Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 6 of October , 2007 at 12:41 pm Comments (2)
Someone I respect likes to refer social bookmarking as another form of SEO. Another friend says it will eventually displace SEO. I think, personally, social media - and not just bookmarking, but all social media - is a form of Internet marketing that is outside of the realm of SEO, but that has some SEO benefits.
What I mean is, you can build a nice solid link building campaign through social networking, bookmarking, and other social media. But that’s not its primary purpose nor is it the primary benefit. Social bookmarking is better utilized as a traffic tool. Sure, you can increase your link popularity and search engine positioning by adding a lot of links to your portfolio, but if you don’t have really useful social content then all you have are links.
Just like the on-page content for your website, social content has to be valuable and unique. You can’t just throw out a bunch of garbage into the web universe and expect that earn you some respect. Remember, your name is attached to all of that. You are building your reputation. You want people to recognize you as someone who appreciates valuable content. So make sure that when you do bookmark certain items that you are bookmarking items that you truly find valuable and unique. In that way, as people come to rely on your bookmarks, they will recognize you as someone who can identify what valuable content looks like. You’re more likely to get reliable traffic to your website that way.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 3 of October , 2007 at 2:31 pm Comments (2)
Robert Scoble is dissing Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer in today’s WebProNews:
Don’t miss this quote. It’s demonstrates everything that is wrong with Microsoft’s approach:
“There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,” Ballmer said.
OK, I’m with Scoble on this one. Ballmer clearly doesn’t have a clue about social marketing. Facebook is the schiznit (did I spell that right?). And it doesn’t matter whether you think MSN has a clue about search. This isn’t about search. It’s about Microsoft’s inability to cash in on Web marketing. Sure, they’ve done OK, but they do own the third largest search engine - not the first, not the second, the third. Then one of their top execs comes out and compares Facebook with Geocities? Come on, that’s not even close.
It could be a generational thing. What is Ballmer, over 50 now? Too old to dance. Might throw a hip out. And if he logs on for too long on a social network he might scare all the young ladies into hanging out at the library instead. Come on, Steve. Geocities? If you had said Blogspot was like Geocities, that would have made sense. But Facebook? Do you even know what Facebook is?
Online Advertising vs. Social Marketing
There’s a huge difference between advertising and marketing. Advertising is paying money for space or time. Marketing is sharing, talking, communicating. It’s a back and forth. Advertising is a one-way street. That’s why Microsoft is still stuck in the past. That’s likely why Scoble isn’t there any more. Ballmer didn’t get blogging and he doesn’t get social marketing either. It looks like the only thing he does get is an oversized paycheck.
I encourage all my readers to join the conversation, or start one. What do you like about Facebook? How is it different than advertising? Should the search engines develop relationships with the social networking websites? If so, how?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 2 of October , 2007 at 7:30 am Comments (4)
You know how I feel about viral marketing. It catches on!
You know that I like viral video and social marketing and I recently wrote a post on podcasting. E-books are another form of viral marketing that has been popular in the past. Another tool that you can use for viral marketing is your newsletter. Today, I’m going to share with you some of the tools that you’ll need to produce these items - at least, the ones that I recommend.
Viral Video
Camtasia Studio - Let’s start with viral video. There are two primary tools I’d recommend. The first, and most popular, is Camtasia. Camtasia is a software program that allows you to record anything you see on your computer screen. You can turn Camtasia on and let it record your mouse clicks and navigation on your own website so you can show visitors how to use your site or to demonstrate other useful experiences. Put out by TechSmith, Camtasia isn’t cheap. It’s about $299.00, but they do have a free trial version.
Digital Camera - If you want to appear on screen and talk then get yourself an inexpensive digital camera. It doesn’t have to be anything real big. Make sure the camera has video capability, or use a camcorder. With a digital camera and Windows Media Player, which comes with most computers these days, you can produce a rock solid viral video.
Viral Podcasting
Audacity - Easily the best podcasting tool is Audacity. Audacity is simply an audio program that allows you to record your voice, telephone conversations, and other audio files, and upload them to your computer or website. It’s really all you need. And it’s free.
Digital Recorder - Not as useful as Audacity’s editing platform, but you can take a regular old digital tape recorder and record yourself then upload it to your computer or website. It works the same way, but you’ll have to edit in Windows Media Player.
Viral E-books
CutePDF - Very inexpensive. About $50. You can convert any document to PDF format. You can go with the original Adobe platform, but it’s very expensive. Get CutePDF. It’s the cheaper version.
MS Word - Don’t want to shell out $50 for CutePDF? Use MicroSoft Word and convert to PDF from there. It isn’t as flexible as CutePDF. You have to do all of your editing inside of Word. CutePDF actually has editing features that allow you to do some things quicker and more easily than Word does.
Viral Newsletters
Constant Contact - Newsletters have been around for a long time. Constant Contact is a service that makes newsletter production simple. They have a 60-day free trial, but you’ll quickly want to purchase the service for $15 per month. If you decide to use Constant Contact, let me know. I can refer a friend and we both get a $30 credit.
MS Publisher - You can do a newsletter yourself with MS Publisher and convert to HTML. This is obviously much less expensive as Publisher usually comes with computers today, or with MS Office. Less flexible than Constant Contact and you’ll have to create your own autoresponders, but it produces great newsletters and you can’t tell the difference.
MS Word - Same as with e-books. You can create and convert to HTML. Inexpensive, but not as flexible as the other options.
Social Marketing
Really all you need to do any type of social marketing is a computer and access to the Internet. Network and bookmark your favorite websites.
One other viral tool that I left out was blogging. You can set up your own blog on a free blog host like Blogger.com. But I don’t recommend that. I recommend WordPress on your own domain name because you have more control over that. WordPress is open source and free and if you’ve never dealt with software before or you are technology challenged then you’ll need some help. But it’s well worth it.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 1 of October , 2007 at 1:29 pm Comments (1)
Viral marketing is taking a product and having it distributed throughout the Internet so that thousands of people come in contact with your message over and over again. It started with e-mail back in the mid-90’s. Then it migrated to articles and e-books. Then video marketing came in and blogging along with social marketing. Another new technology that makes viral marketing an easy and effective way to get your message out is podcasting.
Podcasting simply recording your message in audio and making it available on your website or elsewhere. There are different ways to do this. You can put your audio message on your website or distribute it through podcasting directories. Either way, your message is distributed online by people who hear your message and like what you have to say. It’s called podcasting because it initially got its start with the iPods. People would download audio files and share them with each other. Soon, marketers discovered they could share their marketing message that way.
I highly recommend viral marketing. It’s the newfangled word of mouth. You tell two friends, they tell two friends, etc. Except online it could be you tell two hundred friends, they tell two hundred friends, etc. Viral marketing. It’s here to stay. Do it through podcasting.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 29 of September , 2007 at 7:46 am Comments (2)
(Source) The frustration came when I found out that what I thought was an incredible idea for a post, and an amazing article written by some blogger, did not get much traffic or attention, while weeks later some ‘well known blogger writes a post about the same topic but much less interesting, and gets a huge amount of traffic, comments, and credit for it.
OK, I kind of like this idea. Zuggu.com is a social bookmarking site for Internet marketers. A lot like Digg, only without the prejudice. Let’s face it, Diggers are elitists and if it rains ….
Well, you understand.
I like this idea because you can actually vote up, or down, those interesting stories on Internet marketing that you find all over the place - from guys that aren’t Aaron Wall or Darren Rowse. The only thing I think that would make this idea even better is to be able to search for all the blog entries on a particular topic. For instance, this mornging, Michael Martine submitted his blog post titled, “10 Things To Do After You Create A Blog.” If I had an interest in seeing who else blogged about that same topic then I’d be relegated to looking for similar blog entries by clicking on one of the category listings on Zuggu’s sidebar. So I’d click on “Blogging.” But then I’d only get results that were actually submitted to Zuggu.
Here’s what I’d like to see: A search box that allows me to type in a key phrase. Let’s say, “after you create a blog.” If I can find any blog entry on the Internet that uses that phrase and be able to vote it up or down using Zuggu’s concept then that would be quite cool. This way, if I’m working on a similar concept then I can see how many other bloggers have done it before me and find blogs that I can trackback to and comment on about my blog post on a related subject.
Still, I like Zuggu concept even without the fantasy feature.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 22 of September , 2007 at 7:37 am Comments (2)
(Source) At least BlogRush has emailed its users acknowledging their concerns and also admitting that ”bozos have come out of the woodwork and are trying to cheat the BlogRush system.” No, really?
lol
This is hilarious. It doesn’t take long for bozos to come out and play when the snake oil salesmen enter town square. Anyone who didn’t think this would happen has been living with their head in a sandbox - or somewhere dark. I haven’t tried BlogRush, but I’m not sure that I want to. To me, building traffic is a natural process, not a synthetic one. This just seems like a more modern version of web rings and traffic exchange networks. If you do get more traffic it will likely be other users of the system who are curious enough to click on their own links while checking out their stats. Frankly, I’ve got better things to do.
Social Marketing Journal is all about sharing the best ways to use social media to market your business online. We’ll be discussing social bookmarking, social networking, reputation management, video marketing, viral marketing, and a host of other online methods of marketing yourself and your business through social media. So far we’ve posted six entries to the blog and we’ll continue our commitment to blog on marketing issues of relevance and interest to the small business owner as well as the corporate marketer.
When you want the latest and the greatest information, news, and know-how on social marketing, drop by the Social Marketing Journal and leave a comment. Stick around and read the blog posts. Bookmark your favorite ones and share them with your friends. Check out these posts from the Social Marketing Journal:
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 19 of September , 2007 at 1:57 pm Comments (1)
Search Engine Optimization Journal is proud to sponsor a new blog directory and blog host: Today.com.
Today.com offers free hosting for blogs and allows bloggers who currently have a blog hosted elsewhere to submit their blog to this new directory. They have an interesting set up in all its simplicity:
Three tabs - Home, Blogs, Videos. That’s it.
On the Home tab you can create a new blog and start writing in minutes. You can click on the Read Blogs icon and start reading immediately. Or you can view and upload videos. Today.com also allows you to search their site using keywords (the search box is in the top right corner of the web page). Scroll down and you can see the tag cloud and a list of popular searches.
Click on the Blogs tab and you can browse blogs, create a blog, or submit your blog for inclusion in their directory. Today.com even allows you to vote on blogs so you can influence which blogs are most popular. You can browse all the blogs in their system or just those hosted by Today.com.
The Videos tab is perhaps the best of all. Browse videos by popularity according to most views or most votes or you can browse by length of video. Just like with blogs, users can vote on their favorite videos and influence which ones rise to the top of the pile. Just below the tabs in the top left of the screen you choose to see videos by most popular or most viewed or you can select New Videos or upload your own (you know how much I recommend viral video marketing!).
Today.com is just getting started and has a lot to offer. Take a look at this video from the Today.com site and see for yourself:
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 14 of September , 2007 at 6:31 pm Leave a comment
After reading my feeds today I’ve come away with more insight in the race for search dominance (as if Google hasn’t already topped every hen in cyberspace). Here’s what I’ve learned today:
MSN: Launching Live 2.0, which should move it up to nine legs behind Google instead of the current ten.
Yahoo!: Inking a deal with Viacom because Viacom has pretty much pissed off Google to the degree that the stud of search won’t give the TV free content whore any more lovin’.
Google: Killing us softly with its own PowerPoint-solution, which will allow devote fans of the search king to drop MicroSoft altogether and just do it all online.
Yellowbook: Moves into video marketing.
The Village People: Everyone wants a piece of Google’s assets, even this bad act from the 70’s.
BuzzTracker: Sells out to Yahoo!
The Moon: Be the first to get there with your own personal robot and Google will give you your own personal $30 million. To the moon, Alice!
The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince: Hires a lawyer to go after all the assets he can find, including those belonging to Google, eBay, YouTube, and The Pirate Bay. Is there anybody he won’t screw?
Farecast: Creates a Facebook App so you can see trips your friends took.
MTV: Due to launch its own social network tonight, called Flux.com. Just one more online publisher for people like Prince and The Village People to sue.
97th Floor: Offers Social Media, a new extension for Firefox that allows social media users to easily see what has been submitted to the social bookmarking sites faster by seeing them all together side by side, like cans of soup on the super market shelf. Yum!
Twitter: Absolutely nothing, but all its competitors are making moves.
MySpace: You’ve heard of MySpaceTV and QuarterLife, I’m sure. Now MySpace is teaming up with Seventeen Magazine to show a video series of freshman girls integrating into their first year of college. I’m guess this is aimed at other seventeen year old girls and sixteen year old boys.
Blogger: Launches a new slideshow that features the newest photos uploaded to Blogger sites.
New York Times: Launches a new Facebook app.
Google: Adds 54 new countries to Google Maps.
Pitzer College: Starting a college course on YouTube where students submit content and comment on it. This millennium’s basket weaving.
Del.icio.us: Celebrates its fourth birthday.
There’s a lot going on in the world of business online. Can you keep up with it all? I can’t.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 13 of September , 2007 at 5:09 pm Leave a comment
Is this telling or what? Mashable published this chart on its blog today, showing which social networking sites are the most popular. While MySpace has the most users, it is fitting to note that Facebook is growing at a faster rate. If it continues to grow at that pace then Facebook will outgrow MySpace within two years.
Another up and comer is LinkedIn, which is seeing even faster growth than Facebook. It is quite possible that LinkedIn could move into the top five by next summer.
Of the video sharing sites rated by Nielsen, Veoh is growing the fastest and Yahoo! Video is second, both with triple digit growth since August 2006. YouTube is third with 66% growth.
It looks like the future of social and viral marketing is looking good. The question is, when it all pans out, who will be on top? Any guesses?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 12 of September , 2007 at 8:52 am Leave a comment
Last Friday, we launched a sister blog - Blog Marketing Journal. As you would imagine, it didn’t take us long to get around to talking about social bookmarking.
Weighing in on the discussion, I’d like to say that I don’t just rely on pings and trackbacks. We get a good deal of them here at SEOJ, but I’m much more proactive than that. I believe in meeting the enemy on his own ground.
Of course, social bookmarking isn’t the enemy, nor are social bookmarkers. But I hope you know what I mean. You have to take the fight - or the link love - to the place where the action is. You can’t just expect them to follow you home. Humans - even online - don’t act like puppy dogs.
That’s why I’m an active social networker and bookmarker. One of my favorite places is Netscape, which is about to change to a new domain name for its bookmarking site. It will soon be called Propeller. I like that. Other places I like are StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us, and various other sites as well. There are hundreds of social bookmarking and networking sites online and I think most of them provide some kind of benefit if used the right way.
Speaking of social networking, news flash: Yahoo! and Bebo, the UKs No. 1 social networking site, are teaming up. The partnership will be called Yahoo! Europe and give Yahoo! access to millions of social media users all over Europe. Looks like Bebo will now be displaying Yahoo! advertising on its sites. Is that a win-win?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 10 of September , 2007 at 8:31 am Comments (1)
The question comes up quite often, “Which social networking site is the best.” I must say that it really depends. I wouldn’t use some of them (I won’t say which) at all, but others I use quite often. Most of them have a good deal of strengths and others have just a few. I think this largely depends on what industry you are in, who your target audience is, and what you are trying to accomplish through social networking.
MySpace is a good example. MySpace is great if you are a musician or another arts-oriented person or you want to reach a younger crowd. Facebook is better if you are targeting a more affluent college-age person. LinkedIn is perhaps one of the best for professionals working in the traditional corporate world, or in the new Internet economy.
One this is certain. It is difficult to run an online business, or do any business at all online, without engaging in social networking. It’s a necessity. But you have to research the different sites and see which ones are a better fit for you.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 7 of September , 2007 at 8:33 am Leave a comment
Two days ago, Facebook announced on its blog that user profiles would be made searchable on Google. I think this is a good thing.
Now you can use Facebook as another way to get your name, or company name, into the public realm. Here’s how:
Set up a user profile
Change Facebook’s privacy settings to your preferences
Be sure to fill in as much information as you can about you and your company
It’s that simple.
But Will Anyone Find Your Facebook Profile?
Whether Facebook profiles will be optimized enough for anyone to find them is another question, but my guess is that Google and Facebook have entered into an agreement that will make Facebook profiles a part of Google Universal searches. If they haven’t, they should. That will mean that of the top 10 listings for any person’s name or a company name then one of those will be a Facebook profile - provided that the individual or company has set one up.
Users concerned about privacy will be happy to know that Facebook has taken great measures to protect privacy. You have total control over how much of your profile is made public. As it stands now, anyone not logged in to Facebook will only see that you have a Facebook profile. They won’t be able to see the profile itself.
Who Wins With The Facebook-Google Wedding?
What this means for Facebook is a new and effective way to market Facebook itself. If someone not familiar with Facebook searches for a long long Army buddy, or something, and finds out that he has a Facebook profile, they click the search query and land Facebook’s website, but will not be able to see their buddy’s profile unless they log in and set up an account. Big win for Facebook.
Facebook users have one more way to get their personal names and company names in the Google SERPs. Granted, people will have to search for you by name, but as you grow your company online and you make an impact in social circles as well as with your customers then people will be more apt to search for your company.
Let’s say that you meet someone in a public chat room. You get to talking and they want to learn more about you, but you leave before they get your website address. They search for your name to see what they find and discover your Facebook profile. That’s a big win for you.
It’s also a big win for those want to find you. Triple win.
Yahoo, Live, Ask: The Collateral Benefit
What Google does other search engines will inevitably follow. You can bet that Facebook profiles will start appearing in other search engine results as well. What degree of importance they will hold is another matter, but I would not be surprised to see Facebook profiles appearing in Yahoo and Ask SERPs soon.
More Google-Facebook Rumors
For awhile I was hearing that Google might be buying Facebook. Nice rumor. It could happen. It might not. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Facebook is quickly replacing MySpace as the place to be. Overall, I think Facebook does a better job of protecting users’ privacy, which is very important if you have children who like to play around on the social sites.
There are other benefits to having a Facebook profile, however. You can now read your RSS feeds in Google Reader through your Facebook profile. How cool is that? And you can set up Google Analytics in your Facebook apps. You can also share your social searches with your Facebook friends.
I see the relationship between Google, Facebook, and users of both only getting better. I’m on the edge of my seat. How about you?
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 5 of September , 2007 at 2:43 pm Comments (3)
A Bill of Rights for social media users has people talking. I found this little tidbit by one of the commentators buried deep down on the page:
Ownership, Control, Freedom, and Transparency. Thanks for starting the ball rolling on this one, and sign me up. As more and more people move more of their lives online this is a must. As this happens, the online world must reflect the offline world more and more.
The sentence As this happens, the online world must reflect the offline world more and more caused me to have a gut reaction: God, I hope not!
There’s no real reason to make the Internet look more like off line living. None at all. For one thing, there is no governing body in cyberspace to enforce any kind of agreement. We are stuck with the laws of individual nations. I highly doubt that any nation would give up its sovereign right to establish its own laws with regard to privacy and similar issues, which would be necessary in order to establish a “one size fits all” solution for the entire Web. I don’t think it’s feasible - at least, no time soon.
That said, I think the Bill of Rights has some good things in it, though a couple of the items are impractical. The one I’m most concerned with is the last item in the Bill:
Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.
In other words, we’d be asking social media sites to give up some level of privacy so that we could access the information of other people on their sites. This seems to be somewhat antithetical to the Bill’s aims. And I’m not sure that I’d want people just looking me up out of the blue to see if they can find me. My old college room mate, the guy I pissed off in eighth grade, my mother’s ex-boyfriend? Do I really want these people finding me when I don’t want to be found?
If I’m understanding this point correctly I think it’s a bit overdone. Every relationship has two parties. When it comes to social media, users ought not try to take away too much from the media itself or they’ll end up taking something away from themselves.
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 30 of August , 2007 at 5:10 pm Comments (1)
When it comes to viral video marketing, everyone knows about YouTube and Google Video. But those are not your only options. I wanted to take this time to share with you some other places you can upload your videos as well. Here’s the list of video directories I recommend:
YouTube - Needs no introduction.
Google Video - I think you know who they are.
Yahoo! Video - Did you know the largest search portal on the Internet has a place where you can upload your videos? I highly recommend using Yahoo! Video in addition to YouTube and Google.
MetaCafe - MetaCafe encourages users to vote on their favorite videos.
Break.com - Break is unique in that they offer monetary prizes for the best videos in certain categories, including Girl of the Day, and they have ways for videos to make money being the most popular.
DailyMotion - DailyMotion is very popular and it’s easy to see why. You can upload your videos, join groups, and share your videos with your group. This adds a new twist to social networking.
When it comes to marketing yourself through viral video, don’t just settle for YouTube and Google Video. They may be the most popular video sites on the web, but they are not the only video sites. Get your video out there in as many places as you can because some of the most devoted video marketing freaks aren’t YouTube junkies. Some of the best viral video marketers are actually hanging out in some of these other places too. Oh, and one more for the road: Try Blinkx. It rocks.
Search Engine Optimization Journal is an SEO Blog that discusses Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Ranking and Positioning for the new and advanced reader. Learn more about this SEO blog.
Other places I like are StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us, and various other sites as well. There are hundreds of social bookmarking and networking sites online and I think most of them provide some kind of benefit if used the right way.
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