#SMCQ16 How do you measure influence?

Metrics, popularity, comment counts, network buzz or simple word-of-mouth credibility? There are a huge number of factors that go into determining the influence of a blogger or online platform, but how can you tell who or what truly influences both individual and community behavior. What does true influence even mean?  On this week’s Social Media Question of the Week call, our Editorial board discussed how we rank influence in an ever-more-vocal online environment. When do you listen and when do you tune out a blogger’s opinion or other online source of information? How do you choose and rate your sources? We want to know:

#SMCQ16 How do you measure social media influencers and/or influential online communities?

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

#SMCQ15 On truth-finding

This week’s SMCQ15: How do you know who to trust within the social media environment? was especially pertinent given the dramatic impact Social Media had amidst the election and protests in Iran.  The online conversation and direct responses we received pointed out the need for self responsibility and incorporating a journalistic standard for fact checking.

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday, June 26 @ 10am PST as the Social Media Club Editorial Board reviews the conversation. We welcome your input.

Some notes from the online conversation:

“Is Twitter The CNN Of The New Media Generation?,” by Brian Solis, TechCrunch,  June 17, 2009

“Fact checking is a vital part of the news business and is ultimately what separates amateurs from experts. But researching fact from hearsay or even opinion is almost impossible on Twitter for most users. Keen believed that citizen media is corrupting the very institution of news media because most of the individuals publishing information using social tools, he argues in his book, are “grossly misinformed.” While Morris didn’t make the sweeping assertion that Keen expressed, his point is noteworthy and deserves further examination”

“How Not To Be A Social Media Sucker (aka who to trust online),” by Kimberly Turner, Regator, June 25, 2009

“You can guarantee fast or you can guarantee accurate, but you can’t guarantee both. We want things instantly. If a plane landed in the Hudson 30 seconds ago, we want details NOW. Fair enough. But remember, the faster you get your news, the less likely it is to have undergone a fact-checking process. Monthly magazines, for example, often have teams of fact-checkers who verify everything from the spellings of names to the color of a source’s hair if it’s mentioned. This is because monthly publications work several weeks out. There is time for due diligence.”

Iran + Twitter = Trust, But Don’t Verify, by Farel Chideya, The Huffington Post

“So, how do you verify? Well… some people say, just… don’t. It’s a cul-de-sac you can go around again and again. I am not saying don’t follow Twitter (again, that would be useless). I do want to follow Twitter, on #IranElections and all else. What I don’t want to do is give up the idea of verifying information.”

“How Do You Know What Tweets are True? Exactly the Same Way You Source Everything Else” by Sarah Delman, Corporate Memo

“Social media isn’t some separate sphere: it’s similar, in fact, to all other source building. If you don’t know who to trust, online or off, then you’re not doing your job. It’s what reporters do: they figure out who to trust before they need to. You should have built social media sources beforehand in exactly the same way you build offline sources.”

“Twitter and Social Media in Iran,” By Anthony Caruana, Hydrapinion, June 24, 2009

“solely relying on Twitter where particularly poignant or inflammatory Tweets are heavily retweeted doesn’t equate with accuracy.”

Highlights from The Twitter Stream:

@rustytanton There’s nothing in the question to imply that mainstream media or what you hear on the street is superior in any way 

@dwiggins: How different from other sources? Same question. Most folks think answers found on Google correct! Info literacy a core need here.

@znmeb posted twice on the question: I don’t think “social media” are any different regarding trust than any other communication channel”
and, noting need for self responsibility, @znmeb: #SMCQ15 fool me once, shame on you … fool me twice, shame on me

@ baurecom: nowadays you can’t really trust anybody. You have to thoroughly check the validity of the source b4 you broadcast it.

Further Reading

Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned, by Naomi Cohen, New York Times, June 20, 2009

“Crisis Communications Online: Social Media Usage during a Crisis with Leysia Palen,” by Eric Schwartzman, On the Record, June 4, 2009

“Thumbs To The News: Public Turns To Twitter,” by Wendy Kaufman, NPR, April 20, 2009

“Finding Truth on the Internet,” Wired, by Louise Witt, September 4, 2004

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday, June 26 @ 10am PST as the Social Media Club Editorial Board reviews the conversation. We welcome your input.

A new social media song and music video by Pete Codella

A couple months ago, as I was returning home after presenting at a social media conference in Las Vegas, I had an idea: what if I took a fun, popular song and changed the words to tell a story about social media?

My idea came to reality with the help of my wife and some great friends these past few weeks.

I debuted my new social media music video, Crazy Little Thing the Web, today at a presentation I gave in Denver for the America’s Blood Centers annual conference.

The reason I choose this outlet is because it brings some of my musical theater training into my practice as a digital public relations counselor and practitioner. It combines something fun and creative with the world of social media and communication.

Other Applications

Are there ways your company or organization can utilize multimedia sharing sites like YouTube to tell your message in a new, engaging and creative way?

If so, what will be the end result? In other words, why would you want to tell something in a different way?

Are you looking for greater awareness, for more members, to sell products?

Perhaps an indirect, creative message — one that demonstrates your expertise without a blatant sales pitch — will produce increased engagement and enhance your communication efforts. At least it’ll show you’re creative and willing to step out and do something different.

We all know the definition of insanity: repeating the same actions and expecting a different result.

Challenge

Social Media Club: what do you bring to the table? How have you engaged constituents in new and creative ways? What will you be known for? What makes you unique and different from everyone else?

Enjoy Crazy Little Thing the Web

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor with this new entree into the world of songs about social media.

Please feel free to take this new social media song and share it, tweak it, edit it, revise it, improve upon it, etc.

It’s all about the creative process and collectively creating something better than the sum of its parts.

Published on the Codella Marketing YouTube channel on June 24, 2009.

#SMCQ15 Who to trust? Verifying social media information

Receiving retweeted information that doesn’t have a clear source, mail from hijacked email accounts and coming across yet another poorly fact-checked blog post represent the down side of the instant information age. How does one determine the accuracy of information found online? And how do you verify sources to ensure that you’re getting the truth, be it business, personal or political? During last Friday’s Question of the Week call, the Social Media Club Editorial Board discussed the conundrum of finding the most accurate sources of news amid a vast ocean of information. Now we want to hear from you. We welcome your thoughts on this week’s question:

#SMCQ15  How do you know who to trust within the social media environment?

Please tag your response, posts and tweets #SMCQ15.

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

New Chapters Forming

We continue to see requests for SMC in cities around the world, and are happy to report the following ‘active’ and ‘in the works’ chapters. Please note the list below is subject to change, so it is best to check the SMC Event Calendar for real-time meetings:

MAY

• Chapter Launches: Houston, TX (USA) – Nashville, TN (USA) – New Orleans, LA (USA) – Östergötland (Sweden) – Richmond, VA (USA) – St. Louis, MO (USA) – Tucson, AZ (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Orange County, CA (USA) – Pasadena, CA (USA) – Rio Grande, TX (USA)- Wilmington, NC (USA)

JUNE

• Chapter Launches: Charleston, SC (USA) – Corpus Christi, TX (USA) – Detroit/Ann Arbor, MI (USA) – Lincoln, NE (USA) – Rio Grande Valley, TX (USA) – Utah Valley, UT (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): – Orlando, FL (USA) – Southwest Florida, FL (USA) – Toronto, ON (Canada)

JULY

• Chapter Launches: Charlottesville, VA (USA) – Knoxville, TN (USA) – Mexico City (MEXICO) – Missoula, MT (USA) – Munich (GERMANY) – New Haven, CT (USA) – Nigeria (AFRICA) – Southwest Florida, FL (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Hartford, CT (USA)

To find out information on your city launch and/or planning meetings, please check out our Local Teams page and then click through to the SMC wiki. The great thing we have found is that you too can start an SMC chapter in your town – so just add your city on to the wiki if its not there and review the ideas and insights on the wiki about what you can do to be more successful with your efforts.

We are also hosting a weekly chapter call where we answer questions around what is needed to launch Social Media Club in your local city, how to develop awareness campaigns, discuss topics/conversations that have worked well in other chapters, securing sponsorships, and so much more. The calls take place every Wednesday, and alternate weekly – at either 8am PST or 5:30pm PST – an updated schedule is available online in the Social Media Club events calendar.

The conference call dial-in number is (269) 320-8400, and the access code is 509633#.

These calls are usually recorded and are available for listening up to one week following each call.

We do ask that you review the following items before you jump on the call:

• SMC Chapter Guidelines
• 30-minute podcast SMC Founder, Chris Heuer, did with SMC Louisville Chapter Leader, Jason Falls, on organizing a Local Social Media Club. Take a listen.

We were hoping to get some stronger organizational tools in place before launching more cities, but found…sometimes…you just need to let it happen and worry about the details later. If this has been frustrating for you, we would like to apologize, we have been doing this as a labor of love as opposed to doing it as a paying job. We appreciate your patience and your continued support of our growth, hopefully in a city near you soon!

Welcome to our SMB and Professional Members!

We’d like to acknowledge our new Small and Medium Business Members and Professional Members here. Thank you ever so much for opening your heart, and your wallet, to support the mission of Social Media Club (’SMC’).

• SMB Members: Doug Kern (Inovis), Bruce Fisher (Hawaii-Aloha.com), Kevin Kilduff (Weber Shandwick), Barbra Pleadwell (Hastings and Pleadwell)
• Professional Members: Tess Staadecker, Gerard Babitts, Ann Glenn, Dan Parks, Michele McGraw, John Mecke, Donna Baske, Scott Williams, Emily Grant, Becky Parker, Elssy Baddour, Josh Gordon, Alex Lawrence, Cathryn Hrudicka, Madia Logan, Jenna Langer, Ralph Rogers, Jordan Anderson, Nathaniel Lee, and Frank Hametner.

We would be honored if you were able to join as a paid member so that we can continue sharing our knowledge and bringing people together to expand our collective abilities.

If you are able to support Social Media Club so that we can afford to continue to advance Social Media around the world, please register here today. We look forward to welcoming you officially to the SMC family!

The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem

It’s an interactive evening at the Social Media Club, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, at Citizen Space. HP alum Ravit Lichtenberg of Ustrategy ignited the event presenting before dozens of the social media digerati on “The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem.”

“What are you?,” she asks. An expert, agency, first timer? Now, let’s get started. Companies have become collaborative with multiple customers, and those customers are interacting with other customers. One to one marketing from company to customer is a thing of the past.

The social media corporate ecosystem has also changed. What used to be a discrete relationship between companies and their customers; companies and their partners, has become a much more pliable system. Corporations now count on customers to inform other customers, and often partner with startups—not just established companies.  The corporation, customer and partner are all together having a ‘conversation.’ Corporations want to create relationships; customers want the interaction; and start-ups want the money. The “glue” between them all is marketing, business development, and capabilities.

Recap: What is social media again? The desktop solutions (and previous web apps) have changed the conversation – and people are overwhelmed. The focus used to be on the customers as eyeballs, but now those same customers have a face, an actual “voice that’s being heard.”

Over 60 percent of Americans regularly use social media (RWW/Cone research from Compete.com). Ninety-three percent of consumers believe a company should have a presence on social media sites. According to Forrester Research, people are open to most social tools from brand they like. Online discussion forums are on the rise, so are online videos while blogs and podcasts are coming down in popularity.

“Corporations care about social media!,” Ravit stresses. Cisco, Google, HP, Intel, Pepsico, Microsoft, eBay, and others are marking budget for social media, and making it part of their products, online and off-line.

The “gold standard” for social media use is marketing and collaboration – offline integration with online. And, brands are trying to get that right. HP spends 50 percent of its budget on marketing, and  brands who use social media spend 10-25 percent of their marketing dollars.

“Lots of money being spent on social media and some are getting it right…” Remember how Burger King asked you to sacrifice your friends? Burger King got 20,000 people to each sacrifice 10 of their friends for a total of 200,000 people engaging with the brand. Procter & Gamble’s “BeingGirl” is a location for what it’s like to be a young girl. And, then those girls go to the store for the first time and, it’s a Procter & Gamble product they’re looking at first, of course.

But, most brands don’t get it… More than 50 percent of brand campaigns fail. Worst ad campaigns were HP Pay Per Post, Subway, Walmart Across America, as outlined at SXSW this year (SXSW blog and Forrester Research). These brands were unable to articulate and show ROI.

Startups know there’s a need. Facebook created a global need. Yammer’s another good example. Some succeed and others don’t. Some are generic or too customized, can’t get a handle on the business model, don’t share consistency or dependability, need integration and a quality interaction, need to show better understanding of customer benefits, and have to reach the right decision makers.

“So now what?”

Each player in the ecosystem cares about different things. How to measure ROI, what tools are best, how to get IT’s buy in, are the old ways best? Customers want to know what they get out of all of this: What do I get, why should I spend time here, will I have control over privacy? Start-up / partners are asking will we get a deal, will we beat our competition, are we creating a need to fill?

To turn the corporation social…

They need to move from “selling to caring!” Focus on relationships, get to know the customers, go to where the customers are, develop meaningful communication, make it easy for them, give tools to the advocates, reward the enthusiasts, turn boring into excitement, enlist the right subject matter experts, and bring on board the right solutions.

And, of course, corporations must have a STRATEGY!

Agree on the business objectives, understand customers’ objectives, identify the relevant channels, establish relevant metrics, have right people on board, align with ongoing marketing strategy, prioritize, develop a plan, identify the right tools, then…IMPLEMENT!

AND NOW (DRUM ROLL)

Ravit mobilizes the audience with an exercise. We’ve got to develop a strategy that we can take to a corporation. We break into groups and start to work..

Here’s what Ravit’s tasked us to do…

1.    Choose a sector: technology, financial, or retail
2.    Identity a product you’re passionate about
3.    Identify a set of customer needs
a.    What’s important to these customers?
b.    Where do these customers spend time?
c.    How do they like to get information?
d.    What do they like to talk about? With whom?
4.    Identify corporate objectives
a.    What does the corporation want to achieve?
b.    Determine the decision maker in the organization
c.    They’re looking for a solution…what’s important to them?
5.    Envision a social media strategy
6.    Propose it to the organization

To see the rest of the photos from this event, please check our Flickr album.

Ravit’s perspective?

I wanted people to leave with two key takeaways. First, that Social Media is about much more than getting on facebook, twitter, or having a blog. Just like traditional marketing, for Social Media efforts to succeed, it needs to be treated as strategy with objectives, metrics, and implementation plan. Second, for a Social Media strategy to succeed, it needs to speak to the corporate ecosystem and to the needs of each of the ecosystem players.  Without this holistic perspective, any Social Media initiative will face significant barriers to success.

I greatly enjoyed seeing how people took to these concepts and worked together to create Social Media strategies. We went from a strategy for a local bank focused on small business lending, to a Social Media strategy for the Flip camera, to cloud storage, to turning the boring Dr. Scholl insoles to a sexy Executive-in-Hills campaign. It’s not hard…but it does require a shift in the way people think of Social Media. With sessions like the ones the Social Media Club organizes we are getting closer by the day.

RE: SMCQ14 Dumbing Down or Getting Smart?

“Now along comes Twitter, which totally reduces our collective thought leadership to 140 characters or less and in doing so, belittles and minimizes every big thought into a punch line or social limerick. It’s premature articulation if you ask me and it’s very unsatisfying.” — Joseph Jaffe, “Blogging is Dying, Twitter is to Blame,”

In this week’s question, the editorial board asked “What are the consequences of exposure to a constant high-volume stream of info?”#SMCQ14

A quick tour of the blogosphere (I picked up one actual book this week, a novel, which give you a hint of how much information I get online), revealed many pundits, theories and postulations on how hyperconnectivity may be damaging our ability to pay attention as much as it opens up a door of infinite knowledge.  We’ll be summarizing the comments we received, but in the meantime, here are some notes from the field:

“I learned that instant feedback from the web had caused me to change the “voice” of my writing.   Over time I had learned how to post messages and content that maximized chances of “retweets” “blog postings” , blah, blah, blah.Instead of saying what I believed – I was writing based on what I thought the audience wanted.  The result was a “dumbing down” of my messages.  And, a lack of authenticity.“ —Doug Hall, “Why Instant Feedback on the Internet Can be Bad,” Communty Marketing Blog

“In the digital age, with its overabundance of information, the modern newsweekly is in a particularly poignant position. Designed nearly a century ago to be all things to all people, it Chaplin-esquely tries to straddle thousands of rapidly fragmenting micro-niches, a mainframe in an iTouch world. The audience it was created to serve—middlebrow; curious, but not too curious; engaged, but only to a point—no longer exists.”—Michael Hirschorn,  “The Newsweekly’s Last Stand,” The Atlantic

“Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on. ” —by Walter Kirn, “The Autumn of Multitaskers,” The Atlantic

“The sheer volume of information which many of us are exposed to every day may actually impair our performance and add stress to our lives.” Data Smog (thanks @matt_klein)

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please add your comments or tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday @ 10am PST.

#SMCQ14

SMCLA Panel Recap: Improve Your Search Engine Optimization Using Social Media

The panelists included (listed by order of personal page rank):

• Sean Percival (PR5): Sean Percival is an online content producer from Los Angeles, California. For work Sean is the Director of Content for Tsavo, for play the founder of lalawag.
• Jeffrey Henderson (PR4): Jeff is an Internet entrepreneur and founder/CEO of Adept Marketing Concepts, a firm offering SEO, reputation management, website design, domaining and sales outsourcing.
• Tony Adam (PR3): works for Yahoo! as an SEO Manager for it’s Audience Marketing group. His “About Tony Adam” page is worth visiting.
• Barbara Boser (PR3):Barbara Boser is a “Social media consultant, wife, mom, marketer.”

Moderating her final SMCLA event as club director/founder was Jackie Peters: founding partner of Heavy Bag Media, a communication strategy firm based in Los Angeles.

What are some of the myths surrounding SEO and social media?

• Barbara: SEO and Social Media are not one in the same. They absolutely do not equal each other.
• Tony: There is no secret sauce. There is no one trick. It’s a holistic process.
• Jeffrey: Search is constant traffic. Spikes occur from Social Media. Search is where they find you, SM is where they hear about you.
• Sean: A big misconception is that you need to be ranked #1. You can still get a lot of traffic by ranking anywhere on the first page. Google is using a “freshness” rule to see who continually hits the keyword. Social Media is not a replacement for search. Search will always be #1 driver.

How important are social bookmarking sites to your SEO strategy?

• Barbara: The goal is to get your content picked up and passed along via shared links. Driving comments and bookmarks to your site gives your page “authority”. It feeds upon itself with scrapers and reposters.
• Tony: Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit are not for ALL of your content. Be selective and have a strategy.
• Jeffrey: Digg/Reddit-write a sensational headline. Use IM to ask people for Diggs and be sure to build out a good network of Digg friends (using social media, in-life events, good old fashioned friendships). Be authentic or else you’ll get trashed.

Are there certain social bookmarking sites for certain content?

• Sean: The female demographic stuff will not make it to Digg. There’s actually a female-targeted social bookmarking site called Kirtsy for that. Reddit is the “smart” version of Digg and focuses more political and analytical. StumbleUpon is for your aunt who has an AOL address and sends you random sites.
• Jackie: StumbleUpon delivers the largest spikes for her sites.
• Sean: StumbleUpon may deliver traffic, but it’s all NoFollow links, so don’t expect to get any authority along with your traffic spikes. Digg is for male sites & new sites (Monolith content hits Digg homepage 2-3 times a week). StumbleUpon is basically for random, unfocused, one-off posts.
• Jeffrey: StumbleUpon is the gift that keeps on giving…very long tail for traffic with random spikes

What is link juice (and why does it make me feel so dirty) ?

• Tony: Described the history of Page Ranking and how things have evolved from HTML Meta tagging to # of linkbacks (inbound links from other sites to yours), and how things are now evolving into needing to do all of the on-page SEO stuff but also having a strategy to get to the front of Digg so that you get picked up by authority passing sites like TechCrunch or Read Write Web to give you the bump you really need. That passed “authority” is basically what “link juice refers to”. Think of it as a vote from one site to another…only not all votes are created equal.
• Sean: The more inbound links to your site the better. There is a new emphasis on relevancy and freshness. Google will add more emphasis to a relevant backlink. Anchor text needs to be varied or else it raises flags (so be careful if you send out specific HTML for people to include in their posts)
• Barbara: Backlinking relevance is very important. For example, if you’re an automotive site, a backlink from a site with high relevance to toys (but no relevance to automotive) is not really worth much

Top SEO Tips

• Sean: For relevance, use the tilde character (”~”) before a search term on Google to perform a search. The resulting page will show you synonyms to the term you’re looking at in bold. For example, if you’re searching for “wave”, you’d type “~wave” and the results page would show terms like “surf, ocean, beach” in bold and bring back those results as well.
• Sean: See the backlinks to your site using the Google search box. Type “link:yoursite.com” to see who links to your site. You can filter it down to the page if you’d like. (Ex: http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Asocialmediaclub.la Hey! How come we don’t have more?)
• Barbara: Tip: Know who the groups are who push things to the front page. Look at posts that go to the front quickly and see who the usernames are who are pushing these things forward. It’s kind of an insider community, but see what you can do to get into it or to figure out how to do something similar with a group of your own.
• Sean: There is an art to writing a post for your blog/site that is positioned well to capitalize on trends, but also relates the trend itself to the subject of your site. Trends can be a very powerful tool to grabbing traffic (and subsequently authority and ranking).
• Tony: .GOV and .EDU sites pass more backlink authority than regular sites. Consider engaging a university on a project, donation, sponsorship to get your logo with a high authority backlink to your site as a tactic to increase page ranking
• Barbara: Don’t be greedy with only internal links. Link outward and you’ll get some reciprocal links from friendly people. Play in a “safe neighborhood” by linking to other sites with relevance. Writing a post on a trending topic can get good inbound links with authority, but spin it so it’s relevant to your keywords.

15 Useful SEO Tools

• Trellian SEO Toolkit: includes everything you need to optimize and promote your web pages, to increase your web site traffic and search engine visibility.
• StumbleUpon Toolbar”>StumbleUpon Toolbar (Firefox): discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
• Instant Messaging: To communicate to people that it’s time to spread the link love and get busy with the social bookmarking, tweeting and re-tweeting.
• Majestic SEO is a company that offers a service for SEO that Barbara recommends for competitive link intelligence.
• SEO Toolbar by SEOBook.com: The SEO Toolbar pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results.
• Yahoo Site Explorer: Use this tool to see who is linking to you. Or, better yet, use it to see who is linking to your competitors! Pages here are listed by rank, so pay close attention to those that show up first and learn from them.
• Del.icio.us Toolbar (Firefox): Quick and easy access to save sites into your del.icio.us social bookmarking stream.
• Digg.com/tools/firefox”>Digg Toolbar (Firefox)
• Google Keyword Tool: type in a keyword and get back tons of information about volume of searches, trends related to that term, local and global data about that keyword and synonymous words.
• Google Keyword Search-Related Keyword Tool: similar to the keyword tool, but adds what Google thinks is related based on search patterns
• SEO Quake (Firefox or IE): allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.
• Google Webmaster Tools: a one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
• WordTracker: a must have resource for any search engine marketing professional. It combines both a respectable search term database with tools that make mining the information easy.
• Google AdWords: Once you have an account, you have access to key information about keywords, the cost of keywords, related keywords and more…
• Google Trends: understanding trends and predicting user behavior is more than half the battle when it comes to creating compelling content that gets picked up.

10 Useful Sites for SEOs of All Levels

• Search Engine Land: Search Engine Land is the industry’s leading online publication for the latest search news, research and anaylsis, commentary and expert advice. Led by search authorities Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, an experienced editorial staff and wide range of contributors produce the most comprehensive coverage in the industry.
• SEOMoz: SEOmoz serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help every SEO to be the best they can be.
• Alltop’s SEO Page: Alltop aggregates RSS headlines from all of the top search engine optimization news and headlines from across the web.
• Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) Blog: Matt is the head of Google Webspam and provides an inside view on Google’s search engine. This is his personal page, and isn’t primarily focused on SEO, but if you dig a bit you’ll get some good info.
• Google’s YouTube Videos for Webmasters: This is the official YouTube channel for Google Webmaster Central, your one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
• SEOChat: Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization – SEO Chat
• SEOBook: SEO Book.com is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind.
• Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.
• Brent Csutoras
• 10e20: 10e20, LLC is THE Global Internet Marketing & Web Solutions Company® dedicated to helping small and mid-size companies meet and exceed their Internet marketing goals. Each day we strive to deliver a strong return on your investment.

Q&A from SMCLA Crowd

Question: “I have a client with 300 company acquisitions (each has a website in a relatively similar and relevant field)…should their sites link to each other?

• Sean: There is an extreme power in having a network of sites. Be careful going overboard on it and use “no follow” with some moderation to keep the quality of cross-pollination high. For highly advanced users, people use different IP blocks, data centers, load blanceers, etc… to really randomize the source of authority building links. The more random the source, the less likely it is that Google will nerf them.

Are there any strategies that apply to image galleries?

• Jeffrey: You definitely want to use filenames that are “human readable”. A picture with a filename of “best-golf-clubs.jpg” is a LOT better than “1234.jpg”.
• Sean: ALT tags are important too. Since search engine bots can’t see your picture, make sure that the picture has machine readable tags to describe what the picture depicts.
• Sean: I once saw a massive spike from a post I did with a picture of Megan Fox. It was a perfect confluence of filename, alt tag, page title, etc…coupled with an extremely popular female celebrity.
• Tony: That brings up a great point: “universal search” (searching across images, videos, text, and other media) does have a vast reach. Be sure to populate your content across sites like Flickr and YouTube to take advantage of those search sites as well.

What about measuring the success and results of your SEO efforts? Tools?

• Jeffrey: To measure success, you must have good baseline stats and well defined goals for what you want to achieve. This could be anything from just traffic stats to very specific conversion goals like opt-in email list joins, ad banner clicks, or filling out a survey. Define your goals, and have a strategy for what your site is supposed to do and then use the tools to measure your conversion rates. Use Google Webmaster Tools, Website Analytics, Rank Checker, Excel
• Sean: Tons of ranking tools are available. Google has a bunch of “ranking tools”. I use custom Excel sheets in-house to track these things (example: weekly Google positioning for specific keywords). I track growth based on ranking on certain terms and # of pages indexed as a metric. Google Webmaster Tools has “diagnostics” for your site that provide most of these metrics.
• Barbara: Look at analytics – 90% bounce rate is bad. Do your research on the topic and find competitors who rank higher. See if you can make changes to switch up your bounce rate so your site is stickier.

More Tools: SEO Goal Conversion & Ranking Measurement

• Web Position: WebPosition® 4 offers all of the tools necessary to improve your web site’s search engine rankings and increase revenue. WebPosition 4 now includes a summary dashboard, trend graphs, essential off-site metrics (link popularity and search engine saturation reporting) and 200+ new search engines.
• Rank Checker by SEOBook (Firefox):Want to know where your website ranks in the search results? Our Firefox Rank Checker extension allows you to easily check your website rankings in Google (US and international), Yahoo, and Microsoft Live search.
• Web CEO: Complete SEO Toolkit offering a whole suite of features and services all centered around optimizing your site for search.
• SEO Tools on SEO Moz: The SEOmoz toolset includes over twenty SEO tools designed to help with every aspect of search engine optimization, including on-page targeting, site crawlability, competitive analysis, rank checking and keyword difficulty.
• Google Analytics Goal Tracking & Funnels: Google Analytics offers a number of conversion measurement tools to help you define and assess whether or not you’re accomplishing your goals with your website.

Ways to optimize your content to rank within the social networks.

• Sean: Include the social network badges to encourage social sharing. I recommend that you don’t go overboard with the badges because people develop a blind spot to a noisy area of logos/icons. Choose the ones you want to target (ex: Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter). I especially like TweetMeme buttons to encourage Re-tweeting of content.
• Jeffrey: WordPress is your friend here. There are so many plugins you can use to faciliate the optimization around your content. I use All in One SEO and Google XML Sitemap Generator to name a few.
• Barbara: Get on those Instant Messaging channels and get your network of friends to boost you up. Ask for favors saying, “can you Digg this?” or Ccan you please tweet about this or post it into your Facebook wall?”. That groundswell of popularity and passed link sharing is worth its weight in gold.

This was such a great panel and we’d like to thank everyone who assisted with the event. Special thanks goes out to Jackie Peters for her year of service to the club as a founder and a director. We’d also like to thank our sponsors: Rubicon Project and EasyTweets for making it all possible. Congrats to our 4 winners on their fully licensed copies of EasyTweets!

SMCQ14 Media overload? Consequences of the stream

At the same time social media has created a wealth of opportunities to create, consume, interact and react to information, the diversity of media can be staggering as quantity and immediacy often overshadow quality. The Social Media Editorial board discussed how this ‘web of now’ is trumping deeper context and how exposure to a constant stream of information may be shaping our behavior for better or for worse.

We’d love to hear how you are making meaning in an increasingly shallow media landscape. What have we lost, if anything, and what are we gaining? Do you have any strategies for negotiating media overload? We’d love your comments on our 14th Question of the week:

SMCQ14 What are the consequences of exposure to a constant, high-volume stream of media and information?

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

Conversation SCMQ13: Social or Socialism

“When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism.” — “The New Socialism,” by Kevin Kelly, Wired.

This article prompted much conversation when it was published in May, which led the editorial board to this week’s question. However, when we asked point-blank whether Social Media was indeed the new Socialism, most SMC readers noted more differences than true parallels:

“It isn’t the new socialism. If anything, it’s the new expression of liberty — commented Allen Taylor on our blog.

“I think that politics of the internet are – and have always been – closer to pure Anarchism than anything else. Socialism is mandatory, and based on coercion. Therefore, the analogy to the Net instantly falls apart.” —Alex

“Socialism’s hallmark is government control of industry and other aspects of society. Our government would have to be in control of our activities and dictate them to some extent. In fact, social media’s ability to connect people for collaboration outside of the reach of government’s tentacles makes social media anti-socialist,” —Shaine Mata

@matt_j_kendall: “With no allegiance to state or market, could it b a 3rd way? ”

And some posed that it perhaps wasn’t completely relevant to even bring political labels into the conversation:

“If my research showed me anything, it’s that the word itself—no matter how accurate or inaccurate—is too charged to be of much use to us in this context.” — Kimberly Turner wrote on Regator. Kimberly  also conducted a slew of research tagged on Delicious that you may want to read. We’ll be fielding calls to further discuss Social-or-Socialism, this Saturday, June 13, 10am PST on BlogTalk Radio. We invite you to listen, and call in, and share your thoughts.

Social Media Club SFSV: Sonoma Bound on July 11, 2009!

Come join the Social Media Club for their FIRST ever wine adventure!

We know you’ve been slaving away all year, so isn’t it time to kick back and relax a little? We thought so too, so we got together with Barbara Drady (@WineEvangelist) from Affairs of the Vine to put together a Social Media Club road trip to Sonoma wine country!

Here are the details:

• July 11 – we’ll meet up at the Presido Bowl Parking lot in the Presidio, San Francisco, board the bus and leave at 9:30 AM sharp.
• First stop is Keller Estate Winery. We’ll have a tour of the winery, a guided tasting and a light lunch provided by the winery.
• Next is Baletto Vineyards for a guided tasting and also enjoy some cheese and snacks with Dutton-Goldfield’s wines in their shared tasting room.
• We’ll wind up the tour at Owl Ridge, where we will taste more wonderful wines, learn about wine blending and blend our own bottle to take home.

After the blending party, it’s back on the bus to San Francisco.  We are expecting to be back in the city by approximately 5:30 PM.

The cost of this event is $65.00, and there are only 40 spots available.  Tickets will be on sale until July 10 at 5 PM – assuming they don’t sell out.  Book your tickets today to avoid being left out!  http://sfsvjul09.eventbrite.com

Want to Join the Question of the Week Editorial Board?

Love, appreciate and use Social Media for both work and personal use as well as talking and blogging about it? Interested in trends affecting the social media industry? Want to help shape the Social Media Club Question of the Week initiative? We’re looking for a few new members to round out our Editorial Board and that could be you.
Launched at SXSW ‘09, the goal of the Social Media Club Question of the Week is to create a hub of conversation for best practices regarding New & Social Media around the globe. As you’ll see if you visit the SMCQ Archive, the blog features links to board and reader posts, comments, polls, presentations and Tweets in response to the questions we pose each week. The goal is to create a real-time archive of the discourse surrounding new media as it evolves. SMC Editorial Board members participate in a weekly call and are strongly encouraged to do research and post on topic during the week. If you’re interested in being considered, please write deborah@socialmediaclub.org and include information about your participation in social media thus far, links to your sites and any questions you may have.

Social Media Camp #IWNY Wrap-Up

Social Media Club’s Social Media Camp was a great success thanks to the over 120 people who participated! Social media Camp was held in the Roger Smith hotel last Thursday, June 4 2009 during Internet Week New York. The camp had over two dozen sessions throughout an eight hour day, with well known social media professionals, small business folks, professionals and corporate communications teams learning from and teaching each other. There has been some great feedback from those who attended and a good amount of sharing from the people at the camp too.

Some of the comments on Twitter

• VegasBill @pepsico The info packed sessions @ #smcamp 4 #iwny look amazing. @ChrisHeuer is a dynamic social media role model. Have a great time:)
• stevecherches RT @MellieBe: Check out our top social media marketing tips from Social Media Camp#smcamp http://tinyurl.com/l7dqm3 (Great post)
• deanmeistr @danzarella bummed I couldn’t do graphic recording of your talk at #smcamp - I dig the concepts/content of your talk–maybe next time!
• LesBlatt Smart idea seen at #smcamp yesterday: some attendees put their Twitter names on their conf name badges. Made it easy to follow them.
• chttrbx99 please retweet – Thanks to @howardgr & @chrisheuer for a great day at #smcamp NYC yesterday some great conversations
• SocialSteve @chrisheurer and @howardgr did a great job on #smcamp (Social Media Camp) at #iwny. Check them out at socialmeadiacamp.org
• Amver @chrisheuer Not only did I find #smcamp valuable I would love to join SMC. Hopefully our paths will cross again.
• SocialSteve Last week’s participation in #smcamp (Social Media Camp) and #iwny (Internet Week NY) has spawned tons of activity.
• craige @chrisheuer et al: Thanks for a fabulous event! I feel so inspired after attending #smcamp.

Differing slightly from a typical BarCamp, Social Media Camp not only offered open space for participants to create their day together, but also a “Social Media 101″ series planned out in advance to allow for those who are new to Social Media to learn some of the basics. These sessions were all streamed live and are available as an on demand episode from Livestream, a partner for Social Media Camp. This 5 session series was lead by Howard Greenstein and myself, Chris Heuer.  The links below take you to the blog post about each session, along with the SlideShare presentations used during each session.

1. What is Social Media Session
   
2. Creating a Digital Identity
3. Social Media Tools, Services and Networks Session 
4. Using Social Media for Job Searches Session
5. Marketing Through Social Media Session

Dean Meyers did some great visual notes, capturing the concepts and resources from the Social Media 101 Sessions. It was a lot of fun. More importantly, it seems we help many and created more questions in a few, so overall a success, but definitely just the beginning of the conversation and the process of learning how to use social media. The complete schedule for the day from the Open Space sessions is available on the blog.

 

Some of the other topics that were discussed were power of suggestion on Twitter, basics of strategy in social media marketing for businesses, social media tools, measurability, and marketing through social media. One session in particular struck a lot of conversation. Social Media Marketing triggered thoughts upon building relationships with the market, the importance of trust in marketing/branding and how companies are using social media to market their businesses products and services. 

“Companies in general don’t value social media marketing as much as they should. They’re afraid of it; they don’t understand it; and therefore, they just don’t do it. Yet it’s the most cost-efficient way of marketing there is.” – Ayelet Noff, Blonde 2.0.

Many different tools and tactics were taught, then they were put into play. One of the most compelling part of the sessions was the group involvement and peer to peer knowledge exchange. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and were not scared to interact with one another. Among the ideas and information exchanged, relationships were built.

“I just love social media and Web 2.0…. I really want to thank the Social Media Club folks for having such a great event: Howard Greenstein, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells…. The last session was really interesting. The topic was retweets on Twitter. Dan Zarrella from Hubspot crunched some numbers that gave a bit of insight on how people are behaving on Twitter.” – Regina, Volunteer at SMCamp

Well, we love doing it too, and Howard and Kristie and I are blessed to be able to do this sort of work and so happy to help people.

Other blog posts and photos from the event are below, please share yours in the comments:

• PepsiCo Blog
• expatJane’s Blog (Volunteer)
• Les Blatt’s Rambles
• SMC New Haven Blog Post
• DMDInsight
• ReadWriteWeb

Social Media Camp Photos:

• SMCamp room kickoff
• Social Voice from Livewworld
• Flickr from Courtney Crosslin
• Flickr from Howard Greenstein
• Flickr from Chris Heuer

#SMCQ13 Is social media the new socialism?

“Just like the ant-communist Red Scares of the early part of the century,  Republicans today are throwing about ’socialism’ as the great ‘Blue Scare,’” noted Chris Heuer, during the Social Media Club Editorial Board’s weekly discussion.
The comment was inspired by one of the more compelling surveys of Social Media published in the most recent issue of Wired, called “The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society is Coming Online,” by Kevin Kelly, May 22, 2009. Given the heavy baggage that the term holds, we wonder if such a tag will help or hinder all that social media has to offer society. That said, if Social Media — with its distributed power, collaborative, communal aspects  — isn’t socialism, what is it? And if it is the new socialism, how do we leave the worst of socialism’s reputation behind?

So we’re curious to know how you answer this weeks Question of the Week:

#SMCQ13 Is social media the new socialism?

We welcome your comments, posts & tweets. Tag: #SMCQ13

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

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