seobridges.com

Among the leading stories this week is the redesign of Myspace.  Just a few weeks ago I told someone MySpace is far from dead, but if they want to survive they need to become more of a niche based social networking site that focuses on the music and entertainment industry.  Now, I wonder if my conversation was being bugged.  Anyways, I went onto my account, which I haven’t been on in more than six months, and nothing seems too new.  I guess they’ll roll out new features in the months to come.  Here are some other stories.

Facebook and Paypal Monetize Social Media – I’m taking a finance class, so I’ll let you in on a little secret.  The easier a sales person can make it for you to purchase, the more likely you are to purchase.

Amazon, Facebook, and Zynga to invest in social media start-ups – If you have an idea, this could be your chance to get some change.

Yahoo! integrates with Facebook and Twitter – I think I posted something about Yahoo! moving into the social networking arena last week.  Maybe they should develop a social networking site, and call it Yippee!

Scholastic Launches Social Networking Site – YouAreWhatYouRead.com is a social networking site for book junkies like me.  It’ll be interesting to see how many Randians will use this site to proselytize miss Rand’s philosophies.

IBM makes additions to Cognos 10 – IBM reminds me too much of the days when computers were only for nerds. They’ve figured out a way for those nerds to collaborate through Wikis, blogs, and workrooms.

New Trojan Virus Attacks Macs – Mac users, I suggest you read this article.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Have a great weekend.

Stay social my friends.

Erick

#social#media#marketing #social#networking #Web#content #Internet#Marketing #Twitter #SEO #SMM

One of the greatest inventions in the history of entertainment is the deck of cards. There are an inexhaustible number of things you can do with a deck of cards. There are countless games you can play, tricks you can perform, and things you can build (house of cards) with a deck of cards. I see writing Web content and doing social media marketing like performing with a deck of cards.

The purpose of a game of cards is to increase your probability, while decreasing your opponent’s probability. The purpose of SEO content and social media marketing is to increase your visibility while decreasing your opponent’s visibility. To do that, you must first know what deck of cards you’re playing with (Web content/Social Media/Internet Marketing/Other). You must also know which game you’re playing. You should know whether you’re playing to get the most followers you can or to get the most value out of your followers.

When it comes to Twitter, if you’re playing to get the most followers, you’ll want to use an automatic Twitter follower and other automatic tools. At SEO Bridges, we don’t use those, so we don’t know which ones are out there. We believe that just as the best SEO practice is to write organic content, the best SMM practice is to build your audience organically. If you want to find the followers with the most value, you must focus on your message. And follow those people whose messages you’ll benefit from the most. If you offer the same quality message to them they offer you, chances are they’ll follow you in return. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow, so come back.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Related articles

• Five Steps To Social Media Success for Startups (startupprofessionals.com)
• 3 Time-Saving Tips for Becoming a Great Social Media Listener (thebloggersbulletin.org)
• 30 Quick Tips to Get More Twitter Followers for Free (shoutmeloud.com)
• Have You Defined Your Social Media Marketing Funnel? (smallbusinessmavericks.com)
• How to gain more exposure for your Twitter account – 4 simple tips (ubervu.com)
• Getting Started Online: Social Media (wheretheclientis.com)
• 10 Twitterific Twitter Tools (sixrevisions.com)

#social#networking #Twitter #social#media #windows#Live

So far the four most trafficked sites in the U.S. have been those four I’ve looked at. There are some socialization capabilities to the site ranked 5^th according to Alexa (Amazon), and pretty much anyone can add content to the site ranked 6th (Wikipedia). But I wouldn’t consider them social networking sites. It’s hard to even think of Youtube as a social networking site. Twitter is ranked 7^th according to Alexa, and Microsoft’s search engine Windows Live is ranked 11^th. Here are the numbers:

Twitter

8% of all Internet users use Twitter

Live

14.96% of all Internet users use Live

Twitter

About 6.2% of their users come from search engines, so their user base would decrease by less than 1% without search engines.

Live

About 4.4% of their user come from search engines

Twitter

Immediately before visiting Twitter, 12.04% of their users visited Facebook, 9.48% visited Google, 2.66% visited Youtube, 2.11% visited Yahoo, and .94% visited Live (Twitpic and LinkedIn are in there). Immediately after leaving Twitter 11.28% of their users visit Facebook, 9.48% visit Google, 2.88% visit Youtube, 1.91% visit Yahoo, and  .85% visit Live.

Live

Immediately before visiting Live, 13.64% of their users visited Facebook, 5.81% visited Google, 3.49% visited Yahoo, 2.42% visited Youtube, and to small of a portion of users come from Twitter for Alexa to rank them. Immediately after leaving Live, 14.6% of their users go to Facebook, 4.83% go to Google, 2.86% go to Yahoo!, and 2.07% go to Youtube. I should also mention that 10.79% of all users who use Live come from MSN and 15.94% go to MSN.

It doesn’t appear Twitter and Live have a very good relationship. That’s okay because once again the numbers show that search and social must coexist. Live receives 16.06% of their traffic from social networking sites, and Twitter receives 13.33% of their traffic from search engines. It looks like search needs social a little more than social needs search in this battle. Come by tomorrow as our last two contenders duke it out.



Stay social my friends,

Erick

Related articles

• You: The social networking tools you need for business – Feature (earthtimes.org)
• Brand Challenges & Opportunities With Social Media & Mobile (searchengineland.com)
• Digital News Roundup: Oct. 11, 2010 (360i.com)
• Twitter Targets 1 Billion Users, Challenging Facebook for Ads (businessweek.com)
• Twitter predicts it will have 1 billion members (sfgate.com)
• SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 12, 2010 (searchengineland.com)

#Facebook #Google #social#networking

You’ve probably heard at least one person say search is dead, or maybe you are that one person.  Let’s look at the argument in perspective, using Alexa to compare Google and Facebook—the two most trafficked sites in the U.S. and the world.

Facebook

In the last three months, 35.66% of all Internet users in the U.S. have used Facebook.

Google

In the last three months, 43.22% of all Internet users in the U.S. have used Google.

Facebook

6.7.% of all traffic to Facebook comes from search engines, which means their traffic would decrease by 2.35% without search engines.

Google

3% of all traffic to Google comes through Google.  In other words people searching for Google Analytics, type in “Google Analytics” into their search engine.

Facebook

7.37% of all people who visited Facebook visited Google immediately going to Facebook, and 7.86% of all Facebook users go to Google immediately after leaving Facebook.

Google

4.61% of all people who visit Google visited Facebook immediately before visiting Google, and 4.15% of all people who use Google go to Facebook immediately after they leave.

We can take these numbers and draw any number of conclusions, but it seems these numbers suggest that search engines and social networking sites need one another.  Neither is dead, rather they have become so integrated that they cannot be separated without negatively impacting the other.  I invite anyone to chime in, but I would especially welcome the rebuttal of anyone who believes search is dead.  The numbers simply do not suggest that.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Related articles

• Google versus Facebook is about ‘fast’ versus ‘sticky’ – which is the best strategy? (zdnet.com)
• Facebook taking on Google on new fronts! Will they succeed? (trak.in)
• Facebook Shuns Google, Not too Social (arnoldit.com)

One thing that’s important to us is the ability to keep our social networking local.  We are more than willing to work with a person/company on the east coast, Canada, or anywhere else in the world.  But a large segment of our audience is here in San Diego.  For that reason, it’s important to us to use a social media monitoring service that allows us to keep our social media marketing efforts local.  Sprout Social will allow you to reach a global market while listening to a local audience.

Sprout Social

1.     Use the + symbol at the top of screen to connect up to five Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Yelp, and Foursquare profiles.

2.     Use the inbox tab to view your Twitter follower demographics on a pie chart, a social scorecard that tells you the change in your message volume and engagement, and the overall rating of your engagement and influence.

3.     Use the inbox tab to see and answer all your messages from those social networks you’ve connected to, including the ability to see your new followers and follow them.

4.     Use the discovery tab to search for new Tweeters to follow (globally or locally) based on keywords, your business mentions throughout the social web, articles and blogs that mention keywords you select, a Business 360 Agent that graphs your social media interaction, and more.

5.     Use the promotions tab to schedule one time or recurring messages on Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook.  If you want to send messages to those social networks now, just click on the icon of the pencil over the piece of paper at the top of the screen.

There’s much more you can do with Sprout Social, so I encourage you to check out their free trial.  They offer a professional package for $9 a month and a business package for $49 a month.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

To start this week I want to let you know about an upcoming event. On November 4, I will be interviewed about SEO Bridges and the novel I’m writing. If you would like to know more about my novel, you can find a very short synopsis about it on my Twitter page. For those of you who want to listen to it on your own time or will not be available to listen to it live, a podcast will be available. If you would like more information about the interview or my book, please feel free to contact me. Oh yeah, I was asked to do this interview by someone I connected with on Twitter.

Moving on, usually I talk about principles of social media marketing and SEO content, or I list specific sites and tools you can use. Today, I want to throw some croutons into that salad and let you know about specific things I’m doing to get the conversation started.

About a year ago, I was at a meeting for a literary NPO here in San Diego. One of the board members mentioned something that needed to be done and then asked for a volunteer. The president of the organization looked at me and volunteered me, saying, “Erick will do it. He has an agenda.”  I looked at her, smiled, and jokingly said, “You’ve figured me out.”  She laughed and said, “I figured you out a long time ago.”  So, now I want to let you in on my agenda, and invite you to take part in it.

Simply, it is to connect people, and the people I work best with want to connect people. That means understanding your audience. Business is all about understanding your audience, and business to business marketing is about connecting people with ideas to other people with ideas.

When you write Web content, you want to understand the needs of your target audience. And when you understand the needs of your target audience, a good way to engage in conversation with that audience is through social media marketing. Focus your end of the conversation on how you can add value to your audience’s lives by alleviating their needs.

Specifically, I want to connect readers and writers, because I am both of those things; though, in this new economy I feel we need to connect with one another. I chose the name SEO Bridges because I want to bridge the gap between people and ideas, whether it be readers and writers, musicians and singers, or whomever. For now, if you want to take part in the conversation I’m starting, follow this Twitter list of 500 literary Tweeters.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Our Social Media Marketing (SMM) philosophy is to keep every interaction relevant, personal, and conversational.  Start by determining who your target audience is and focus your SMM endeavors on your target audience.

Once you determine who your target audience is, formulate a relevant message and stick to that message. One suggestion is to find useful blogs, articles, and other sources of information to Tweet or retweet.

Make your SMM personal by letting your audience see your real side, but don’t fall into the trap of sharing TMI (Too much information). I see too many people giving constant updates about where they are and what they are doing.  Unless you’re famous, no one cares.  And if they do care, you probably don’t want them to know that information.

Now, your conversational Tweets and other forms of virtual conversations, may not be relevant to everyone, but they will be relevant to the person you’re having a micro-conversation with.  Others will see you’re not just using Twitter or other platforms to send out advertisements, but that you’re trying to get to know your audience. Thank people who retweet you, interact with people who interact with you, answer questions, and get into conversations with people on the Web.

Whether you use our Social Media Marketing philosophy or one of your own, build your audience around that philosophy and brand yourself with that philosophy.  It will pay off in the end.

Go ahead and comment, Tweet me, or e-mail me.

Erick