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Social Networks - Search Engine Marketing for Web2.0
By Warren Pattison (c) 2006

Social networks are getting a lot of attention these days
including Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace. Along with the
buzz, these sites are also generating a lot of traffic! How can
you integrate links for these types of social network sites into
your search engine marketing program? While there are an
increasing number of social networks, this article will stick to
the above as they are kings of their domains so to speak.

I recently had the opportunity to attend Search Engine
Strategies in New York City this past February, 2006. While
attending a session in regards to community marketing tactics
using both Wikipedia and tagging, the panel asked the audience,
"Who here knows what Wikipedia and tagging are?" - less than
half the room raised their hands.

Let me give you an overview of these concepts.

Wikipedia is a free community content driven encyclopedia. I
have included an excerpt about Wikipedia from their about
section located at About Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About)

   "Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest
    reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia
    is free, written collaboratively by people from all around
    the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone
    with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit,
    correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia,
    simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor
    exceptions such as protected articles)."

Your benefits of using Wikipedia as an online marketing strategy
are various. To begin with, your submitted content about your
product or company may be very short and simple to begin with.
As your content ages and more members view and contribute to
your content with edit revisions, your content submission will
grow and grow. For example, your submission may start out as a
forty word brief that may turn into a multi-page article.
Additionally, Wikipedia has a good Google Page Rank of 9 which
will help boost your website's PR with a quality backlink from
your submitted content. Finally, using keywords that relate to
your site in your contribution will assist you in controlling
more space within the search engine results' pages for your
particular brand, product or name. For example, doing a Google
Search for the term "Microsoft" returns a Wikipedia content
entry about Microsoft in the tenth position of the Google SERP
for "Microsoft".

You should only submit content about a famous person, a patented
product your company invented, a trademarked brand, famous
places, etc. When you write your content you will want to write
from an extremely neutral viewpoint. Don't write all sorts of
features and benefits; write more factual based information
related to your subject. Your focus needs to be the community
and not your subject. Tread lightly, the community is helpful to
assist you in producing additional content, but be careful of
keyword spamming and link spamming.

Although there are many benefits to using Wikipedia for SEM,
there are also just as many caveats to using it. Submitting
content to Wikipedia is a double-edged sword. You will only want
to contribute to Wikipedia if your product or service is of
relevance to the community. Using spammy techniques in your
content or submitting an entry that has no real value such as
"another affiliate website" could have the opposite of desired
effect by producing negative feedback about your brand or
product from the community.

Tagging on the other hand doesn't have quite the negative
drawbacks as posting to Wikipedia.

Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) is a social bookmarking site
where members contribute links based on tags that anyone can
search. I have included their about page found at
del.icio.us/about below:

  "What is del.icio.us?

  del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone
  else's. Use del.icio.us to:

    • Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music,
      restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access
      them from any computer on the web.

    • Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.

    • Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's
      favorite - they've already done the work of finding it.
      Explore and enjoy."

There are a few simple techniques for commercial tagging through
community type sites such as del.icio.us: create bookmark worthy
content or link bait, get your tags in front of the right people
or choose the right category, give your created tags only one
self generated bump in del.icio.us, rinse and repeat about once
a month. Below is an excerpt from del.icio.us to help you answer
what various parts of tags are:

Posts

When a user saves an item on del.icio.us, it is posted to the
front page as well as the tag page for each chosen tag. A sample
is below explaining the various information pieces:

Here is a del.icio.us example listing under the tag "web 2.0":

O'Reilly -- What Is Web 2.0   save this
---------------------------   ---------

by Scottcard to web2.0 oreilly article reference ... saved by 2938 other people .
   ---------    ------ ------- ------- --------- --------------------------

You will first notice the title with the link to the site, next
is an option to save the link to your tags. Secondly, you see a
Username Scottcard. Here you can click the username to see
Scottcard's tags. Next you can click on the next links to see
other related-sites within those tags. Lastly, you will see a
highlighted link where you can view the members who have saved
this site.

The good and the bad of tagging is that you will receive good
quality backlinks to your site and increase visibility. The bad
is that the majority of the time your tags will be removed from
community members because the members are technically savvy and
intolerant of any type of commercial push. Choose your keywords
wisely and make sure your tag is in the right place and
contributes to the community. Other tagging sites to consider
are: http://technorati.com/tags/ and http://digg.com/. There are
many others, but these are the ones that matter.

I see tagging or social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us
gaining in popularity within the next three years as blogs did
two years ago. Yahoo has already taken notice by purchasing
del.icio.us and flickr (http://flickr.com/). Digg.com
(http://digg.com/)and furl.com (http://furl.com/) are also making
headway. Other sources to consider are the social network sites
for developing a web2.0 SEM strategy.

MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/) is the current king of social
networks, as it is literally a social-space network with 2.5
times more daily users than Google (psst, this is a huge untapped
market). The domain dates back to 1999 where it was originally
an online hard-drive of sorts. The current rendition took hold
in 2003 making MySpace barely three years old. The main
demographic is made up of teens to 20-somethings. The music
industry is currently using MySpace as a marketing tool, not the
labels themselves, but the bands. For example, Pearl Jam is
announcing their upcoming release for May with sample songs and
concert date announcements. One of their sample songs from their
upcoming albums is one of the most played songs across the
entire MySpace network. Independent film makers have also taken
notice. In February 2006, amateur filmmaker David Lehre released
a short film called MySpace: The Movie. This short film has
quickly become a hit, registering over six million views
following its release.

Benefiting from MySpace traffic is pretty straight forward. You
will want to create a user profile and post links to your
company or websites such as blogs, feeds, etc. Profile note, you
can post html code in any field regarding your profile. Next,
create your social pipeline of users and keep the demographic
inline with any product or link you wish to shamelessly promote
in the future. You don't want to get spammy here either. The
downside would be getting your user profile terminated from
MySpace or members posting negative comments within your
profile. Again, tread lightly by thinking neutral and keep the
benefit of the community in mind.

The opportunity costs associated with community based SEM are
very high. However, tagging in particular may be time
prohibitive for most organizations as it requires a lot of trial
and error. Tagging can seem like a waste of time as most tagging
submissions will be removed by community members who find your
submission "spammy". Time spent on tagging isn't a problem for
most sole proprietors, but can be costly to your employer who is
left with little equitable return to show for your time spent.

Utilizing Web2.0 sites such as Wikipedia, del.icio.us and
MySpace, will prove effective for your business if done
properly. Remember to tread lightly, don't use "spammy"
techniques and stay neutral keeping the benefit of the community
at heart in your content development. Doing so will help your
business to avoid a negative backlash toward your brand from the
community you are developing content for.
================================================================
Warren Pattison is the Director of Search for Elixir Systems, a
full service search engine marketing company specializing in
organic search engine optimization services, online public
relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more
information visit http://www.elixirsystems.com. This article can
also be viewed at http://www.elixirsystems.com/articles/a060322.php
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