Before getting started, please understand this post is just my opinion. I’ve done exactly 0 testing on the things I’m about to say. My thoughts are based on my own reading and understanding of the subject and in trying to think how a search engineer might think about social and search.

With that said how about a little search engine history? I promise we’ll get to the social stuff, but some thinking about where search has been will give us a better context once we’re there.

Search Engines and Links

Imagine it’s day 2 of life on the internet. Day 1 was filled with people posting articles and other content and along comes day 2 with people wanting to find the stuff they’re interested in amid all that content.

You decide to build a search engine to help people find what they want.

Putting aside the issue of literally finding and indexing what’s out there, your task is to decide which pages to rank first. I would think you’d naturally begin by looking at the words that are actually on the pages you’ll return in the results. It’s the obvious first step.

You look for matches with with words in the query and words on the page. Perhaps you give emphasis to words in specific places like the page title or at the beginning of the content or in various meta tags. This works really well until people discover the value of ranking first and discover how you’re choosing to rank web pages.

Then comes the spam. And then more spam and still more spam. It’s easy to manipulate the words you place on the pages you control.

Eventually you realize you need to find another way to understand the content on websites and rank it appropriately.

That’s where Google comes in with their PageRank algorithm. Google shifted things and made links the focus. They didn’t remove that “what’s on the page” data, but they shifted the focus.

Their idea comes from the idea of attributions in scientific papers. The more mentions of one paper in others is a good indication of the value of that initial paper. If it works for attributions and scientific papers, why not links and web pages?

The one difference is that spam problem. For the most part scientists are a little more trustworthy than spammers.

If more links meant better ranking then people would figure out how to get more links regardless of the merit of what those links pointed to.

Google adjusts to see some links as more valuable than others. The rest of us figure out what makes some links more valuable and adjust too.

Google adjusts again and looks at the authority of the web page linking out, the distribution of domains sending links to a particular page, where on the page links are located, the words used in the link, how often those same words are used in all links, and on and on.

The rest of us learned and adjusted as well. Some to understand seo fundamentals and some to continue playing the cat and mouse spam game.

In the end search engines continue to add more and more data that they can use as signals to determine whether page x is a better match to a query than page y. The more signals they use, the harder it becomes to significantly manipulate the results.

Social and Search

Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Google+ offer another set of signals search engines can use. At first it was the links coming from those sites to our content, but now most of those links have the proverbial link condom added.

Social shares can be seen in a similar way to a link. If you consider a link as a vote then a Like or a Tweet or a +1 is also a vote. And just like links, different social shares can be given different values.

And just like links, social shares can be manipulated. Whether or not they’re easier or harder to manipulate I don’t know. My guess is it’s about the same.

Both Google and Bing have publicly stated that they look at social signals and some of these signals affect the order of rankings in search results. All indications seem to point toward them looking more toward social when and where they can get data.

In a recent email to Wired Magazine Google said:

Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results

If you go back to scientific papers and links then search engines probably started with the simple more social sharing means more important content means better rank.

Again this is easily manipulated and so we need to consider possible ways to view some sharing as more valuable than others.

• Who’s sharing? What’s the authority of the sharer?
• How often is something re-shared?
• How quickly is something being re-shared?
• What’s text is used to share?
• In how many different communities is the content being shared?
• Can we apply a social rank akin to PageRank

The above are just a few things off the top of my head. We can probably brainstorm and come up with more. Then we can watch as everyone debates the merits and lack of merits in our ideas and the usual flame wars that will ensue.

SEOmoz collected data earlier in the year to present their findings on correlation between certain search signals and their effect on ranking. As always needs to be said, correlation doesn’t not automatically mean causation.

• Facebook + Twitter’s Influence on Google’s Search Rankings
• Does Google Use Facebook Shares to Influence Search Rankings?

In the end I don’t think the details as important as the general idea that search engines are looking to how we all share things in social communities and that they’re looking to those communities for signals that will affect search results.

For most of us this will mean a few things.

• We need to continue to create the best content we can
• We should create content for real people as it’s people who share socially
• We should encourage our readers to share our content
• We should participate in social communities
• We should understand we don’t need to be everywhere

Why Google+

Look again at my last point above. We don’t need to be everywhere. It’s physically impossible and even if it were possible I’m sure it would be exhausting.

What advantages does having a Google+ profile offer that other networks might not?

• It’s Google’s data. If you’re a search engine and you’re going to collect data that determines how your search engine ranks web pages, who’s data are you going to use? Your own most likely.
• Facebook refuses to share it’s data with Google and Google’s license for Twitter data recently ended. Google only has access to the publicly available data of both.

Face it the social data Google will use is the data it collects directly from its own network. So which network do you think will most greatly affect Google’s search results?

Google is already using Google+ in a way that could lead to more or less traffic. Currently if you’re signed into your Google account you’ll see avatars from your Google+ friends for those results they’ve given a +1. You’re more likely to click through with that recommendation.

You can also +1 content directly in Google’s results and I wouldn’t be surprised if what you and your friends +1 re-ranks your personal search results.

Because Google+ is still relatively new, you’ll have a head start on building an authority profile for when the masses arrive (assuming they arrive). With less people active now you can also build stronger relationships with people who’ll also have authority later.

Summary

The first shift in search rankings was the move from on-page to links as the major factor in ranking. Today another shift is taking place as things are moving to the social scene.

How much of a shift it will be is currently unknown. What’s known is that search engines are looking to social networks for new signals to help them rank content. That alone should be enough to convince you of the importance of social networking and sharing where search results are concerned.

It stands to reason that social signals will follow a similar path as links. it starts with quantity being the most important and then moves into quality being the most important.

The major takeaway for us is to continue to create great content, participate with social networks, and encourage others to share your content. Where Google+ is concerned, now is a good time to build authority before the masses arrive.

I still have some Google+ invites to give out if anyone is interested.

• Leave a comment below
• when filling out the comment use the email you want the invite to be sent to
• Your email doesn’t need to be a Gmail address
• You will need to have or set up a Google account for the email address

I’ll send out invites to the first 50 people who ask for one, assuming there are 50 of you out there that want one.

Here’s my profile for those of you with an account who’d like to connect.

Thoughts on Google+

I’ll spare you talk about what Google+ is or how it’s similar and different to other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. There’s plenty of information out there already that’s easy to find.

Instead I’ll offer some observations from my own use of Google+ these last few weeks.

• I find myself checking in to Google+ more than I am other social networks
• I find it easier to navigate and set up than Facebook
• I like how circles makes it easy for me to send posts to different groups of people though Facebook is now adding similar controls
• I like being able to follow people without them having to follow me back
• Despite it’s quick growth there are far less people posting than joining

I’m following a little more than 100 people and about 40 people are following me. My network isn’t particularly large which could account for why I don’t see many people posting. Of the 100 I follow only 20 or so seem to post regularly.

On the bright side the number of people posting seems to be increasing and less people currently active means more opportunity to have a conversation and get to know others.

When I’ve sought out people to add to circles they tend to fall into one of several camps.

• Internet celebrities
• Internet marketers
• Designers and developers
• The generally tech and web savvy

Perhaps that’s more to do with my own interests than who’s really there, but understand that for now your mom isn’t there. Neither is mine.

While Google+ is growing it’s not mainstream yet. That may or may not be an issue depending on who you want to connect with.

I also find myself drawn more to the design of Google+ which makes better use of space and color than Facebook. That helps contribute to the easier navigation for me.

Why Google+

If you’re already on Facebook or Twitter you may be wondering why you should sign up for Google+

I’ll leave it to you to decide if Google+ makes sense for your personal life. It’ll probably depend on whether or not your friends are there or can be convinced to join you.

On the business side Google+ is still small so there’s opportunity to build up an influential account before the masses arrive, assuming the masses do arrive at some point. My guess is Google finally got social networking right enough that the masses will arrive in time.

Google has said a few times they look to social signals as a way to determine rankings. SEOmoz posted a few months back about how they were seeing a strong correlation between ranking and social signals. Correlation is not causation, but given how Google has said they do look at social signals it seems likely that what happens on social networks influences where web pages rank.

It also makes sense that Google will use data from their own network over data they might get from another network as they’ll have more and cleaner data from their own network.

Even without changes in ranking Google+ might already be influencing click through as results now show when your Google+ friends have +1d one of the results. You might even see the recommended content ranking better for you.

Google+ still hasn’t introduced business pages but they should be coming and again being an early adopter will probably put you in a better position once the mainstream arrives.

Who Wants an Invite?

Again I have invites to give out if you want in.. Just leave a comment below and use the email address you want me to send the invite to. It doesn’t need to be a Gmail account, but you will need to either have or create a Google account with a public profile in order to use Google+ with your preferred email address.

I’m guessing we won’t reach that 50 invite limit, but if there’s a large demand I’ll offer more in the near future. I want to hold some in reserve and also don’t want to overwhelm myself having to send them out so quickly.

Naturally if I do invite you I’d be happy to have you add me to a circle. Like I said there’s not a ton of conversation going on at the moment so we can easily connect.

Last week Clay started a thread on my small business forum that essentially asked the question above. The thread started with the following statement

I was shocked today to discover a pretty well-put-together restaurant in Chicago that only has a Facebook page instead of a designated website. I personally don’t like that and think it looks bad on them, what do you guys think?

Many local only businesses still forego developing a site for their business, restaurants especially. Some, having heard of social media, are now setting up profiles and marketing through social sites, but still don’t have their own website. Is this a good idea? Is a website no longer necessary? Or are these businesses making a huge mistake?

Last week I talked about how many of our social media profiles are little more than a wasteland. As part of that post I mentioned the idea your site being your home base online and your social profiles being outposts.

I wanted to take a little more time today to discuss that idea and then offer some reasons why you might forego a site in favor of Facebook (or any other popular social site) and then explain why I think having your own site is so much more important and why it’s more valuable to you than your presence on Facebook.

The diagram above will be explained further down in this post.

The Theory of Home Bases and Outposts

A few years ago I wrote a post on how to build your brand through social media that was my attempt to get at something about using your site as a home base and using your social media profiles as outposts of that base.

The basic idea was that instead of always trying to use social sites to bring the web to you, you should see social media as a way to bring your brand to the web outside your site. It was an idea for increasing the reach of your brand. I never thought of it in terms of home base and outposts and don’t think I ever mentioned either word in the posts, but it’s how I was thinking of it.

A year later I came across this ProBlogger post on home bases and outposts, where Darren talked about how he used social media in this home base/outpost way. He had gained the theory from Chris Brogan, who I believe really created this idea. I’ll link to a few of Chris’ posts on the subject at the end of this section.

The theory breaks down to three concepts.

1. Home Bases are places online that you own like a website.
2. Outposts are places you don’t own, but where you can build and maintain an online presence
3. Passports are credentials for being able to get into outposts.

Home Bases

Home bases are your websites, your blogs, your own real estate on the web. If you own a domain and build something on it, then it’s a home base. You control what happens there. No one can take your home base away.

You can have more than one home base, though my feeling is it should be one per business. The idea is to have a place that serves as the base of operation, the command center, for your business online.

The most important aspect of a home base is he ownership. The only way your home base goes away is if you decide to make it go away. You have complete control over everything that happens there.

Outposts

Outposts are really the crux of this theory. Think of where the term comes from. Outposts are usually military for advanced scouting, diplomatic for networking, or economical for being able to trade goods beyond your main place of trading. Each is an extension of a home base of some kind.

Social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are perfect examples of outposts. They are extensions of your online presence.

Outposts can be taken away. They can be overrun militarily. They can be removed by the country you’re seeking diplomacy with. They can fail to generate enough business to keep going.

Your online outposts can be taken away too. Facebook can remove Pages anytime they want. Twitter could delete old tweets. LinkedIn could cease business. You never have complete control over your online outposts and you are always limited in what you can do by the sites in question.

Passports

Passports are your login information or any other criteria for gaining access to a site. In order to participate fully you need access to the outpost sites. They’re simply a way to get in to the outpost.

You can see a limited amount of information when not signed in, but each social site offers more to you when you do login, when you present your passport. You generally need a passport in order to interact with other members of the site.

Moving between Home Base and Outposts

In the image above this section (the one I said would be explained later) the central blue dot is your home base and the purple dots around it are your outposts. The lines in between allow communication and traffic to flow both ways between your home base and outpost.

The smaller home base/outpost clusters belong to other people on the web, who you also connect with. The lines represent you building a presence on their clusters and in so doing bring others back to your home base and outposts.

The lines are simplified in the diagram. In actuality lines could flow between outposts and between clusters. Basically if you see a dot you could draw a 2-way line of interaction between it and any other dot.

Additional Resources

Here are a few of Chris’s posts where the concepts of home bases, outposts, and passports are mentioned. They’re listed in chronological order

• 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
• Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy
• The Beauty and Problems of New Presentations – hour long video. Home bases and outposts talk starts about 20 minutes in.
• How to Put Your Small Business On the Web

And here’s a short (7 minute) video by Darren that explains how he’s using home bases and outposts

• How to Promote a Blog with Social Media

The Best Approach to Using Home Bases and Outposts

There’s no one right way to use your home base and your outposts for marketing online, however I do think there’s a best approach.

Overly marketing yourself at any of your outposts is usually frowned upon. Even if you can get away with it, you likely won’t forever or even for long. In fact when a social site allows too much overt marketing the community quickly becomes a cesspool. That’s not to say you can’t market there at all. Much of what you do on your outposts will be marketing. It’s that you shouldn’t be trying to directly sell there.

You sell on your site, at your home base. You use your outposts to extend the reach of your brand, and interact with customers and peers. You give as much as you can to your outposts and build 2-way avenues between your home base and your outpost.

You want to bring people from your outposts to your home base and you want to send people from your home base to your outposts. Ideally people will be flowing through this entire network and engaging with you in as many as possible.

You can further extend things, but participating on other people’s home bases and outposts. These are also outposts for you.

For example if you consistently comment on posts here, you interact with me and others who are also commenting and reading. You build your brand here and some of this community will flow through to your network of home base and outposts.

The key though, is the selling happens on your home base. Your business model is built on your home base and your outposts are a way to connect with people.

Why Your Site is Worth More than Facebook

I used Facebook in the title of this post, since it was the site mentioned in the forum thread. You can really substitute any social site, any outpost you want. When comparing your site to these outposts there are pros and cons for each side, the pros of one being the cons of the other. They break down into two basic categories.

1. Who has control
2. The size of the community

You control your site. You don’t control your outposts. You will always be limited on your outposts as far as what you can do and they can be taken away at any time for any reason. Not so with your site. There’s also no functionality on your outpost that can’t be implemented on your home base site. Given enough time and resources you could rebuild any other site on your domain.

You probably aren’t going to do this, but in reality you could and it’s not nearly as hard as it might seem. Set up a site with WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress and you’ve mostly got Facebook. Add some kind of instant messaging and you’re close to having Twitter too.

What you don’t have is a community as large as the ones on those sites.

The advantage of your outposts is they have large communities you can interact with. You still need to find the people you want to connect with in those communities and have them find you, but it’s generally easier to do so on a site like Facebook than it is on your site due to how interconnected everyone is there.

Go to your outposts and connect with the communities. Most of the connections you make at your outposts will tend toward the shallow side. As you build some of those connections and make them stronger people will follow back to your home base, where your connection will be the strongest.

You will usually have a more meaningful conversation with a person you invite over for dinner than you will with the person you run into at the store shopping for groceries. You can meet a person at the store every day and exchange pleasantries and the depth of your conversation or relationship will never be as strong as the one you have with the person who accepts your invitation to dinner.

Would You Choose Your Own Site or a Facebook Page?

If you read your way down this far you know my answer. I’m guessing it was your answer too, even before reading. I might be preaching some to the choir here, but I want to bring this back to the forum thread that led to this post.

If you don’t have your own site then you’re driving all your marketing to another businesses brand.

Most of the arguments in favor of going the Facebook route revolved around the ideas that you can’t do everything Facebook does on your own site and that since people were already at Facebook it was easier to connect with them.

The first is complete BS. Facebook is a website like any other. What’s stopping you is time and resources, but the reality is if it was built on Facebook’s domain, it can be built on yours too.

As far as the second is concerned it’s true a site like Facebook is always going to have a larger community and social network than you do, but so what. You’re not trying to connect with everyone in that community. You couldn’t even if you tried. You want to connect with a much smaller subset of that community and you want to have meaningful conversations with them.

Those meaningful conversations are going to happen on your site, at your home base. Sure people are already hanging out at Facebook so it’s easy for them to say hi. The same way it’s easy for them to say hi when you cross paths at the supermarket.

The real conversation takes place when you set out to talk to each other. The person who takes the action to come to your site is much more important to your business than the person who dropped by your Facebook page while they were visiting 20 other Facebook pages and playing Farmville.

That second group of people might interact with your more often because they’re at Facebook more often, but the point is they didn’t go to Facebook specifically to talk to you. They did, however, go to your site specifically to talk to you, which leads to a much more meaningful conversation.

That’s not to say that sites like Facebook and Twitter aren’t important. It’s not to say they can’t help your business. It is to say that it’s far more valuable to get the people you meet at those sites back to your site and interact with them there.

Social sites are great for meeting new people and for quick interactions with the people you know. You can start a relationship on any of them, but to make that relationship deeper and stronger you need to interact outside the social network. Your site is the better place to grow the relationship.

Your site will always be worth more to you than Facebook or Twitter or any other social site will be. Your site will always be the more valuable resource as far as your business is concerned.

For the last few months Leo has been posting to Buzz and having what he posts to Buzz also appear on his Twitter account. On Sunday he noticed it wasn’t working. His Buzz posts weren’t being displayed on Twitter, leading to less engagement in his Buzz feed. They hadn’t been displaying for a couple of weeks. Things like that happen, of course. It’s not a big deal as far as the technology is concerned and I think Google has already discovered and fixed the bug.

The troubling part is that no one noticed. Not any of Leo’s 220,000+ Twitter followers and not Leo himself.

In his own words:

It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. All this time I’ve been pumping content into the void like some chatterbox Onan. How humiliating. How demoralizing.

Leo goes on to mention that fortunately his most important content is under his own control and in front of an audience that would notice its disappearance.

Social Sites are the Outposts – Your Website is Your Home Base

Adam Singer picked up on the post pointing out the absurdity of of yielding your presence to the stream.

In Adam’s words

While there are many reasons to maintain an independent presence Leo is experiencing the poor signal to noise ratio within these networks, and the fact that they simply are not places to carve out a voice for yourself.

and

You would think that Leo would understand the importance of self-publishing all his content and simply using things like Twitter as outposts to grow interest there.

Imagine you own and run a brick and mortar store. On weekends you have a couple of people on your staff set up a limited supply of your goods at a local flea market. That generates some extra revenue for your business, maybe even a lot of extra revenue. Even more it’s a way to build your brand and market your store.

If people like your merchandise at the flea market, it seems reasonable to think they’ll stop in at your store during the week.

The flea market is your outpost. It probably doesn’t generate enough revenue to keep you and all your employees working at the level the store does and you have to be prepared for a day when the flea market decides to close. If it does your entire business is gone in an instant without the store.

Online your site is your home base. It’s the real estate you control. Social sites are the outposts. They can generate new followers and fans and sometimes even revenue, but they aren’t under your control and they could go away overnight.

If you treat social sites as your home base and give them all your best content, be prepared for the day when that content is no longer accessible. If on the other hand you treat your site as your home base, the content you create will always be there (as long as you want to keep it) no matter what happens to any or all of those social sites.

Why build someone else’s business instead of building your own.

Are You Focusing on the Wrong Things?

I also want to pick up on a different aspect of Leo’s post, the idea that many people mistake the single tree for the forest when it comes to marketing a business online.

It’s why people mistakenly focus on PageRank as the end all and be all to Google traffic. It’s why people think how many followers you have is the most important thing in social networking. It’s why some blogs write one useless list post after another without anything more substantial in between.

Too many people mistake waypoints along the path to success as the end goal for success and fail to see the big picture of how everything works together. Again it’s staring so intently at a single tree that you think that one tree is the forest itself. Those points along the way are often important, but they work within a larger plan or strategy and not in isolation.

Imagine you’re running a marathon. Looking over statistics from past years you discover that 90% of all winners reached the 4th of 10 check in points first. So you decide to concentrate all your efforts and training on reaching that 4th check in point before anyone else. When the race comes you do reach check in point #4 first, but you do so in a way that most of your energy is gone.

You’re passed before the 5th check in point by a few competitors and by a few more before the next. By the time you’re approaching the finish line the winner has long since been crowned victorious.

That 4th check in point was simply something to get through on the way to the finish line. It wasn’t the finish line.

The problem with social media is that often people treat it as the end goal. They see a successful person with tens of thousands of followers and assume it’s the reason why that person is successful. The focus all their efforts on gaining followers through any means without stopping to consider what the point of all those followers is or how they fit into a larger plan.

Someone who follows you isn’t automatically paying any attention to what you say. Some are, most probably aren’t. People follow you at times, because they think they’re supposed to or in the hope that you’ll follow back and pay attention to them. The problem is people focusing on quantity at the exclusion of quality.

Networking is about genuine interactions with people. It’s about engaging them in real conversation. It’s not about saying hello to as many people as possible.

A few weeks ago Smashing Magazine tweeted a link to one of my posts. Unfortunately something was wrong with the shortened URL and the link wasn’t working. The link was soon corrected in another tweet, but you’d be amazed (or maybe not) at how many people retweeted the broken link. What does that tell you?

It clearly shows none of those retweeters bothered to visit my post to determine if they thought it was worth telling others about. They didn’t stop to read it or consider what value it might or might not have. They certainly weren’t interacting with me or Smashing Magazine for that matter.

They retweeted because they blindly retweet anything Smashing Magazine tweets, perhaps because they think they should or perhaps in the hopes that Vitaly will notice and tweet something they wrote.

That’s not social networking. That’s people mindlessly and blindly performing actions. Those people aren’t paying attention. They’re not understanding the point of social networking. Those are the people that didn’t notice Leo’s Buzz posts had stopped appearing on Twitter.

My Forum

As many of you know a couple of years ago I started a small business forum. Since day one my goals has been to maximize the signal of the forum. We catch spam as soon as possible, delete it, and ban the spammer like many forums do. However we go beyond that and delete all the useless “me too” one liner posts. Too many short meaningless posts without meaningful ones and you’ll find your account in the same place as the spammers.

It may at times seem unfair to some and a bit on the ruthless side, but unless you’re going to genuinely interact with the forum community, you aren’t going to be around for long. Those who do contribute find a lot of value and when and where I can I thank them. In time I’ll be able to offer more substantial thanks in the form of advertising or monetary rewards.

The forum has and will likely continue to grow at a slower pace than how it could grow if we let it fill up with as much content as possible. However what would all that content and all those extra “me too” members be worth? Not a lot and even nothing in my opinion. We’d have the same watered down forum with so much noise you see in so many places around the web.

It will take a little longer, but we’ll end up with a forum that is mostly signal that can become a great destination for small business owners to learn from and interact with each other. We’re building and will continue to build a real community of people.

More Garbage isn’t Better. It’s Just More Garbage

The amount of followers you have on Twitter or fans on Facebook is not the goal. You want to have a lot of followers on Twitter? Follow every other person there. Enough will follow you back because they feel like they’re supposed to and you’ll have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.

Think any of them will actually read your next tweet? Think again. In isolation your follower count is meaningless.

More followers is not the goal. Becoming a genuine part of the community isn’t the end goal either, but it’s a better waypoint toward the end goal and before you get something back from a community you need to put something into it.

In some respect the issue Leo had wasn’t a big deal. A couple of weeks of absentia isn’t a lot. Had no one noticed after several months then it’s a problem, but a couple of weeks…? Bloggers take vacations. Readers get busy and can’t keep up for a little while. There are a ton of other things out there to keep our interest and cause us not to notice one thing missing.

Things happen. It is a bit odd that no one noticed with that many people supposedly paying attention, but things do happen. It’s also possible Leo has built his network in a way that created more mindless sheep, than truly interested people.

I’m sure many of his followers are interested in what he has to say as Leo does have many interesting things to say and I assume it’s why many people are following him. How many though, are following because they feel they should or because they want Leo to notice them?

How many are paying enough attention to find their way and listen to his radio show?

Is the real issue that we’ve given our content away to sites that may or may not respect that content months or years later? Or is it more that too many of us are chasing metrics like followers without truly understanding why?

Are we putting our time in to attract as much noise as possible instead of trying to attract the signal within the noise, because we assume more is always better?

Where’s the signal? Isn’t that what we should be seeking? Shouldn’t we sooner look to connect with the handful of people that genuinely want to interact with us and us with them. Why are we seeking the masses who couldn’t care less?

Obama’s recent inauguration seems to have a lot of business people thinking seriously about social media. Obama’s ability to digitally connect with millions of people to achieve campaign goals (Eg. record fundraising) seems to have a whole lot of people thinking about how they can use social media in their business.

However, despite Obama’s amazing online achievements, it may be questionable whether he’s the ideal social media role model. Indeed, some industry insiders have even gone as far to say that he has implemented broadcast marketing techniques. So, who should budding social media pro’s look to emulate in the social stratosphere? Simple; if you want to become a social media rockstar… act like a rockstar!

photo credit: alonis

Meet Lily Allen. She’s a rockstar. A lot of you probably already know her. After all, she’s been known to cause the odd headline or two. Aside from her music, Lily is perhaps best known for her potty mouth and public drunkenness. Lily may seem a strange choice as a benchmark, because she’s clearly not a role model! In terms of character she’s a long way behind Obama. But she knows a whole lot about connecting with people via social networks!

You see, Lily Allen is one of the original MySpace rockstars. While she wasn’t exactly the epitome of a struggling musician before she joined MySpace in 2005 (she already had a lowly £25,000 record deal) it was her ability to connect with and create a huge MySpace fan base that propelled her towards international stardom. And it’s the way in which she achieved this feat that all businesses can learn from. Let’s take a look at the factors that helped contribute to Lily’s meteoric MySpace fame:

Exclusive Content

Rather than using MySpace solely to redistribute her music, Lily embraced the full range of functionality offered by MySpace to deliver exclusive content to fans. At the forefront of the exclusive content is Lily’s blog, which has become one of the most infamous in the global music industry. Indeed, it was nominated in the 2008 NME awards for the category of best band blog.

The blog itself hosts strong opinions from Lily on a wide range of issues including:

• Double standards in the media
• Explanations of her controversial (and drunken) antics
• Wardrobe malfunctions
• Flame wars with Perez Hilton

The list goes on… Most of the content is far too controversial to be applicable to a business environment. But on a more conventional level, Lily also uses MySpace to distribute exclusive multimedia content including:

• Behind the scenes footage from album cover shoots
• Photos of music video shoots
• Original covers of popular songs such as Britney Spears’ ‘Womanizer’
• Everyday video footage of Lily in her home
• Photos from her personal life

The broad range of exclusive content gives fans greater insight into who Lily is as a person, thereby building deeper connections. In the pre-MySpace days, this level of intimacy was impossible. But the Internet has forever changed the way people publish and consume information. Lily has embraced new forms of media to truly give fans a window into her life. Likewise, businesses wanting to leverage social channels need to follow Lily’s lead and deliver meaningful content. Recycled press releases won’t cut it. Indeed, most businesses need a complete transformation in their communications practices. Rather than approaching the channel with the question ‘What do I want to say’, businesses need instead to ask ‘What do my customers want to hear?’

Personality

If there’s one thing Lily Allen can never be accused of it’s a lack of personality. Indeed, her mouth has continuously got her in to trouble since her swift ascent to fame. Whether it’s feuding with fellow musicians, pissing off Elton John or justifying topless romps, Lily has stood by her controversial actions and words. Indeed, her strong personality and ‘eff you’ attitude is perhaps her most endearing quality to many fans. It makes her real. It makes her interesting. And her fans love it, as can be seen via the comments on her MySpace blog:

“It’s great to see a true down to earth celeb, who can voice an opinion and not have someone make their decisions for them! Keep doing what you do Lily, you are fabulous!!”

“Lily, its great to see you being so real…work it out, girrrly…I adore you and your music. Your personality makes me love you more. Eff the media, I dont care what they say.”

“I think you’re great, lily. You’re talented and funny and very entertaining. I love that you respond to crap in the press in your blog. It’s nice to hear your side of things.”

While Lily’s personality is likely to be too controversial for most businesses, the lesson is simple. Personality builds interest and advocacy. Conversely, marketing/ corporate speak turns people away in droves. Businesses that succeed in social media manage to create personality around their brand. While it might seem difficult, even the most boring of products can be successful in social media with a little creativity and personality.

Balanced feedback

Lily’s MySpace page is predominantly home to her legion of fans. But, with outspoken opinions and occasional loutish behaviour, she also attracts her fair share of critics. Naturally, some of her detractors are drawn to her blog to respond. But rather than try to stifle negative commentary, it seems Lily allows all comments to be published (a little spam moderation on her wall wouldn’t go astray though). As much can be seen from a couple of the comments below:

“Oh babydoll…you can’t be drinkin’ like that when you’re in front of the camera all night. I’m sorry ”

“On the aforementioned YouTube video, Elton John referred to you on camera as a “rude, vile pig.” Somehow, I don’t think that “friends” would make such comments.”

For most businesses, the natural instinct is to shield the brand from negative discussion. However, doing so detracts from the credibility of the medium. Tightly moderating user comments and only publishing positive feedback reduces the channel to little more than a glorified press release. In social media you have to take the good with the bad. It’s the nature of the beast. While criticism may cause some short-term pain, being open, honest & transparent in social channels is far more likely to lead to longer term gain. And for businesses, actually listening to constructive criticism may just teach you something about what customers want…

Direct Interaction

These days it’s difficult to find a lot of evidence of direct interaction between Lily and her fans within MySpace. But with almost half a million friends and hundreds of comments on most blog posts, scaling personal interaction becomes almost impossible. For the same reason, a number of the marketing industry’s biggest names rarely interact directly with readers via their blog (Eg. Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse). Of course, much like these marketing superstars, it’s likely Lily takes this sort of interaction out of the public eye. In an interview with musicOMH, Lily hinted at intimate direct interactions with some fans:

“Sometimes I get a bit worried, as I get things from girl fans who are going through a hard time and want me to pull them through it, and I feel a responsibility to them in a weird way as they’re relying on me to help them out. But I’m not a therapist! But I keep in contact with them and try and make sure they’re alright.”

A look at comments now on Lily’s MySpace profile shows endless requests from fans craving a direct response. While a brand is rarely going to engender the same level of passion from customers (Apple aside), there is no doubt customers appreciate direct one-to-one interaction. Just ask Comcast customers, who are beginning to rave about Comcast’s reach out program via Twitter. Alternatively, ask Ford fans and detractors alike, who Scott Monty connects with via a range of social networks. In a world where one-to-one connections have been phased out in preference of bulk communication, many customers value being treated as an individual. Or as Scott so aptly put it:

“It’s learning how to speak with your customers again”.

Amen.

The REAL lesson

While this article talks about a number of specific behavioural characteristics, there is one overriding lesson for businesses to absorb. And that is to be real. Lily is real. Lily is flawed, but people love her for it. Her flaws make her real, and that helps people relate to her. For businesses to succeed within the social web, they need to be real, flaws and all. Because people relate to people, not faceless/lifeless corporations.

Forget the PR. Forget the spin. Just be real. It’s as simple as that.

I bet you had already heard about Squidoo.

No? Well, in this case you are losing lots of good publicity opportunities for your blog, website, or business.

What’s Squidoo?

Squidoo is a web 2.0 platform designed to make it easy for web users to create web pages online. Imagine it as a platform for one-page-blog, where the owners get to share ideas and sell products online.

At the time of writing, Squidoo is one of the top 500 websites in Alexa ranking.

For years, marketers have been leveraging the power of Squidoo. Squidoo lenses (webpages) are used to attract website traffics, building one way links, as well as developing personal authority in certain niche.

Getting Success With Squidoo

If you are totally new to this, the best way to get started is to create your own lens. It is ultra easy to start making a Squidoo lens but before you begin, here are the best 20 tips for beginners.

1. Not keen in writing? No fear, fully utilize Squidoo built-in modules to minimize the writing task.
2. Good keyword research work is a must before creating a Squidoo Lens.
3. Good keyword research work is a must after creating a Squidoo lens, use the stats feature to check which keywords are referring you the most traffics.
4. Long tail keyword helps, include them in your lens tags.
5. Squidoo lenses rank well in Google, always keep SEO in mind while writing – use keyword in your lens URL, bold your keyword, include keywords in your title, make your lens description keyword rich… etc.
6. Squidoo disallow drug reviews and sales, so forget about writing your 101 tips on cheap Viagra shopping.
7. Implement Squidoo tags – use up all the 40 tags progressively.
8. Join Squidoo Groups that are related to your topics.
9. Be active in the Squidoo community – the more your profile get exposed the better your lens ranks in Squidoo.
10. Be friendly – there are tons of Internet marketers hanging around Squidoo and unlimited ways to partner up with the big dogs.
11. Set ‘Contact’ on in your profile so other Internet marketers can get in touch with you.
12. Submit your lens to social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.
13. Squidoo marketing can be a quantity game, break your subject into smaller part and create more lenses on various sub topics.
14. Leaving meaningful comments on other lenses helps, try start with the Lens of the Day.
15. Keep your lens fresh, it ranks better in Squidoo.
16. Use “Poll” and “Plexo” to increate your lens interactivity.
17. Use “The Most Important Thing” and “Talk Bubble” modules to promote your primary ideas or products.
18. Squidoo lens gain Google PR fast, thus remember to link back to your related website or blog via keyword-riched anchor text.
19. The “Black Box” module is best to highlight your free email courses or ebooks, use that to capture more leads.
20. Use “RSS Feeds” module to promote your blog in your Squidoo lens.

Wrapping Things Up: The Best Of Squidoo…

The best of Squidoo is that it is totally free. By signing up with Squidoo, you get the power to create unlimited lenses online with no cost at all. More over, you can even earn money via Squidoo profit sharing.

With nothing to lose on the table, I don’t see a reason why you are still hesitating with Squidoo. Go start a lens today!

Bio: Jerry Low is the owner and operator of Web Hosting Secret Revealed. He offers unbiased reviews of web hosts to help make your decision easier.

Forum Traffic Is Sticky

A few months ago while discussing social media referral traffic I displayed an image showing a few sources of referral traffic to this site. The image deserves another look here.

You’ll notice that Webmaster-Talk and Teaching Sells arguably provided better traffic than either StumbleUpon or Sphinn.

Visitors from each bounced less and stayed engaged with the site for a good deal of time. I surmised on the original post the reason for the engagement here was based on my engagement there. Both are also forums.

Teaching Sells isn’t technically a forum, but it does contain a forum, which is where the above traffic came from.

Social sites like Digg have the potential to drive greater numbers than any forum, but they don’t drive the same quality, because they don’t allow the same level of engagement on your part at the site. Old school internet as they may be forums still allow you to show who you are and what you can offer better than your typical social site.

Networks like Twitter and Plurk are great for getting out short messages, but there’s still a lot to be said for having more than 140 characters to make your point.

Forums Are A Source Of Customers

Most people look for forums on similar topics as their site. It’s natural since your topic is what you’re interested in and you’ll meet like minded people who share your interests.

photo credit: me-2007

The people there will be peers and you’ll have have plenty to share and discuss. Your peers often provide a good source of links, a good source of blog subscribers, and a good source of people to partner with on future projects.

There’s another type of forum though, that can prove just as beneficial. It’s the forum where your customers spend their time. I’m a firm believer that marketing yourself is about determining who your customers are, finding where they spend their time, and building a brand in that space.

For me that’s meant participating in small business forums and that participation has led to more clients for my business than any other source.

Forums Are A Source For Market Research

The same communities that hold your customers are a great place to do market research. What better way to find out what your customers want than to ask them and listen daily to the questions they ask.

By listening to what your market is saying you gain the information you need to tailor your business to them. It’s easy to think we know what our customers want, but it’s no substitute for actually having them tell you what they want..

photo credit: Jacob Bøtter

Forums Are An Online Networking Group

If you own a small business I’m sure someone somewhere has suggested joining an offline networking group as a way to find new clients. You may have joined one and you may or may not have had success with it.

Forums, especially small business forums, can be the online equivalent of networking groups. It doesn’t take long to build a rapport with people working in other industries.

Through the relationships I’ve built I have a list of go to people when clients inquire about services I don’t offer. I know I’ve made it on the shorts lists of others as well, which has led to new business on both sides.

Again I hope you’ll forgive my romp through forum land and one last pitch for our new small business forum I recently helped get started. We already have an active community of great people with knowledge and experience across a variety of industries. We’d love to have you join us.

Do you still or have you ever participated on forums and have you found them to be a good source of business? In what ways have you found forum participation to be a valuable part of your business?

photo credit: creativecommoners

We shared a few details about what we did during the day as well as other mostly mundane information. Nothing about our conversation was particularly enlightening and neither of us is a changed person as a result of our talk, but in talking about ordinary things we strengthened the bond between us.

A number of years ago he was living in Manhattan and I was living in Danbury, CT. Both or us were single, worked all day, and came home to watch a little tv and unwind after the day. We’d call each other and watch a Knicks game together. He watching on his tv and me watching on mine. We said very little, didn’t need to other than the occasional comment on a play. Yet the phone line was open and connected us for a few hours each night a game was on.

Earlier today I was IMing a friend. She used to live here in Boulder and now lives in Florida. We discussed exciting topics like the weather and what we were going to eat for lunch. We said nothing profound and for much of the time neither one of us typed a word. She worked on her laptop and I worked on mine. Still the channel for communication remained open and helped to keep us close.

I Do Want To Know What You’re Doing Right Now

The most popular criticism you hear about Twitter is “I don’t care what you’re doing right now.” I said it often enough myself before giving Twitter a try. From the outside looking in, it does seem like a stupid idea.

• Do you need to know what I had for breakfast? – Raisin Bran
• Do you care what time I’m going to sleep? – around 2:00 AM
• Is it important to know what magazine I’m currently reading? – Dynamic Graphics

Does knowing these mundane details about each other help us in any way? Is there any point to sharing the information?

As it turns out these kind of tweets are one of Twitter’s great strengths as a networking service. Do we need to know? Of course not, but knowing the mundane facts about each other is what brings us closer together.

I can’t speak for you, but most of my day is pretty dull. I wake up, go to the bathroom, make myself a pot of coffee (presumably so I can go to the bathroom again), check my email and begin my day. Much of the details about my week aren’t too exciting. I’m not complaining. I’m very happy with how I’ve set up my week to week, but truth is most of us live rather ordinary lives.

Earlier I left a quick message on Plurk about how I was having difficulty writing today. I started this post and several others a few hours ago and while the ideas were all in the place the words weren’t flowing.

Did anyone need to know that? Probably not, but since most everyone who’s ever written anything has gone through the same it’s a point of connection between us. Anyone who sees my plurk and empathizes will feel a bit closer to me and I’ll feel a bit closer to anyone who replies.

We’ll continue to become closer as we reply to each other’s tweets or share links on Sphinn and StumbleUpon. Repeated replies to ordinary thoughts will create stronger bonds between us than anything else.

We are the minutia of our days and sharing that minutia is what connects us as human beings.

It turns strangers into acquaintances and acquaintances into friends. is there a better purpose to networking? The little things make a difference and the ordinary strengthens friendships.

Maybe it sounds stupid and pointless to share mundane details about what we’re doing at various moments throughout the day, but the truth is I do care what you’re doing right now and I hope you care about what I’m doing too. We don’t necessarily need to know, but knowing will bring us closer together.

Consider the image below of some recent referral traffic to this site.

Stumblers clearly didn’t spend much time here. Most bounced immediately. Sphinners stayed a little longer if not a long time. The large majority still bounced. Visitors from both Webmaster-Talk and Teaching Sells on the other hand didn’t bounce nearly as much and spent considerable time on the site. Why the difference?

More Engagement There Leads to More Engagement Here

The answer is pretty simple. It’s about my own engagement on those other sites and the familiarity the visitors who came here had with me prior to visiting. It’s about brand.

While I do maintain a presence at StumbleUpon the mass of the people who found their way here did so when this page randomly appeared after stumbling. They didn’t visit because they specifically wanted to see my content. They weren’t planning on spending time here in advance. They just happened to find there way here.

Referral traffic from Sphinn likely had a little more familiarity with me and so stayed a little longer and bounced a little less. The numbers still aren’t to brag about, but that can be explained in part on the post visited, April’s This Month In SEO, which might more likely be bookmarked than consumed right away.

Now consider both Webmaster-Talk and Teaching Sells. Why did people from both sites spend so much more time here? It’s because both are sites where I’ve spent a considerable amount of time engaging with the community. Visitors from both were planning on spending time here before they arrived.

My brand and engagement is stronger in those communities and consequently the communities were predisposed to engaging with me here.

Social Media Extends Brand Reach

The ability to build your brand through social media is perhaps the greatest marketing value you can derive from it.

I’ve never been to any of the Barnes & Nobles in San Francisco. But having become familiar with the store in other cities I wouldn’t hesitate to walk into one in San Francisco. If I was in San Francisco and wanted a book I’d seek out the store. My experience at one store is transferred in my mind to the other stores.

Having become familiar with me and my brand at Webmaster-Talk and Teaching Sells people had no hesitation spending time here. They sought me out based on an experience I provided on those sites. I’ve extended the reach of my brand to those communities.

Not everything needs to happen on your site. Part of the conversion process can take place elsewhere.

The Value Of Social Media

Most of the value in social media is indirect. You may have one popular post bring traffic from StumbleUpon, see similar numbers to those shown above, and come to the conclusion there was little value in it. That’s not the case.

There may not be direct and measurable value in a single submission, but there is value. A series of submissions to the same social site will likely lead to less bounce and more time on your site. Why? Because it takes more than one submission to build your brand.

One submission people don’t know who you are. Five submissions over the course of a month and they begin to.

When developing a social media marketing strategy think long term. Think about how you want others to perceive your brand and act accordingly.

Social media provides an opportunity to extend the reach of your brand without having to spend a fortune. You still need to do the building, but the cost is minimal in comparison to the alternatives. A quick spurt of traffic from a popular submission looks great in your stats, but it’s the longer term where the true benefit of social media is realized.

• Macbook Air laptop
• Professional version Shopping Cart solution
• Cash that can be applied to affiliate networks and marketing
• An iPod Touch
• 3 Free months of SEO Training from Aaron Wall

There are more prizes to be found on the contest announcement page at the forum.

The contest is based on a system of points, which you can earn in a variety of ways and you can find the rules here.

$25,000 in prizes is certainly good reason to join, but there’s more to the forum than the contest

Why Webmaster-Talk?

About a year ago I reviewed Webmaster-Talk and outside of the obvious changes like new forums and a new Marketplace that resulted from the merge what I said in the previous review still holds true.

Webmaster-Talk has generally been a welcoming community where newbies and experts alike are treated well. The staff takes a strong stand against insults to other members and we do what we can to keep things civil. I’ve made a lot of friends through the forum over the years and expect that will continue in the years ahead.

Design, development, and website administration answers have always been a strength of Webmaster-Talk. If you’re having a problem getting a site to look or function the way you want just ask and in a matter of hours someone will likely have offered a fix. Monetization strategies were a strength of EarnersForum and the two forums overlapped where marketing and seo are concerned. The combined Webmaster-Talk forum is now a one place stop for everything about creating, marketing, and profiting from a website.

I’ve found people with varied expertise over the years at the forum. The new members from EarnersForum bring the one area of knowledge that may have been previously lacking. This is really a good mix of forums and a good mix of members.

Forums are no longer the sexy social networks, but they are still one of the better social mediums when it comes to connecting with other people and even when it comes to driving traffic. My stats will back up that Webmaster-Talk is consistently one of the main referrers here and I know quite a few of you reading now first found your way here through one of my signature links at the forum. The combined WT and EF forums can now boast over 56,000 members, which is a huge audience for you and your site.

Give Webmaster-Talk a look. It’s free to join, though you will need to join to be eligible for the contest. You have a month until the contest ends which will be more than enough time to decide if you enjoy the community. I suspect you will like it and hope to see you there.