Continued from Part 1 of “Which Social Sites Should I Use?“:
Once you have established a strong following across these main five sites, you can consider participating in a few niche social sites based upon your industry, services or geographical location. The social properties you employ define your overall social persona. Subsidiary aspects of social media can be realized in terms of company branding, building company legitimacy and trust, and online reputation management.
Breakdown of "The Big 5"
Facebook
Traditionally, Facebook was typically best for personal relationships and getting reacquainted with friends and acquaintances. You can also use it for work colleagues with whom you have personal relationships.
With the advent of Facebook Pages, businesses can now separate their personal and business faces into different "pages" You can think of this as a Yellow Pages advert promoting your business. It gives your viewers a chance to see some of your products and get to know a little about your company and their online social presence.
You can build Groups and add Events to further engage your followers. The success of a Page is based upon the number of "Likes" from visitors it receives. It is important to have a strong and reputable personal profile that will be connected to the Business Page to act as an administrator.
Facebook is best for "private networks" but is useful to generate an online business presence
LinkedIn
This is the most popular site for maintaining your professional business networks. You can search and connect with former work colleagues, business partners and network with people that you may not know but may be in a related industry.
Different sections of the site allow for employee recruitment in order to facilitate the hiring of your next employee. This is a particularly great feature as people in your business network may be able to personally recommend an individual in your industry. You can list current promotions and have colleagues or clients recommend you which helps to build a more credible profile.
LinkedIn is your "professional network"
Twitter
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform as it only allows for posts (or tweets”) limited to 140 characters. Although Twitter is not a website in the sense that Facebook or LinkedIn is, it is starting to adopt similar functionality. Recent additions of pictures, follower suggestions and groups seem to indicate that Twitter may be moving toward more of a destination site, rather than only a platform.
Twitter allows you to connect with a much broader group of people. Because you can follow someone that does not necessarily follow you back, connections can be one-way or two-way and allow you to broadcast status updates, links, etc without needing to have an involved conversation. However, those businesses that do pro-actively engage their followers find that Twitter is an effective medium for connecting with a large number of people and organizations without the formality of a "friend request".
Twitter is for your "public network"
Google+
Google+ is considered the company’s fourth foray into social networking. The New York Times have declared it as Google’s biggest attempt to rival the social network of Facebook, which had over 800 million users in 2011.
Google+ integrates social platforms such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz and introduces new services called Circles, Hangouts and Sparks. Google+ is currently available as a web site and is reported to be available soon as a desktop application. It is already available as a mobile application.
Google+ is best for advertising your business, as well as for public and private interactions
YouTube
Created by three former members of PayPal and launched in 2005, YouTube offers a site for users to upload, view and share videos. Traditionally, YouTube did not seem to be advantageous to online business promotion and was considered a personal social site. Increasingly the video platform has become a standard medium for the promotion a business. By creating a YouTube account, users are able to create a public "channel" where owners can upload video files showcasing products and offer promotional information.
Remember that the larger your social network, the more time that will be involved to maintain it. Stick with the main 5 (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) and choose only a few from the specialty niche oriented social groups. It is always best not to spread yourself too thin. It is better to have a closely formed network with a good number of quality followers than it is to have a larger network spread over many social sites that you are not engaged with.
You need to link accounts together to increase their effectiveness. Linking can become a bit complicated if you are dealing with many social sites. You may want to create a text document that shows where your feeds are being syndicated to (see example).
YouTube is akin to a "television audience"
In Part 3, we will discuss Linking Your Social Accounts
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 10:56 am
Initiates to the world of social media all inevitably ask the same question: “How do I know which social media sites to use?” Choosing the right set of social sites to promote your business can seem a daunting task if you are unfamiliar to social media. As ever-increasing numbers of social networks add themselves to the mix, it becomes increasingly overwhelming determining which sites to use and to know which will be best for promoting your company.
There are very few businesses that would not benefit from an online social presence. Any business that is not actively engaged in the promotion of their business, products or services online today is truly missing out on opportunities for their company. Often the reluctance to embrace social media is from an emotional reaction based on an inadequate understanding of social media and what it can do to transform their business.
Social media can be thought of as an online equivalent to more traditional promotions and advertising. In the past, the most common mediums used to promote your business were magazine and newspaper advertisements, television commercials, radio adverts and billboards. To engage is specific niche markets you might have placed an ad in a technical journal directly related to your industry.
The modern equivalents of traditional marketing would be in the form of (but not limited to) tweets, articles, blog posts, press releases, viral marketing and video marketing.
In many ways social media has allowed marketers to streamline the advertising process. Niche social sites that are geared specifically towards your industry make it much easier to connect with others in a specific industry.
Although a plethora of social sites abound on the Internet, the main players in the social media world today are considered to be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. These are currently the most widely used social sites today and should be considered a staple of any fledgling social marketing campaign.
In Part 2 of "Which Social Sites Should I Use?" we take a look at the top 5 players in the world of social media that you be should be paying attention to and using in 2012.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 9:54 am
I started my computer life on an Apple II PC, my first gaming/entertainment electronics experience was the Lesiure Vision, and it wasn’t until high-school that I met my first IBM, an XT with an attitude. So in my years you can bet I’ve seen a few operating system ‘revolutions’, heck the first computer I paid for with my own money was the Mac Classic back when it was the first PC to have a mouse and ‘Windows’ (plus it could talk!). 
Things have changed a bit since that 8mhz Macintosh with it’s single color 10″ non-upgradable screen. The 4mb maximum limit of RAM that was a selling point of my Mac isn’t even enough for a modern CPU cache, let alone an OS + applications, and ‘booting from disk’ has a totally different meaning.
Along comes Windows 8 and I really felt that I needed a new operating system like I needed a new hair in my nose, so I was in no rush at all to review it. The situation reminded me of a quote from Tron 2.0:
“..what sort of improvements have been made in Flynn… I mean, um, Windows 8?” .. “This year we put an 8 on the box!”
Well it’s not really that bad, in fact the more I poke at Windows8 the more I see it’s potential and I can see how it could be a game changer for a web based business. Here’s why:
- The start menu is now a web page with tiled animated content including feeding from websites like XKCD.com:
– Do you have your website setup properly to feed the new start menu when people add your site there?
- IE10 is the browser the OS uses, you can install another, but it won’t get loaded until you specifically load it
– Does your site look the way you’d expect in IE10? I know our aging site layout looks different in IE10.
- There is no prompt to chose a search engine, you’ve got Bing and what more could anyone want?
– This could divide the consumer base among power users who have fiddled and those who just use things ‘as is’. Depending on your market this could change the way you look at Bing.
- Clicking the “Make Google my homepage.” link on the google.com/.ca homepage currently causes IE10 to load a blank white page instead of the default home screen.
– Does your site use similar javascript? Will you have the same issues with IE10 users?
- Built in applications for reaching social networks aren’t broad enough. “Socialite” program for FB only works with FB, and drops support for Twitter, Reddit, Google Reader, Flicker, Digg, etc..
– Speaking of which, how cozy are you with giving MS access to everything?
Mind you, with all the stink that’s getting raised over the UEFI secure boot protocol, the rate of adoption for Windows8 could be pitiful. If Microsoft’s hardware partners went ahead with the new feature it would lock out other OSes and force people to deal with one source for new OS installs/upgrades.
SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:05 am
With the number of Twitter users hitting the 100 million mark and after watching Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday episode titled "Yes, You Really Can Build Links with Twitter",I decided I had to share this wisdom. It seems that many in the industry seem to have a difficult time believing that Twitter is an effective tool that can build high quality, long-lasting backlinks for their websites. Rand detailed eight very effective methods to do just that in his video.
- The "Serendipitous Connection"
This is an ambiguous tactic and is perhaps the hardest one to obtain. It is also perhaps one of the most organic tactics you can engage in. By creating and nurturing friendships and connections through chatting, you can build up a powerful network that will usually leads to a link from one to the other. Building up your interaction with select followers in a good way to consider long term friendships and can help with several of the other described tactics.
- The "Top X List"
This is a targeted approach and is brilliant from a content development perspective. An example of this tactic might be to research and list the Top 5 personalities in a particular field or industry that you are targeting for links and build it up in the desired hub etc.
"Let’s say I am in the business of selling snowboard equipment. So what I want to do is I am going to take the top five snowboarding videos of all time, snowboard stunts. In fact, I might even get more septic because getting more specific yields much better results oftentimes from a link perspective. So, what I want to do is I am going to say the top five snowboarding videos taken in Whistler BC, and I am going to make that a piece of content on my blog, on my website. Maybe it is a blog post, maybe it is just a piece of link bait, maybe it is a list, whatever it is."
"Then I am going to figure out all the Twitter accounts of all the people who appear in those videos, and I am going to use Twitter as a way I connect to them. I am also going to talk to all the people on Twitter and say, “Hey, does anybody know the best snowboarding videos? Do you have any recommendations?” I am going to reach out to people who have shared snowboarding videos in the past, who have the word snowboard in their profile that I find through a service like Follower Wonk, and I am going to create those top X lists. Then I am going to tweet at all those people and give them all badges for having won that they can place on their websites. Suddenly, I am getting links from all of the top places in industry X."
Very soon after you will find that you are getting links from the top industries in your targeted area. Maybe the best thing about this tactic is that you can use it over and over again in various industries as much as you want.
- The "Let me Build/Do/Find That For You"
This is a good method to use when you see someone who is stuck, or who otherwise has a question or problem they are experiencing. If you are in the know, or can otherwise help them, do so. People are very appreciative when you help them for free. And almost assuredly will want to do something to return the favor. This is when you get your links. This may not always be the most time-effective strategy so you should use it sparingly.
- The "Storyteller, AKA the Summify"
Oftentimes there are stories or events occurring through social media where the tweets are scattered about or drawn from several sources. You are looking for those stories that are very hard to track unless you are paying strict attention to every tweet and source and sifting through it all to find the story.
The tactic involves you taking these separate stories and amalgamating them into a cohesive narrative that people will want to follow, link to will want to share with others. You can pull in snippets from LinkedIn, Quora, Facebook and Twitter with the Summify. This tactic is particularly useful with breaking news stories coming in from several sources.
- The "Link Suggestion"
This one is really only effective when you have already formed an ongoing relationship with someone. It is most useful when you find potential linking possibilities (or just information) missing from another’s blogs posts, rss feed, website or article. By suggesting a relevant piece of information when you have already developed the relevant blog post or article or url to offer them is a great method of building links.
- The "Content to Match Your Query"
Many social sites are filled with questions from its users. Not just on Twitter, but on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Quora etc. If you are able to build the content to match the individual’s questions, or if you see many questions on the same topic a lot and can provide facts, and relevant data and information for these people, not only will they be appreciative, but they almost certainly will be linking back to your quality answer. It is going to bring you traffic to your site, time on site, drive links and produce some quality, valuable content as well.
- The "Must-Have Testimonial"
Anyone with a website is looking for people to say wonderful things about the product or service that they are offering. You can engage a startup, small business or a local business by engaging those people through Twitter. You can tell them that you have written a blog post about how much you loved their product/service and that if they would like a testimonial from you that they can to direct message you since you are already following them. Not only will be likely to get a follower and a direct message, but they are most likely put the testimonial on their site and link back to yours to boot. This is a win-win scenario. The site owner gets a glowing review and you get a quality link.
- The "Biz-Dev Deal"
This is a particularly effective method to employ, as most businesses are looking for ways to jumpstart their reach. The thought here is that anyone involved on the social web is probably going to be actively involved in a lot of other inbound marketing activities as well. You can connect with preferred companies that are good fit for the company you are linking for. Let them know what a fan you are of what they are doing and that you would love to discuss ways to form a mutual partnership. This approach requires that you have already built up a communications to a strong level of interaction. The Biz-Dev deal will inevitably lead to linking between sites.
New tactics and approaches are being developed regularly to utilize social media to its fullest potential. These tactics clearly demonstrate that Twitter is useful as an SEO tool and is a phenomenal tool for link-building.
SEO news blog post by Kyle Krenbrink @ 9:51 am
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Bart sprang back a fair bit, had to zoom to see the wilt!
Leaf me alone! The kid is not my sun!
Bart’s beans are sprouting!
