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Building Social Bookmarking Networks 101

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:18:54 +0000

Social Bookmarking sites aren’t a huge mystery. If you think there’s some “special formula” to the Digg and Reddit algorithms, for the most part: you’d be wrong. Sure, there’s an algorithm at work there, but before you make that attempt at the front page, you need to work on the 2 major pieces necessary for success: great content, and a network of users to help promote it. The need for great content is self explanatory, and if you still need help with yours, there’s plenty of articles on the topic. But why is having a network so important? If you’re one of those people that thinks Digg power users hit the front page so often because their submissions “count” for more than others’, again: you’d be wrong. That success is based on a loyal following of literally thousands of users that follow their submissions and vote them up with and without being asked to. Building a network goes far beyond finding and adding users to your friends list. You need to participate in a variety of ways that both gets your account noticed and shows you’re willing to reciprocate by voting for, spreading, and commenting on others user’s submissions. And believe me, it’s a lot of hard work that you need to keep up on. Below is a basic guideline of some dos and don’ts roughly based on the regular habits of power users: Do: Friend, IMvite, and Follow power Users Don’t: Be a pest. If there ever was a starting point to creating a network for social bookmarking sites, making friends with the power users would be it. They have hundreds (if not thousands) of followers & friends, and a vote from them can often turn into a number of additional votes from their faithful. Also, once you’re seen in their company, people will ideally start coming to you. What you have to remember, however, is these people are super busy. They don’t have time to digg, vote, and retweet 100 links for you every day. They also don’t want to answer newb questions like: “How many diggs does it take to hit the front page?” Friend them, add them to your IM list, and follow them on twitter, but don’t ask too much of them. In fact, don’t ask a thing unless you’ve started giving first. Vote up their submissions, retweet for them on twitter, and if they IM you for a vote, make sure they know you got it for them. After a while, they’ll take notice, and before you know it, they’ll start voting up your subs without asking. If not, a simple IM request isn’t totally out of the question, but remember: once a day is plenty. Do: Participate in the SOCIAL side of social bookmarking Don’t: Be a Troll Most social bookmarking sites allow comments…use them! Commenting and participating in the social conversation isn’t just about being funny or witty. It’s about being noticed and showing that you actually took the time to view a submission. Being the first to comment (hint: especially a power user’s submission) is a great way of being noticed. Making a great comment can even get you attention far beyond the person who submitted the post, too. Sometimes great early comments get up-voted as much as the story itself…you just need to know how to appeal to the community. Spend some time reading comments to find out what gets up-voted, and what gets buried. While commenting is great way to network, here are some things to avoid: Don’t be too controversial (especially if you disagree with the article/submission) unless you’re sure the community agrees with your take..even then, your comment may end up buried. Don’t reply to comments to disagree…a flame war is not networking. Being funny is great, but remember not everyone has your sense of humor. Finally, don’t be offensive. In other words: don’t be a troll. Do: Embrace Multiple Social Networks & Technologies Don’t: Spread yourself too thin Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging, Skype, and the thousands of additional social media networks out there can be your best friend. Finding power users and your closest, most loyal contacts on these networks is a great way to keep multiple lines of communication open. As you network and add new friends you’ll find while most people have accounts on a number of networks, many stick to their few favorites. Twitter is a no-brainer if you want to expand your social network, while Instant Messaging ranges from AOL, Yahoo!,G-chat, and more. Using a program like Digsby can help you consolidate multiple instant messaging accounts into one simple application. Just make sure you keep a separate account for your personal or business life. If you succeed in building a strong network, you’ll likely get hammered with IMs every time you sign on. Another way to expand your reach is to join multiple social bookmarking sites. Digg and Reddit are great (and obviously the largest), but many (if not most) power users and users with larger networks are members of a number of the smaller sites as well. Being noticed on other networks (like Mixx, Propeller, and Stumble Upon) will really help you stand out, especially to users with large & powerful networks. Just be careful not to stretch yourself too thin. Maintaining a number of profiles on multiple social sites is a lot of work, so manage your time wisely. *Quick tip: remember to list and/or interlink your other social profiles when you can, and keep your user name & avatar as consistent as possible. Do: Submit content from community favorite sites Don’t: Submit commercial content As a member of a community, like Digg or Reddit, you’re likely to notice a trend when it comes to certain sites that produce front page content on a regular basis. It’s largely because they consistently break news or produce killer articles/videos/images/etc., and as a result, a large number of users regularly check these sites to submit and/or vote up their content. Being the first to submit breaking news or great new content from these sites is a sure-fire way to get noticed. It’ll also help build your profile with a fast track to hitting the front page (social networking pay-dirt). Be sure to add these sites to an RSS reader that you check regularly. On the other side of the coin, one of the quickest ways to fail in the social bookmarking world is to submit content that has no place in the community you are in. Commercial content, marketing (and yes SEO) articles, and poorly written content not only won’t achieve results, it will diminish your networking efforts. Just remember: most people hate marketers. (GASP!) They’ll down vote you, remove you as a friend, block you and even report you as a spammer. So do yourself a favor and make sure everything you’re trying to promote is WORTHY of the votes. Because even if you’ve built a strong enough network to push just about anything to the front page, it probably won’t last, and if you’re really careless, you even risk losing your account. Do: Submit content from a variety of sites Don’t: Consistently Submit content from a single site or short list of sites This concept may seem obvious to most, but you’d be surprised how many users submit their own content and nothing else. Oh sure, they’ll vote for other stuff every now and then, but their intentions are pretty clear: they’re in it for the marketing. In other words: you need to make sure you don’t LOOK like a marketer. The best way to do this is to submit content from a variety of sources. That way, when other users visit your profile (say, to add you as a friend) they don’t only see a single site* (or short list of sites) that you’re trying to promote. *This is especially true of Stumble Upon where one of the goals is to attract subscribers of your discoveries and up votes. Seeing the same site over and over on SU creates a bad user experience for your subscribers, and as a result, you’ll likely lose them. Do: Sign in, Vote up, Retweet, and Comment regularly Don’t: Leave huge lapses of activity in your accounts Even power users can’t afford to be away for too long…perhaps ESPECIALLY them, but I digress. If you take too much time away from social bookmarking activity, you’ll soon find that all the hard work you’ve done networking will start to go to waste. It’s not that you can’t take a week or two vacation if you like, but the more inactivity you have, the more you’ll find your influence dwindling. Basically, the more available you are (or at least appear to be) to vote and spread the submissions of your network & friends, the more influence you’ll have with them to push your own. Do: Perform favors (like submitting content) for friends in your network Don’t: Ask too much of your friends & contacts without giving back It’s a karma thing: the more you do for others, the more they’ll be willing to do for you. Don’t be afraid to submit content for others (as long as it’s appropriate and worthy of votes). Vote up your friend’s submissions without being asked, retweet it, and be a regular commenter of their stuff even when they simply asked for a vote. Go out of your way for them and they’ll go out of their way for you. If you start asking too much of someone, they’ll probably avoid you or simply ignore your requests from then on. So what’s asking too much? Basically asking anything of someone that isn’t a simple vote request (unless they’ve offered otherwise or owe you a favor) can be considered too much. So if you need someone to submit something for you, make sure that A) you’ve built a strong enough relationship with this person first, and B) it’s TOP quality content. Otherwise, you may never hear from them again. Do: Be a human being Don’t: Be anti-social or a computer What’s the point of “social” media if you’re not going to be social? If you want a network of “friends” or followers to fulfill some ego driven goal based on a number, by all means, automate as much as you can. But if you’re looking for contacts and friends who will be willing to do favors for you and can help you consistently reach the front page of your favorite social bookmarking sites, then you need to act like a human. Be friendly and don’t be afraid to have conversations once in a while. If the only IM-ing you do is “Can you digg this for me? Thx!” and “Dugg, can you hit this for me?”, then you’re missing a vital part of social media, and your networking efforts will probably suffer as a result. Do: Keep at it Don’t: Give up This list isn’t some secret sauce that will put you on the fast track to success. Building a network for social bookmarking sites takes a lot of work. This is simply a starting point and guideline for you to succeed and (frankly) not waste your own time. And while it’s a lot of work, the good news is you don’t need to spend all day every day on social media in order to be successful. You just need to find a rhythm that you’re comfortable with and stick to it. Persistence is everything. Todd Heim is CEO, co-founder, and SEO manager of Essential Internet Marketing, LLC , an SEM and Social Media Marketing company based in Albany, NY. You can find Todd on twitter at: http://twitter.com/ToddHeim/ Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Building Social Bookmarking Networks

How to Back up Your Social Media Accounts

cgseo — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:46:10 +0000

If you are like me, you have all your major working materials stored online: I organize useful links with Google bookmarks and Delicious, store email and IM conversation with Gmail, have most of my important (collaboration) docs at Google Docs, have multiple resource collections on WordPress and Blogger, etc. Backing up this massive amount if highly important information is actually a smart idea because the services are not owned by me, hosted by God knows who and thus having a local copy and updating it regularly would be wise. Backupify is a nice (free until January 31) web-based tool that allows to download content from a number of popular online services including: Gmail Twitter Google Docs Flickr Facebook Basecamp WordPress Delicious Photobucket Blogger FriendFeed Here’s how it works: after signing up you will be offered the list of social media sites “to manage”: Here are a few examples : Allow the tool to access your Twitter account by Twitter auth; Login to Delicious using your login information; Connect to Flickr account by Flickr auth; Connect to Photobucket account by Photobucket auth, etc When you are done adding your social media accounts, set up the back-up frequency (daily or weekly) and delivery options: Email me every time a backup is performed Email me a once daily digest of all backup activity Email me a once weekly digest of all backup activity Do not notify me via email of any backups You can also access the archives of your backups at Backupify from any computer. The only possible excuse for not trying the tool out is the privacy concerns, here’s an extract from the service privacy policy (remember: your privacy is up to you): What information is collected about me? We only collect data you provide us at sign-up. We do not ask for any other personal information. We do not collect data without your knowledge. How do you use collected information? We don’t use it at all. The only thing we collect and monitor is general patterns of storage and service usage so that we can make sure our architecture is optimized for speed and scalability. What security measures do you use to protect my privacy? Any information we have about you is stored with strong encryption. The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Back up Your Social Media

Social Media Tips : Why Should I Help You?

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:32:44 +0000

When the clock struck midnight on January 1st, I began running. It was a 5k run in Philadelphia, along the Schuylkill River, to be more specific. During this run, I passed a homeless man. Rather than running past him, I stopped. I gave him $100. Later that day, I stopped to think in greater detail about that incident. What was it that compelled me to engage him? I think the answer to that question, in this case, should be fairly obvious. The night was cold and rainy. No person should be outside and homeless, regardless of how they got there. How does this story relate to my thoughts on many folks on Twitter? Before I continue, please understand I am in no way making light of the homeless. I’m simply offering background as to what inspired the following thought: Many individuals all around the social media world are simply asking for handouts. Think about that for a second. How many people do their best to be placed prominently in front of you, but really do very little to offer a value proposition? How many individuals clamor daily about social media strategies, and the need for engagement, yet fail to offer an answer to the simple question of why you should contribute to their success? I find more and more redundancy invading my personal space. Less substance, less value, less originality, more noise. While there is overwhelming concern about those that are not participating in social media ‘correctly’, there is a disproportionate lack of concern for those that are considered social media ‘geniuses’ and really offer minimal value. If you’re going to be successful long term using social media, you must be certain that your product can back up your mouth. With that in mind, follow along and below you’ll find a small list with tips to help you, or your product, offer a compelling value proposition. 10 Ways to Translate Social Media Success into Real World

How to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page & Get Lots of Fans

cgseo — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:47:18 +0000

Ever since my last year’s post on the differences between the Facebook fan page and Facebook group ( which needs an update by the way ), people are contacting me with various questions related to the topic. One of the most frequent questions is about the most effective ways to promote a Facebook fan page. So here you go: the most effective, not really difficult to implement and quite obvious ways to promote your fan page : Round 1: Create fresh content for people to want to

Should You Be Marketing Yourself Online?

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:35:08 +0000

I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve landed just by coming up in searches for my own name in Google. Since I am an Internet marketing professional having a web presence is a must. What if you’re not a marketing professional, is a web presence something you should work on and will it benefit you? The answer of course is…Yes! As with any business your brand is what people identify with. If you are a freelancer or a consultant you are your brand. When you Google your name what comes up? How many results are of you? How many are of someone else? If someone wanted to hire you and learn more about you what would they find? These are important questions. It should also be important to you that when a search is done on your name that information pertaining to you and your area of expertise shows up. Why? The top reason “people searches” are done on the net is to establish ones credibility. Not having anything is almost as bad as finding something bad. Does your Myspace page show a picture of you flipping off viewers? That could be damaging and costly to your image and reputation. You can keep your personal profiles private, just don’t have damaging content or photo’s showing in your limited profile. How To Brand

Google Answers Privacy Questions with Call for More Data

cgseo — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:49:19 +0000

Last week Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s director of community development, put out a link on his personal blog and stated: Here’s how you can easily switch Firefox’s search from Google to Bing. It was a pretty shocking move by a member of a company that has seen most of its revenue come from Google . It was a move brought on by concerns over the search giants view on privacy. The comment was spurred by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt comments on privacy: If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” Schmidt told CNBC. “If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities Why are they watching and storing what we do? Data. The more data they can collect, the more they can personalize search. How does Schmidt feel about personalized search ? From his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: It’s the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp as in print, without a maddening wait for each page to load. Even better, the device knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read. So while I get all the news and comment, I also see stories tailored for my interests. I zip through a health story in The Wall Street Journal and a piece about Iraq from Egypt’s Al Gomhuria, translated automatically from Arabic to English. I tap my finger on the screen, telling the computer brains underneath it got this suggestion right… Personalized search can only happen with data collection, this is a reality. How does Google collect data ? Gmail and Google Accounts Adsense Adwords Google Analytics Google Chrome (browser and OS) Google Toolbar Android On and on and on… Their new love? Real Time Search data. This data comes in the form of APIs from places such as Twitter in some cases, and can give the engines much of the information they need to fuel time based elements in the ranking algorithm such as Query Deserves Freshness (QDF). Real time data allows them to pull in trending information, links, and pages linked from conversation without a crawl. Why stop there? Enter Goo.gl, Google’s URL shortener. What kind of information can you pull from a URL shortner? 1. What information people care enough to share – will likely be a huge signal if you are logged in 2. What information people are clicking on 3. Referral sources for differing pages that do not include Google Analytics The really strange component of this addition to Google’s product set is that it goes against what initially made them THE search engine, the interlinking web’s use in ranking. 301 or no, that loss of anchor text and the credit from direct citation are something that seem to be against everything the engine was founded on. However, they are everything the engine is moving towards. Data driven results. Eventually this data will not only mean your results being shaped by what you like, but also your social web. Think about this, if I am logged into Google and share 30 pieces of content and you click on 25 out of the 30, do you think this will begin to shape your SERPs? More involuntary personalization. Less of the web delivered. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Answers Privacy Questions with Call for More

Link Builder’s Toolkit: Saving Time on Writing an Email Pitch

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:19:02 +0000

I think many of us will agree that a link builder spends 50% of his time writing emails: more often than not to the potential backlink platform owners but also asking and answering questions, completing web forms (directories, email forms, etc) and so on. Therefore it is so essential to optimize the time you spend on that allowing for better productivity and maybe work-free weekends ( oh, I miss them so much! ). Auto Fill Web

Host Images Using Free Image Hosting Services: Essential Guide

cgseo — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:55:17 +0000

Many people will tell you that using external (free) image hosting to host your website images is the same as using free hosting overall: unsafe, unreliable and generally unadvisable…. Well, this is not exactly like that. So before we go any further, let’s discuss the pros and cons. Why using a free external image hosting service might be a good idea? (1) It’s a good way to save on hosting and bandwidth (especially if you publish multiple images regularly); (2) It can be one of steps to take to speed up your site. Of course, there are some cons: (1) Less control over your images (the service can decide to cancel your account, delete your images, etc); (2) Less reliable: the service may once just close down, etc. Am I using them? – Yes, for those sites where there are many images. Note: Of course, I do optimize the image size before publishing it, but if I have multiple images per page, the page load time will still leave much to be desired (even with a fairly good hosting package) – unlike when those images are hosted on Flickr for example: the page loads pretty fast even with like 50 images on it. Main (Most Reliable) Image Hosting Services:

Manage Your Corporate Twitter Account with TweetFunnel

admin — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:04:42 +0000

Using Twitter for streaming news on one company or business is nothing new. It’s considered perfectly fine to separate your personal Tweets from your business life and maintain several Twitter accounts at a time. This week I am sharing a cool tool called TweetFunnel that allows several people to post to one Twitter account and provides you with really useful options: (1) Grant different users with different rights (those who can contribute and those who can review and approve submitted Tweets); (2) Schedule Tweets for later publication; (3) Manage your whole multiple Twitter accounts from one handy dashboard: The process is really quick and easy: Hit “Try it” in the top-right corner of the page and create your account. You will need to specify your company name, a name to create your custom company URL at the site and login details (email, account name and password). The service requires no email confirmation, so setting up an account is really quick and easy. Login and add your Twitter account (either by Twitter’s secure authentication method or by providing your Twitter account login information). When logged in to your dashboard you will be able to see your Twitter stream and manage your Twitter activity: reply to Tweets, retweet, send private messages, favorite Tweets and schedule Tweets for publication: Now add users (contributors and publishers). Go to “Manage TweetFunnel Users” and add or invite users. There are 3 levels of users: an administrator (who can do everything: he creates the account itself and adds users as well as reviews and publishes Tweets), a publisher (reviews and publishes or denies Tweets) and a contributor (who writes and submits Tweets to the administrator for approval). To add a user, you will need to provide his login and contact details: Once a new contributor logs in, he can see the same dashboard with some limited options. He can create new Tweets and only submit them for approval. The administrator or a publisher can then go to “Review Queue” to moderate the Tweets received from the contributors. He can do the following with the queued Tweets: approve and post, approve and publish later, reject the tweet. Looks like a neat tool, what do you think? The tool has been reviewed under SEJ policy . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Manage Your Corporate Twitter Account with

4 Recipe Search Engines to Find Thanksgiving Recipes

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:19:03 +0000

Thanksgiving has always been associated with family, cooking and lots of food to me. That’s the time when I have to forget about my diet because it is impossible to resist the temptation. And for those who is looking for more delicious recipe ideas for this year’s Thanksgiving, here are my personal picks. Best recipe search engines : Site Name Best search feature Epicurious Filtering by holiday Food Filtering by the recipe provider CookThink Tag cloud serving as search suggestions Cookstr Filtering by chef Epicurious What I love about the site is its “filtering options” available after you perform a search. You can filter your search by: Main ingredient; Meal/ course; Cuisine; Dietary consideration; Holiday (!); Preparation method; Season. You can also go even further and see only those dishes that: Can be paired with wine; Are quick and easy to prepare; Are healthy. Besides, you can search within search results which also turns really useful for finding what you need. Food This site can be a good option to use because it indexes and aggregates results from multiple recipe sites. Irs search options include: Filtering by courses; Filtering by techniques; Filtering by total time you’ll need to cook something; Filtering by country; Filtering by site that provided the initial recipe (!). CookThink CookThink allows for quite a few unique recipe search options to play with. The best of them are: Search for moods (!), health restrictions, seasons, aromas, textures; Search suggestions and aid in the form of a tag cloud (add terms to the search field by clicking them in the tag cloud): Cookstr This one is for the advanced cooks – it allows to search by star chefs and cookbook authors. It also has that “Surprise” button that shows you a random recipe in case you are stuck for inspiration! Its search sorting and filtering options include: Skill level; Dish cost; Kid friendliness; etc Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . 4 Recipe Search Engines to Find Thanksgiving