Well, yeah, it does. But only to the extent that you’re interested in search engine rankings and organic traffic. Some of the social bookmarking sites carry a pretty heavy weight, and are definitely worth the link juice you’d be getting were you so fortunate to get a link from them. (Not that it’s that hard…) 

Others, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and others are valuable despite the nofollow tag they append to your links simply because there exists the possibility of immense traffic from them should your content become popular on these sites.

So what it boils down to is this: you need to decide as part of your social media marketing strategy which of these social bookmarking sites you want to go after, and do so aggressively. Half measures count for next to nothing here. We’ll talk tomorrow about just what I mean when I say “aggressively”. There are ways to be aggressive without getting yourself in hot water, and we’ll talk about those.

~Keith

Choosing the specific web properties you’d like to implement for your social media marketing strategy can be a confusing and time-munching matter. There are literally thousands of Web 2.0 sites out there, each purporting to be exactly what you need. So, as I said in a previous post, you need to be really clear about what it is exactly you’re after. Then you have a basis for choosing dance partners!

First, you need to be pretty plugged in if you’re doing this yourself. many times people come to social marketing thinking they’ll just get themselves a Facebook or MySpace account and everyone will simply rush right over after they see they’re there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Just the fact you’re reading this is a great start, and there are many more voices that can shed light on the ever-changing landscape of social media. For me, I start my day by logging into my Google Reader and checking out the feeds of the various sources I listen to, and I have subscribed to a few! (You want to limit this to whatever number doesn’t keep you glued there all day!)

Now that you have an ongoing education in what’s hot and what’s not, you can begin to choose. Remember not only your goals and objectives, but what exactly will be the return for that investment? You can spend months building up thousands of friends and followers on some of the social networking sites, but if your goal is search engine traffic then you need to know that Google and others don’t give link credit from sites like Facebook, MySpace and others. So what is their value then? Their value lies in getting people excited enough about you that they’ll click through your profile to your website, where the fun can begin! And yes, you can gently massage them in that direction!

If your goals lie more in the direction of search engine rankings and traffic, you’ll be examining sites with a whole different set of eyes. You want sites that give live, followed links, that are very social, and that are getting lots of attention from the search powers that be. (Namely Google) These sites come and go all the time, but there are some that have lasted a while and are proving their worth to those who know how to use them, such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Tumblr and others.

There’s a lot to consider when choosing sites for your social media marketing arsenal; make sure you come to the table armed with all the knowledge you can!

Next time we’ll talk about the methods you use, and what you need to have done for you.

~Keith

Today I’m going to start a series of posts to talk about how to develop your own social media marketing strategy. That is a long-winded (and admittedly long-tail!) way of saying we’re going to discuss how to best optimize your campaign to get traffic from social media, brand your name or your company’s to reach any other goals you may have in mind, such as sales, backlinks and more.

To start with let’s talk about the preliminary steps you should take yourself through to get a clear idea of just where you want to end up. I know, it’s much more fun to go and tinker and twitter all day with all the various Web 2.0 goodies out there, but if you’d like to stand above your competitors this is a crucial step.

When we start social marketing services for a new client, we give them a worksheet to fill out detailing exactly what they’d like to see from their campaign. We do this as much for them as for us: it not only helps everyone focus on the same goals, but sometimes forces the client to really think about these things. Many times it will expose a weak spot in the campaign before it even starts, such as poor keyword choices, unrealistic expectations, or poor market research. Better to fix these things going into your social marketing campaign, otherwise it’s a great deal of work for nothing!

You need to spend some time thinking clearly about what goals you have for your social marketing, and makes some choices. If you’re running this yourself, you need to be ruthless about things like time management, and the number of sites and services you actually take on. You only have so many hours in a day, and to be truly effective you really need to focus. If you have a staff or are going to outsource this, there are still vital questions to ask, such as the specific choices of how you brand yourself, how you’ll implement this and how you’d like it done.

The point is that even though social media is now accessible and convenient for any of us now, that doesn’t mean it will be effective as a tool for you if you just barge in, announce yourself and expect hordes of hungry visitors to descend upon you. Doesn’t work that way. A good analogy would be to those of us who used this kind of appproach with PayPerClick advertising. (My hand is raised; I’m guilty!) You put up an unfocused Adwords campaign with zillions of poorly chosen (but highly-trafficked!) keywords and are dismayed to find you’ve racked up a hefty bill at the end of the month! Social media marketing is really no different. Unfocused efforts here will also lead to wasted, time, money and opportunity.

In some ways, the stakes are even greater, particularly since many times we are attempting to brand our own names. Get this wrong and you’ll pay dearly! A reputation is a terrible thing to waste!

Next time I’ll talk about how to choose among the many thousands of Web 2.0 properties out there to best advance your cause.

~Keith