Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the brother of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- they are both attracting customers to their website content, except SMO is attracting visitors to a company’s web site by using its social media pages or profiles on sites like Twitter and Facebook. In addition, creating a SMO-friendly website means making social media a core component of how users interact with content.

There are several different things companies can add to their site to make it SMO, thus increasing traffic and building links. Some of these include:

1. Adding RSS feeds and making subscribing to RSS feeds by email easy (like the Feedburner Subscription box on the sidebar of The Social Robot.)
2. Adding social media share buttons (like those found on addany.com or sharethis.com)
3. Plugins and components that allow users to rate and comment on posts and content
4. Widgets that pull in company tweets or facebook updates
5. Easy customer engagement, like the ability to upload videos with their company feedback and thoughts.

In addition, there are also some social media optimization tactics that work as a ‘pull’ method to get users to come to the site.

1. Guest blogging on other’s blogs with a link back to company website
2. Commenting on relevant blog articles and including website address in the URL or comment itself (but only if it is topically relevant- otherwise would be spamming)
3. Answering questions related to company’s industry on LinkedIn Answers or Yahoo! Answers, in addition to forums and message boards. Include link to company website in signature, if applicable and allowed.

Here’s some great posts on social media optimization from around the internet:

13 rules of SMO
social-media-optimization.com
16 rules for SMO revisited
The beginners guide to SMO

In 8^th grade I was in a mediocre band, and I ran an equally mediocre website to promote that band. The one thing we had going for us was used cjb.net to shorten the convoluted URL Angelfire.com has given us. Maybe our abysmal Green Day covers weren’t turning heads, but at least we had a pithy URL. But that was 10 years ago, when URL shortening was all about style. Now it’s mostly about fitting those long URLs into the character constraints of tweets and text messages. But should link shortening be just about brevity? Some organizations are taking URL shortening to the next level by using their own, branded URL shorteners.

A lot of websites use link shorteners like Tiny URL or bit.ly to facilitate the tweeting or texting of links. Those services are easy to use. Enter a URL, and they’ll generate a shorter URL that points to the original. Sure, they’re brief but they aren’t exactly stylish. Depending on what service you use, the shortened URL will start with http://tiny.cc/, http://bit.ly/, and so on. You might argue that this doesn’t matter, because readers don’t care about what a URL looks like, as long as it’s short enough to fit into a tweet. You might be right, but I’m seeing branded URL shorteners popping up more and more.

Marketers love talking about brand equity, that intangible value your brand name provides its products. A branded URL takes advantage of brand equity,  evoking the reputation of the website it’s connected to. If somebody tweets a news story, you’re decision to click on it will be informed not only by the headline, but also by where the link will take you. The New York Times branded shortened URL is http://nyti.ms. If the URL begins with http://nyti.ms you might more likely to check out the link because of the positive association you have with The New York Times.

If you want your own branded URL shortner, there’s YOURLS. Check it out. It’s great tool that lets you customize your shortened links, with a URL that corresponds with your own brand. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Get a catchy URL and a place to host it. Learn from the nyti.ms example and try a domain that’s an abbreviation of your current one.
2. Download YOURLS and follow the setup instructions.
3. Since this is your branded link shortening device, make sure “private” and “custom” are both set to true. Otherwise, other people would be able to create links from your branded URL.
4. Show off your tech savvy by creating branded, shortened links.
5. Take advantage of all the extra goodies YOURLS provides, like historical click reports, referrers tracking, and geo-location stats.

New, real-time, up to the minute search has become the next big thing in both Google and Bing. While many people are concerned that this may ‘cheapen’ the quality and value of regularly indexed search results, having tweets and Facebook profiles crawled almost immediately after their conception will not be detrimental to search engine results. And here’s why:

Black Friday has come and gone, and so too has the constant flow of tweets, status updates, and blog entries exhorting us to “take advantage of special savings!” Experts predicted that purchasing would be down, but spending was actually up 0.5% from last year.  According to the Wall Street Journal, people spent about 10.66 billion dollars on Black Friday. Do retailers have social media to thank for helping Black Friday endure despite the recession?

While it’s hard to determine what impact social media had in terms of actual sales, it’s apparent that a lot of the major players (such as Office Max, Target, and Old Navy) put their faith in Twitter and Facebook to spread the word about their Black Friday deals. With advertising budgets hurting due to the economy, social media provided a cheap way for companies to reach a lot of people.

Consumers responded to this corporate outreach by visiting a whole slew of new blogs that cropped up. With names like Black Friday Ads and My Black Friday Deals, these blogs kept people (perhaps obsessively) up-to-date on retailers’ latest savings offers.

According to one pre-Thanksgiving survey, 1 in 5 shoppers planned to consult social media to find the best bargains. If businesses really did reach 20% of their potential customers through social media, this was money well spent. Having a person or small team to manage your Twitter and Facebook is going to be a heck of a lot less expensive than the money spent running ads in hundreds newspapers and websites.

The excitement was so great, that even the mainstream media picked up on the story. A few weeks before thanksgiving, ABC News encouraged readers to check Facebook and Twitter before heading out into the fray.

What About Next Year?

I think retailers will learn from this experience and continue to refine the way they use social media to interact with consumers. And if shoppers had a good experience using social media this year, the word will likely spread and make next year even bigger.

In the meantime, retailers now have their social media hooks stuck in shoppers. They can continue to capitalize on new Twitter followers and Facebook fans by keeping people aware of new sales.

In the old days, stores used to promise to “match or beat any price,” if you brought in a valid coupon proving another store was selling a product for less. I wonder if things are changing. Maybe we’re heading towards the day when retailers will be saying, “We’ll beat any tweet.”

I found a great article from Business Week warning businesses about the hype of social media. Because internet marketing and social media have boomed this year, there is definitely a fine line between utilizing social media successfully and just jumping on the bandwagon because everyone else has.

To read the full article, please visit Beware Social Media Snake Oil.

With the majority of Twitter updates and interactions done on other applications besides the actual Twitter website, along with updates to other social media sites via text, mobile social networking is becoming more and more popular as more people get internet-ready phones that allow them to check their accounts on the go.

Mobile Websites
Mobile websites were the first attempt at adapting the internet for cell phones. Now they have become more and more regular and many websites can now detect if a user is accessing their website from a mobile device and can display the mobile version of their website instead of the ‘regular’ internet browser version.

Mobile websites usually are text-only versions of sites and contain easier navigation and sometimes less content. However, some websites give you the option to switch to the ‘regular’ version if desired.

Mobile Applications
Companies have recognized this trend and have attempted to adapt accordingly. Many social networking sites like LinkedIn and Yelp have created mobile applications for smart phones like the iPhone and the Palm Pre that make it easy for users to use their website without having to be at a computer.

The growing popularity of mobile communication has helped Twitter grow more than 300% percent in the last year due to the instantaneous nature of tweets. It’s not uncommon for Twitter uses to tweet messages like, “On my way to the airport. Excited to be back in New York” or “Standing in line for the new Twilight movie.” These types of updates are allowing people share snippets of their everyday activities, instantly and from their cell phone.

In addition, phone manufacturers have welcomed the trend of growing ‘mobile dependence’ and are making it as easy as possible to use your cell phone for almost every digital transaction. Besides the ability to open and even edit some documents and spreadsheets, many phones can load regular webpages and some phones come pre-loaded with mobile versions of YouTube.

Services Built for Mobile
Besides websites and major brands building mobile applications for users to access on the go, a few web services have popped up that were created solely for mobile social networking. Two of the most popular are Loopt and FourSquare. With the use of GPS, these services allow you to ‘check-in’ on where your friends are and what they’re doing, see the latest reviews of restaurants and other establishments near you, and interact with friends who may be nearby.

As the idea of instant and constant open communication becomes more accepted, it wouldn’t be surprising for mobile social networking services to grow in popularity. Connecting with friends and family no longer has to rely on a phone call or random encounter. Loopt and FourSquare allow you to find out where your friends are, invite them to where you are, and even learn who else is using these services in the business you are in.

Sometimes the best posts about our industry (social media and SEM) come from unlikely sources. One such example is this great article, entitled “Find out how social media can save you money” by Alison Brownrigg on nwsource, a shopping and fashion information portal owned by the Seattle Times.

Alison gives several tips to social media savvy-shoppers on how to use websites like facebook and twitter in order to garnish the best deals. One such tip is to search for different twitter hashtags (http://search.twitter.com) like #holidaydeals.

Be sure to read the full article and come back here to share more tips or let others know what you think!

You’ve already got a great news site. Now all you need is more readers for those informative and topical articles you and your writers regularly put out. Getting your news site listed on Google News is great way to attract readers, but how do you get into their database?

The good news is, being included on Google News is totally free. Just send them your URL, cross your fingers, and hope they like what they see when they review your blog or website. If you aren’t sure your site will pass muster with Google News, there are some ways to ensure that it will.

Before being considered, there are a number of formatting issues your site must adhere to. Google News uses a crawler to search through their source sites, and thus they have specific URL formatting requirements.. You can see all of the technical requirements here, but below are the most basic points.

Google News requires that your URLS must:

• Contain just one story per html page
• Be permanent
• Have a display number of at least 3 digits at the end of each URL. For example: www.thesocialrobot.com/news359.html, or www.thesocialrobot.com/news2353253 would work, but www.thesocialrobot.com/news34 would not. (This rule does not apply to new site maps.)

[Editor's Note: The Wordpress URL structure as seen on this site is also fine.]

While Google News does a great job of explaining all of the technical specifications you must stick to, they don’t give any guidance on what type of content will improve your site’s chances for inclusion in their directory. The best advice is to strive to have newsworthy stories, quality images, and a neat site layout.

Below are not requirements for inclusion in Google News, but they will certainly help your chances. Google news values sites with content that is:

Current and Original. Articles should contain up-to-date information, which doesn’t merely repeat what the other news sources are saying.

Linkable. If other sites start linking to a story you broke, Google News will consider your article more credible and newsworthy.

Written by Multiple Authors. One lone writer won’t get the attention of Google News as a viable source. If you’re currently a loner, consider asking other writers to help you with your content.

Before applying to Google News, try to optimize your site by doing the above. And once your site is accepted for inclusion, the work isn’t over! There’s a whole slew of things you can do to increase your story’s chances of rising to the coveted Google News top spot.

Sources:

How to Get Your Site into Google News

Google News Tips For Publishers

Aaron Couch is a freelance writer and musician from Kansas City. He has experience writing and designing press releases, as well as planning publicity campaigns.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has a great article about the social media channels you can use to drive traffic to your website. While this article may not be of much use for those of us who have already experienced the ins and outs of social media marketing, it is a good brief overview of the popular sites and how they can help your business’ website. I’d also like to point out that their advice about MySpace may not be worth the effort- MySpace, in my opinion, is a dying site and probably isn’t worth the effort unless your business is a bar or music/entertainment venue.

To read the full article, please visit Using Social Media to Drive Business to Your Website.

By Caitlin Burns

Geek Culture has become increasingly powerful in Hollywood and Fan Communities on social networks are as sought after by consumer product companies as they are by TV shows and feature films. What draws fans to a property, product or community? What is the magic alchemy that gives some properties armies of loyal torchbearers?

Social communities have always been built around shared interest, and some of the most powerful examples of pre-internet social communities are fan clubs and communities, like those that sprang up following Star Trek, Howdy Doody, Soap Operas and countless others. In the absence of the Internet as a means of organizing, fan magazines, comic book conventions sprang up that over decades have become institutions where studios and other companies spend millions to present their new properties to new fans.

A strong fan base provides word of mouth advertising and a staging point where viral marketing campaigns can quickly launch. These fans can also sustain a property long term, like fans of Star Wars, who remained zealously loyal to the brand for decades between films.

What draws fans strongly to properties are aspirational drivers, themes and messages within a franchise, or associated with a product, that resonate on a very human level. Transmedia Storytelling is a method of providing content to highlight those themes and messages, by consistently integrating them into stories everywhere fans can think of looking for them.

From the driving platform, where the largest range of audience members have access to the property, those who are engaged will immediately, often before the property is released, start looking for additional content on different platforms, online, on cell phones, in magazines, etc… This system has been more or less the same, with ever-advancing technology, for 15 years. From promotional websites, to trailer releases to fan networks operated by studios. Fan sites such as www.aintitcoolnews.com and www.rottentomatoes.com are examples of sites that dictate as much consumer-action as profoundly as newspaper reviews once did.

People not only rely on these communities and sources as reference but expect a certain amount of interactivity as a normal part of a film’s release. The material as a whole follows a traditional magazine format, showing snippets of the film and reviews by critics but is the primarily the same format that one saw reviews and trailers presented in since the 1930s. What then, distinguishes a property? How can social media be used as a tool to expand on these antiquated formats?

Audience members and consumers on the whole, are savvy and proficient in following content across the platforms available to them. As the viral marketing revolution shows, word of mouth is a powerful tool that can catapult a story or ad from one niche to mass-market exposure. Why do they do this? They want more.

Each week thousands log onto websites to see extended previews of the next episodes of their favorite shows, once they’re logged in, additional narrative content keeps viewers tuning in again and again, in between airings of episodes, and in the time between seasons. These narrative strings create added value for a property that can be sponsored, or packaged later to provide new revenue streams around a property. There are many ways to provide additional narrative content to the fan communities that spring up around new releases (and older releases): alternate reality games, casual games or interviews with cast members, and centrally, official property hubs that help direct fans to new threads in a Transmedia Storytelling tapestry are fantastic tools to validate fans, and create long-term fan loyalty. The more often fans are validated by the properties they adore, the more loyal they become.

Providing opportunities to explore fictional worlds, based around stories or products, is an excellent way to create and maintain fan interest, especially if the additional effort can be later celebrated by the property by including elements from the extended narrative in the driving platform’s storyline. A single line of dialogue in a film that is related to something in a related video game, online story, or other fan endeavor, can send fans into rapturous cheers and really cements the dedication of torchbearer fans, those who are evangelizing the property to others and makes them feel included in the world in a very solid way that is easy to execute and creates incredible loyalty.

Social Media is all about interactivity, and modern audiences crave a sense of connection to characters and stories they love. Expanding the universe of a narrative into and around social networks, providing additional content and creating inroads for fans to feel ownership in a property’s fictional world is a sure way to extend the life of a property into a world-class, franchise that stands the test of time.

Caitlin Burns is a Transmedia Producer and Editorial Lead at Starlight Runner Entertainment. To hear more of her thoughts on media, follow her and catch up on her other blogs through Twitter: Caitlin_Burns