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You should care about Social Media Optimization (SMO), because you care about your company’s image. There’s an old saying that goes something like, “A happy customer will tell one other person about his good experience. A disgruntled customer will tell ten people about his bad experience.” Good or bad, that’s powerful marketing. Social Media Optimization gives you the power to take an active role in managing your brand by interacting with your current and potential clients by discussing your products, their comments and concerns and continually promoting your brand.

Social Media Optimization Defined

In its most basic form, Social media optimization is any method used to raise your website’s online visibility through meaningful communication. SMO opens a dialogue between you and your clients, using the power of popular opinion to fuel your marketing campaign. The open format strengthens your search engine optimization efforts by fostering a mutual connection with your clients through the myriad of online communities, also called social media sites. Current examples of SMO include:

• Creating profiles in social media communities such as MySpace, Facebook, and VIRB.
• Participating in and/or creating blogs.
• Disseminating your blogs or articles using RSS feeds.
• Creating and sharing content through community based sites like Flickr, YouTube, and more.

Not to incorporate unnecessary buzz words, but SMO is a very Web 2.0 approach to Search Engine Optimization. Of course, Web 2.0 merely refers to the perceived second generation of Web-based communities and hosted services – the social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies, which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. SMO allows you to become an active member of your online community, quite an important aspect of marketing your brand. Through participation, you establish yourself or your company as an industry leader and improve your online visibility.

As you can imagine, Social Media Optimization is most effective when the viral nature of the technique and its communities are utilized in a positive manner. Creating legitimate content, building relationships and instilling trust in your community is the very backbone of SMO. You may initiate the process, but effective SMO will take on a life all its own. A true forum is bred through the act of continual communication between your company and your online audience.

Of course, not everyone plays by the rules. In every aspect of life, you will find those who would cheat the system to receive short term gains. Like most schemes, the underbelly of SMO may seem attractive to anyone looking for a quick fix, but don’t make that mistake. Just as it’s true with SEO, erroneous SMO will backfire. Using questionable techniques will very likely yield the exact opposite results you were hoping to see.

SMO Etiquette

Legitimate SMO techniques are centered on sharing information and exposing your community to your interests. As such, you want to focus on promoting proper SMO etiquette. The MySpace super fríend, the guy or gal who adds anyone and everyone, would be a good example of improper Social Media Optimization. The whole concept behind Social Media is to create a community with similar interests for meaningful discussion and let the power of popular opinion grow your online visibility. Of course, you may belong to several different communities and you may even have some of the same friends in those different communities. That’s perfectly fine. The idea is to remain active in your communities by adding friends and contributing relevant content. Adding friends in bulk, for no reason, is no way to optimize.

Communal sites like MySpace and Facebook, or even YouTube and Flickr to some extent, are indeed popularity contests. However, simply trying to catalog massive amounts of unrelated, uninterested “friends” is totally counterproductive. Let the high school kids worry about who’s got the most friends. For the purpose of SMO, you should concern yourself with quality, not quantity.

Using unsavory SMO techniques is the Web 2.0 equivalent to spam. Unfortunately, we’re all far too familiar with spam. Unsolicited bulk messaging and link heavy advertisements instead of useful comments are two of the more prevalent methods of Social Media spamming. However, Social Media spamming is even more atrocious than email spam, because the offending text is visible to everyone on the site. It doesn’t hide in your inbox, so it can really dilute the appeal of the site. Your kindergarten teacher was on the right track. If you don’t have something relevant to say, don’t say anything at all.

Is SMO right for my firm?

There are many different types of Social Media sites currently available. To put it in perspective, think about all the different interests you have in life. Now, consider the possibility that there’s at least one Social Media site for each of your interests. Of course, you’re not the only person on the Internet, so it’s a safe bet there are literally millíons of sites dedicated to countless interests around the globe. Believe it or not, there’s a group out there looking for your company, product or service. You just have to make it available. Therefore, understanding how to submit to and maintain your content on each community is absolutely crucial when developing a successful SMO strategy.

A few examples of the different Social Media genres include:

• News – These sites allow users to submit news articles. Once an article is published, users can submit their comments and vote to promote the story and/or author.Examples include: Digg, Propeller, Newsvine

• Media – These sites allow users to upload and share a variety of different media files. The overwhelming majority of these sites are dedicated mainly to photo and video files.

Examples include: YouTube, Flickr

• Wiki – These sites allow users to add and edit informational articles as determined by the individual users.

Examples include: Wikipedia, WikiHow, Million Dollar Wiki

• Networking – These sites allow users to create profiles and network with others according to similar traits, tastes, and interests.

Examples include: MySpace, Facebook, Virb

• Bookmarking – These sites allow users to compile public bookmark collections of sites they find interesting, informative, or helpful. The more a site is bookmarked, the higher the ranking.

Examples include: Stumble Upon, Technorat, Del.icio.us

When executed properly, Social Media Optimization can be quite a beneficial marketing tool. However, SMO may simply not be the right fít for your organization. Some questions you might like to consider before launching your SMO campaign are:

• Most SMO sites share very specific information. Would your products benefit from this type of content specific market?
• The audience for most Social Media sites is more of a young, tech savvy group. Would your company, product or service appeal to their fickle nature?
• Does your web site contain a blog, or similar media outlet, you can regularly update with relevant content?
• Given the fact that community based sites focus on individual profiles and commentary, are you comfortable with developing unique profiles across multiple sites?

In summary

Social Media Optimization has become a successful marketing tool for one simple reason. It works. The gap between old media and new has gotten smaller and smaller with the majority of the prominent television and print media outlets finally embracing the Internet by launching sites of their own. The different Social Media sites, like MySpace and Facebook, have exploded with profiles for everything from 8th graders discussing their favorite bands to full scale ad campaigns for Blockbuster movies.

If done correctly, SMO can expose your brand to markets you didn’t think possible. Whether it’s used alone to drive a campaign or in conjunction with your current interactive marketing strategy, Social Media Optimization offers you a significant advantage.
About The Author
Brian Easter is the CEO of NeboWeb. As CEO, Easter has led NeboWeb to explosive growth, attracting Fortune 500 clients and driving strategic partnerships which have fueled NeboWeb’s expansion.

Just as website directories can be used to promote your website online, article directories can be used to publish your articles. These articles can in turn be used to promote a specific page on your website, and in this respect are more useful than a website directory listing that promotes only your home page.

You have few opportunities to direct search engine spiders directly to a page of your choice, and when one arises it should be made good use of. In fact, other than article directories and links on your website, you are unlikely to find such an opportuníty, and it should be seized whenever it arises. However, very few people actually know how to make best use of such an opportuníty and to use their articles intelligently to drive masses of traffic to their site.

You can use your Author’s Resource to achieve that, but in order to get the Resource read, you have to get the article read. For that to happen, you have to write a good article and then make people read it. To do that your title must be good enough to persuade people to read it. To achieve that you must be able to write a good title. So how do you achieve all of these things? That is the purpose of this article: to teach you how to craft a title that will get you article read, and then to craft a resource that will compel the reader to visit your website – or the web page that you want them to see.

So, first the title: Before you can craft your title you will need a good topic or subject to write about. There are several ways to decide what that should be, but that is another article. Let’s assume that you have decided to write about how to cure a slice in golf. The obvious title would be: “How to Cure Your Golf Slice“.

Would that really be a good idea? How many web pages are there online with that title? A few thousand? A few hundred thousand? In fact if you use the term as a Google search you will find it is 387,000. You have 387,000 other websites competing for these keywords. Now, let’s change it to “How to Cure a Golf Slice“. You get 71,500 competing sites. Just one small word change: ‘your‘ to ‘a‘ reduces the competition by almost 82%.

What that means is that with fewer competing sites you have a lot better chance of having your website listed close to the top of the listings for the keyword. However, you also have to take the demand into consideration: if nobody is using these keywords in their search you won’t benefit by using them. Using Wordtracker I get three times as many people, searching for ‘cure A golf slice‘ than ‘cure YOUR golf slice‘. So based upon keyword research the title will be: How to Cure A Golf Slice

This has three times the demand and over a fifth of the supply of the alternative with ‘YOUR’ in the keyword. That’s the difference that one simple word can make to the success or failure of a keyword or keyphrase.

In practice it will make little difference, unless the prospect uses the exact phrase, in which case ‘how to cure a golf slice‘ is the more likely of the two terms for somebody to use. Were the term ‘cure my golf slice‘ used, both would have the same number of results.

You then write the article, making it as interesting and as useful to the reader as possible, and try to persuade them that they have to find out more by visiting your website. However, the purpose of this article is not to show you how to write articles, but how to use them. You do that using your Resource Box. This is a section that some directories provide in which you have to persuade the reader to visit your site. The directory won’t describe it as such, but that is basically what it is. In fact not all directories provide a separate data box for this, so you have to add it to the end of your article, but either way you design it the same way.

Keep in mind that the resource box should not be used as a bio. Even though the directory might ask you to provide info about yourself, you should use it to promote your website. Here are some ideas for your resource box.

1. Provide more information and a free gift “For more information on this topic and a free gift check out Pete’s website at xxxxxx” .2. The Second Part Offer “You will find Part 2 of this article at xxxxxx.com, in which you will learn how to put this information to practical use.”

3. The Final Offer “If this article interests you, you will find a limited period free offer on xxxxx.com, that will help you to cure your golf slice.”

These are various uses to which you can put the resource box, and they are all effective in getting the important clicks. However the format that works best for me is something along the lines of: “For more information check out xxxxxx where I will show you how to make every article rock with cash generating pizzazz that makes you more in a month than your website does in a whole year.”

That’s how to use your articles and your resource to make monëy. Some people don’t want the resource to look like an advert. Why not? Advertising is your life’s blood and your resource is the only place in your article where you really can advertise.
About The Author
If you want to learn more visit Pete’s site Improved-Search-Engine-Rank.com and find out how to make monëy from a rapid and high listing on Google and the other major search engines. You can’t beat free and powerful search engine advertising.

Unfortunately for the millions of people who view YouTube videos, the judge granted Viacom’s request. The court’s ruling has caused many advocates of privacy rights to cry foul. For the following reasons, I believe the federal judge was correct in ruling against Google.

The Court’s Powers To Access Records Cannot Be Denied

Like millions of Americans and other people around the world I love Google. I can say without a doubt that Google has been very good to me and my family law practice. And if Google wants to be viewed by it’s customers as the champion of privacy rights, so be it. But, let’s get real… , the court’s access to private records under appropriate circumstances cannot be denied. We cannot let people hide behind their computers to commit crimes or torts. It would be absurd, for example, to give a child molester safe haven to either post or view child pornography. It would be equally absurd to give a person safe haven to infringe upon the property rights of another, to commit defamation of character, or to violate someone’s privacy rights.

No Right Is Absolute!

The fact that the federal court did not buy into Google’s privacy right argument comes as no surprise to those of us who go to court for a living and who know that the right of privacy is not absolute. Our courts are vested with the power to issue search warrants and subpoenas to allow lawyers access to private records. On every work day throughout America, judges are granting motions similar to the one filed by Viacom.

Within my family law practice, for example, I serve subpoenas for personal and employment records almost on a daily basis. Personal records frequently lead to hard evidence concerning the opposing party’s true income for the purpose of paying child and spousal support. Likewise, data collected from the opposing party’s computer usage can also lead to damaging evidence concerning the issues of child custody, community property, or domestic violence. Thank goodness for those incriminating little e-mails. There is nothing like cross examining a perpetrator of domestic violence as to why he thought it was necessary to send 40 messages to my client concerning her new boyfriend!

In case this information is beginning to scare you, keep in mind that our legal system allows parties the right to object to invasions of their privacy. In California, for example, before a subpoena for personal or employment records can be served, the attorney serving the subpoena must give notice to the opposing party and wait numerous days before sending the subpoena out for service. In addition, there are special rules when it comes to any attempt to obtain medical records, in which case the court is usually going to scrutinize the request for said documents. So if your ex is trying to get your phone records to obtain your friend’s phone numbers, there are certain hurdles that need to be cleared before the court will release such records.

Can you say . . . , “protective order?”

There is nothing new about the possibilities of an attorney or party releasing confidential information. In the cruel world we live in, people misbehave and private information is often dispensed to people who have no right to the records. I’m sorry if I’ve just burst your bubble, but this happens all the time, especially in divorce cases.

Fortunately, the court has a pretty strong remedy to this problem. Courts issue “protective orders” that forbid the release of private documents to third parties and impose huge sanctions on people for violating such orders. And let us not forget the fact that an attorney’s license could be in serious jeopardy for intentionally releasing such information, which is a pretty strong incentive for not violating the court’s order.

Again, borrowing from my experience in litigating family law cases, I often find it necessary to obtain protective orders on behalf of my clients. In one case, where my client was an attorney who owned his own law practice, his wife demanded copies of all the records pertaining to his clients’ files. She purportedly wanted the records to assist her forensic accountant in determining the value and cash flow of his law practice. Obviously my client was concerned about the confidentiality of his client’s files, especially since his wife was on the war path to destroy him. We could not get into court quick enough to obtain a protective order, which was granted without hesitation!

What About Viacom’s Underlying Motives?

For the purpose of this discussion, Viacom’s motives are irrelevant. Viacom has the right to our system of justice as any other company or person. It is, after all, the court’s responsibility to ensure that Viacom does not release the information to third parties. If Viacom violates the court’s protective orders, well, look out for an astronomical monetary sanction.

Be Careful!

The bottom line is that the information obtained by Viacom will be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers or others. The lawyers representing Viacom will probably make sure the protective order is obeyed. Nevertheless, it behooves all of us to think twice about the sites we choose to view within the privacy of our homes. After all, the right to privacy is not absolute, and you never know who may get their hands on your records.
About The Author
Written by Donald P. Schweitzer.
Law Offices of Donald P. Schweitzer
201 South Lake Avenue, Suite 700, Pasadena, California 91101
(626) 683-8113 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (626) 683-8113 end_of_the_skype_highlighting PasadenaLawOffice.com