Social Media Optimization

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 :: 4 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 »

Ok everyone, it’s my very first blog. I’m tossing all the rules aside and tackling a monumental beast that I hope I can bring you closer to. What’s that? Why it’s the world of Social Media Optimization!

I’d been struggling for a bit with this post as I didn’t know exactly what to cover.. Should I touch on why I’m doing it? Perhaps I should mention where it comes from or talk of my reasons behind starting this site? Should I stop procrastinating and just make an entrance? Yes!

I decided upon touching on what everyone in the industry credits as the origins of SMO:

Social Media Optimization (SMO) was a term coined by Rohit Bhargava in August of 2006 in this blog post.

Rohit states,

“The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

He also gives his 5 rules for Social Media Optimization:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

That’s his version and the origins of all of this in a nutshell. Over the next while I plan on bringing you my version, exploring the differences and perhaps through our shared experiences we could all learn a thing or two about the future of internet marketing.

greg :: Jan.01.2007 :: Social Media Optimization :: 2 Comments »