In the last 6-12 months social media optimization has been a very highly talked about and discussed venue for traffic.
Although social media sites like myspace have been around much longer then a year over the last year many internet marketers and SEO’s have been focusing their attention on marketing and gaming these sites. With the emergence of proper SMO the need to have top rankings in the SERP’s has decreased and the need to optimze content for sites like digg, myspace, redditt, newsvine etc. has become a very indemand skill.
Anyone who is an SEO/SEM should definitly know about SMO and if they are serious SEO’s they should learn how to be a SMO.
Lets take a quick look at SMO results over at shoemoney.com. Jeremy released a blog post about 10 reasons why Microsoft will aquire Yahoo! in 2007 and soon after that released his traffic stats which shows almost a 100% boost in his traffic from reaching the first page of digg. These results are being seen all over the web but the problem I see is that the boost of immediate traffic is extremely fast BUT the drop in traffic is also fast. Darren Rowse posted a pretty interesting article on how to cultivate your digg traffic into long term traffic which is a great resource for anyone looking to become successful as an SMO.
Here is a quick break down of what Darren mentioned.
-Style of Writing
-Topic of Writing
-Become a Digg User
-Comment on other key sites and blogs
-Drive Traffic to Diggable posts
-Make it easy to digg your work
-Titles and first lines are important
-Digg own stories with caution
-Celebrate Digging subtly
-Quality Content
I think this is a great list but I would like to add onto it if I may and since its my own blog I MAY!!!
-Utilize your My #1
-Notify people of a diggable story (do this with caution as to not spam people but if you have a report with some diggers it is perfectly ok to let them know of a diggable digg)
-DO NOT ask top diggers to digg for you in exchange for cash
-Becoming a member is not enough you need to become VERY active within digg.
-Comment First before you digg an article
-Get involved in community forums NOT JUST blog sites and leave comments and informative posts regarding your posts (do not spam)
-Comment back on people who leave you comments from digg.
-Comment back on comments left on your dugg articles ON DIGG.
-Be concious of the digg community as they are VERY fickle.
There are tons of social media sites out there and the first thing an SMO should do is figure out a sites algorithm. Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz.org put together a great list of ranking factors that Digg, Reddit, Netscape, and Shoutwire might use. Todd malicoat came out with a great post about how DIGG will be the next google and gave some great suggestions about how to improve digg. He also did a really great interview with web pro news with neil patel and I will post that now. Its kinda long but I loved this interview as todd and neil really gives us a play by play on how to become a SMO.
WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO LEARN!!!
By the way if you are looking to create a site like this you can use PLIGG which is a content management system for digg like sites. I put together a test one over at youhypeit.com.
Myspace marketing – everyone is doing it but is the traffic really there?
If you have been on myspace recently you have noticed a HUGE increase on how many profiles have been created that are 100% marketing profiles like the boost mobile profile or the personal marketing profiles like the Tera Patrick Profile.These profiles are pure marekting tools that have been created with the sole purpose of marketing a product or a person. I am sure you get the email and bulletins that are complete spam and you just over look them. This is pretty much the attitude of your myspace community. Here is a list of some things that myspace members are pretty aware of and usually look over and why it seems like the marketer is marketing to other marketers.
-Bulletin spam: the same bulletin over and over again or bulletin’s that are specifically selling a product or service.
-Email spam: Myspace spam emails can get pretty out of hand and since myspace has not truely implemented any kind of spam protection these emails are easily spotted and overlooked.
-Comment spam: comment spam is usally the same message over and over again and not specific to a person or their life so sometimes these comments are actually posted but a click through is usually far from ever happening.
-The myspace community is there for friends, family and networking NOT purchasing a product through your profile. The digg community is kinda like the myspace community.
-Over the last 6 months I have seen real people’s profiles with thousands of friends get knocked down to just there immediate friends and new networking aquantances. The myspace community is pushing away from fake profiles and more towards real people.
-The myspace community finds these spam profiles misleading, bothersome upsetting.
How to tell if you are marketing to other marketers?
-When you mass friend request usualy the people who add you back are other marketers.
-You find a large amount of comments on your site are from other marketers
-Most of your emails are from marketers and not real people inquiring about your product/service
-Your bulletin’s are complete spam
How can you make myspace marketing work?
-Make your profile an attractive womens profile.
-Right your page copy as a real person.
-Do not oversell or over push a product or service. If you are going to mention something be subtle.
-When doing timed bulletins vary the text and make them hours apart.
-Interact with people on myspace so you do not come off spammy.
-DO NOT email market but subtly talk to people and see if you can get them to advertise for you and promote you or your service for you.
-Purchase banner ads on myspace
-Purchase new sponsored links
-Remove spam comments from your profile
-Use a template and spice up your site with music and photos
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
NOTE: Somthing I think most social media marketers will agree on is that people need to trust your profile in order for you to be successful.
Todd Malicoat listed some great other resources for myspace marketing and I will repost them here.
- Myspace: Good for more than just hanging out
- Getting to know Myspace
- MySpace gold at MarketingVOX
- Myspace marketing
- My Social Marketing
- Much more on “myspace marketing”
I would like to add a few resources as well
Bookmark Murdok:
My name is Joe Whyte and I have been doing SEO/SEM for over 5 years now. I have worked with fortune 1000 companies helping them to market their products online, improve search engine rankings, increase conversions and draw viable, targeted traffic to my clients sites.
