Blog Optimization Series: Social Media Optimization (3÷3)

Finally, the third install­ment brings us to Social Media Opti­miza­tion. If you’ve missed the first two (Search Engine Opti­miza­tion and Search Engine Mar­ket­ing) — don’t worry because you can always go back and check them out.

After review­ing some of the response to this series (through com­ments + Twit­ter DMs etc.) it became quite clear to me, that most of our read­ers were inter­ested in this sec­tion of the series-post.

So, I shall try not to disappoint!

Social Media Optimization

Social Media Opti­miza­tion is exactly as it’s title sug­gests — opti­miz­ing your con­tent for social media. Social Media Net­works such as Digg, Red­dit, Tech­no­rati and more recently — Twit­ter can be one of the most pow­er­ful tools to reach an unprece­dented num­ber of web-surfers.

Yet, like any other way you would pro­mote your blog — you need to work on sev­eral key aspects of it.

Build­ing Your Network

Per­son­ally, I think this is where most web­mas­ters fail when it comes to Social Media. Many are under the illu­sion that you can make a Digg account, sub­mit and arti­cle and just watch the traf­fic flow in. Or, more recently; many peo­ple expect to be able to open a Twit­ter account with some fol­low­ers — tweet for a bit and then get a con­stant flow of traffic.

Unfor­tu­nately, it doesn’t work like that. Just like every­thing else, you get out — what you put in. Social Media Net­works rely on every­day web-surfers, just like, whom helps to put the spot­light on inter­est­ing con­tent. So, you need to spend a lot of tim­ing build­ing your pro­file because with­out any­one to rec­om­mend you — you won’t get far.

Under­stand The Impor­tance of Titles/Descriptions

When it comes to Social Media — every­thing depends on your title & descrip­tion. Just like your sub­mis­sions, there will be a mil­lion oth­ers com­pet­ing for your reader’s attention.

How will a surfer judge which sub­mis­sion to read about? He/She will go with the one with the most appeal­ing title. That’s just com­mon sense — because if you don’t have any­thing else to base your deci­sion on — go for the one that appeals to you the most.

Don’t just slap on a phrase to fill in the required field but instead actu­ally take some time to come up with an inter­est­ing Title + Descrip­tion. Just take a note; the title is your best weapon against the over-lookers.

Make Tag­ging / Book­mark­ing Easy

There are a count­less num­ber of plugins/scripts that make tag­ging & book­mark­ing easy — and it’s crit­i­cal that you use at least one. A pop­u­lar WP plu­gin that I would rec­om­mend for this aspect of the opti­miza­tion would be; ShareThis.

When vis­i­tors come to visit your site and they read a piece of con­tent that they like — it’s your respon­si­ble to equip them with social Bookmarking/Tagging tools. How often do you spend time directly vis­it­ing a Social Media Net­work — then log­ging in — then sub­mit­ting someone’s awe­some con­tent? Not often, I assume because not many peo­ple will actu­ally do that — I mean, why would they?

They have noth­ing invested in pro­mot­ing your blog — other than the fact that they might want to spread the word on use­ful infor­ma­tion you have pro­vided. So, make sure your book­mark­ing / tag­ging tools aren’t that far away from the content-rich areas of your blog.

Offer an Incentive

This is a bit harder to acheive, but if you can offer an incen­tive — peo­ple are more likely to help you out. By putting an incen­tive up for grabs; you are encour­ag­ing peo­ple to blog about it, Twit­ter about it and even tell their friends about it.

A very com­mon (and pop­u­lar) exam­ple of offer­ing an incen­tive is a Twit­ter con­test. Sim­ply; a Twitter-er will offer an incen­tive to all of his/her fol­low­ers, and this will encour­age peo­ple to fol­low him/her. It could be any­thing; from a free eBook to even some “under the table” advice

When it comes to Social Media; word-of-mouth is the essen­tial key to suc­cess. If the peo­ple like it; you will make it.

Help Your Con­tent Travel

Lit­tle things like ask­ing for a Digg or a RT can go a very long way. So, take the time to help your con­tent travel by doing your part too.

Ask peo­ple for help and in return, you should do the same to them. You can’t give noth­ing and expect to receive every­thing. So, Digg good arti­cles and Stum­ble inter­est­ing pages — in the end, your suc­cess on Social Media Net­works depend how active you are in those communities.

You are now Optimized.

It’s been a long time com­ing, but we’ve com­pleted the series-post on Blog Opti­miza­tion. If you really want to reach as many web-surfers as you can, it is impor­tant that you cap­i­tal­ize on all three of these pro­mo­tion tech­niques. They com­ple­ment one-another and together; form a for­mi­da­ble alliance!

If you missed the other two or want to recap you can check them out below;

• Blog Opti­miza­tion Series: Search Engine Opti­miza­tion (1÷3)
• Blog Opti­miza­tion Series: Search Engine Mar­ket­ing (2÷3)
  

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