Search Engine Optimization Help

Yesterday Google released Buzz, an integration of new social features for Gmail that connect users with each other. If you read my article I had mentioned something about finding it a little strange the name “Buzz” was used, seeing as Yahoo! Buzz has existed for quite some time now. Evidently I’m not the only one who has taken notice of this- Microsoft and Yahoo have both taken it into their own hands to speak out on how they feel towards Google at this point in time.

Microsoft came out with a pretty hasty statement, saying “Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefited from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”

Microsoft has been pretty chummy with Facebook lately, so I can understand why they may not think Google has the right to release “another social network” when the other search giants have already hopped on board with it. Windows Live has “Spaces”, listing tons (and I mean TONS) of applications for various social networks to share with other Live users. You can broadcast your web activities right on your own page. I just wonder how many of the activities people use. I counted well over 50, and I would use maybe 4 of those.

I can only wonder if Microsoft is slightly threatened by the capabilities Buzz has and the implications for its competitors.

Yahoo, on the other hand, took more of a direct hit from Buzz due to the fact that they are now sharing the same name. Yahoo! Buzz hasn’t had a ton of publicity lately and for a moment, I almost forgot it existed. It seems Google has followed suit with Yahoo! Updates, another feature Yahoo has to congregate your social networking and updates. They decided to send an email out just to “updates” their users on what Yahoo! Updates already has…in case they forgot or got blindsided by Google Buzz. What do they have in common?

Similarities Between Yahoo! Updates and Google Buzz

• The ability to have streaming updates to broadcast to contacts
• Updates appear in mail, so comments are never lost or gone unnoticed
• Connect with sites already used, such as Flickr, to share content
• Capability to share updates both publicly and privately

…they DO sound pretty similar to me.

All in all, I think Microsoft and Yahoo! have a right to be miffed- after all, Google joined the game a little late with introducing a complete package for social sharing and networking… but do you think Microsoft had the right to put out that public statement openly slamming Google? Thoughts?

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Microsoft and Yahoo Displeased With Google Buzz

Ladies and gentlemen- Google Buzz has now been announced! It looks like Google inadvertently answered my “social hub“ prayers today with everything that Buzz has to offer. First thing I noticed: does Buzz sound familiar? That’s right, Y! Buzz already exists. It seems like Google is going to be direct competition to good old Yahoo.

Unfortunately it hasn’t went through to everybody yet so I don’t have any screen shots or usage notes to give you. I can, however, offer you a quick cheat sheet with all the juicy details!

• Automatic integration of your email and chat contacts.
• You can decide whether you want your ideas to be private (secret diary style) or public.
• Comments will be sent right to your inbox so you can have instant access to them.
• You can now see thumbnails for photos or just browse full-screen images that are available from popular photo websites.
• You can import your stuff from Google Reader, Flickr, Picasa and Twitter so you won’t have to personalize everything again.
• Updates will be in real-time. You won’t have to worry about developing an automatic finger twitch from constant manual refreshing.
• In true 21st century style, Buzz will adapt to you, funneling in interesting content and denying the content that will be most likely unappealing to you.

If you’re curious  and want to see a quick preview:

Buzz will also be available for your phone and will allow you to tag your posts with your current location. When available to you, you can access it directly by visiting buzz.google.com from your mobile device.

Please check back soon for a follow up post about my first hand experience.

…Now, do I get bragging rights to say that I’m psychic? I DID just publish that post about their social hub…

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Introducing Google Buzz! GMail Social Sharing

If you can’t tell from my recent posts, I think Google is quite revolutionary. With the implementation of Gtalk with video chat capabilities, Google Wave with the ability to have real-time collaboration, Google Docs & Calendar making document and schedule sharing between colleagues or friends and simply the ability to social share in search results, Google truly has made their website somewhat of a single source for all things social. With the expected announcement of Google integrating streaming updates into Gmail, I thought I would throw together a list of how Google could utilize these individual services into one social hub.

The Yellow Brick Road for Google’s Social Hub:

1. Pushing the limits with iGoogle-

There isn’t much that is needed to be said about this. Everybody loves watching funny YouTube videos or seeing a cute picture stream of a new puppy that their best friend adopted. Being able to pick out keywords of videos or images you want to see would also be fantastic and useful. Another example of how content can be personalized on your homepage.

3. Integrating GTalk and video with a web-based application so users can pop out chat (think along the lines of Aim Express…but better! Clearly Google is superior to AOL)-

I use GTalk a lot, but sometimes I’m not always on my computer or even on one that HAS a program with GTalk capabilities. I realize that you can pop out your chat box already, but having a pop-out web-based application that has every feature separate from Gmail or iGoogle would make GTalk easier to access and use to keep in touch.

4. Integrating Yelp-

Yelp is a website that lets you view reviews and recommendations on restaurants, shopping, nightlife and various other fun stuff in your city. Yelp also comes in handy for when you’re visiting a new place and have no idea what’s good or what you should avoid like the plague. Perhaps my iGoogle Social Hub idea could have a small box available that can display a new recommendation or review on places near you every few days.

5. Integrating Google Wave into the link bar with social sharing buttons for wave friends or the public timeline-

I think this is the bread and butter of my Google social hub idea. Google Wave can be used everywhere on the social hub. The share buttons mentioned above can be put around the YouTube and Flickr features, as well as with Yelp. The ability to instantly wave favorite places, videos or pictures can be extremely useful. If you want someone to meet you for dinner at a great restaurant in town, recommended by Yelp, simple wave them the information and they can view it themselves.

6. Google Voice easily accessible-

Even though Google Voice is currently available by invite only, when it becomes available to everybody it would be great to have this integrated into a sidebar so you can keep up with your phone messages along with your email and waves.

7. Integrating a drop-down menu with search features-

I don’t know if most people who don’t use the internet often even realize this, but Google has a plethora of search options available when you look to the left of the search page. You can display results from images, videos or books as well as choose your timeline. You can also choose to show fewer or more shopping sites (which just proves there’s too many out there that leak onto the search page without us wanting them anyway) as well as a “social search”, which narrows results down to your social circle. I think iGoogle should have these in a drop down menu underneath the search bar so people can actually realize that it’s there.

8. Updating the Google smartphone application-

The final step, of course, is to redesign the smartphone application. Having one cohesive application with all these options available (especially the ability to use wave sharing buttons….or wave at all since it’s not really available in an application) would make the redesign all the more valuable.

All in all, I think Google has the assets available to make one heck of a social hub. Having everything available in one place is very appealing and would attract more users… not to mention give their current users a nice treat for being loyal.

PS: I wanted to do a mock-up of the “iGoogle Social Hub” but I’ve decided to not put my viewers through the torture of my unskilled scribbles Sorry!

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8 Ways Google Can Become a Social Hub Overnight

Social media marketing is pretty tricky - but it is too tricky to ever roll out international campaigns? Where do you start from when you’re targeting international social networks - success at home or do you need to start all-over?

….

Is social media better than a 60-second ad spot that costs around $3 million. Pepsi thinks so which is why they chose to launch a viral campaign at RefreshEverything.com instead of advertising in the Super Bowl this year. Pepsi plans to give away $20 million in grant money to fund projects in various categories. People can go there now to submit ideas and vote on other ideas.

From the Yahoo News article:

The problem, say marketing experts, is mixing the medium with the message. “The Super Bowl is just too extravagant for something like this,” says Lee Clow, chief creative officer and global director of media arts at TBWA Worldwide, the agency that created Pepsi’s campaign. “It’s seems like a contradiction to say you’re going to set aside $20 million in marketing dollars for a worthy cause, then turn around and spend $12 million on two 60-second spots for the Super Bowl. Couldn’t that money be put to better use?”

It’ll be interesting to see how skipping on the Super Bowl TV advertising will alter Pepsi’s sales as compared to the previous years. One thing is for certain is that large companies are starting to see the value of social media marketing and will continue to pull their ad dollars away from traditional advertising to turn over to search engine & social media marketing.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Social Media Better than a Super Bowl TV Ad Spot?

Apple clearly recognizes the importance of the mobile web, but did they get trigger happy and launch the iPad too soon? The launch of the new Apple device has lit up the internet with all sorts of criticisms, praises, questions and opinions. A question remains for those of us in the search marketing and social [...]

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Super Bowl. It’s that special time of year where long lost friends and family members are drawn together to eat wings and pizza, while jumping out of their chairs cheering for each touchdown their team makes and giggling over this year’s outrageous commercials.

It’s also the time for companies to participate in the Super Bowl’s competitive advertising environment; pushing the boundaries for the viewers and making a long-lasting (serious or funny) impression. Millions of viewers tune in to the Super Bowl. A suprising 51% for the commercials alone.

Audi Green Police

Lately, a new trend has been emerging. With the rising popularity of viral videos and social media, many companies are taking the stage on YouTube and Facebook prior to Super Bowl, to build up anticipation for the long-awaited advertisements. Audi, for example, has launched a social media campaign by the name of “Green Police.” Protecting and conserving, they have been launching YouTube short videos, using examples such as simple arithmetic to demonstrate how we can keep the landfills free of excess napkins, ending with a catchy theme song reminiscent of Captain Planet.

The Green Police campaign is a catchy and gentle way to highlight the importance of adopting a green lifestyle in order to take care of our environment. The model in the commercial, the Audi A3 TDI, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 30% and was presented the 2010 “Green Car of the Year” award by Green Car Journal. They are not only helping to educate the public but are following their own advice as well.

Audi has also made use of the social media phenomenon known as Facebook. If you were a fan of the Audi fan page as of Thursday evening, you had access to an early sneak peek of their Super Bowl XLIV commercial, along with bonus extras such as a downloadable  “Green Police Remix” made exclusively by the rock band Cheap Trick. They’ve certainly done a good job of adding multiple viral elements to this campaign to make it a hit. One video alone from the Green Police campaign was the “9th most viewed video” on YouTube from Canada today.

E-trade, who is best known for their humorous talking baby commercials, has a 360-degree campaign running, utilizing Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages and YouTube. E-trade alone has 18,000+ Facebook fans and the Fan Page for the baby has 12,000+. Over 3,000 users follow the baby’s tweets on Twitter and 10,000+ subscribers on YouTube, where they’re putting up fresh commercials along with funny outtake s you won’t see during the Super Bowl.

My personal favorite? Outtake number 2.

America loves getting a sneak peak of things to come, so getting an inside look at the new babies that will be airing during the Super Bowl is certain to draw more viewers to the actual event. Some have been speculating that E-Trade’s baby campaign is overrated, but thanks to the solid numbers of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, we can see that the speculation is far from true. Not to mention the amount of fans that are posting their own versions of the E-trade commercials with their own babies. That shows the true amount of love viewers have for them.

Gone are the days where simply having a new (and hopefully humorous) advertisement on deck for an event as large as the Super Bowl will suffice for a company. Viewers and consumers of the product want it all; they want to live, eat and breathe your campaign. Spinning off into social media to turn a company’s commercials into live personalities and making them accessible will keep consumers engaged. If done right, we’ll be amused and constantly looking for new content and sharing it with the people closest to us. Sometimes even strangers via Twitter. This is why viral marketing and social media are such strong additions to any campaign. Companies that are adapting and changing by harnessing this new age marketing to build anticipation for their advertisement on the Super Bowl will attract an extraordinary amount of viewers, including those who may not enjoy watching those guys in funny tight pants throw around a football!

If you’re interested in more of the aforementioned videos, please visit the Green Police YouTube Channel and the E-trade YouTube Channel.

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Green Police & eTrade Up Super Bowl Ante w/ Social Media

URL shorteners have become popular together with Twitter: they allow to save on characters and thus tweet and retweet very long URLs.

They do have one huge advantage of making URLs short; they also have two huge disadvantage: third-party URLs shrinkers are unreliable (imagine if one of the services just stops existing) and they are “blind” in the meaning that you never know where you might land after clicking it.

Today’s tools will solve this last issue: they will unshorten any URL you see on a web page to let you where they are linking (note: all the 4 tools will need a Greasemonkey plugin to run):

1. UnShortenEmAll

UnShortenEmAll unshortens URLs in twitter and identica. On the first glance, it seems to do nothing – you will be able to see the actual URL only on hover-over in the statusbar:

2. TinyURL Decoder

TinyURL Decoder unshortens both the link text and the address (you will be able the shortened URL on mouseover)

By default, the tool will only work on Twitter. If you want to make this script work on other pages, you can configure it by following the steps:

1. Install (and enable) script;
2. Go to “Tools” FireFox menus;
3. Select: “Greasemonkey” > “User Script Commands”
4. Select “Reset cache of TinyURL Decoder”

3. Expand url shortening service urls

Expand url shortening service urls: the script unshortens the URL address and on mouseover) shows you the service used to shorten it and the linked domain:

4. Twitter and FriendFeed Short URL Expander

Twitter and FriendFeed Short URL Expander: works only for snipr, tinyurl.com, is.gd, zz.gd and bit.ly links posted on Twitter web interface and Friendfeed.

Note: you’ll have to get a login and developer key at http://bit.ly/app/developers and enter it into the script to get it to work for bit.ly.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to UNshorten Any URL

During the most recent PubCon, Kenny Hyder spoke in a session called “Online Brand Management Strategies” where he suggested that you should “own” all ten positions on the first page when someone searches for you. As Kenny pointed out, a few obvious sites can be used to accomplish most of this:

(1) Individual/company website
(2) Individual/company blog
(3) Social media profiles
(4) Niche sites

Sounds easy enough, right? After all, there are more than a couple of social media sites to choose from. The question is, are they strong enough to be built up to the first page and maintain rank? Are they powerful enough to do what online reputation management (ORM) combined with search engine optimization (SEO) is often meant for, namely to keep a bad review, lawsuit filing, or anti-fan site off the first page where the majority of searchers get their first impressions?

It’s safe to say that the higher a social profile ranks on its own accord (without any link-building), the better chance it has of staying on the first page with link-building. So which are the social profiles that rank well without help? Let check.

Surveying Social Profiles

I used a basic, non-statistical test to determine whether other social profiles might also be powerhouses for ORM. I gathered search results data from 44 different personal names ranging from unknowns (10 monthly searches, like “David Stines”) to high-profile celebrities (100,000+ monthly searches, like “Ryan Seacrest”), spread fairly evenly across the search volume spectrum. I documented whenever a social profile appeared on one of the first three search engine results pages (SERP), meaning it was ranked #30 or higher.

The graph shows an overview of how often social profiles showed up on page 1 (position 1-10), 2 (11-20), or 3 (21-30) of search results for all names. For example, a Facebook profile showed up on the 1st page for 27 of the 44 names searched.

Other profiles appearing just once across top 30 search results: LiveJournal, Deviantart, Wiki.answers, FameGame, Slideshare, Mugglespace, Qik, Friendfeed, Getsatisfaction, GrindTV, Vox, ArticlesBase, Goodrec, Naymz, Biznik, TeachStreet, Twittermoms, SheWrites, Trekearth, IMEEM, 1up, Gaia.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Wikipedia Dominating

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard repeatedly about Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Wikipedia as the end-all default profile sites for ORM. According to the search results, there’s some clear validation for their powerhouse reputations, so don’t neglect those profiles.

Wikipedia isn’t a true social profile site, because of the collaborative content, but it serves as a good benchmark. And while some of the profile sites only work for individuals, like Classmates.com, others are definitely more business-centric. It’s far easier to get a small business in Wikipedia than an unknown person.

Evidently, sites like Myspace.com and Classmates.com—once part of the upper echelon, but now dealing with diminishing status—are still ranking very well. Their sites are reputable enough to be a major factor at the top of the search results, even if their reputability has been on the decline for several years. I didn’t expect to see them listed so frequently among the social profiles I surveyed, but they proved me wrong.

Forgetting Other Profile Sites?

The overview above shows the major disparity between sites like Facebook or Twitter and the “other” profile sites (which still have millions of users in some cases), but there are also bright spots, as I saw in the broader array of data not shown. Up until search volumes reach 1,000 for a particular name, the frequency of these “other” lesser social profile sites is actually very high. After 1,000 searches, the big boys like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Myspace are nearly the only social profiles to be found on the first three pages of search results.

Disclaimer: The graph above is awesomely representative of, but not created with, actual data.

The great thing is, you’ve got plenty of options for social profile building and subsequent link building if the search volumes you’re dealing with are low. (Can I just say how much I would love to make an ORM strategy that includes a Mugglespace.com profile for the client? Talk about ORM wizardry!)  The point is to not waste your time with the smaller profile sites if search volumes are high because the competitiveness is often just as high and you won’t get any return on a smaller profile.

Setting The Strategy

If you can afford to use some of the smaller profile sites to fill up the first page for yourself or your client, you’ve got a great setup. You’re basically free to choose a few niche sites that may be more adapted to your interests or your client’s interests. You’ll be more likely to maintain and build the profile and engage the community in a meaningful way while improving your search results. That’s smart ORM.

Ultimately, you’ll need social profiles for any SEO-driven reputation management project or to get all of the first page listings like Kenny Hyder suggests. A little research will help you determine just how much stock you should put in social profiles, and which sites you’ll want in your arsenal.

Scott Cowley is an SEO Manager at SEO.com, a search engine marketing company. He also provides social media expertise to local Social Media Club.  Follow Scott on Twitter to

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Go Beyond The Default Social Profile Strategy

I’m assuming most of you are already somewhat familiar with StumbleUpon. For those who aren’t, Ann wrote a great post last year StumbleUpon Essential Basics A beginners Guide.

As most of you already know, StumbleUpon made some significant changes to the interface last year that weren’t received very well by the SU community. Besides changing the look and feel of SU, they made other major changes, including taking away the ability to share en mass to all of your StumbleUpon friends with only a couple of clicks. As shown by the screen shot below, on the new StumbleUpon if you want to share a piece of content with your SU comrades, you have to select each friend one by one and then hit “share now” once you have finally finished selecting all the friends you want to send to.

Needless to say, this takes way too much time and effort.

Now for the good news! There is still a way to share en mass, and I’m going to show you how in 3 simple steps.

1. Goto SU.PR and create a shortened URL



2. Open the shortened url in a web browser and click the “share” button on the su.pr toolbar.



3. Click the “all” button at the top right hand corner, type in a message to your recipients and finally click the share now button.

Tips for success:

• Don’t spam your friends to high hell by sending them many mass shares per day. Moderation is key.
• Don’t mass share only your website or blog. Not only will this annoy your friends and make you look like a spammer, but it can also get you banned.
• Don’t make multiple social media request when you sending a share. i.e. “Hey can you Digg, Stumble, Reddit, mixx, prop del.icio.us and buzz?” Don’t do this unless you are in a hurry to piss people off. You are already sending the share, if your friends like what they see, they know what to do.

Now it’s not entirely clear if this is a temporary loophole that was leftover from the old StumbleUpon platform that will eventually be closed by the SU powers that be, or if it’s here to stay. Either way, now that you know how it’s done please don’t abuse this power.

Please share your thoughts, opinions and insights in the comments below. Also be sure to cast your vote in the reader poll.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How To Share En Mass On StumbleUpon in 3 Simple Steps

A few weeks ago I watched the movie called “Julie & Julia“. If you haven’t seen it yet, you definitely should because it is all about blogging (well, not all but blogging has played a huge role in the main character’s life).

Basically, the movie is about an ordinary woman who is so bored with her work that she starts blogging about how she is learning cooking. Her blogging style and schedule is ideal: she blogs daily, one or two recipe a day, and each post contains her personal, quite emotional coloring.

The woman doesn’t know a thing about blogosphere, promotion or traffic. In fact, until people have started commenting, she never had a clue if there is actually anyone out there reading her blog. She has never tried to promote her blog but she quickly becomes famous.

The movie perfectly illustrates the exciting era we are happy enough to live in. An epoch where any ordinary person who is known by only a few people ( friends, relatives and co-workers) and who lives an ordinary life of an office clerk and wife/husband; this absolutely ordinary person can be heard by millions.

The main thing is to have a passion and share it with the world.

The movie is based on the true story; here’s the picture of that real blogger who then got popular enough to be featured in the movie:

I have another real-life example. A couple of weeks ago I got to know Gretchen Rubin, a woman behind the Happiness Project. The story of the woman is inspiring:

Raised in Kansas City, I live in New York City with my husband and two young daughters… I’m left-handed, hopeless at sports, tone-deaf, a constant hair-twister, and afraid to drive. I talk to my parents and my sister all the time, and I live around the corner from my in-laws…

A few years ago, I had an epiphany on the cross-town bus. I asked myself, “What do I want from life, anyway?” and I thought, “I want to be happy”—but I never spent any time thinking about happiness. “I should do a happiness project!” I realized. And so I have.

So she figures out how to set up a TypePad account, decides to blog six days a week religiously, and she starts using Facebook and Twitter.

And now she is a best selling writer and one of the most popular people in the Internet.

I had a chance to have a quick interview with Gretchen which I am sharing below. I hope the stories will inspire you!

Please start with the short introduction about yourself.

I am the author of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, an account of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from pop culture about how to be happier (Harper). On my blog, The Happiness Project, I write about my daily adventure and insights into happiness.

My blog launched in March 2006, and when my book hit the shelves in December 2009, it immediately shot to the top of the bestseller lists, with a debut at #2 on the New York Times list. It was spotlighted on the Today show, Time, People, Entertainment Weekly, Psychology Today, the Christian Science Monitor, and others, as well as countless blogs.

As a companion to my book and blog, I also started the Happiness Project Toolbox, a site that provides eight tools to help readers begin and track their own happiness projects.

How long did it take you to become a powerful social media user?

A few years. It started slowly.

How do you use social media to promote yourself?

I post six days a week to my blog, and I cross-post a good deal of that material to other sites. For 2009, I cross-posted to Slate, I post twice a week to Huffington Post, post often to PsychologyToday.com and Yahoo! Shine, and also write original content for RealSimple.com. I’m active on Twitter and aim to tweet at least four times a day. I’m active on Facebook – I have my personal account, of course, also a Happiness Project Group and Fan Page.

Which social media network is the most effective?

They support each other.

Which social media network takes most of your time?

Writing original blog posts.

Which social media network do you enjoy most of all?

I like all of them – they each have a special strength, something that the other don’t.

What would be your advice to a newbie entrepreneur who considers using social networking to get more exposure?

Social media is an incredible tool, but it takes time to build. Start now! One of my happiness project commandments is “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” and that definitely applies here.

You can get paralyzed by worrying about your design, your bio, etc. Do your best, ask for good advice, do your research and then START. You need time to see results, so the longer you are at it, the better off you’ll be. I started my blog in March 2006 to help support a book that just published in December 2009. Having that long lead time was invaluable.

What do you think accounts for you social networking success?

I write about happiness, a topic that resonates widely and that fascinates many readers. People care about the issue, they have things to say, and people are also interested to hear other people’s experience. So it’s very engaging. Also, on a more mundane level, it lends itself to weekly “tips” lists which really work well online! There’s lots of fascinating science, great art, and pop culture to draw upon.

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You Can Achieve Everything with Social Media: Here’s the Proof

Regardless of which candidate you supported in the January 19 special election to fill the seat vacated by Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, there is one thing that should make Internet marketers proud: The first poll to correctly predict the election outcome was a social media poll published on Thursday, January 14.
Traditional polls were showing a close race, and before the Suffolk News 7 Poll, the Blue Mass Group/R2000 poll, the PPP Poll, PMJ/CrossTarget poll, or even the Rasmussen Poll – which all later showed Scott Brown pulling ahead – a social media poll published on the WordStream Internet Marketing blog showed that Scott Brown held a significant edge over Martha Coakley in social media engagement metrics, including:

• A 10:1 advantage in Web traffic
• A 10:1 advantage in YouTube video viewership
• A 3:1 advantage in Twitter followers
• A 4:1 advantage in Facebook followers

It concluded: “The findings (based on data collected on January 14) were staggering. The data suggests that conventional pollsters and Washington insiders have it completely wrong – it won’t be a tight race, and State Senator Scott Brown will win by a landslide … all available signs in the social media sphere currently point pretty strongly to a win by Scott Brown next week.”
The poll results which were also published in a press release the same day and were subsequently picked up in the national media, including by Russ Douthat of the New York Times and Ben Smith of Politico.com. The social media engagement metrics shifted even more strongly in Scott Brown’s favor through election night, and we all know how the story ended.

Why Social Media Polling Data Matters

Elections are essentially popularity contests. Candidates and campaign staff try to get the public excited about their candidate and their ideas, which in turn gets people motivated to volunteer, donate, and finally vote for them.
A candidate’s website is always featured in campaign flyers, commercials and stump speeches. Engaging with a candidate’s social media presence is the 21st century equivalent of making a phone call or putting up a yard sign. Here are a few key advantages of social media engagement metrics over conventional polling.

Large Volumes of Free, Real-Time Data

Conventional polling requires manual calling and compiling survey results. This is a slow and expensive process, so there’s a limit to how many people you can call. In an election, time is the enemy. Social media engagement metrics are the opposite of conventional polling data – YouTube views, Twitter followers and mentions, Web traffic estimates, blog posts and comments, Facebook fans and so on allow you to look at far larger samples, and the results are measured in real time, and are available for free.

Momentum

Graphing all this real-time data over time shows a candidate’s momentum, an important element of any race. For example, look this graph of Twitter followers (courtesy of Twitter Counter) comparing @ScottBrownMA vs. @marthacoakley – Scott Brown starts pulling ahead as early as December!

Consistent Polling Methodology

A popular approach taken by many news organizations like Real Clear Politics is to average the results of multiple polls. But every poll has different polling methodologies, including different turnout models, as well as different ways of determining likely voters. Social media engagement metrics, on the other hand, are consistent. If you measure the same signal (even if it’s flawed) every day, and look at the change in results on a relative basis, the error cancels itself out.

Higher Resolution

For just about any question a pollster might have, there’s a search marketing or social media data point somewhere on the Internet that can give you real insight. For example, say we wanted to compare search volume on Google for two candidates, broken down by state and city? Look no further than Google Trends:

And wow – look at my hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts (a very liberal-leaning city). Alarm bells should have been ringing at the DNC headquarters – hit the panic button!
And what about measuring demographics like veterans, women voters or other key voter segments? We could look to Facebook fan page engagement metrics of Women for Martha Coakley vs. Women for Scott Brown (which, incidentally, also showed Brown with a 15:1 advantage).
I’m not saying that social media engagement polling data is without its shortcomings, but neither is conventional polling. For example, not all voters are active Internet users, and underdogs often have the most passionate supporters. My point is that there’s clearly valuable data here, and we need to find ways to blend these social signals into conventional polling data in order to more accurately model and predict public opinion.

And Now … The Blame Game

I find it amusing to read all the post-election coverage: the hand-wringing, the recriminations, the blame game – pointing the finger at everything from a bad candidate to a poorly run campaign to strong political headwinds from Washington, DC. So jumping right into the fray, I’d like to add one more reason to the list
I believe the biggest failure lies at the feet of National Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and other Democratic party operatives whose job it is to read and understand public opinion, which in turn drives intervention efforts and strategies – such as getting more engaged in the race earlier on (Air Force One made an emergency stop at Boston’s Logan Airport, just hours before the polls opened – oops!). At the very least, they could have tried to reset expectations so as to avoid an embarrassing defeat. The failure to see this coming in the context of Democratic losses in New Jersey and Virginia in November, and with the entire President’s agenda at stake, is really quite shocking. Many events in our nation’s history were the result of poor intelligence gathering – the special election in Massachusetts is just another example.
I have read articles likening the Scott Brown victory in liberal Massachusetts to hell freezing over or pigs flying. But anyone looking at the social media sphere in the weeks running up to the special election would have seen the temperature dropping as pigs were gassing up on the runway, prepping for takeoff. Democratic Party pollsters were asleep at the switch.

A Bright Future for Search & Social Media Marketers

I love Internet marketing. I strongly believe it’s the most effective way to connect with people to sell products, services, or even ideas as a candidate for public office. And while President Obama, Scott Brown and many other candidates have already made progress in successfully leveraging social media and Internet technologies, I’m even more excited for the future of this interactive marketing medium.
Just as television, radio and print media make a killing in advertising revenue during election seasons, I envision an even bigger share of that financial windfall to be allocated to Internet marketing related efforts. Here are just a few of the ways I see our profession shaping future political races:

• Pollsters start factoring social media engagement signals into their forecasting models.
• Campaigns start using social media and Internet marketing technologies to test out ideas and platforms.
• Political parties use social media presence as a way to determine a candidate’s viability – currently, a candidate’s ability to raise money is king, but the ability to create buzz in the social media sphere is a prerequisite to fundraising success.

The shot heard around the world this Tuesday was first called by, of all things, a social media poll – this is great news for the long-term outlook of our profession and our industry!

Larry Kim is a search marketer and the founder of WordStream, a provider of Keyword Research and Keyword Management solutions for PPC and SEO.  He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can contact Larry by email: lkim (at) wordstream (dot) com.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Scott Brown Tops Coakley in Massachusetts Election & Social Media

StumbleUpon and Digg have been my major social bookmarking/voting sites for months. There’s no way to compare the two sites: it’s like comparing oranges to apples; but it’s nice that sometimes we are given the opportunity to somehow mix them.

Today’s social media tools will give some StumbleUpon feel to Digg browsing: the tools will allow to click through Digg stories the way SU toolbar button allows to browse through stories shared on StumbleUpon: all you need is just clicking the button and see some random page submitted to Digg:

Jogstr

Jogstr is a nice online tool that requires no registration and allows to click through popular or upcoming submissions in any Digg category /-ies:

1. Choose at least one category;
2. Click “Jogstr”;
3. See the top popular story on Digg;
4. Digg it (for that you will be taken to the submission page on Digg);
5. Share on multiple supported social media networks;
6. Or “Jogstr” further:

You can also set preferences to filter some subcategories, select the media type and choose between “jogstering” popular or upcoming stories:

Sub Digger Plus

Sub DiggerPlus helps to browse through any Digg user’s friends’ submissions:

1. Provide any Digg user name;
2. See a random story submitted by this user’s friend;
3. Use Digg bar to digg or share the story;
4. Click “Next” to see another friend’s submission:

The tool is thus a good way to kill an idle hour and keep up with the content your friends share on Digg. It is especially useful if you have been selective when adding people to friends and thus follow only those who share the same interests as you.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

2 Ways to Browse Digg Stories the StumpleUpon-Way

It took me quite a bit of time to complete this post, because all the pieces fell into place last week at CES. I interviewed Chris Brogan in mid December for the Search Exchange conference @SearchExchange, and ran into him at CES with some other folks. I broke up this post with the Q&A, my thoughts, and some pointers.

Robert: What things can you attribute to your success?

Chris: Helping people and having a platform/community to do it.

MyThoughts – I have done mortgages for a long time, and I used to frequent forums just to answer questions and/or help people with their questions. After building myself in that community, a lot of people would see that I had X amount of posts, and would consider  me to be a ‘SR member’. I used to receive a lot of mortgage leads this way, and the rule of thumb here is “Help Others to Help Yourself”. I recently did this at Webproworld, and received 2 consultation calls from 1 thread. I didn’t offer my services…they just PMed me.

Lesson - Help others, and expect nothing back. Frequent forums, blogs, twitter, and other types of websites in your niche where interactions can occur between you and potential clients AND onlookers. Someone is always watching. You can do this on twitter by searching for keywords on search.twitter.com and spending time answering questions! (great way to build followers)

Robert: What are one of the first things you notice when you meet another business professional?

Chris: All their teeth (LOL, I guess he doesn’t get along with football players). Do they talk about themselves or talk about others.

MyThoughts – I received a lot of inquiries from other states, and I couldn’t help them since I was only mortgage licensed in a few states. I would find out what city/state they were in, and would find a local mortgage professional to help them out. Within time the extra started to payoff, and I started to receive leads from professionals in other states.

Lesson – Build a network with business professionals in your area and other states. LinkedIn is great in recommending others, and keeping in contact with people you have worked with. Think of others, and they will start thinking of you!

Robert: What’s the next social media platform you see people using?

Chris: BrightKite or location based social platforms

MyThoughts – I was recently chatting with Robbie Hodge @Taldir at CES about his use and success with FourSquare. Robbie sells consumer electronic products, and was telling me how he checks in everytime he goes to work. Within time the tweets from FourSquare paid off. A lot of people didn’t know what he did for a living, but the FourSquare tweets helped his followers take notice. This program can help you promote your business ‘indirectly’ by tweeting your whereabouts. Robbie mentioned that he received 2 sales within a short period of time of using FourSquare. He also uses it whenever he goes out to eat which is basically free advertisement for the establishment he’s visiting.

While at CES I met @AyaZook (Bing’s Product Manager), and he showed me Bing’s new product called Twitter Maps. Very Cool. Not only can you see where the profile is located, you can also see where a Tweet was originated. Now if Robbie tweets that he’s at some restaurant, I’ll know if he really is there…or just promoting them.

Lesson – Starting using location based apps so potential clients can see where you are, and may even stop by your place of business! If you own a business, you can promote specials like “Come to ABC Business and check in to Foursquare to receive free appetizer”. Customer gets free appetizer, and ABC Business gets YOU to tell your friends about ABC Business.

Robert: In your book Trusted Agents you speak about Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco hooking up with Lefty. If Lefty was on the web, how would you hook up with him? Who are the Lefty’s on the web?

Chris: Be Helpful…Give to get. Treat them like equals.

Chris: Frank Eliason, Comcast @comcastcares, Christopher Barger, GM @cbarger, Matt Cutts, Google, @MattCutts

Thoughts – One of the biggest dilemnas we have in our online/offline business is getting to the heavy hitters. They’re usually busy or won’t talk to you if you’re not important. Donnie Brasco worked his way up the mob, and learned the favorite spots of where the mobsters were hanging out. Twitter is a favorite spot for a lot of the heavy hitters which can provide fast/easy communication without going through hoops.

Lesson – Learn the online spots AND offline spots where the heavy hitters like to hangout. Chris mentioned @RShotel a Social Media Hub located in New York.

Lesson2 -  If you can’t get the heavy hitter to respond to you on Twitter, then find out who they will respond to. Chris Brogan responds to a lot of people through twitter…even through Direct Messages. If he didn’t respond to anyone, I would go after his buddies like Kristopher Smith @croncast who was introduced to me at CES by Chris Brogan. When the heavy hitters see you interacting with their circle, you’re more than likely going to receive a response from them.

Robert: Why follow so many people or why shouldn’t you follow so many people?

Chris: Underfollow you’re the elitist, overfollow you’re a spammer, 1 to 1 ratio and you’re reciprocal.

Chris: Stay away from getting hacked

Thoughts – Getting hacked is a pain because you may ruin your chances with building business online. If you can’t protect your password info, then why should a client trust you with their information?

I highly recommend you purchase Trust Agents which can help you take your business to the next level.
You can follow Chris Brogan @ChrisBrogan or go to his website http://chrisbrogan.com/

You can contact Robert Enriquez at his SEO Company site, through his twitter account @NC_SEO, or on his SEO Blog

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Interview with Chris Brogan, Social Media Maven

Let’s face it, not only are Facebook fan pages the craze with clients these days, but one of the biggest obstacles with Facebook is tracking and measurement.

Although Facebook’s analytics are slowly improving, for us data junkies it isn’t near fast enough nor is it sufficient information.

Fan page owners are currently able to get insight into:

(1) The total number of fans and active fans on their page. Active fans are defined as Facebook users who have engaged with your page in some way.
(2) Gender demographic data
(3) Fan subscription and un-subscription trends
(4) Language and location statistics

To the untrained eye, you’re left rather un-impressed with Facebook’s Insights. And while there is something to be said about its limitations, let’s focus on what we can learn from them. Like any analytics platform, you should use this data to find trends and form hypotheses. Here are some ideas to get you started and in the right frame of mind.

Take a look at which status updates, video posts, etc. get the most fan interaction (comments and likes) and determine why. Is it because you are giving something away? How did that affect your fan growth rate? What demographic was most active – male or female? You need to ask all of these questions so you can maximize the effectiveness of your updates and posts.

You want to maximize fan interaction, and in order to do that you need to have an understanding of who is paying attention and why. By looking at a user’s demographic you can better target them with future updates. It’s also a good idea to see how this compares to your website’s users. Does that match up? What you need to determine is how this affects your online marketing strategy.

Let’s say that your company has a small clothing line for those die-hard fans. It’s not the focus of your business, but it’s great for branding and you can make some additional money off of it. Knowing that your active users are primarily male or female, when you mention the clothing line on your Facebook page, you can feature a product that would appeal to that particular demographic. If it is primarily female, make sure you feature a women’s article of clothing. This will better resonate with your audience and should increase conversions as a whole.

One area you’ll want to keep a close eye on is un-fanning metrics. It can be difficult to determine what exactly caused someone to decide to no longer be a fan of your page, but there are some questions you can ask to narrow it down. Here are some things you should look at:

• How frequently are you updating your page? Perhaps your audience needs more or less updates to keep their interest or to not overwhelm them. Test this and take it one step further by testing different days of the week to determine which days get you the most fan interaction.
• How engaging are your updates/posts? Are you giving users a reason to want to monitor your updates and to want to get involved in the conversation? You should try different types of updates to see how it affects the number of fans you have.
• Are you losing most of your fans after you give something away or run a contest? This is a common way to lose fans as people will become a fan of the page just for a chance to win. The question now becomes: how can you keep them around? Do you offer up some type of minor giveaway at random times to fans?

Facebook’s Insights provides us with numerous opportunities to ask “why?” Asking questions about the information they give you plus a little out-of-the-box thinking (e.g. using a URL shortener like kl.am to track outbound links within your page) can go a long way to getting the most out of Facebook’s Insights.

Taylor Pratt is the Product Marketing Manager at Raven Internet Marketing Tools. With Raven you can conduct research and analysis, manage link building campaigns, track search engine trends, instantly produce ROI reports for SEO and SMM campaigns, and collaborate with team members with intuitive multi-user features.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to Get the Most out of Facebook’s Insights

Keyword Research is an obvious first step in researching a niche for yourself or for a client.

Keywords, and their results, make up the terrain of search marketing – and knowing the terrain (and who else is playing in it) helps us navigate up the mountain (and determine when the mountain is maybe too crowded to climb).

Google’s AdWords Keywords tool isn’t a bad place to start, but if you’re operating in a competitive niche there isn’t much of an advantage there – even my grandma uses it (not really, my grandma still has a rotary phone, but you get the idea).

Your real advantage comes from looking in places where your competitors aren’t to identify "under the radar" keywords.

Here are 10 sources of keyword data that are often overlooked in the course of everyday keyword research.

1) Misspelling Tools

Typos happen to the best of us. Sometimes they happen when we’re searching.

While misspelled keywords won’t have the traffic volume of correct-spelling versions they are rarely targeted by competitors. And people’s fingers slip a lot more than you might think.

• MS adCenter Labs Misspelling Tool
• SEO Book Misspelling Generator

2) Technorati Tags

Technorati is a blog search engine – and a great way to research the blogosphere overall or just find some new sources.

Their tag section represents "popular tags used on Technorati.com over the last month."

Browsing here is a good way to find out what topics are buzzing in the blogosphere lately – and, more importantly, what language is being used. You won’t find volume data here, but it’s a great place to look when you’re brainstorming keyword lists.

http://technorati.com/tag/

3) Twitter

While Twitter isn’t exactly a microcosm of the online population (think demographics) the real time stream provides a good study of the topics of the day and the language people are using to discuss them.

There are quite a few Twitter tools out there that you can use to monitor the buzz surrounding keywords (or find new ones). Here are a few worth looking at:

• TweetBeep – think Google Alerts for Twitter – monitors keywords for you and notifies you when they’re mentioned
• Trendistic – allows you to track keyword trends in Twitter (with nice graphs that visualize the data)
• TweetVolume – see how often your keyword(s) appear on Twitter

4) Facebook Lexicon

Facebook released Lexicon in April of 2008. Essentially, it allows you to enter a keyword (or multiple keywords) and it graphs their use over time. It’s a good way to research keyword seasonality (but they don’t display actual usage volume – just a relative comparison).

http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/index.php

5) SEOBook’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

This one may not be terribly overlooked, but it’s incredibly useful so I’m including it anyway in hopes that a few of you are unaware of it.

This tool brings a tremendous amount of data and other research tools to your fingertips. It reports daily estimated for WordTracker, Google, Yahoo! and Bing. It also links you to various other research tools – automatically pulling up the data for your keyword to save you plenty of time. It’s a must-bookmark for sure.

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

6) Google Wonder Wheel

This experiment from Google shows keyword relationships with a nifty wheel/hub visualization trick. This tool is great for brainstorming keywords – leading you to related keywords you may not have thought of.

To experiment with the Wonder Wheel you have to first perform a search at Google.com – then, at the top of results, expand the "More Options" link and select "Wonder wheel" (about 3/4 down the column). Clicking a keyword one of the spokes of the wheel expands a new wheel around that keyword (made up of related terms).

7) Your analytics

I may be preaching to the choir somewhat here (hopefully we’re all actively reviewing keyword referrals in our analytics data) – but your analytics data represents arguably the best source of keyword data as well as new keywords you may not have thought of.

If your site has any authority and a decent breadth of content your referrals are already telling you about keywords you hadn’t thought of – and better yet, you have actual usage data to go along with it (so you can tell which keywords bring in the users you want).

Here are a few related posts from around the web worth reading if you’re looking for smart new ways to research keywords:

• An Exhaustive List of Search Engine Based Keyword Research Data | SEOmoz
  
• Keyword inspiration – Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com shares his secrets | Wordtracker
  
• 10 Free Google SEO Tools Everybody Should Use | SEOptimise

What are some of the alternative sources you use for keyword research? Let us know in the comments.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

7 Overlooked Sources of Keyword Data

If you are like me, you have all your major working materials stored online: I organize useful links with Google bookmarks and Delicious, store email and IM conversation with Gmail, have most of my important (collaboration) docs at Google Docs, have multiple resource collections on Wordpress and Blogger, etc.

Backing up this massive amount if highly important information is actually a smart idea because the services are not owned by me, hosted by God knows who and thus having a local copy and updating it regularly would be wise.

Backupify is a nice (free until January 31) web-based tool that allows to download content from a number of popular online services including:

• Gmail
• Twitter
• Google Docs
• Flickr
• Facebook
• Basecamp
• Wordpress
• Delicious
• Photobucket
• Blogger
• FriendFeed

Here’s how it works: after signing up you will be offered the list of social media sites “to manage”:

Here are a few examples :

• Allow the tool to access your Twitter account by Twitter auth;
• Login to Delicious using your login information;
• Connect to Flickr account by Flickr auth;
• Connect to Photobucket account by Photobucket auth, etc

When you are done adding your social media accounts, set up the back-up frequency (daily or weekly) and delivery options:

• Email me every time a backup is performed
• Email me a once daily digest of all backup activity
• Email me a once weekly digest of all backup activity
• Do not notify me via email of any backups

You can also access the archives of your backups at Backupify from any computer.

The only possible excuse for not trying the tool out is the privacy concerns, here’s an extract from the service privacy policy (remember: your privacy is up to you):

What information is collected about me?
We only collect data you provide us at sign-up. We do not ask for any other personal information. We do not collect data without your knowledge.

How do you use collected information?
We don’t use it at all. The only thing we collect and monitor is general patterns of storage and service usage so that we can make sure our architecture is optimized for speed and scalability.

What security measures do you use to protect my privacy?
Any information we have about you is stored with strong encryption.

The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to Back up Your Social Media Accounts

The idea of giving the opportunity to leave off-site comments to any page has been hot for a long time: that’s how many social bookmarking / sharing sites work (like StumbleUpon where people “review” and tag pages within the system), that’s what Google Sidewiki concept is based on and that’s how Tweeting any page works…

Why it has been popular is quite clear: people are saved from the trouble to log in or filling the comment form and are given the opportunity to use their favorite web environment and instantly share their comments with their online friends.

The question is how we, bloggers and Internet marketers, can keep track of those comments and utilize that off-site conversations around our web pages.

This post looks at one part of the question: possible ways to keep track of Twitter conversations related to any web page:

Kutano

Kutano works as a browser addons (supported browsers: FireFox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome) that hides behind a handy sidebar and notifies you of recent Tweets around any page you are landing on. In short, it works as follows:

1. Install the addon (and restart your browser). Kutano sidebar should appear;
2. Navigate to any web page and notice a number that appears right on the sidebar (when it is closed). This number indicates how many Tweets have been found for the current page):
3. Click on it and see the actual Tweets in the opened sidebar:
   

Best features:

• Instantly see Twitter comments on any page you are currently viewing (the sidebar is open);
• See Tweets to the page or to the site;
• See “Discussions” – i.e. recent web updates that do not link to the page directly but use a related hashtag or keyword (useful for tools, brand names, etc):

BackTweets

BackTweets is a popular tool that tracks and aggregates tweets linking to a particular page. It supports a number of URL-shorteners which makes the tool one of the most complete.

It can be added to your browser with help of a bookmarklet which allows to quickly find Tweets linking to the current page.

Best features:

• Create an email alert for new Tweets linking to any page;
• Grab an RSS feed to follow Tweets commenting on any page.

AddATweet

AddATweet is more about commenting using your Twitter identity than aggregating all Twitter buzz around one specific page – that is you won’t see all the Tweets related to any specific page but you will be able to track comments left using the tool.

Best features:

• Instantly see if the page has comments by the color of the addon button;
• Easily leave your own comments using the tool and your Twitter identity.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to Quickly Check Tweets Related to Any Web Page