SEO Mentor

With the influx of new Web 2.0 sites online there is a growing concern with businesses both online and offline and how to benefit from Social Networking and Media sites that are currently rocking the online world.

The president of the company I used to work for asked me the following,

“How can Social Media help my company and why should I waste time with it.”

I went through a couple examples of how social marketing would help his business grow and showed him a couple of sites that I thought he should check out like Facebook.com, Squidoo.com, Twitter.com, and Stumbleupon.com just to name a few. Once I said ‘Facebook’ his eyes lit up and he said how fun he has had on Facebook and how he has come across old friends that he hasn’t talked to for years. I then saw a light go on in his head realizing the power of Social Media and Social Networking sites.

A recent article called “Why is Social Media So Hard For Businesses?” by Mark Collier of SearchEngineGuide.com stated:

“More businesses than ever are exploring the possibility of using social media tools and sites to help grow their business. But many of these efforts aren’t very effective, and I think that is due to many businesses simply misunderstanding what social media is, and why it’s so important.

First, what exactly IS social media? Asking 10 people might result in 10 different answers, but for simplicity sake, lets say that social media is a group of tools and sites that let you easily create and share content online. Blogs, social networks, and podcasts are the common forms of social media that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with.

The problem that I think many businesses have, is how they view social media. I believe many businesses (of all sizes) see social media sites and tools as new channels to publish content into. In order words, they view social media as being marketing channels.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Notice in the above definition of social media, I said that these sites and tools are ways to create and share content. Why use the word ’share’ instead of ‘publish’ or ‘distribute’?”

I totally agree with Mark and believe that not only businesses but in general people are misunderstanding the purpose of these social media sites that are now getting more pageviews than even the major search engines. Think of a search engine as a quick search for something and then leave. With these social media sites people are not only viewing more pages on the sites but they are also staying on these sites up to 5 times longer than they stay in the search engines, meaning you as a business owner now have five times as long to catch your viewers attention. THIS IS POWERFUL!!!

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Social Media Optimization (SMO) is relatively a new concept in online marketing, even though it has been there in our society for quite some time now. People like hanging out with like-minded people in a closely-knit group, and a similar strategy is employed when it comes to the online world.

Even a few years back, webmasters used different SEO techniques holding high ranks in search engines, which would ensure greater visibility for the surfing audience, and thus lead to monetary gains. With Social Media Optimization, one can reach out to many more individuals across the globe both as an individual, as well as an employee on behalf of his company.

Facebook.com, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Digg, Twitter and a few other social networking websites enable us to promote and market our business to innumerable individuals, who are members of the websites and social communities mentioned above. These websites thus help organizations to cater to the diverse demands of the public on a large scale.

These websites also encourage professional and cultural exchange, which enable learning individuals to pick up valuable tips from experts in their respective fields. Not only do people with similar interests get to flock together, they can also access easy solutions to their problems by posting them for the experts to answer.

Social Media Optimization also helps organizations and individuals to reach out to the global market with their products and services. The business owners also benefit largely by developing their client base on a reference basis. Not only does it allow a beneficiary give-and-take policy to thrive, but also helps in developing personal relations.

With this kind of an evolution taking place, the world is now just a click away for individuals. The biggest attraction of SMO is perhaps the fact that it allows individuals and organization to venture out on projects with little or no capital expenditure at all.

Most people do business with people they know and trust. So, the best way to get more business is to meet more people and the best and easiest way to meet more people is to use the great new social networking sites. These sites empower you to easily create a page all about your business for free!

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So if you haven’t heard of Twitter.com yet then you must be living underneath a rock. Twitter whether you like it or not has been changing the online world and has created a lot of buzz. Everyone and their dogs are all on Twitter, so the question is “Are YOU?” If you want to learn a bit more about what Twitter is then check out what Wikipedia is saying about it.

So if you remember each month I will be posting my monthly SEO Cartoons, so here is this months cartoon about Twitterholics:

Guess what there is actually a website about Twitterholics at Twitterholic.com. CRAZY!

Here are a couple articles that you should take a look at about Twitter:

Are You Using Twitter Yet? - by Aaron Wall

Twitter: Is it really worth using? - by Neil Patel

Twitter Poll: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool? - by Lee Odden

Tweet Wars - check out this funny video

To see more posts about Twitter check out all Twitter article posts at Sphinn.com

The SEO Cartoons have arrived! You will probably notice the new cartoon logo to the right on the sidebar that looks like this:

You can check out all our SEO Cartoons

I have teamed up with Mike Dyson a professional cartoonist/artist who is great to work with. Mike has a ton of experience and in my opinion is a great artist.

So if anyone needs some great artistic work done feel free to visit Mike’s portfolio at Caroflot.com and you can also check out his blog at Atomsplit.wordpress.com!

So check out our first Cartoon about Twitterholics!
 

If you are not using FriendFeed you are missing out on a great tool that helps you add disparate accounts across blogs and social networking services such as Twitter, StumbleUpon, YouTube, and many more. Friendfeed aggregates them so friends can follow what you’re doing in one place, think of it as a one stop shop for all your social networking updates and news items. The company was founded by ex-Googlers, and using it is easy.

Here is what Crunchbase.com is saying about what FriendFeed is:

“FriendFeed is a service which, instead of layering a meta-network on top of all your other social networks, will create a news feed incorporating them all much like the facebook news feed. It’s an idea that isn’t too difficult or bothersome for social network users to adopt.

Users tell the feed which networks they belong to (Facebook, Digg, Last.fm etc) and FriendFeed personalizes your data feed with info from each of the sites.

Other companies, such as Spokeo, ProfileLinker, MyLifeBrand and the more recent Fuser, are trying to help you organize your online social identity as well, all in different ways.”

So I joined FriendFeed a while back and have found that it is another great tool that helps me keep up on what all my social friends are doing online one of those being Dave Harry of Huomah.com. Not only do I love to follow everything that Dave is talking about online (because it is usually entertaining and intellectual) but what I really wanted to let everyone know about was the public rooms he has created on FriendFeed:

• the SEM Room
• the Learn SEO Room
• the SphinnZone Room

Here are some other people that I follow on FriendFeed and really I try and follow them everywhere:

Ann Smarty
David Wallace
Kristen Munson - Social Media Mom
Danny Sullivan
Shana Albert - theNanny
Jason Calacanis
SpostareDuro - Kimberly Bock
Bill Slawski

So if you have been reading any news withing the Online Marketing, Social Network Marketing, or SEO industries then you have come across “Google Friend Connect“. Here is a little of what Google says Friend Connect is:

Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site.

Conrad Salvador of Directoryone.com says, “A preview release of Google Friend Connect was launched just last night, which placed you on a waiting list for the services. Friend Connect claims to offer something that the others do not, which is the ability to turn any website into a social network. Website owners will be able to generate traffic by enabling their site to provide social features for all its visitors.” He also references this YouTube video below explaining how it all works:

So here is what you need to do if you are at all interested in Google Friend Connect:

• Watch the video above
• Sign-up for the preview release
• Continue to learn more about how it can help you and WAIT