Pubcon Vegas Social Media Optimization Presentation

I forgot to post this one – so here goes. The pretty random looking un-edited notes are listed below as well. If you’d prefer a larger version – you can view it here.

I. Self-perpetuating snowball
i. Rankings and relevant converting traffic
ii. One more indirect step
1. social media = buzz = links = serps = converting traffic
2. Seth Godin – turn strangers into friends, friends into customers, and customers into salespeople
3. Links are generally NOT direct – Buzz is even MORE indirect
4. Not easy – and not a quick fix to pump spam – Higher the $$ value – harder to bait-

II. SMO for Links
a. Disclaimers and Information
i. Timeconsuming
ii. Tools will make it quicker – Bookmarklets
iii. Understand what works for which promotion

b. Linkbait WILL bomb
i. Don’t get frustrated and don’t whine
ii. Create 3 better ones
iii. Plan for the worst – hope for the best

c. Sites
i. Netscape
ii. Digg
1. Digg Do’s
a. Great titles
i. Copyblogger
ii. Testing title
b. Add lots of friends
i. Lots of diggs
ii. Similar interests
iii. Dig their submissions
iv. Contribute to the community
v. Think residual value
c. Submitting YOUR stories
i. Have a friend submit your story
ii. No one likes vanity submissions
iii. Add a “dig this” button on your site
iv. Pay attention to what works – TITLEBAIT
v. Time restrictions and thresholds
vi. Stay natural
2. Digg Don’ts
a. Try to SELL to diggers or netscapers
b. Try to plaster the page with adsense
c. Try to hype your product
d. If the story sucks – you won’t get links – and might get buried
e. Get frustrated if your bait doesn’t work
3. GOOD results
a. How much is 1500 links worth?
b. PRIME unsolicited valuable links
4. You can optimize a popular page later
a. Increase outbounds to important areas of your site
b. Change to other similar content
c. Slather it with adsense
iii. Netscape
1. Lower threshold than digg
2. Bottom up voting

d. 5 minute link value test
i. Theme – relevance to your topic
ii. Power – quality/ quantity inbound links – YSE – .gov’s .edu’s
iii. Outbound links – bookmarklet
iv. Unique linking domains – linkharvester
v. Placement – your brain – google heatmap
vi. Age – archive.org

III. SMO for traffic
a. Delicious
b. Technorati
c. Reddit
d. Stumbleupon
e.
IV. SMO for Rep. Management
a. GW’s tips for controlling the top 10
b.
c. Lots of accounts
i. Netscape
ii. Digg
iii. Linkedin
iv. Naymz
v. Squidoo
vi. Myspace

d. Some will be better than others
e. Own the serps
f. Crosslink intelligently
g. Learn the community and etiquette of them, and their benefits
h. Contribute!

V. Other SM sites to experiment with
i. Rollyo
ii. Tagalag
iii. Myspace
iv. Emurse
v. Orkut
vi. Furl
vii. newsvine
viii. zazzle
ix. yahoo 360
x. youtube

VI. Conclusions
a. Social media sites are another tool in the marketers toolbox
b. Find efficiency tools like bookmarklets
c. Expect to spend time on research
d. Understand how the potential benefit of each tool
e. Understand that abuse will cost you

Thanks to Seth Godin’s story from the book “Small is the New Big” I told to start of the presentation, and to Adam, who showed me the cool Stephen Colbert sign generator that I used to make one of the images.