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Fun Photo Fridays: Danny & His In -N- Out Burger Hat

By Li Evans

I'm dreaming of... a fun photo, one with an In -N- Out Burger hat!  Yes, its Friday and we're back with another "fun" photo.  I snapped this one I'm featuring this week at SMX West out in Santa Clara.  I was on my way to the elevators and there's Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, Sphinn & SMX sportin' an In -N- Out Burger hat, and of course you know I couldn't resist capturing this moment.  I think he's dreaming of the "Animal Style" Burger, what do you think?

If you like this photo of Danny Sullivan in his In -n- Out Burger hat at SMX West, feel free to comment and favorite it as that's how we'll be judging the photos at the end of the year! Check out the rest of the fun at SMX West, there's over 300 photos total!  Keep an eye out, we'll be back next week with Fun Photo Fridays.

Micro-Communities: Utilizing Social Media to Market to Qualified Audiences

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Micro-Communities - Marketing To Your Qualified Online Audience

On the second day of SMX Social, I had the privilege of being on a panel that spoke about micro-communities.  The panel included Rand Fishkin and myself while Danny Sullivan moderated.  Several of my colleagues were a little confused with the title of the panel, just as probably a few in the SMG audience are right now. So just what are micro communities?

First, before I explain that, let me start off by saying - the concept of Social Media is not new.  That's right, the concept of what exactly social media is not new.  The fancy term that has been coined "Social Media" and the new "Web 2.0" looks are what's new to this rather old advertising medium (old in terms of the internet that is).  Social Media has been around since the inception of the internet.  Think I'm a little nuts in stating that?  Stop and reflect a moment, some of the most powerful social media outlets for your clients, services and products have been around a very long time - Forums and Message Boards.

Forums and Message Boards are chalk full of relevant very honed content around particular subjects.  Whether its subject is about collecting comics, fan fiction writing, or making crafts most forums have a lot of "power" when it comes to value and optimization of your website (think age of domains, relevant content, etc.).  They also offer traffic from very qualified resources, and these are resources that really would be more interested in what you have to say.

So now, maybe you are getting an idea of what micro-communities are?  Micro-Communities are specific communities built around niches.  When it comes to social media it can encompass a wide variety of social media types from specific social news sites (BallyHype, Sk*rt), bloggers blogging about very finite subjects, specific communities (WebMD, Corkd), to fourms/message boards (Cre8asite, Rotten Tomatoes).  All of these social media types provide user generated content created by people interested in one particular niche.

SMX Social: Yahoo Answers & Wikipedia

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Harnessing Wikipedia & Yahoo! Answers for Your Marketing Strategy

Matt McGee - Marchex
Matt is speaking about using Yahoo! Answers.  Yahoo! is more for services, rather than products. 
What is Yahoo! Answers:
It's a Q&A sites, and very active Q&A sites.  Has moderation, points and friends.  You get to create your profile page, with a link to your website, but they are nofollowed.

It is the #2 website behind Wikipedia.  56% year over year growth, since they launched.  They are smart enough to realize people will use it to market their services and actually encourage it.  It is o.k. to drop your link as long as you are providing helpful information to the community.  This is a way to build up your service's credibility too.

Why Use It:
Referral Traffic to his Small Business blog, 4th highest referral, #1 source of new traffic and that traffic has the lowest bounce rate.  Search traffic also comes from answering on Yahoo! Answers.  As it gets older more pages are ranking.  Search engines are having no problem crawling Yahoo! Answers, despite the

How to Use it:

SMX Social: Evangelist - The Marketer's Role in SMM

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Effectively Using Social Media - Second Life, Big Brands & Managing Social Media Strategies, Working with Bloggers

Rob Key - Converseon
Community has become the center of the web experience.  There are dozens of communities that people communicate in and have emerging cultures that are different in each community.  These shared experiences help us communicating with each others.  As marketers, we haven't been invited into these environments.  The challenge is that these communities are evolving their own norms.

The role of a social marketer is sort of being like an anthropologist.  Second Life shows a bit of this with their "2nd Life Liberation Army" where they take avatars in commerical properties in Second Life hostage.  Sony got outted for their "flog", Wikipedia has it's own strange culture as well.

As marketers, we know that backlash is going to grow as brands penetrate social media communities.  Driving factors such as tagging and increasing personalization will affect this as well.  Ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community - a play on JFK.

8 Principles of Karmic Communication

SMX Social: Effeciently Leveraging Social Networking

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Using FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace Effectively with Online Marketing Strategies

Dave McClure, 500Hats
Dave starts off asking the audience about who is using Facebook, audience is rather familiar, some even logged in right now.  Demonstrates his facebook page, showing he just updated his "status".

Showing off the news feed, showing all the shared activities that you and your friends are doing.  People who are using applications, posting content and commenting push things out to the feed.  The real trick is about setting up your network appropriately, as well as tagging content with the people who are appropriate.  Referencing people who are notable helps to get them to add you to their network.

If people are tagged in photos, posts or videos, they are notified, great way to get their attention to add them into your network if they aren't already there.  It's also a great way to get people to view your content.  Facebook also gives you the option to "Share", you can send it to your friends on the network, or your can post to your profile, which puts it into your "mini feed".  Not only do these people see this, but their friends see it too.

SMX Social: Social Bookmarking - StumbleUpon & Del.icio.us

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Social Bookmarking Services, Leveraging Del.icio.us & StumbleUpon

Guillaume Bouchard - NVISolutions.com
For of Social Media Bookmarking success, you need a lot of friends.

So what is social bookmarketing?  It allows internet users to store, organize, search and most importantly share bookmarks.  Popular Social Bookmarking websites:  Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon and Furl.

Every bookmarking site also uses Tagging:  Collaborative practice and method to identify content a certain way.

Helps your site index better on search engines.  Achieves high amount of natural incoming links, creates a presence in online social communities.  It also increases brand awareness, builds traffic from alternate source, influence traditional media.

Tagging Effectively: 

• Check how other people are tagging the kinds of sites you want to remember
• When in doubt pick the tag that is the most relevant and that is the most popular in the tag clouds
• Stay away from separating your tags with commas
• co-ordinate your efforts and establish a set of standards on how to tag resources you want to share with others

SMX Social: Exta Extra Social News Sites

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Social News Sites - Tips, Advice and Tricks for Digg

Neil Patel - ACSSEO.com
Neil Patel starts off the session.  He loves Digg.  What is Digg and why should you care?

It's simple, you submit and if people like it it'll go to the front page, if it sucks it won't.  Why should you care?  He did a study, on average a front page digg will get approximately 129 links from unique sites.  You also get on average over 10,000 visitors in an hour as well great branding.

Older people do read digg, in fact Washington Post featured Neil, their audience is older, but they are reading Digg.

Requirements, you need a website.  You need a content, picture, podcast or video to submit, however podcasts don't drive much traffic.  The way digg works, is on a voting system.  Time also works, a hundred votes in a 100 days, not so important, 100 votes in an hour then it's important.  Voters, 20 votes from active users better than 100 votes from new ones.  Friends is another factor, act like a Tom Cruise, get friends!

Unwritten rules:

• No self promotion. 
• Don't pay for votes (usersubmitter.com)
• No spamming
• NO SEOs Allowed  (if you are an SEO, don't let it be known)

Only .7% of all stories get to the homepage out of the thousands submitted a day. Top 100 control 56% of the homepage, and you can't control what people say.

SMX Social: Link Bait Panel

By Li Evans

SMX Social Media:  Link Bait Panel - Creating Successful Campaigns & Success in Social Media

Link Bait Panel featured Danny Sullivan moderating with Rebecca Kelly, Brent Csustoras, and Cameron Olthius.  The following is brief summations from their presentations.

Rebecca Kelley - SEOMoz
Benefits of Link bait- Links & Visibility
Successful Link Bait Creates a Domino Effect
    increases links coming in
    the more relevant Google sees your page
    One page can strengthen your entire domain
    Traffic stickiness

Who are you Targeting
    "Linkarati"
        Bloggers, web researchers, journalists
        Why?  Internet is evolving, people like to link - created content and give it to the right audience
    Do Your Homework
        Research your niche's link-worthiness
        Find things that were similar and see what worked what didn't, what can you improve upon
        Don't neglect your own industry
                can give you more "juice" because they are related to what you do

Brainstorming
    What would you find interesting?
    Ask coworkers and friends
    Write everything down