sEoCiAliZaTiOn

Top 5 Social Media Optimization (SMO) Guidelines

2010-04-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

While SEO has become more and more a competitive arena where companies are advancing their different strategies to get an edge in search engine rankings, there is still more to internet marketing for websites to be fully equipped. The promising waves of Semantic Web and Web 3.0 deemed to change website marketing throughout internet history. To realize the fullest functionalities of a website, it must try to surf above these waves of internet revolution to become highly competitive as ever. As such, even at this stage, webmasters should take social media optimization (SMO) more seriously as search engine optimization (SEO).

Below are top five (5) guidelines of making website SMO-friendly and boost its marketing potential in all aspects:

Linkability Enhancements. This is the foremost consideration in social media optimization. It means giving more charisma to your site so others can’t help but link to it. Most often, excellent contents in easy-to-remember URL’s (preferably short) won the popularity race. Even excellent blog posts help a lot of making others subscribe to your site updates. Wake up, your site is not just a static web store. It needs to look so active and content should always be up to date.
Embedded Bookmarking Tools. People will always look for an easy way. If bookmarking your site will just be a click away rather than going through the regular procedure, expect a statistically sound number of regular visitors. You can use “add to”, “share this” or even “follow me” add-ons and plug-ins plus right choice of tags to speed up the interaction between your site and your visitors.
Reward Your Follower. Displaying your visitor’s profile together with his topics of interest could encourage your visitors to regularly visit your site. Attending to their queries via blog commenting tools directly posting it on their Twitter of Facebook accounts could cheer them up. This will help engage themselves in a rich interaction even among your other followers imparting their ideas.
Faster Rate of Content Popularity. While SEO deals mainly on content text manipulation, SMO provides and avenue to promote non-textual contents. PDF’s, video blogs, and audio clips watermarked with your homepage will help spread the news and stories of your website. In return, this will draw a huge amount of traffic and even backlinks to your site.
Less Restriction to Web Application Hybrid. In web development, web application hybrid is popularly known as the mashup or simply allowing others to reuse your content. It is a web application combining ideas coming from two or more external page sources in creating a new page. Giving them access to your highly informative pages will help them go to your site frequently in search for more updated information.

Why Use Social Media For Your Business’ Global Market

2009-11-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

In the age of globalization when the world market is no longer that hard to reach out, having a business which could have a global market has a lot of advantages. Today’s social media is a new tool to make that deal even easier. You don’t need to invest so much on global advertising via costly conventional means. Instead, you just need to have an internet connection and a website and your business is on the go.

Take a look at the following data bits could convince you why use social media as am global advertising tool for your business:

Roughly 80 million people in US alone used social networks.
Around 70% of the world’s internet users visit social networks for referrals.
Social media sites are on the rank 4 among the Most Popular Online Activity and will likely be the No. 1 in succeeding years – even more popular than personal email.
Estimated 15% people trust ads, and 75% people trust consumer recommendations.
Social media provides more traffic than SEO, more affordable than PPC, with viral property to spread information across time, and gives higher conversion rate.

Source: Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places

Haven’t convinced yet? The very reason why social media has a higher success rate for business application is that in conforms to word of mouth (WOM) communication model which is also applied in common networking business. The only difference is that it is done online using social network’s friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) strategy. Consumer recommendations alone could give other consumer a higher degree of confidence towards a particular product being endorsed, especially referrals from people they already knew. So set up your social networking accounts via Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Friendster now and start your effective social media internet marketing campaign in no time.

Who is Involved in Social Media

2009-07-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Whenever the word "Social Media" is flashed on a screen, 8 out 10 spectators would say that it's a very busy web networking site. Chances are, they would site two or more Web 2.0 sites like YouTube, Amazon, TechCrunch, Skype, Flickr, MySpace, Delicious, Digg, Blogger, Last FM, Newsvine, AdBrite, Technorati, Wordpress, Yahoo, and Google. Well, social media is not really a bunch of highly interactive sites. Social Media is rather a form of conversation that is inherently powered by Social Networks in a form of Blogs, Podcasts, RSS feeds, Wiki's, and Search Engines. In fact, social media involves the following sectors in the society interacting together to continually reinforce the popularity of social media through the internet:

Donors

This sector generally refers to any individual sharing some form of information or resources for free over the internet. Regardless of whether it costs him a lot acquiring such information, he willingly shares it to public feeds so everyone may take a glance and know.

Investors

Where the crowd is, there's business. Social media popularity has apparently enticed every investor looking on a global market for his product or service. This is because social media can deliver extended advertisement 24/7.

Volunteers

This sector has supported the cause of donors and transmit information willfully to everyone. For hot issues and global concerns, volunteers mass-produce information for maximum public awareness.

Employees

Even employees unknowingly use social media as a channel of interaction even if separated by departments and area of discipline. More often, social media catalyzes the flow of operations among business firms because employees can practically use social media for business ends.

Service Recipients

This sector relies so much on the best thing the internet can give to their concerns and queries. They can be any consumer in need of something concrete or abstract turning to social media sites for the best information or best deals available.

Who else are involved in social media? You can think some more, other than yourself, who are turning their everyday lives browsing for something new in the internet.

How Popular is Social Media

2009-07-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

Understanding how popular is social media can be done by statistically reviewing the number of its users from time to time. However, you cannot be definite about the numerical expression of social media's popularity because it increases drastically from time to time owing to its viral nature. Now let's have some quick recap on some popular social media having a considerable number of users eye-popping enough for some business-driven individuals to invest into.

MySpace alone has more than 200 million users. That means if MySpace was a nation, it could be on rank 5 of the top ten most populated nations in the world. It would be sandwiched between Indonesia on the 4th and Brazil on the 6th.

In Google search engine, daily search queries reach to more than 250 million

The number of text messages sent daily outnumbers the total number of the world's population. With social media access through mobile technologies, it is expected that social networks will invade mobile advertising.

There can be a vast number of blogs published daily. And at least 346 million people around the world read blogs on the internet.

One of the most popular social networking tool today is Twitter. Micro-blogging is enabled as text-based posting with at most 140 characters called "tweet". Statistically, there are around 3 million recorded tweets daily.

Another social networking utility used to connect people around the world is Facebook. It is recorded that people are spending 2.6 billion minutes per day facing their Facebook account.

What makes social media extremely popular basically lies on every individual's desire to connect to others. Regardless of whether it is for personal, political or business purposes, social media indeed build and enhance relationships and which is boldly expressed by facts and figures.

What is Web 2.0?

2009-07-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is defined as the second wave of web development. If there would be a Web 1.0, it refers to the previous web paradigm where contents and information are generally transmitted from expert authors and company specialist to internet users and consumers. Although with higher rate of accuracy, expert-produced contents prevent wider content variation making the web not too interactive. Besides, not too many experts gain convenient access to the internet before hindering them from participating in providing expert views on subject expertise.

As technology offsets faster web development, Web 2.0 explosion has become inevitable. The web has become an FFA (Free-For-All) arena where internet users and consumers can greatly participate in almost all aspects. User-generated contents have replaced the expert-controlled nature of the previous web genre. This results to a very high content variety and has increased drastically the interaction among people of all sectors in the society. Web 2.0 can be formulated as a content sum of universal views of every topic, user-generated views on every topic, and the cumulative increase in connection of all internet users in the world.

The web is becoming more social day by day. And defining Web 2.0 has become relative due to the faster rate of technological advancement that created it. From simple text-based page to podcasts, video blogging and video conferencing, instant messaging and mobile technology aggregation, Web 2.0 has become an indispensable part of daily life.

The very reason of the popularity of Web 2.0 lies in the social nature of man. The web only provides a virtual avenue where everyone can reach out to other people and express their views on every subject matter. It is not just a simple code of instructions for computer to publish over the internet, it’s a paradigm shift for a more social, collaborative, and highly interactive web environment.

Megan Fox is Now Following James Retuya

2009-06-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

These are really crazy internet days. People always wanted to get into something controversial. And candid Megan Fox of The Transformers is none of the exception. After a naughty joke she had on January 11, 2009 at the Golden Globes comparing herself as Alan Alda, rumors spread up to these days that she was once a guy. And now she's following me on Twitter!

Doing some social media research for the veracity of such claim, here is the rundown of internet community discussions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Fox - Megan Fox is a chic!

http://weeklyworldnews.com/celebs/4783/megan-fox-is-a-man/ - Megan Fox is a hunk!

http://www.mtv.co.uk/artists/megan-fox/news/90994-megan-fox-a-man - Title is exciting, but she is definitely the Golden Globes Best Dressed Girl!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/13/megan-fox-im-a-man-video_n_157488.html - She is the sexiest woman in the world by lad mag FHM in April.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090117115534AA9N0TI - She is a female!!!

http://www.alvinon9.com/2009/06/it-is-11.html - He's maybe just insecure but he didn't think she's a man!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/2521340/Megan-Fox-wants-a-new-man - This fox's a vixen!

http://moimoi26.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/megan-fox-is-a-man/ - He's doubting Megan Fox used to have balls.

http://igossip.com/gossip/Megan_Fox_Not_a_Man/563130 - Megan Fox: Not a Man

http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/06/25/would-you-believe-that-megan-fox-is-a-man/ - Doubting but still believes she's a man...

Oopps! I'm taking only top 10 social media sites confirming or disproving that Megan Fox is a guy. The Yes vote counts 2, the No vote was cast 7 times, and anything in between was ciphered once. So, the unofficial social media statistics shows that is it not good to judge when one says,"I am pretty sure I am a doppelganger for Alan Alda. I'm a transvestite. I'm a man. I'm so painfully insecure. I'm on the verge of vomiting now. I am so horrified that I am here, and embarrassed. I'm scared."...especially if she's Megan Fox!

How Social Media Improves Site Ranking on SERP

2009-06-26T10:26:00.001-07:00

Social media is being closely linked to search engine optimization (SEO) nowadays that they are often used interchangeably. But they can never be the same nor can one of them make the other obsolete. The truth is social media can be a very important tool to boost ranking of your target keywords on different search engines. If your visitors found your site on search engines, they most likely have heard about it via social media twits. But making social media a great help for your site requires a lot of patience and all-encompassing tricks. Here are some convincing ways how social media can improve your site's ranking on target keywords on major search engines:

Social Media Provides Free and Juicy One-Way Links. The fact is linking your site freely on different social media sites give you the opportunity to mass-produce one-way links. This makes social media an inevitable venue for link building. There is no other way you can place a number of links to your site faster than through social media.
Social Media Delivers Traffic Flood. Believe it or not, but watch over site analytics after heavily indulging in social media strategies and you will see a raise in the graph of those analytics, and in an all-time high. Innovations like catchy titles and link baits are highly compatible with social media sites.
Social Media Can Greatly Support Organic Links. When most of your high quality links are concentrated in organic ways, social media can reinforce them by creating a tag clouds of target keywords that points to your site. Social media is highly effective in linking headlines to your site, where your target keywords can be found.
Social Media is Gaining Trust from Search Engines. The web 2.0 explosion has given social media sites more authority in terms of news and updates. The fact that almost everyone is using social media sites make them a favorite spot for search engines to scoop information on frequently discussed topics. And besides, social media subscribers are growing in numbers.
Social Media is Very Versatile. More social media have already incorporated all kinds of media like pictures, news clips, podcasts, and videos to be posted, shared, and discussed within a page or two. Cross-platform boundaries is also becoming lesser and lesser. Almost in different kind of situations, there can also be a social media created to cater user-constrained preferences.

Social Media Categories

2009-06-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

Social media is being categorized mainly on the type of media being transmitted and shared. Although some can be too general to cover two or more types, others tend to excel for being too specific to only cater one kind of media. The popularity of a social media is always measured by the number of people using it, interacting together using social media technology as a channel. The following can provide a basic categorization of social media based primarily on the type of media and nature of information:

Blogging
- Blogspot
- Wordpress
- LiveJournal
- TypePad
- Vox
Social Networking
- MySpace
- Facebook
- Bebo
- Hi5
- LinkedIn
Social Network Aggregation
- Twitter
- Jaiku
- FriendFeed
- Plurk
- Pownce
Social Bookmarking
- Delicious
- Faves
- Diigo
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo Bookmarks
Social News
- Reddit
- Mixx
- Digg
- Newsvine
- Technorati
Collaboration
- Wikipedia
- PBwiki
- Wetpaint
- Wikea
- Swik
Opinion Posting
- Yahoo! Answers
- WikiAnswers
- Yedda
- Epinions
- MouthShut
Media Sharing
- YouTube (Videos)
- Flicker (Pictures)
- Kaboodle (Brands and Products)
- Ustream (Livecast)
- Imeem (Audio)
Game-Sharing
- Miniclip
- Kongregate
- Yahoo Games
- Newgrounds
- Shockwave
Virtual World
- Second Life
- The Sims Online
- Forterra
- Cybertown
- Club Penguin

The above social media categories provide 5 sample sites that generally intend to accommodate one or more types of media or nature of information. Of course, one social media is not restricted to cater only one or two types. Some technology updates might give them the capacity to consolidate more types of media under one site. Gaining more and more unique visitors and users and build their connections will determine the success of any social media.

Social Media Vs. Conventional Media : Contrast and Comparison

2009-06-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

Social media can make or unmake conventional media like newspapers, radio, and television obsolete. It always depends on the time spent by majority of people on a particular type of media. Comparing social media and conventional media can be done in several aspects. The following are some few points of battle between social media and conventional media:

Cost of Operation

Social media is generally cheaper over conventional media. Anyone needs only to connect online to publish or transmit information. Conventional media may need expensive tools and gadgets to be able to spread some news.

Area of Coverage

Social media is not limited to publishing or accessing information within local scale, its scope is really wide and boundless. Fiber optics, satellites, and mobile technologies can now be used to download and upload information into social media sites. Conventional media like newspaper depends upon logistic operations to be able to distribute information. Radio and television also depends on the range of their broadcasting satellites. They can only generally cover a city or two.

Accessibility and Usability

Social media is the most user-friendly among all other social media in terms of both publishing and sharing information. Most of today’s software programs also offset the need for more user-friendly prototypes. Accessing information from conventional media is generally one-way. Readers, listeners, and viewers are only fed by the information controlled by conventional media operators. For them to share information directly back to conventional media service provider takes time and resources. This makes conventional media less interactive.

Real-Time Information Transmission

Social media is the fastest way to convey and receive information globally. A simple video-conferencing using the internet greatly reduces time spent to transmit information. Plus increasing bandwidth on internet connection will eventually lead to zero-lag and real-time transmission. Conventional media may take hours, days, or even weeks to deliver the information to the public.

Information Modification

Social media provides easiest access to modify information and make it even better. A simple WYSIWYG editor can make your published information more accurate and more interactive. Users can instantly add, delete, and change certain parts according to their preferences. In a conventional media, what’s done is done. When a particular damage is incurred, it takes times to rectify the errors. Not to mention the cost involved to restore it.

What is Social Media?

2009-06-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Social media is an online publishing hub for internet users around the world. It is a revolutionary kind among other media in the sense that it changes the way people acquire, keep, and share information on both local and global scale. It generally upholds easier ways to communicate via highly interactive internet environment. This makes social media as decentralized avenues for transmission of information

What makes social media so popular these days is that it supports the social nature of people regardless of race and culture. The drastic development of web technology also offsets ever increasing users of social media. Private individuals and business entities interact in the World Wide Web, breaking barriers like no other forms of communication has established. It is also one of the easiest ways for businesses to extend their services to the customers by determining their concerns via user-generated links or consumer-discussion boards. Social media is successfully transversing the social, technological and economical aspects of modern-day living.

Just like any other things, there is also the other side of the coin about social media which can also displease anybody. There have been criticisms regarding the credibility of social media contents as being vulnerable to malicious hearsays. But social media being highly interactive also encourages other people to dispute any unreasonable claims as fallacies. Internet users themselves, with the help of search engines, find ways to develop their level of awareness on certain issues that concern them.

Whatever the picture of social media through time will be, it will always remain as a neutral ground. Majority of users, as contents transmitter themselves, can mold the stability of social media as a credible source of information. Let it not be said that the World Wide Web is still in the making, and social media plays a vital role.

Easy Social Media Optimization Using Reddit

2009-06-19T12:59:00.000-07:00

Reddit got a new skin for submission page, and it's a lot cooler now! Bigger fonts, smooth color, easy submission schemes, can't stop getting Reddit!

Reddit.com is an online news flagship social media taking a lot of user-generated links. It popularized karma system encouraging users to vote submitted stories to float up to the front page. Primary front page Reddit (categories) are atheism, funny, pics, politics, programming, reddit.com, science, technology, worldnews, and WTF. There are also a number of popular user-preference reddits to choose from.

Reddit is one of top 10 social media sites with roughly 1.2 million unique visitors in the US alone. It is even more popular than Delicious. Most of it's users are around 35-45 years old having a household income of $30 to $100 making it a premier social networking site. When you are dealing with political, environmental, business and entertainment news daily on the web, then Reddit.com is a perfect spot for you.

Reddit is also one of the easiest social bookmarking sites. It only requires to register your username, optional on email, and password plus the verification code. After that, you are ready to go and submit your news links requiring only URL, title, reddit (category), and verification code. Reddit also discourages spamming by disallowing submission within 10 minutes from the last submitted news. Online news are submitted via URL and it cannot be submitted again but one can vote for them. With its much spacious interface and larger fonts, where else will you go to submit your news online?