Social Media Optimization
After discussing Social Networking Media we're now going to look at some general pointers to follow when doing social media optimization.
When dealing with social media it is recommended to leave your moral, religious and political beliefs behind. If you're not liberal, at least pretend to be. Cultivating a thick skin is necessary, because you're bound to receive both negative and positive feedback. Never, ever take anything personally!
Social media optimization differs from search engine optimization in that you're now targeting a human audience and not a search engine algorithm. Whilst search engines can't see an ugly background or a slow loading image, people can and these factors will be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not you get their vote.
Generally links from social networking media are tagged as nofollow (which tells search engines to not put any value to tagged links). This means that web marketers have to appeal to the community as a whole, instead of relying on a websites domain strength.
Asking for votes in social networking media is fine, as appealing to people for votes is the way to go here. In order to make them want to vote for you there has to be some form of perceived value or fun factor in your offering, this is where the trick comes in.
Different communities have different audiences, and identifying the intended audience for your social media optimization effort is critical. People behave differently on Facebook vs. StumbleUpon for example, and figuring this out is your key to success.
The current trend is shifting more and more towards social media, and taking heed of this will only benefit your future web marketing efforts. Pleasing people, rather than pandering to search engine algorithms is where the future's at. This brings the type of submission to social media websites, as well as timing into the picture.
Good content can become popular at any time, but a good rule of thumb is to post intellectual submissions from monday through to thursday morning, with more fun postings from thursday afternoon through to the weekend. A fun picture posted on a friday afternoon is bound to attract more attention than a serious discussion about some social issue.
That was a brief look at social media optimization, next we'll take a look at some of the more popular social networking media, starting with Facebook