What is a social media campaign? What is SMO? We're still under construction, so we'll have more in this part of the site soon. Also check out my blog at: http://www.smoexpert.com. Which also answers some of these questions.
Some Basic Terminology:
Social Media:
(From Wikipedia.com):
Description
Social media can take many different forms, including Internet
forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.
Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email,
instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a
few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social
networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social
networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video
sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter
(social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and
Pownce. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social
network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.
Social media or social networking (one example of social media)
has a number of characteristics that make it fundamentally different from
traditional media such as newspapers, television, books, and radio. Primarily,
social media depends on interactions between people as the discussion and
integration of words builds shared-meaning, using technology as a conduit.
Social media is not finite: there is not a set number of pages or
hours. The audience can participate in social media by adding comments or even
editing the stories themselves. Content in social media can take the form of
text, graphics, audio, or video. Several formats can be mixed. Social media is typically
available via feeds, enabling users to subscribe via feed readers, and allowing
other publishers to create mashups.
Social media signifies a broad spectrum of topics and has several
different connotations. In the context of Internet marketing, Social Media
refers to a collective group of web properties that are driven by users. For
example, blogs, discussion boards, vlogs, video sharing sites and dating sites.
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of trying to get one's content
more widely distributed across multiple Social Media networks.
Social Media has two important aspects. The first, SMO, refers to
on-page tactics through which a webmaster can improve a website for the age of
social media. Such optimization includes adding links to services such as Digg,
Reddit and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily 'saved and submitted'
to and for these services.
Social Media Marketing, on the other hand, is an off-page
characteristic of Social Media. This includes writing content that is remarkable,
unique, and newsworthy. This content can then be marketed by popularizing it or
even by creating a “viral” video on YouTube and other video sites. Social Media
is about being social so this off-page work can include getting involved in
other similar blogs, forums, and niche communities. Search Engine Marketing or
SEM involves utilization of all available Social Networking platforms to brand
a product using Search Engine Optimization or SEO techniques of communication,
to the end consumer.
Examples
Communication
*
Microblogs / Presence apps: Twitter and Pownce
* Social
networking: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace
*
Events: Upcoming
* Niche:
Eons.com
Collaboration
* Wikis:
Wikipedia
* Social
bookmarking: del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
* Social
News Sites: Digg, Mixx and Reddit
*
Opinion sites: epinions
Multimedia
* Photo
sharing: Flickr and Zooomr
* Video
sharing: YouTube and Vimeo
*
Livecasting: Ustream and Justin.tv
* Audio
and Music Sharing: imeem
Entertainment
*
Virtual worlds: Second Life
* Online
gaming: World of Warcraft
* Game
sharing: Miniclip.com
Social Networking:
(From Wikipedia.com)
A social network service uses software to build online social networks for
communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested
in exploring the interests and activities of others.
Most services are primarily web-based and provide a collection of
various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video,
voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on. Social
networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with
one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being
used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that
social networking is a part of everyday life. The main types of social
networking services are those which contain directories of some categories
(such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with
self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular
methods now combine many of these, with MySpace and Facebook being the most
widely used in North America;[1] Bebo,[2] MySpace, Skyrock Blog, Facebook and
Hi5 in parts of Europe;[3] Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central
America;[4] and Friendster and Orkut in Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Blogs:
A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by
an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or
other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in
reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb,
meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject;
others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text,
images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its
topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an
important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some
focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog),
music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social
media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with
very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was
tracking more than 112 million blogs.[1] With the advent of video blogging, the
word blog has taken on an even looser meaning of any bit of media wherein the
subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.
Podcasting:
A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the
Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers.
The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content
itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called
podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and
"broadcast",[1] the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media
player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of
podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to a
mobile device after they are downloaded.[2]
Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or
streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media
formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically
when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of
reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.
RSS:
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content
such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.[2]
An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed"[3],
or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated
web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web
sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or
filtered displays.[3]
The benefit of RSS is the aggregation of content from multiple Web
sources in one place. RSS content can be read using software called an
"RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator",
which can be web-based or desktop-based. A standardized XML file format allows
the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The
user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by
clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The
RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content,
downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor
and read the feeds.
The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following
formats:
* Really
Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
* RDF
Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
* Rich
Site Summary (RSS 0.91).
Social News:
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search,
and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that
they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can
be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only
inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains.
The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by
category or tags, or via a search engine.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their
bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-based system of
folders, although some services feature categories/folders or a combination of
folders and tags. They also enable viewing bookmarks associated with a chosen
tag, and include information about the number of users who have bookmarked
them. Some social bookmarking services also draw inferences from the
relationship of tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists
of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to
become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other
users.
As these services have matured and grown more popular, they have
added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to
import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web
annotation, and groups or other social network features.[1]
Social Media Optimization (SMO):
Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity
through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO
include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and
incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides
and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is related to search
engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving
traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking
is also a benefit of successful SMO.
Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog search engines such as Technorati.
