Social Media Track, Thursday 9:00 – 10:15 AM
SMO: Social Media Optimization
Moderator: Detlev Johnson, Director of Consulting, Position Technologies
Todd Malicoat, Independent Search Marketing Consultant, stuntdubl
Neil Patel, Co-Founder, ACS
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Todd Malicoat started with the hooks that can be used to attract attention. He then went on to provide some excellent title tips. You want good titles and be sure you keep your stuff focused. Todd says to make it “magazine good” and link out quite generously to other bloggers. A new twist on an old idea is a great way to get exposure.
When launching, don’t wait for users to submit, find someone with a trusted account to submit it for you. Do it all in just a few hours, don’t drag it out over time, hit it hard and fast. Asking for links does work. You want to be able to get trusted links from high profile sites, which will help with getting in Digg and other SMO sites.
Rand Fishkin asked the audience who has heard of SEOmoz and then used that as a jumpoff point to point out how effective SMO is. They have never spent any money on marketing. Rand says it’s important to build profiles in the hundreds of social media sites like Facebook, etc. Build presence in the community.
Rand says that YouTube is the #1 place for social media. Below that is StumbleUpon. Next is Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Yelp, Reddit, LinkedIn, Flickr, Netscape, Del.icio.us, Facebook, MySpace, Craigslist, Amazon, Technorati, Newsvine, Sphinn, CitySearch, Helium, Wikihow, Second Life, and Twitter.
Neil Patel talks specifically about how to leverage Digg and StumbleUpon. To appeal to the Digg crowd you have to appeal to the childish mentality. Important factors are number of votes, time, voters, original submitter and friends. Don’t self-promote, don’t add biased info, don’t pay for votes, obey community rules and don’t spam. To build your profile, add tons of friends, participate in the community, use great titles and descriptions, become a top user and submit stuff at the right time.