Together with LMC, who is hosting the event at the Bertrand Crossing Campus in Niles Michigan, we at SocialMarketingExpert.org  were keen to share our enthusiasm for this new communications channel and highlight the opportunities for organizations and businesses of all sizes and in a range of industries.
Managing Director Lizz Clarke said:
“We’ve been working with social media for some time now and have been delivering real benefits to our clients. We wanted to get involved with Social Media Day and know that there are still so many people who want to know more about social media but are uncertain where to start, or what will work best for their business. Our morning seminar will help to demonstrate how to integrate social media into a communications strategy, and offer case studies of successful projects as well as provide a chance for delegates to ask questions and share their experiences.”

We are finalizing the dates for the four events, so if live around the South Bend Indiana area, and you are interested in attending these social media webinars, contact Wayne Clayton @ socialmarketingexpert.org – PH: 5764-514-5095

Most of us trying to optimize our sites for search engine traffic know one of the single most important ways to get our sites listed higher on search engines is through obtaining incoming links. For Google, the quality of the website providing the incoming link is also important. It’s very important to get incoming links from high page rank (PR) web pages. Most search engine optimization ( SEO )articles mention this importance. However, many search engine optimization articles do not go into specifics about how to obtain these links.

Avoid Excessive Link Exchanges

A simple way is to have a link exchange whereby websites swap text links from their index or other pages in an attempt to build links. This system used to work very well in the past until Google decided that it didn’t like websites exchanging links simply to perform better in Google’s search algorithm. Google’s position now is that link exchanges are alright as long as they are not excessive. It is unclear how Google defines ‘excessive’.

An alternative approach to building incoming links apart from simple link exchange is to have an A-B-C link exchange. In this scenario site A links to site B. Site C links to site A in exchange for the link to site B. It is widely held that Google’s algorithm is aware of this situation and accounts for it. 

Obtaining One-Way Incoming Links

The vastly superior way is to have one-way incoming links. One-way links are links which point to your site without you having to link back to their site or set of sites. This is clearly the superior method for building incoming links. However, this method may take a long period of time as external websites find your web pages useful and link in to them. No matter the quality of your content it takes time to build natural links in. Such natural links may come from web directories or sites related to your topic which find your website useful and link to your site without being asked.

This SEO article is written specifically to address the problem of building one-way links to your website. By taking some short-cuts it’s easy to get high Page Rank websites to provide one-way links to your website. One of the simplest and easiest ways to gain incoming links is by taking advantage of social bookmark sites. These social bookmark sites include high page rank social bookmark sites such as ma.gnolia.com, simpy.com, furl.net, and del.icio.us.

It’s free to signup and start using these various bookmark sites. Most of them will require that you install their icon into your web browser toolbar. Once installed, simply click the bookmark icon when you’re on any web page which you’d like to have bookmarked. Ideally you may wish to bookmark all the web pages of your site. You can use these bookmark sites to create a URL containing all your own website links.

Once you have the URLs containing your websites then submit these URLs to Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines of your choosing. Place links to these URLs on your own websites or on other sites such as within blog comments.

Once these newly created bookmark webpage URLs get indexed and search engines crawl them then your websites will benefit from having quality one-way links.

Importance of Anchor Text

Always remember that the anchor text used to link to your site is extremely important as search engines such as Google attribute the anchor text to your website. The anchor text is simply the hot-linked words that refer to your website. If for example you operate a car dealership then for anchor text you may choose something like “cars for sale” or “buy cars”. It’s good to use adjectives sometimes when choosing anchor text. Continuing with the example above you may choose anchor text such as “autos for sale” or “buy automobiles”. It’s a good idea to vary the anchor text and not use the same anchor text for all incoming links. Keep this in mind when naming your websites as you manage your bookmarks.

Alex Brown’s love of horses started long before he launched the blog, Alex Brown Racing, but it was Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro that pushed the blog into prominence — and eventually established it as a site dedicated to the welfare of horses. Along the way, Brown learned many things about creating and nurturing an online community using tools, including Wikis, Facebook and Twitter, and following certain principles, such as: Be authentic, be transparent, be consistent and build trust. Brown, one of whose goals is to rescue horses destined for the slaughter house, talked with Knowledge@Wharton about his strategies for bringing attention — and money — to the cause. Transcript can be found at: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Building on work from chrisbrogan.com this post shares how I promote my blogs using social media and other websites

I’m only four months old in the social networking arena, and I admit that I’ve become less inhibited about requesting connections on Linkedin than when I started. I believe my Facebook participation has made me believe that anyone should be approachable. However, I do see the value in the Linkedin guidelines because it’s more of a business oriented site. FB is driven by social etiquette, and Linkedin is driven by business etiquette.

Because of the business etiquette on Linkedin, I ignore the invitations from people who look like they are mass marketers. I think they are using the wrong networking service. Facebook has built more of a culture on quantity, and I like that you can follow anyone…ANYONE; your favorite author, your favorite tennis player, favorite artist (as a fan.) It appears to break down any barriers and brings the world together. Finding new people to connect with and reading their profiles, comments, etc is addicting too, but is it worse than vegging in front of a TV for hours?

I teach workshops that help people understand and acquire business networking skills. I start by defining stages of relationship building, and add that according to our research (Contacts Count program; 17 years of research) it takes about six contacts to get to know someone’s character and competence. Hopefully this is done in person, but social networking sites can help us get to know someone….Help. We wouldn’t want to substitute online communication with person to person communication, I hope. There is research from the Stanford University’s Shyness Center that shows Americans are getting more shy- will the networking sites feed this trend by encouraging people to hide behind the computer screen?

Who would I recommend, or not recommend from a Linkedin contact? If I have never met someone in person, I might be able to see online activity that shows a sense of honesty, intelligence, politeness, and consideration (expressions used in writing, interests, work history, and how they contribute and help others.) Good character and competence are characteristics that I would think any hiring manager would like to see in a candidate.  Interview questions can predict future behavior based on answers which show historical behavior, right? So wouldn’t there be a good value attached to seeing someone on Linkedin who is proving to be a good source of information in their field? How quickly could I really learn about their character and competence and begin to trust them enough to go out on a limb and recommend them? It would depend on geography, groups and associations in common; frequency of contacts. Is meeting someone in person the deal breaker? Can I recommend someone based on their showing good character online rather than actually working with them? Can I assume the “all or nothing rule- if they succeed in their personal life they will succeed in their work life.” Last point to make- if we network by teaching and giving, we can develop relationships both online and in person. Thanks for the first contact.
Susan

What is the IT? It is Social Networking/Social Media Marketing — sites like Twitter, Facebook, and some of the up and comers like Google Wave (the supposed Twitter “giant killer.”)

The hype of Social Networking/ Social Media Marketing is clearly producing results these days. People are seduced into the ease of giving, receiving and searching for information by clicking their mouse..

Conversations between people through social media have been continuously increasing, and even more in these weird economic times. Statistics from a Google Trends shows that in less than three years, there’s been a 300% increase in the number of searches at Google for the term SOCIAL MEDIA.

The rate of conversation in relation to the impact and effects of social media is increasing. According to Google, searches for “SOCIAL MEDIA” has increased by the hundreds in a span of less than three years. It has maintained such a tremendous rate of acceleration that it has sparked interest and curiosity to the masses this year.

If it is being searched, then the safe assumption is it means people are interested to know what it is all about. “That’s a no-brainer” you say? Well then the frequency of the search can safely be used as an indicator of most people’s interest, which ultimately means that it relevant to the person doing the search. Another no-brainer, right?

But is it safe to conclude that for most instances, the change is not nearly as important as the rate at which the change occurs. In financing, the rate of change in money is called interest. Will this term apply in the same manner to human behavior? Is interest the basis for currency? Interest on the money is supposed to act as compensation for the risk that the lender took. When there is devaluation the interest is suppose to be negative. Does this mean there is a negative risk? Since in finance a negative risk can not exist more money printed to compensate for the risk. This makes the currency inadequate.

In a word, no.

Social currency is different because it can handle negative interest rates with ease. In my opinion, this then makes it a superior currency. As can be seen in the present statistics from Google, the increase in the interest over social media is reflective of the growth of the rate of social networks and the use of the social media.

We can surmise that there is now a paradigm shift, and that these shifts are actually creating a new avenue for human interaction. What we are actually seeing here is a systemic change. The rate of change is so out of control making predictions difficult if not impossible to do because when the inputs are changed then the process is changed too, and consequently we see a change in the results.

The currency of a conversation gives different kinds of results. When conversations increase the currency of the conversation accelerates. This creates or adds value. If you want to improve on a result in the relationship economy, then you must engage in conversation that will impact those results.

G. Wayne Clayton is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Integerol/SocialMarketingExpert.org. He’s a former newspaper publisher and investigative journalist. He has been seen seen and heard on CNN, Fox News Talk radio, and is a Guest Blogger on FastCompany.com.

According to a survey conducted by the marketing firm Ad-ology Research, a growing numbers of people in younger demographics are influenced by social networks when choosing a day spa or hair salon.

Fifty-seven percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 48.5% of 25- to 34-year-olds say social media influenced their choice of a hair salon or day spa, according to Ad-ology Research. Across all demographics, online media had the most impact, with local Web sites (28.8%) and online Yellow Pages (22.3%) ranking as the most influential. Direct mail and newspapers were the top-ranked traditional media types.

“The younger crowd wants the latest styles, but they also want to go somewhere popular, somewhere their friends go,” said C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research. “Salons and spas need to get active online because chatter on social networks and positive comments can attract these young potential customers,” Smith said.

Other key findings:

• Currently, only 3% of consumers prefer to schedule hair and spa appointments online.
• 34.3% of African Americans say a sports sponsorship is an important factor in their choice of a hair salon or day spa.
• In addition to quality, cleanliness, price and location are top factors in salon and spa selection.

Read the entire article at http://www.skininc.com/spabusiness/management/marketing/49600392.html

Wired’s Danger Room blog has obtained a copy of a May 18 operations order from the Army’s 93rd Signal Brigade directing information managers on domestic military bases to allow personnel to access Facebook, Vimeo, Delicious, Flickr and Twitter.

Read the entire article at  http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/06/army_to_stop_blocking_some_soc.php

I still dont get the negative impact that using social media would’ve made… unless they were concerned the Taliban is on Twitter or North Korea has a Facebook Fan Page…maybe I should check LOL

G. Wayne Clayton is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Integerol LLC along with SocialMarketingExpert.org. He’s a former newspaper publisher and investigative journalist. He has been seen seen and heard on CNN, Fox News Talk radio, quoted in The Toronto Star and is a Guest Blogger on FastCompany.com.

Deeptaman Mukherjee  of Watblog wrote a good article regarding ROI entitled “Social Media – Its Power, ROI & Marketing.”  Here is just a taste of what he had to say…

Social Media has emerged as the single largest viral marketing source in recent times. I doubt if there is a close second spot to it. The immense online advertising opportunities it holds are utilized in every walks of life viz. politics, marketing, branding, networking etc. The power of Social Media lies in its ability to build up a relationship damn quickly and being able to sustain with it over a period of time. It is amazing to interpret from this research that it is women who rule the social media usage over men; and this ‘relationship’ funda which is considered emotional to some extent strikes the correct chords with them.

Read the complete article at http://www.watblog.com/2009/03/25/social-media-its-power-roi-marketing/ 

According to a new study released by Aberdeen Group (published today by eMarketer), 63 percent of companies plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2009, despite the current weakness in the economy. Digging deeper into the numbers, 21 percent of those surveyed plan to increase social media spending by 25 percent or more, while a mere 3 percent plan to shrink their budgets (34 percent responded “no change”).
To read more go to http://mashable.com/2009/03/23/social-media-marketing-budgets/