Social media : Distinction from traditional media

Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves. Social Media Optimization is improving the linking structure of the websites by making it highly visible in social media searches.

Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. The social media sites typically use tools like message boards,forums,bookmarks, communities etc.

Social media has a number of characteristics that make it fundamentally different from traditional media such as newspapers, television, books, and radio. Social media does not have a finite limit: there are no set number of pages or hours. The audience can participate in social media by adding comments or even editing the stories themselves. Content in social media can take the form of text, graphics, audio or video. Different formats can be mixed. Social media is typically available via feeds, enabling users to subscribe via feed readers and allowing other publishers to create mashups.

Social Media is a term that is used for a broad spectrum of topics, and has several different connotations, however in the context of internet marketing, Social Media refers to a collective group of web properties that primarily driven by the users. For example, blogs, discussion boards, vlogs, video sharing sites and dating sites. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of trying to get one's content more widely distributed across multiple Social Media networks.

There are two sides to Social Media, the first side is known as SMO as stated above. This refers to on-page tactics that a webmaster can do to improve their website for the age of social media. Such optimisation includes adding links to services such as Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily 'saved and submitted' to and for these services.

Social Media Marketing on the other hand is the off-page characteristics of Social Media. This includes writing content that is remarkable, unique and news-worthy. Marketing this content can be done by trying to get the content 'popular' on the services mentioned or even creating a video that is likely to be viral on the likes of Youtube and other video sites. Social Media is about being social so this off-page work can include getting involved in other similar blogs, forums and niche communities.

Source: http://www.searchengineoptimiser.biz

Get the power with Social Media Optimization

Search engine optimization has been a well-known technique for getting an online web site known to the users of internet. In fact, things like internet marketing, email marketing and various other similar concepts have been regularly used for the promotion of an online site in the internet domain. However, technology is an ever-evolving thing and with the passage of time newer concepts have come out and these concepts has been well adopted for the promotion of online sites. One of the most recent and highly used newer techniques is social media optimization. Social media optimization is similar to all the other optimization techniques that are used for the promotion of online web sites. Nevertheless, like all the other techniques, social media optimization also has its individuality and there are certain unique principles that need to be followed while adopting to social media optimization for the optimization of a web site in World Wide Web.

There are various processes that need to be included when a web site has to be socially optimized. Basically, social media optimization helps to increase the linkabilty of the site. This is in fact, the main purpose for doing social media optimization for any online web site. Moreover, it should be made sure that the look and the feel of the web site for which social media optimization is being done, is constantly changed so that every time the site gives a fresh feeling to the visitors. This is also a necessity because nobody likes to see the same old graphics and read the same old content. Therefore, changes in the website help to get more visitors and at the same time help the business to earn revenue. Therefore, the content and the other materials used in the site should be highly attractive and attention grabbing.

The principle that works behind social media optimization is to mainly draw traffic to the site. Drawing a good amount of traffic is in fact, one of the best ways to get the site popular among various social media platforms and search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. The thing that mainly needs to be done is to write good articles and then get them circulated in the various social media platforms so that people can read them and come to visit the site. This not only helps in getting good traffic for the website but also helps in getting popular among internet users and various social media platforms. Once the content in the form of articles are floated among the various social media platforms, social media optimizers get hold of them and use them to optimize the site, which further helps in the promotion of that particular website.

After search engine optimization, social media optimization has become one of the most used techniques for the online promotion of a website. Social media optimization is a relatively newer concept but it is gaining a lot of impetus in the market as more and more optimization firms are using this concept to optimize the website of their clients. In fact, social media optimization proves to be a good option for drawing good traffic to a site and at the same time popularizing it in the social media platform.

Source:www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Social networks: what goes out, what goes in

“Social Networking 3.0″ was on the agenda this afternoon at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit. This one was a “must watch” for me, as will be Dan Farber’s later today on “The Democratization of Media.” You can follow along with the conference’s live Webcast here.

Moderator Charlene Li, senior analyst for Forrester Research, was joined by Travis Katz, senior vice president and general manager of MySpace International; Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook; Rich Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media and former MySpace executive; Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning; and Karl Jacob, CEO of Wallop. Dan blogged the panel on Between the Lines, and as he writes most of the discussion focused the future of social networks. I was most interested in the comments concerning social networks and identity, attention, and intellectual property.

On the identity front, Charlene Li stated the truism that maintaining identities across different social networks is “a pain,” and wondered when the social networks we see today will become more open. Facebook’s Dustin Moskovitz recognized that portable identities are necessary, but didn’t go into particulars of how Facebook is or will be addressing this. Rich Rosenblatt said they talk internally at Demand Media about “the portable profile,” and says Demand Media is working on letting users log in with a single profile then select from a mix of options as to where they want to be. (My impression was he was not talking about navigating out of the Demand Media environment.) MySpace’s Travis Katz is interested by the notion of OpenID and a single, portable identity, but thinks it’s “complicated” to make it happen. And Gina Bianchini challenged the notion that social networking users want a single, inflexible identity to follow them around: “Your wakeboarding social network is fundamentally different from your independent journalist one. People in the real world have different sides of themselves that they show to different groups, different people, different communities.” She makes a good point, and I think the digital identity community is on top of that nuance. (Though Tantek Çelik Twittered me to ask about their plans, if any, for using microformats as an open portability standard, sadly I didn’t get the nod from the microphone handler.)


On the attention front, in response to the question “Where’s the money going to come from?” the panelists answered with nearly a single voice: targeted advertising. But transactions based on user desires and intentions are on the radar as well:

Travis Katz: the advertising model on social networks is going to be here a long time. Other models will probably emerge too. MySpace is looking at ecommerce models. You always feel better buying from a trusted source. When you talk about transactions between individuals, there’s a commerce opportunity there too.

Karl Jacob: Wallop is all transaction, no advertising. We believe there’s a world down the road where you buy the things you need to dress up your profile and the applications you want to use. Akin to the ringtone market.

Gina Bianchini: If I had to choose between the ringtone market and targeted advertising, I’d choose targeted advertising. There’s a huge opportunity to bring what is happening with AdWords into social networks. If you take a monetization model that’s working today and generating significant amounts of money, and apply it to a market that is only going to get bigger and more sophisticated as far as targeted advertising, it gets very interesting.

Finally, on the subject of intellectual property, when asked what was missing from the social networking ecosystem and what he would invest in if given the opportunity, Rich Rosenblatt commented on the need for what I would call a “third estate” of media: outside the copyright and use limitations of the products of the big studios, labels, and publishing houses, and yet a step above one person’s photos, films, etc. made primarily for personal use. A class of media produced and designed for Web distribution. Gina Bianchini challenged the notion that “amateur” media can’t comprise this third estate:

Rich Rosenblatt: We’d like to see more content actually made for the Internet. There are two layers of content. Studio generated (lots of trouble and fighting there), and user generated but not usable (one guy’s photos of himself). We’d like to see content that more than a few people want to see.

Gina Bianchini: I would argue that that’s happening today. On YouTube some of that gets lost in the crowd, but put it in a community of really interested people, and it’s very powerful.

Rich Rosenblatt, to Gina: But if you could buy wakeboarding content for your wakeboarding social network, wouldn’t that be great?

Gina Bianchini: From my perspective, one of the benefits of social networks is you and your friends can watch your own stuff. Another benefit is the good stuff rises to the top. I would rather have the material be truly user generated.

Karl Wallop: the good content and the good applications will all come from the current and up and coming generations of users.

Source:http://blogs.zdnet.com

Facebook continues its rise, but not in Asia

A regional breakdown of social networking sites shows how hard the major players will have to work to catch 'copycat' sites in China


Facebook has continued its inexorable rise as the social networking site of the moment, but questions remain about its ability to tap the Asian market, where other sites are significantly more popular.

Facebook's audience grew by more than 270 per cent to 52.2 million users in the 12 months to June – far outpacing the increase at Bebo (a rise of 172 per cent to 18.2 million) and MySpace, which grew by 72 per cent to 114.1 million.

But a breakdown of the sites' users by region shows that just 7.1 per cent of Facebook's audience, or 3.7 million people, is in the Asia Pacific, whereas Friendster has 21.9 million members in the region, according to comScore.

More than two thirds of Facebook's audience is in the US and Canada, with 17 per cent in Europe. MySpace has 62 per cent of its users in North America and 25 per cent in Europe.

By comparison Friendster, a site which, like Facebook, is based on finding old friends and building a network of people, now has 24.7 million unique users, 89 per cent of which are in the Asia Pacific.

A spokesman for comScore said Friendster's strong performance in the region was largely due to its popularity in Malaysia, where the site has set up tie-ins with local pop singers.

"Paying attention to the subtleties of each country is absolutely critical for these sites," Bob Ivins, vice president of international markets at comScore, said. "It's a problem any multi-national company faces. Just because you've got a strong brand in one country doesn't mean you'll succeed in others."

Rebecca Jennings, an analyst at Forrester, said that there were significant difference in the way countries adapted to social networking, and the success of sites often depended on how well they catered to local needs.

"Obviously in China and Japan, part of the problem is language and question for Facebook is: do you launch a local language site?" she said.

"Germany has not taken particularly well to social networking, because people there are less willing to sign up for those types of services. In Brazil, however, where the culture is much more about how many friends you have, they're huge, and Orkut, a site which tailors to those needs, is doing very well there."

An additional problem for companies considering the Chinese market was the propensity for authorities to control the use of the internet, which has led many to focus their energies elsewhere, she said.

MySpace has launched a 'beta site' in China – owned and operated by a Chinese company – and the company has also introduced a site in Japan, as has YouTube.

Facebook is yet to launch an Asian-language site.

Earlier this month, Tudou.com, a site similar to YouTube on which 40 million Chinese users watch an estimated 1.2 billion videos a month, announced it had secured $19 million (£9.4) in venture capital funding and would start selling ads.

Other sites to have entered the video-sharing space in China include www.mofile.com, www.5show.com, and www.56.com.

Last year, one of the largest college-based networking sites in China, www.xiaonei.com, was acquired by Oak Pacific, a Chinese company backed by US venture capital firms. According to Venturebeat.com, the site will merge with Oak Pacific's own networking site, 5Q, to form "a giant Facebook copycat."

Source:http://technology.timesonline.co.uk

LaunchTags Offers Revenue-Sharing Model for Bloggers

LaunchTags is a newly released site that’s created a blog network with an ad revenue-sharing model for its contributors.

This service offers you mini-pages with which to create your blog. The idea is to become an authority on a given topic, and generate traffic to your mini-page as a resource to others. Revenue generated from ads on your mini-page are split between you and LaunchTags right down the middle. The blogging tools are pretty basic: enter a title, description, tags and text. There are “widgets” that allow you to insert hyperlinks, images, video, etc. into your blog entry. LaunchTags will help you out by suggesting the common ways in which blogs are promoted throughout the web, and also offering up some topics that you could write on.

The suggested topics list is continually updated, presumably based on what keywords are being searched frequently on the web. And while the ad revenue system has not gone live yet, you can still begin to build up some momentum by adding content to the site now. LaunchTags is very similar to HubPages, which will find the best color and formatting configuration for the placement of Google ads on your mini-page. There’s no indication that LaunchTags will be as customizable and automated as this, but HubPages has seen a good amount of success from its rev-share model, and LaunchTags is looking to have a similar experience.

Source:www.mashable.com

Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing

SEO Meet SMM (Social Media Marketing) was the most information-dense seminar that I attended at SMX Advanced, a multi-day conference geared for advanced web marketing professionals. As a result, it has taken a while to view my footage and pick out all of the best tips to share with you. The SEO Meet SMM seminar was paneled with an all-star cast of Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel and Cindy Krum. Between these three incredibly bright people, and my own experience and research I have put together this whitepaper on how to use social media marketing (SMM) to your advantage. I believe this is the most current (timely), accurate and cutting edge information available for those who want to start marketing in this field.

The ConceptSocial media marketing is a method of promoting your brand (be it yourself, a product, a service, or a company) by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks (such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Myspace, etc). This may seem overly elementary but “making yourself known” is the kicker because each category of social media has a different, sometimes intricate method for effective promotion.Business from Social Marketing is IndirectA key concept to social marketing is that it is not designed to immediately provide business but instead it provides the visibility your brand needs to ultimately convert fans into buyers. I often get clients saying “I don’t think being on MySpace will sell anything”. The truth is that often they are correct.

Having a commercial presence on MySpace that provides great content and interesting free tools (aka. widgets) serves to raise the awareness of your brand so that users remember your service for later and/or provides you with a podium to share the benefits of your brand. In short, it is important not to forget this essential concept: social media marketing drives brand awareness which later translates into sales.Social Media Categories and Associated StrategiesHere is an introduction to the various top portals segregated into their appropriate categories and mated with a recommended strategy. Please keep in mind the following is only a partial listing of some social media sites.

If you want a more comprehensive (but unorganized) list check out this list of web 2.0 sites which includes social media properties (very extensive list).I have organized Social Media Marketing into the following categories or themes:A. Social Networking SitesB. Business Networking SitesC. Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking SitesD. Content Voting SitesE. News Sharing SitesF. Collaborative DirectoriesG. Video Sharing Sites, andH. Photo SharingWe will discuss parts A through D in this segment and parts E through F in the following.

A) Social Networking SitesThe following social networking sites experience a volume of activity unrivaled in the social media marketplace. These sites provide it all; personal blogs, videos, music, classifieds, mail, and much, much more.1. MySpace: this site offers the widest variety of tools and social networking capabilities.2. Facebook: great for connecting with old classmates and creating a personal profile.Associated Marketing StrategyEach of these sites allow you to create a powerfully diverse and engaging web presence complete with photos, articles, and bookmarks.

MySpace even provides the ability to ‘skin’ your profile! In other words you can actually brand it to make it totally unique; a powerful marketing capability (To view a great example see [url=http://www.myspace.com/starbucks]Starbuck’s MySpace account[/url). Assuming the site is already done it is best to then start linking to the site from key areas of the Internet so the search engines will have no problem finding and indexing it. You can do this by linking to it from a social media section of your website; a section that I believe will be part of the status quo structure (as ubiquitous as the About Page) of all new websites in the near future.

B) How to Market on Business Networking SitesThese sites are devoted to networking business people and provide direct access to upper level management / executives for sales people and for those looking to create industry connections.
1. LinkedIn: the premier business networking site where job profiles are shared, jobs posted, questions asked and then answered by industry professionals (my current favorite).

2. ZoomInfo: a search engine index of company names and people. Find yourself (if you are there) and claim your space or create your profile.

3. Spoke: a database of contact information for people at all levels of business.

4. Jigsaw: a database of virtual business cards that can be traded and shared amongst members.Associated Marketing StrategyCreate a personal profile on each of these sites and connect, connect, connect. The concept is so simple I could almost stop there but it is important not to forget that some of these services also allow for interactivity in forums and Q&A sections. I recommend participating as often as possible in these interactive sections in order to gain positive references and to further expand your network.

C) How to Market on Social (Collaborative) Bookmarking SitesHere are a number of websites that specialize in social bookmarking. When you register with the service the service will collect and organize the sites that you choose to bookmark and allow you to share them with other others. The social concept allows each service to create content-specific directories of user-selected content; which states (theoretically) the content is of a high quality.

1. Del.icio.us: bought by Yahoo in 2005, Del.icio.us is the web’s leading bookmarking site.

2. StumbleUpon: in the past when my best content got ‘stumbled’ by users I found this community to offer the highest quality response in terms of traffic and buzz.

3. Yahoo! MyWeb: Yahoo’s huge following has made MyWeb a popular bookmarking property and a top property for promotion.

4. Backflip: started in 1999 (or possibly earlier) this site is the one of the granddaddies of bookmarking but it came on harsh times and was sold to passionate employees who maintain it now. This is not a leader in the industry but it was my first bookmarking site way back in ’99 so I feel I owe Backflip a little time in the limelight.Associated Marketing StrategyCreate a personal profile on each site and then spend some time using them as though you were a potential customer of your own service. In other words, search for terms you target in your SEO campaigns or ask questions you or your target market asks regularly.

After a while you will see a trend in the results you receive that you can use to your advantage.For example, after typing in “marketing tips” on StumbleUpon you may notice that many of the articles that are getting positive reviews are written like tutorials whereas the other articles are getting little or negative feedback. This type of observation will give you the insight you need to write quality articles that are more likely to get positive ratings; which ultimately translates into increased traffic to the article source (your website perhaps).

In addition, you can go back and bookmark tutorial content you have already written (as long as it is still viable).If you are not writing your own content at the moment it is still advisable to find other great content and bookmark it for your profile. Why? If you create a reputation for providing excellent bookmarks it is more likely you will get additional, positive attention when you ultimately feature content of your own.

D) How to Market on Content Voting SitesThe following are the top sites used for people to vote ‘on the fly’ for any content they find useful online. The resulting vote then adds the content or increases its visibility within each resource so that others have a chance to read the content. Once something has received a certain number of votes (this is a moving target) the visibility of the content may gain momentum as others have a chance to read and vote on it.

1. Digg: currently one of the most popular social media websites in the world and has been known to show a high degree of technology-based news.

2. Netscape: is in many ways a successful clone of Digg but Netscape has been accused of providing more entertainment news rather than technology news.

3. Reddit: the news here is more politically inclined and the site has a very strong following.Associated Marketing StrategyFirst a caution: it is crucial that you pay attention to the etiquette of these content voting sites; otherwise your promotions could backfire and/or you could be banned. To read up on etiquette visit the associated help files for each site (i.e. How Digg Works) and the FAQ – these will give you the necessary background info to get you started.To make these sites work for you I recommend participating in each group for a while in order to pick up on what articles do well and don’t do well in your selected industry.

In addition, creating a respected profile by bookmarking new and interesting content and posting thoughtful comments on other people’s bookmarks will go a long way to improving your chances of success on these sites. Once you have a respected profile you can ask other respected users to check out your new content to see if they deem it worthy of a thumbs up.

Whatever you do, I do not recommend voting on your own content due to the obvious bias and potential damage it could do to your profile’s reputation.In the second (and last) installment of this series we will examine:
• News Sharing Sites
• Collaborative Directories
• Video Sharing Sites, and
• Photo Sharing Sites

Source:www.stepforth.com

Social Media Optimization: the best is on its way

We are dwelling in a world that is constantly evolving and growing. Each passing day is witnessing some or the other development and evolvement in some or the other field. The latest buzz in the world of World Wide Web is social media optimization. The World Wide Web seems to be undergoing constant changes and to keep up to these changes we all need to be in tune with the latest things that are taking a front seat in the world of the World Wide Web.

Social media optimization is nothing but diverse ways that are adopted to make an online site easily accessible to internet visitors and internet users. In this fast paced age people want information at extraordinary speed and in this case the faster and the earlier visitors can get information by accessing your site, the more popular you and your online site becomes in the World Wide Web. Social media optimization also works somewhat like search engine optimization but the only differences between the two are the techniques and the methods that each one follows to optimize a site.

There are several ways that can be implemented to go in for social media optimization and if you want to optimize your online site, social media optimization is the best solution. The basic idea behind optimizing an online business site through social media optimization is to optimize it in such a manner so the site is linked to other sites that are more visible in the social media search category. While opting for social media optimization, you must keep in mind that each business has different needs and requirements. This demands you to know your business requirements. Your business can become a success story only if you are fully aware of your business requirements. Apart from increasing links of your websites, you can even go in for exchanging your link with other related websites. Exchanging links is another criteria that social media optimization abides to.

Social media optimization ideally means promoting about something on all the social media platforms. Becoming famous in today’s competitive world is not an easy task. There are many things that need to be done to get famous and this also implements to any online site that wants to become famous on the web. Social media optimization caters to the needs of any online business who wants to get known in the internet circle. One of the best possible ways of undergoing a successful social media optimization process is to let the content of the website flow freely to webmasters who can easily help you and your site gain recognition.

If your website has a great content you must make sure that your content can be easily accessed by people. Living up to the criterion of social media optimization, webmasters make sure that any good content gets accessed by different people through different platforms in the web. This means that you will need to constantly write articles and blogs for your website and make sure that they are well distributed among various links and websites.

With the advent in technologies, people want to try out new things and in this scenario social media optimization has become a very in thing that has not only helped online sites gain popularity but has once again proved that the world is progressing towards a new and a better world.

Source: www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com