SEM vs. SMO Part 3: The Social Metropolis

Social Media Optimization continues to grow at an exponential – and nearly incomprehensible – pace. In the agency world it is almost impossible to stay at the forefront of the SMO environment due to this rapid expansion. That being said, there are a few agencies that do an outstanding job of keeping abreast. In the third installment of the SEM vs. SMO series, I will focus on GoViral, the concept of The Social Metropolis, and the book by the same name.

To begin, let’s get up to speed on the concept. At the end of the article I will provide a link to download the full book free of charge from GoViral.

Jimmy Maymann, the founder and CEO of GoViral, presented his concept of The Social Metropolis this year in Cannes. The video of his presentation is below. Though lengthy, it provides a basic introduction to the concept of The Social Metropolis and what it means to enter this emerging space.

One of the key takeaways from Mr. Maymann’s presentation is the concept of democratization of information. As more people have free and unfettered access to the internet, we see a growing trend of consumer empowerment. The following excerpt from The Social Metropolis highlights the resulting disparity between consumer intelligence and the current state of the ad industry:

“The result is a genuine mismatch between a media and marketing experienced public, and a marketing/advertising industry that, generally speaking, have been delivering the same product since the 1970s. I magine if Ford or Sony did the same...? The old model is broken - a new one is only slowly taking shape. Over the past decades, companies have become used to defining their message, shaping their brand, and having complete control over the channels of communication. Now they are losing it” (The Social Metropolis – Page 11).

Though there is a bounty of new and exciting information in The Social Metropolis, ADMAVEN wants to highlight the bigger picture – respect SMO or be left in the dust.

Explaining exactly how you can take advantage of SMO to leverage your next big campaign is out of the scope of this article. This information, however, can be gleaned by reading GoViral’s The Social Metropolis. Visit GoViral and download the book here.

Happy reading!

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

SEM vs. SMO Part 2

Social Media Optimization (SMO) seeks to drive traffic not from search engines, but from third party websites, applications, and social networking services. Adding SMO to a campaign can be the missing link between mediocre response number and an award winning response!

SMO can be added to an existing campaign – depending on the target market and product/service offering – or be the single method of generating publicity. The premise behind SMO involves connecting with the customer on a personal level without the use of a traditional click-through advertisement. Rohit Bhargava, SVP of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, is credited with inventing the term Social Media Optimization. Mr. Bhargava outlines the basics in his article, “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization”:

1. Increase your linkability - This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are "static" - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons to "add to del.icio.us" are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).
3. Reward inbound links - Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you
4. Help your content travel - Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
5. Encourage the mashup - In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube's idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.

I suggest reading Mr. Bhargava’s article if you want to get the basics of how SMO has grown from a relatively undefined (yet practiced) advertising technique to a clearly defined, methodical operation to supplement or found your next big campaign.

In my next article I will suggest some specific techniques I use to leverage the power of SMO for any type of campaign.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

SEM vs. SMO Part 1

Today marks the beginning of a two part series that outlines how Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) practices can help produce a well rounded campaign that generates great response numbers and leaves a lasting impression in search engine indexes. Let’s dive right in with a brief conversation about Search Engine Marketing.

SEM: Bang for the Buck!

Search Engine Marketing is one of the best ways a company or campaign can raise its profile on a tight budget. As with most things advertising, you can find ways to spend every dime of that precious budget, but few things are as measurable and actionable as a good paid placement plan. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft offer their respective paid placement products, but most experts (and the stock market) agree that Google provides the best offering through AdWords and related products.

Andrew McMains of AdWeek offers a poignant reminder of how underutilized paid placement can be. The kicker – he is talking about interactive agencies! Why an interactive agency would not engage in a paid placement campaign is beyond me. I suggest you read Mr. McMains’ entire article and learn more about some of the fundamentals of getting your name (or the name of your client) to the right audience.

The paid options aside, my favorite topic when speaking about SEM practices is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO gets into the gray area of advertising on the internet. The major search engines guard their search algorithms from the public eye to keep SEO experts from “cracking the code” and circumventing the hundreds of data points a search engine uses to calculate the ranking of a page or site. When am asked about SEO strategies and the best ways to increase page ranking I always recommend using the natural tendencies of search engine spiders to generate a successful result. What do I mean by, “natural tendencies”? Generate relevant content!

Page titles and Meta Tags are the most basic – but also often overlooked – aspects of SEO. Make sure your titles and tags are relevant to your audience on every page and update them as your campaign evolves.

Frequent updates are important to search engines. Old content that has gone stale will be replaced by newer indexing. The best way to keep things fresh and on the top of everyone’s list is to update your page content weekly with relevant information. This may mean a blog or a news/press release section. How many times do you go to a company’s website and find their last press release is two years old? Shameful! If the contract is a one time revenue stream, build a simple method into your project that allows your client to update the page on their own without you (or your agency) helping.

Linking between sites is critical to generating great search results! Make sure your client has active links to their new project on all their websites. Conversely, make sure you link to your client’s new project on all your agency sites. Research professional and industry associations that may be interested in your client’s campaign or project and solicit links from those organizations. Ask your client what companies or relationships they maintain with vendors, business partners, etc… and network to build a solid base of links.

FLASH! The new player in the SEO world. As ADMAVEN covered in a previous post text within Flash SWF files is now available for indexing on the major search engines (Microsoft excluded). Place relevant words and text in your Flash projects to ensure proper indexing. Remember – indexing of Flash files does not apply to ActionScript text, Library names, or any convention not readily viewable by the end user.

Keep reading for the next article in the SEM vs. SEO series, when I delve into more detailed information on SEM as well as graze the virgin territory of SMO!

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.