While there has been much discussion – including here – how “Social Media is a Conversation”, it is clear that marketers need more concrete and less theoretical lens to view Social Media. Basically, “how does this make me and my boss look good?”

This is Social Media. But which is PR? Or Marketing?

First, we need to cast off the idea of Social Media as some hippie “Joining the Conversation” thing. It’s more of like the behavior of users or a characteristic of a website. But to make it concrete let’s call Social Media a Platform, just like how the Internet is a general platforms from which you can conduct advertising. There are lots of channels/tactics within a platform.

Above is a fairly comprehensive chart of Social Media by Brian Solis, which defines all of the various components that make the Social Media Platform. Understanding the “Social Media Platform” is important, but we also need to start thinking about the next stage:

Social Media. I get it. But what does each Social Media channel do? And who should do it? What’s the goal and ROI?

Looking at the graph, there are only many channels but many ways it can correspond to different areas of advertising. For simplicity sake, let’s focus on Marketing, Public Relations, Customer Relations and Community Building – looks pretty limiting.

In the rest of the post, I’ve sketched out a basic model of how to approach 10 of the channels/tactics – document sharing, link baits to microblogging – but ultimately, you should do the following:

Print out a few copies of Brian Solis’s Social Media Prism chart, bring the PR, Customer Service, Marketing, and Evangelist folks. Go through each channel and brainstorm how it could apply to them and their goals.

To help you guys start, I’ve started jotting down a few thoughts below. There are plenty more Social Media channels to explore and more creativity ways to exploit opportunity in a way that gives you ROI and not just “joining the conversation.”

Social Media Channels: Which One? For What and Why?

1. Widgets on Facebook to iPhones to the Google Homepage
Marketing, Public Relations, Community Building

This is an easy one. Widgets are basically mini-applications so they’re capable of being anything. From sweepstakes, to viral marketing, to letting users get in touch with other users and providing instant reviews on services or products.

2. Blogging: Blog Outreach
Public Relations, Customer Relations, Marketing (SEO Focus)

Blog Outreach is connecting with bloggers to understand their feedback on a product or service, as well as, help spread news (usually via seeding viral content) and for my purposes – SEO. Blog Outreach is something I’ve done over at e-Storm for SEO purposes with some great results for the SEO campaign.

3. Document Sharing – Sharing Online Documents, Presentations
Thought Leadership, Branding

Document sharing communities like Slideshare.net (PowerPoint sharing website) is a perfect place to reach the B2B Audience – other business people who are looking for knowledge in specific areas, case studies, industry trends and presentations from conferences. One can find all sorts of material from Social Media/SEO/PPC presentation from yours truely to Morgan Stanley’s annual report on the Technology Industry.

There is also an SEO benefit as you can use leverage SlideShare.net’s authority to get your content ranked well. Your content will be under SlideShare.net, but it will still be your content in front of users in the top 10 search results.

3. Linkbait – Creating & Sharing Content to Encourage Viral Lift
Public Relations, Branding, Link Building for for SEO

Linkbait – creating content that will be virally picked up and discussed – is basically one step above “viral videos”. It is about creating viral content – videos, tools, content, photos etc – that will be talked about, Digged, Blogged about…and hopefully linked to. As you may know, the more links pointing to a website, the better the chances the website will rank well on Google. Heck even Google says Social Media is great for SEO.

4. Blog Community
Customer Relations (Developer Community/Brand Loyalty)

A few companies, such as Ugobe (former client), which creates a sophisticated dinosaur robot called the Pleo, has created a community for Pleo owners which allow them to exchange their Pleo dinosaur experience with each other through their own “Plogs” (basically, Pleo blogs).

A company that provides a product that customers will have a strong connection to (like Pleo owners treating their robot dinosaurs like real pets) would be an ideal environment for allow users to connect and share via an internal blogging community.

5. Blogging on Corporate Blogs
Customer Relations, Public Relations

The United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to Marriot CEO Bill Marriot now have blogs. Blog are officially the mainstream for interactive marketers and public relation folks. They perform as a non-traditional communication tool – SEC recently declared that you can make official financial statements on blogs – that goes beyond the stiffness of a press release. And more interestingly of all, people are generally allowed and encourages to leave comments, provide feedback, and link to them.

6. Microblogging
Customer Relations, Public Relations, Marketing

Microblogging services like Twitter are a fast paced version of a blog and chat room rolled up in one. As I’ve written on previously, Zappos, HR Block, and Downing Street (UK equivalent to the US White House) have effectively used Twitter as a way to not only “microblog” new happenings but interactive with the twitter community.

Payoffs can be measured as real ROI, as Dell made +$1 million in sales via Twitter, or in terms of branding and reputation where disgruntled customers can be readily and transparent addressed (See Comcast example on the New York Times).

7. Social Networks: Advertising
Marketing, Branding, Engagement

Putting display ads on Facebook is not a Social Media plan. And ditto for placing ads on blogs, that’s still just good old fashioned ads.

It is as innovative as putting a banner ad the iWon search engine in 1999 (You guys remember iWon, right?). While Social Networks are known for having horrible CTR, Facebook SocialAds and MySpace Hypertargeting at the best hope for marketers and those with shares in social networks.

However, Facebook’s Social Ads and other new forms of social network advertising do show signs of promise when well executed as part of an integrated campaign.

8. Social Networks: Engagement
Customer Relations, Public Relations, Marketing

This can be anything from having a Facebook Page that you actually make active or something like the Expedia campaign, which had the lovable Expedia Gnome leaving comments on MySpace users’ profiles.

9. Social Networks: Presence (Creating Profile, Fan Page)
Public Relations, Customer Relations

United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome have frequently updated Facebook profiles. The Gavin Newsome staff have used Gavin Newsome’s profile active with news on Mayor Newsome’s upcoming events, videos of recent talks and even updates on his status message (to reflect his position on relevant news stories).

10. Wiki Collaboration
Customer Relations (Developer Community)

Wiki can be an interesting way of “crowdsourcing” a company’s help and support page or at the very least augmenting. Central Desktop, a project management SaaS tool, is one company that allows its users to contribute guides on new ways to use Central Desktop.

Related posts:

1. Moving Beyond Asking “What is the ROI of Social Media?” Countless publications and blogs, including this blog, have been dedicated...
2. Fitting in Social Media Marketing within the Agency For the past few months, I’ve been rethinking what it...

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Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion caused a stir in the SEO community last week by declaring that “SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media“, writing:

“I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

Having started this blog because I saw the increasingly link between SEO and Social Media, Steve and I are definitely on the opposite sides of the fence here. But, I think we can unite behind three central arguments:

1. We Marketers, Advertisers and PR People don’t make Social Media…
   What makes something viral or social is how involved the people get with the media. There are no such things as “Viral Vidoes” or “Social Networks” unless people use them. What we make has have to be interesting, authentic and worthy of being passed on to friends.
2. …But we can help encourage Social Media to happen easier.
   As PR, Marketers and SEO folks: our role is to only encourage “word of mouth” and social media participation, we cannot create it; that’s what “Social Media Optimization” is about. But to not to inform clients on the benefits of “Add to Del.icio.us links” or “Start a Blog to start a buzz” would be a failure of the part of the Agency. Of course, we must align tactics (Social Media) with goals (Building Community, Links) and the appropriateness (building real content people want to talk about) of the overall strategy.
3. Social Media and ROI: What do you tell the COO & CEO?
   In the end of the day, many clients ask “What’s the ROI on this?”. To say we’re going to use “Social Media to be part of the Community” will not cut it for many C-Level executives. Tell them that going long term on Social Media mans better SEO, Word of Mouth, Brand Awareness and Customer Service will make them listen.

Like Google Says: “The best way to create good links is to have good content”

A Google Ad: From Danny Sullivan’s Flickr Stream

As long as the SEO drive for “linkbait” (creating content to attract people to link back to the site) serves to create relevant and authentic Social Media content people will be interested in, the Community will benefit. The Community will quickly discern what’s worthy of being talked about, and what’s not. That’s the power of Word of Mouth and Social Media.

Read more on other points where I take a differing view from Steve:

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable
3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
Steve is worried about how every SEO person will join Del.icio.us, vote on StumbleUpon and start blogs and twitters in some vague hopes of getting more links and getting better SEO. SEO spam is a real danger, but Social Media already has it’s own problems.

Last year, TechCrunch featured an article entitled “The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos“, which basically walked through a process of how to game and spam YouTube for viral video marketing success:

“Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video.We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this)”

…Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment.”

What this shows is that Social Media has always been targeted by shady Social Media Marketers and has always been under the fear of someone trying to “game” Social Media for publicity, branding, eyeballs on videos and links for SEO. Sony’s fake blog called “All I want for Xmas is a P2P” comes to mind.

I think it is unfair to point a figure directly at SEO alone. This is a Social Media problem.

2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable

Far from what Steve calls a “disturbing trend”, SEO’s love of Social Media has existed at least since 2005 (if not earlier). SEOMoz was one of the first companies talking about linkbait back in 2005: “Rand, How do I make Link-Worthy Content?“, “When Money Can’t Buy You Link Love”Even Google has gotten into the act with declaring in a UK ad that : “The more people you have linking to your site, the better. And the bet way to create good links is to have good content”

In the end of 2006, Stefanie at the Google Webmaster Blog, write in “Building Link Based Popularity“:

“Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity: Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites. One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.”

3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

As I’ve written about in the past, SEO is no longer SEO. It is Website Positioning Strategy. As noted in the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Guidelines, high rankings in Google comes from strong relevancy: building content people want to view and content people want to link to.

The more strategic goal of SEO is then the same as Social Media:

• Building an online presence (website to blog to ecommerce shop) with the Community in mind
• Building relevant content your audience wants
• Understanding how you can participate in that desired community
• Be present where ever your potential customers are: optimize for being on Yelp.com, Flickr.com – not just Google.com
• Making your website “optimized” for conversion: make it as easy as possible for visitors to buy, register etc
• Optimize your site to be portable, linkable, “mash-up able” with Social Media Optimization

Basically, the above asks “Can you build an online presence that is open, relevant and active in the community you want to be belong to”. If you can do the above, you will naturally be a strong leader in building an online brand, brand awareness, customer satisfaction and SEO.

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SEO is Dead! Well, maybe your Google SEO

Why is SEO important? Because the majority of people search on the Internet to find things…reviews, contact numbers, shopping etc. But what is Search? Google? Yahoo?

If you’re search engine optimization campaign is targeting Google, then what are you doing about the “searches” on Del.icio.us, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Yelp, Wikipedia, Oodle and even Digg? Maybe those searches are not for the mainstream (yet), but it maybe where the Linkerati, the savvy “Influencers”, go?

Is your SEO really just “Google Search Optimization”? Have you brainstormed with your marketing team to see if your company, product and/or service needs to do more?

The Linkerati: Where Are They?

Rand Fishkin has made much about how SEO folks need to make sure their linkbait (and ditto for Viral/WoM campaigns) needs to cater to the Linkerati audience, the savvy online influencers who create and forward content.

But moving beyond finding what appeals to the Linkerati, is the need to find out where are they online, We need to diversify our thinking on 1) how where/how they create content; and 2) how they find content.

Recently, ValleyWag noted that while the number of active blogs tracked by Technorati has stagnated “personal publishing is still growing, but the fastest growth is occurring on social media properties”, such as MySpace, Digg, Yelp, and Twitter. Indeed, a recent study suggests that “40% of all social networkers said they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products that they like”.

Questions to Ask:

1. Where are my customers? Who are the influencers within those circles?
2. Where do they search?
   (Do they search on Yelp, Technorati, Digg or Del.icio.us?)
3. Have I distributed my content there?
   (E.g. Placement of Yelp, Blog on Technorati, Content on Digg, Bookmarked on Del.icio.us)
4. Is it searchable? Or, simply, Findable? Is it “optimized”?

Counter Point: Who needs the Linkerati? Web-2-What and Big Seed Marketing.

There is the question of how important the Linkerati crowd is in shear physical numbers and how important the Linkerati and influencers are in general.

In May’s Harvard Business review, Duncan Watts and Jonah Pertti proposed the idea of “big-seed marketing” as opposed to “Influencer”-based viral marketing, which:

combines viral-marketing tools with old-fashioned mass media in a way that yields far more predictable results than “purely” viral approaches like word-of-mouth marketing.
…
big-seed marketing harnesses the power of large numbers of ordinary people, its success does not depend on influentials or on any other special individuals; thus, managers can dispense with the probably fruitless exercise of predicting how, or through whom, contagious ideas will spread.

The Tiny Linkerati

According to a Pew Internet May 6 study, 49% of the US audience are those that have “few “tech assets” and limited use of technology”. The survey goes on to show how little of the US audience are among the Web 2.0 Internet savvy. They are so little of them. Is it worth the effort on being on Yelp, Twitter, Digg, MySpace etc to appeal to them?

Of Course, It Depends

It is important to understand that you can create online marketing success without getting caught in the buzz about about “influencers” or the Linkerati. It depends what market your client and your customers are in. Of course, innovation carries risk – but this is not to forsake the long-hanging fruit for risk taking and vice-versa. You need both.

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Update: Fixed MS Word HTML issue. Thanks to Jake for letting me know.
Search Engine Optimization or Strategic Website Positioning?

Search marketing veterans have seen the shift of SEO tactics moving from keyword density and page title optimization to the leveraging of PR-like tactics to conduct link-building (building rankings by having others link to your website) and to now even more complex strategies. At this point is SEO still SEO or has it outgrown that name? Maybe it is time to look at the idea of “Strategic Website Positioning”?

The maturing of the SEO industry has resulted in many changes. The top four has been 1) the further integration of PR-ish tactics like “linkbaiting”; 2) the embrace of social media in social media marketing; 3) changing the metrics from rankings and to relevant traffic and conversion; and 4) thinking about usability and conversion optimization, not just search traffic generation.

All of these new changes will be unfamiliar to someone from the early days of SEO, which mostly concerned itself with placing important keyword on the webpages.

What Does Strategic Website Positioning Mean?

The Working Definition

The idea behind “Strategic Website Positioning” is not original. Businesses create websites with considerations of what the website should be to their targeted audience.

The idea of Strategic Website Positioning is to think of search marketing (organic SEO and PPC), social media marketing and website development as an integrated approach, by asking questions centered around:

• How is your website’s content, structure and usability fit with the intent of your audience?
• How does your website “fit” in how people search (one-box searches on Google/Yahoo, Technorati, Oodle, vertical search engines)?
• How is your website positioned in Social Media Community? How do you want to participate?

From this we can build further questions…

Community Positioning

• “What are similar people tagging (or perhaps tagging with similar words) – Del.icio.us and Google Search History” (SEOBook)
• “What are similar people reading? (Via My Yahoo! or Google Reader or MyBlogLog) – Graywolf recently highlighted how MyBlogLog can use your readers to show what community your site is in” (SEOBook)
• “What words are associated with your brand or site? What sites are associated with those words? What searcher intent is associated with those words? What else are they searching for?” (SEOBook)
• What Terms Are Your Competitors Using? On their website, on their copy, on their AdWords campaigns?

Content Building based on Community Positioning

Building on the above, but including:

• Content Funneling (See Emergence-Media on “Building Content for Branded and Non-Branded Search“)
  How is your website catering to your target audience in general product research, comparative shopping and purchasing mode? How can you be considered an authoritative source for each?
• What is the approach on new sources on online content like blogs and widgets?

Social Media Assessment

• How Visible are You in Social Media Websites?
  How “popular” are you online? Do reputation management? See how communities, blogs, reviews and del.icio.us describe your website?
• How do you want to Participate in Social Media Websites?
  Do video promotions? Community building? Virals? Podcasting?

Search Engine Positioning

• Getting on One-Box Search (See Google on Travel searches, Website Searches)
  Are you using Google Base to get listed on Google’s Real-Estate Seach?
• Getting on Vertical Search like Technorati, Oodle, Kayak, *Shopping Search Engines*
  Beyond the big search engines Google/Yahoo/MSN/Ask, what about the specialized vertical search engines?

Greater Marketing/MarComm/PR Integration

• Sharing “Keywords” Knowledge:
  Does some department have consumer studies on what words people use to describe your product?
• Integrating Offline Ads with Search:
  What’s your slogan, hook, that song playing in the background of your commercial. Is that integrated into your search strategy?

Conclusion: SEO Needs a Conceptual Reset and Reboot

I could go on and on, on the list above. They are not hard and fast categories, but they are the type of questions that need to be asked. They maybe best laid out in a mindmap (see Emergence Media’s SEO Mindmap from last year).

There are many folks trying to tackle what the new SEO exactly is. Todd Mailcoat has placed it forward as “New School SEO”, pointing to various other tactics that beyond traditional SEO: Social Media Marketing, Video Promotion, Community Participation et cetera. Aaron Wall has looked at the community (a more precise type of link authority and PageRank) as the next possible area where more search engines will determine relevancy.

Whatever it is, conceptual we need to rethink how we think of SEO. It’s not just about using WordTracker to do keyword research anymore, so our frame of thought has to change too. “Strategic Website Positioning” is an attempt to reset that thought. Once we figure what exactly SEO will be, there comes the next step: How do we explain it to our clients?

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Recently my co-worker, Kevin Reyes, and I had discussions on the differences between SEO Linkbaiting and Online Word-of-Mouth Campaigns. Credit goes to Kevin Reyes for bringing this up as a blog post.

So what is the difference between SEO Linkbait and an Online WoM Campaign? True, they are not mutually exclusive to each other. But, how do we explain the differences that define WoM and Linkbait to a client?

Let’s start with definition and examples with SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” versus  Microsoft’s Clearification campaign.

• Linkbait: SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards“

Definition of Link Bait
Online activities, usually placed on a single website, used to “bait” its viewers to generate buzz and links from other websites. The main goal is generate a large number of links to the website to increase organic rankings.

Example: SEOMoz’s Web 2.0 Awards
Starting last year, SEOMoz has conducted a best of web 2.0 awards, judging a dozens (100s?) of web 2.0 sites in various categories from web 2.0 bookmarks to games.

SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” has helped propel SEOMoz to the top #5 ranking for “Web 2.0″ in Google. It has over 1,300 links to it at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0.

• Online Word of Mouth: Microsoft’s “Clearification.com“

Definition of Online Word of Mouth
Activities used to generate personal online recommendations and/or referrals regarding a company’s brand, products and/or services.

Example: Micorsoft’s “Clearficiation”
Leading up to the launch of Microsoft Vista, Microsoft’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, along with Mekanism worked with the comedian Demetri Martin to create Clearification, a website that offers a series of webisodes featuring Demetri Martin.

Clearification is interesting in that there is no direct pitch or branding of Microsoft on the website and it entirely focused on Demetri Martin’s hipster (for the lack of a better term) sense of humor. News of Clearification filtered through blogs

So what’s the difference between Web 2.0 Awards and Clearification.com

• Difference on the Strategic Level:
  Linkbait’s main goal is to use buzz to generate links to a website that one wants to rank well, where as, online Word of Mouth is more about generally generating online buzz about the company and its products and/or services. Linkbait finds success when it lands on Digg’s frontpage, but word-of-mouth needs more than that. 

  Commentary:
  Sure both strategies, done properly, generate links. But there is an important difference of degree: linkbaiting can be as simple as offering a free tool, informative article etc whereas “Word of Mouth campaign” usually implies a far larger production, involving mini-sites, savvy creative…the works.

• Difference on the Tactical Level:
  Website Location:
  Microsoft’s Clearification is located on Clearification.com, not Microsoft.com. So any links generated due to buzz will mostly point to Clearification, not Microsoft.   

  Does this mean if Clearification could be linkbait if it was hosted at http://Microsoft.com/Clearification, not http://clearification.com/?

  Relevancy of the Link Building:
  Propelled by links to its “Web 2.0 Awards” webpage, SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” campaign has helped search engines associate “Web 2.0″ with SEOMoz.org. Indeed, the term “Web 2.0″ places SEOMoz in the #5 in Google. What benefit would Microsoft be if Microsoft.com showed up as #5 for a search for Clearification?

  Microsoft is happy with any buzz and links to Clearification. They are probably more interested in traffic numbers than what ranks how well for what.

Conclusion
All in all, the differences seem subtle, especially at the strategic level. At the strategic level there is a large difference in perception (right or wrong) on what it takes to get a word-of-mouth campaign going versus linkbaiting. Additionally, these strategic differences are more visibly shapened when followed through on to the tactical level.

However, this is not to say that Linkbaiting and Word-of-Mouth campaign are mutually exclusive. Indeed, a properly executed and well-positioned WoM campaign can easily fulfill the requirements of a linkbait campaign.

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