Social Media Optimization

Dear Wikipedia,

Bad Fucking Move. Thanks for trying to kill social media, and jack up the whole internet though. Couldn’t have done it better if I’d tried.

See, it’s oft thought that I have much love for the Big Wiki. However, I don’t. On many levels it goes more for the love of the concept of it. The concept that people could come together, share their knowledge on any given subject and the general consensus of whatever the topic is… is pretty much just that. It’s not an authority. It’s not the be all and end all, in-depth view of whatever. It’s much more of a gauge. A social gauge of opinion on something.

Let’s look at it like this:
Imagine 5000 reviews of 1 movie. You won’t read them all I guarantee it. But if all 5000 reviews could be rolled into 1 cohesive review.. then you would get the general sense of what the public opinion was of this. You would understand a bit of the history of the film, it’s players, it’s background, if it did well in the box office or whether it’s widely considered a joke. This culmination of opinions presented as fact is just about what every individual on the net is going for. It’s what the multi-billion dollar industries known as Google and Yahoo strive for every day. It, regardless of what what people say Web 1, 2, 3, 4, or 20-POINT-OH, stands for is really what it boils down to: People coming together and sharing of themselves.

It’s the struggle of humanity, personified on the web, and brought to you by decent, yet antiquated open source software. But whoa be to thee who is in charge of moderating humanity! Seriously, what a fucking jip being a moderator there must be. It’s like being a leased out whore of a god who considers himself ruler of it all, only to find out that there are countless other gods who are just as unaccountable and just as likely to flunk their junior year of high school if they “don’t stop screwing around and ‘get down to business, young man.” Seriously. What a racket.

Having this knowledge and knowing that you are reading this likely means that you’ve sought (in one form or another) to exploit the system. Welcome to the club. It’s humanity, remember. Any attempt not to force your opinion on someone else would lead you to not posting shite on the interwebs in the first place. So to you selfless folks I say: You are too noble.. go away now.

For the 99% of you still reading, pay attention.

Yesterday Wikipedia rolled out this:

Any URL on Wikipedia that points to a location other than it’s own site is now followed with the SEO’s evil stepchild, the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Meaning the Big Wiki won’t help bring any relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

I get it. I really do. From the viewpoint of 10,000 sixteen year-olds, the vantage point could be no clearer. People try to exploit the system. The devil tries to get into heaven. Rick Santorum tries to get elected again. I know it’s hard to moderate a wiki, ’cause I do it myself. But this is a move that creates a rift in the spirit of giving and getting that is supposed to be represented by the very essence of it all. In the eyes of a search engine, say Google, where relevancy and followed links allow the order of the interwebs to fall into a hierarchy, it places unequal weight on the back of a social media giant.

Lets say you work your ass off in a certain industry. For shits and giggles we’ll say it’s the world of web marketing. Let’s say, after years of labor, you get a heads up and you see something new. Let’s say you name it. Maybe you even name it: “Social Media Optimization”. You sit down, coin the phrase, explain your reasoning and come up with maybe, what.. 5 rules for this new frontier?

The next day, the Wikipedia contributors append the details of Social Media Optimization (your discovery, nomenclature, and set of rules) to a Wikipedia page on the subject. They do give your site props as a reference but search engines will never see that ascription or find any relevancy of what you’ve done through the Big Wiki because of the rel=”nofollow” attribute.

Since the Big Wiki enjoys a higher level of trust (hello Pagerank!), the Google will show the Wikipedia SMO page higher than yours in the SERP’s because the search engine spiders don’t know that the content on that page is actually based on yours. What? You don’t believe me? Now you get potentially far less traffic on your work than Wikipedia does and the weight of the internet shifts. The balance gets all out of whack. And something that is supposed to build on the backs of everyone to give to everyone evenly suddenly becomes the leech of the net, giving back less than what you put into it.

Penalizing the whole for the actions of the few. One step forward and two steps back.

greg :: Jan.23.2007 :: Social Media Optimization News :: 7 Comments »

One of the most difficult things to do when discussing the possibilities of social media optimization and social media marketing with people is breaking them of their preconceived notions regarding what marketing means. Sure, they could hang out on MySpace and make a bunch of ‘friends’ or perhaps they could spam YouTube or Digg or something but in the end that’s probably not going to bring you much of an ROI.

So how do you explore different ways to use existing services to their maximum benefit? By stepping outside of the box. And there’s no better way to step outside the box you’re in than by creating a whole new situation, a whole new set of ideas, and doing a bit of roleplaying if you will. I’d been thinking of this and did a bit of searching around to see if something had been done (why do work that others have done for you?) and I came across something interesting: a social media marketing game.

Continue Reading »

greg :: Jan.18.2007 :: Social Media Optimization :: 5 Comments »

Last week the world was taken by storm by quite a few pieces of tech news. As none of them were, at the time, related to Social Media Optimization or Social Media Marketing, I really didn’t feel that it was appropriate to talk about them here. Besides, with 64 million sites already talking about the biggest piece of geek, what would I have to say on the matter that hadn’t already been covered?

Well my friends, the line has been crossed into the world of SMO and it will be interesting to watch the outcome, even if it does signify an un-official beginning of another hundred-year war. Continue Reading »

greg :: Jan.16.2007 :: Social Media Optimization, Social Media Optimization News :: 3 Comments »

It’s not so surprising, that places that are looking for a piece of the social media pie are usually moderately successful. For all my railing against the mindless masses that are drawn to these sites and communities I have to say that while I myself am not lured by the siren’s song, I can completely understand why some are. As I nodded to in one of last week’s articles, people drawn to places like MySpace are automatically freed from holding up the baseline as far as having a dedicated web presence goes. Sure, they are greeted by slow sites, multiple page load errors and unexplained/unaccountable downtime but still they persist and show up day after day, inconveniences be damned. Part of this draw is the freedom that is waved in front them. To each their own soapbox. A nice platform for which to share their ideas and thoughts and herald it to the masses.

On paper it sounds great. However there’s always the fine print. Who owns the soapbox? Who pays the bills? Are there restrictions to your freedom? What the fuck is a EULA? Continue Reading »

greg :: Jan.12.2007 :: Social Media Optimization :: No Comments »

So as someone who is a n00b with Wordpress I keep looking at all the different things that are available as plugins and options within the publishing system. I’ve already done the basics of trying to make it more SEF, but for me and the purposes of this column I’m thinking more and more about different ways to optimize for social media and what that means.

Essentially I have to say that social media optimization for a blog is pretty tricky the same way that SEO can be. Sure you can make a perfectly SEO’d site that will be all text and linked in/out to oblivion but most of the time that site will be ugly as sin and the inner designer in me won’t let that happen. Same goes with SMO. There are, it turns out, about a bazillion different plugins, widgets, icons, and options to enable you to easily get your site socially optimized. However with each thing taking up a certain amount of space, sites can quickly become cluttered with social litter. This is no more asthetically pleasing than a site with no layout and has just about nothing to do with social media optimization. It reminds me of people who go nutty with Adwords and have them mixed in their menus and headers and footers and inbetween articles and paragraphs and fuck! If you need spare change that bad, leave the blog behind and get a job. Consider panhandling. No one wants to look at that shit and the ads aren’t helping anyone. It’s visual vomit two-point-oh.

Just like ads, the song remains the same for those trying to socially optimize as well. Due to so many people trying to get a piece of the social bookmarking landscape, the number of little buttons you could have on your site is staggeringly offensive to your optical nerves. Add all those del.icio.us and furl buttons to the connundrum of different RSS reading services, a few technorati and feedburner banners, some mybloglog rolls, and thumbs from your flickr gallery and you have a site that’s full on going to be unsafe for people with the slightest bit of taste. Everyday I thank god that the majority of these social widgets aren’t animated gifs, lest even tasteless epiliptics be harmed.

There currently isn’t a good solution for visual vomit as far as social media optimization goes other than to choose your battles and your delivery well. I’m not saying that this site has the best solution out there. In fact I’m just getting my feet wet with them and working on breaking them in slowly, to see which are beneficial to this site and which to the communities at large.

Part of this means trying new things and always being willing to know when something isn’t working,is a waste of time, or just plain looks bad. It’s a delicate balance and it’s something that takes time and adjustment. Just like good web design. Heh.

Unfortunately for you readers out there it’s the job of this site to know what’s what and some of that is going to mean testing the waters with new ideas and new trends. Some of these will be successful and some of these will be completely a waste of all our time. It also means that while this site is pretty scaled back design wise, some of these tests might not be the prettiest and I ask for your forgiveness in advance.

Know that the ugliness which is sure to follow pains me as much as it does you, if not moreso. Keep that in mind as we proceed and feel free to ask questions or offer up suggestions as we go.

For those of you coming into this article down the road looking for advice on how to implement social media optimization techniques into your design, let me layout a few basic ground rules:

1. Be mindful of the end user’s experience.
2. Don’t overthink things. Society never does.
3. Pick your targets and know the reasoning behind your decisions.
4. Be true to your design. Good design will always match form for function.

And that’s it. Remember this site is far from the pinnacle of these rules, more of a testing grounds so don’t get pissed if I toss them to the wolves

greg :: Jan.10.2007 :: Social Media Optimization :: 2 Comments »

I know, I know. Fun and Powerpoint should not be in the same sentence but bear with me for a moment. Yesterday for work I had to give a short presentation on Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing, essentially why I thought our company should persue these outlets more and what my role would be. Well I didn’t really know what to expect or prepare as everyone present has heard me rant and they probably already think I’m a bit of a nutter. So instead of spending hours on a full projection plan, I decided to use my brief prep period to create a powerpoint that would highlight why we should be more involved in the social media landscape.

Here are the results:

Powerpoint

Converted to GIF

greg :: Jan.09.2007 :: Social Media Optimization :: 4 Comments »

By this point and time it’s old news. As it’s the end of week one at SMOmashup I couldn’t help pass up what has become perhaps the largest news story in the past month. Definately the largest in regards to Social Media.

Think for a moment. Think back to the middle of December. You’re visiting your parents house wondering what on earth you’d get these strangers for Christmas when - wait - what’s that you see? Yes. There across the living room, under the library edition of the latest Dean Koontz novel.. Is that a monitor you see? Is that “You” written in Arial 2.0 on the monitor? Is that a chubby in your pants? Continue Reading »

greg :: Jan.05.2007 :: Social Media Optimization News :: 3 Comments »

It’s got a nice ring to it doesn’t it? When I saw Steve Rubel’s post “Social Media is No Mo” that got picked up by Reuter’s, I have to admit that I think I did a little dance of joy. Thoughts flooded my head of a giant server crash at MySpace and 4 million emo kids without a place to call thier home on the internets. YouTube, gone as quickly as it came. A flash in the pan now gutted by commercialism, leaving scores of people Ghost Ridin’ tha Whip for no one’s pleasure but their own.

Dream on man, it just couldn’t get that good. No, instead of Webpacalypse 2.0, Steve was really talking about what he sees as mainstream acceptance of Social Media to the point where there is no difference between the old and new school.

In 2006 all media went social. Pretty much every newspaper, TV network and publication has wholeheartedly embraced these technologies. Newspapers have comments, RSS feeds, blogs, wikis and other forms of two-way communications. TV networks have a presence in Second Life and more. The lines have blurred.

And here’s where I’m going to have to chime in with a big old… ummm… No.

Seriously, to some extent media outlets have indeed embraced new technologies. They’ve had to in order to stay current and not fall behind. That’s pretty much been the way since things started going digital though so it only makes sense that they would progress along these lines after making the initial investment. However I would say that the majority of outlets have not “wholeheartedly embraced” two way communication. RSS feeds don’t count. Blogs without comments are for the most part editorials or Flogs. Most with comments are pretty heavily moderated, lest they pull a Tom Delay.

The changes in communications go deeper, however. The media formerly called mainstream also communicates in a far more conversational tone that it did before — one we use.”

Ahh and here’s the rub. See mainstream media missed something big when they gave bloggers and ‘indy media’ the cold shoulder a few years ago. Always late to the party and never wanting to take off their coat at the door, they realize this and seeing the success of the Daily Show and the impact of the Blogosphere they are trying to follow suit. They talk like us! They’re conversational! Down to earth! Steve Jobs is my Homie!

No. They want Joe Shmoe to think that they care. They want us to think that they are just regular guys hanging out around the water cooler shootin’ the shit. In reality though, their idea of 2-way communication is just a facade. It’s about time to realize that you’re standing there feeling cool while talking to a cardboard cutout that hands out self-esteem like gift cards at Christmas.

This isn’t to put down Rubel at all, whose opinion I often look forward to reading, but much more along the lines of not feeling that Social Media is dead or “no mo”. It may very well be that mainstream media outlets are having to accept that Social Media is here and a force to be reckoned with. I could even say that at some point in the future they might actually have to fully integrate with this new mindset. Currently though, just because they let the black kids on the bus doesn’t mean they’re not all still shoved in the back.

greg :: Jan.04.2007 :: Social Media Optimization :: 2 Comments »

Day 3 here at SMOmashup and things seems to be chugging along smoothly. Of course I still haven’t knocked #1 off of my list from yesterday so I decided to spend a bit of time doing that as well as perhaps giving all of you a few things to look through when you’re not reading here. That’s right I’m flushing out my links and trying to see what’s out there in the way of Social Media Optimization news and views.

The following list will be my starting point and everyone is encouraged to drop me a new link or a tip if you think it’s worth checking out, ’cause Knowing is Half the Battle!

The SMO blogs:

Smogger Social Media Blog

This blog is run by the hot and funny Postergirl. Her blog is very visual, articulate, and exudes the 2.0 mentality. It is updated a few times a week and always offers something different from what you’d see around most anywhere else. Fun times and good reads. Recommended for those in the scene looking for something a bit out of the ordinary.

S-M-O Blog

Run by David Wilson, this blog is very straightforward and informative. What it lacks in fun and style it makes up for in thoughtfulness and professionalism. He has some good ideas and a nice understanding of the climate. I guess the only thing missing from this is getting a great grasp on him and his personal involvement in the land of Social Media Optimization. However that’s not essential to running a blog and this is one I’ll check on the regular.

Micropersuasion

Steve Rubel explores how the digital citizen is transforming marketing, media and public relations. Sounds fascinating, eh? Well this blog is a mix for sure. It’s obvious from first glance that Steve knows the ins and outs of the industry and though it’s not exclusively Social Media content, his topics keep coming back to that, but from a very almost executive position. I don’t know whether that means he’s someone entrenched in the game or just a the life of the party but he always has the latest play-by-play from the industry.

Guy Kawasaki

This is one of the few blogroll entries here that isn’t really about Social Media Optimization. Instead it’s much more along the lines of the whole fucking world is social, and there’s media… so where do you fall into the mix? Another person who comes across as and insider, Guy has a very nice resource for all of those who are in the marketing frame of mind. Fresh ideas daily, that if worked correctly, could turn you and your business around. It’s too bad Realtors haven’t figured out the internets yet… if they found this blog, we’d all be in trouble

Influential Interactive Marketing

What sort of tool would I be if I didn’t include the guy who coined the phrase who started all of this? This blog is run by Rohit Bhargava who gave us all the leway that we’ve taken by coining a phrase which encapsulates the entire blog for which I stand. I know how hard it is to coin a phrase and believe me, this dude did it right. On top of all that, he runs a site that covers not only social media optimization but general approaches to marketing in a 2.0 world that are beneficial to all in the web commnunity. Thx mang.

greg :: Jan.03.2007 :: SMO Linkage, Social Media Optimization :: 3 Comments »

About 5 seconds after I thought I had completed the setup of SMOmashup a few things occurred to me:

1. It is impossible to ever be finished getting ready for anything.
2. For a site that’s dedicated to the Web 2.0 world, it feels very 0.9
3. None of the SMO-esque sites I’d seen actually used any social bookmarks
4. Neither did mine

Well, regardless of my inherit unrest I totally didn’t feel like working on a new theme and the only thing I could think of was trying to hook up #4, which would then fix #3 and make a little bit of headway towards the first two concerns.

In no time at all I had come across not one but two different approaches to adding Social Bookmarks to a blog.

The first one is the one that I decided upon and is the wonderful Social Bookmark Links Wordpress Plugin from TwisterMC. Currently in version 0.5.1 it has options where you can pick and choose your favorite Social Sites to display with your post in text form or toss them all in a dropdown menu.

It’s super easy to install and looking at the PHP file it also appears very hackable so that given 15 minutes or so you should be able to add anything you feel the author might have overlooked. Though I would think from the 45+ choices he gives you, that’s probably not likely in the near future.

I would give this a 4.5/5 stars. For future versions I would like to see the ability to order the results in the text format instead of only being able to display them alphabetically. That plus a bit more control over the individual dividers. Other than those wishes for down the road, I highly recommend this for anyone looking to add the easy plugin functionality of Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl, etc to their Wordpress setup.

The 2nd option that I found was an online Social Bookmarking creator by iFeedreaders that lets you choose from essentially the same options as the plugin and when you are done it spits out a clean bit of HTML code that you can drop right into your blog or static page to achieve a similar effect as an actual plugin.

This worked well and fast and would serve the purpose if nothing better was available for your particular setup (*cough* Postnuke *cough* Static Page *cough*). But since just about everyone who would be interested in this sort of feature probably isn’t using something dated I can’t think of what purpose this would serve on a regular basis. Still handy to have around I suppose so we’ll give 4/5 stars for doing what it’s supposed to do.

greg :: Jan.02.2007 :: SMO Tools, Social Media Optimization :: No Comments »