How To Effectively Leverage Socia Media?
By Nick at 26 May, 2007, 8:23 pm
I was browing through Craigslist looking for freelance web projects when I came across an ad. This person was looking to create a MySpace page so that she could blog about real estate trends, investment, etc.
She said that she needed someone to create an image and profile and marketing effort setting up and maintaining a MySpace page. She claims to be a 30 yr old female, former model now in commercial real estate in New York City trying to get more clients and business. She wants a photo section obviously but also wants to have a Realty Blog section where she can talk about real estate trends, real estate investing, forecasts, recent deal signings, dealmakers, etc that will help her get more business. Basically she is trying to get alot of exposure and more clients.
As I gave this some thought, I responded to her ad with my thoughts on how to effectively utilize social media after thinking about what search engine marketing really is.
Some of the naive people continue to think that seo and search engine marketing are two completely different animals, when in fact, SEO is really a part of SEM. To better help you explain this, take a piece of paper and draw three circles in a triangular pattern. Have one circle at the top, and two circles at the bottom. In the top circle, write in SEM. In the bottom two circles, write in SEO and PPC respectively. What this simple diagram shows is that search engine marketing consists of two categories: search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the free, organic links, while Pay-per-click are the paid links. Being ranked in the organic search results has much more value than pay-per-click since most of the clicks come from the organic listings.
I began to tell her that she should start a blog as a standalone brand with its own optimized domain name. To find an optimized domain name, begin thinking about what you want your blog to be about. In this example it would be about real estate investing. Do a check in Overture to see how many searches your targeted keyphrase is attracting. Next, type that phrase into Google with the quotes around it to see how many competing pages are presented. By using quotes, you asking Google to show only those pages that exactly match your keyphrase. This is your primary competition. To be effective at ranking, the number of competing pages should be less than 1,500.
After you have chosen your targeted key phrase and registered it as a domain name, you can create a MySpace profile page that is very simple and basic. Download FriendBlasterPro and use it to find and add friends to your friend list. Next, create a group on MySpace. If you are into real estate, then call the discussion group “Real Estate Investing for Beginners.” Since the audience at MySpace are typically twenty-somethings, you can then tailor this group discussion to the twenty-something crowd that exists on MySpace that interested in real estate.
You can do the same thing by creating a Ryze account. The audience on Ryze is effectively working professionals; so you can create a group also titled “Real Estate Investing.” However, the discussion needs to be tailored towards the working professional since the majority of users on Ryze are working or mid-career professionals. There is one thing to note. To create a group on Ryze, you must upgrade to at least the Gold Membership. The free account does not allow you to create groups.
So if you are a real estate professional looking to establish a web presence, here you have two target markets: the twenty-somethings and the mid-career working professional. By conducting and moderating these group discussions on these two communities, it will expose your blog as a standalone brand and strengthen it; allowing you to be seen as an expert in this area.
Since MySpace and Ryze are both trusted sites in the eyes of Google, this can allow you to effectively use social media to promote your websites, thus increasing your rankings as a result. You will also have incoming links coming from trusted sites that will be related to your blog. When link building, you want to stay away from reciprocal linking since Google is beginning to discount these types of links. Creating discussion forums on sites such as MySpace and Ryze and dropping a link to your web site is a more effective way of link building and using social media.
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You know using software to add friends violates MySpace use of terms? All the work you’ve done could be undone if they delete your account.
Social media works better for some businesses than others. Blogging on their website would be better than on MySpace. Why build the MySpace brand when they should be building their own. I wrote an article about that about a week or so ago.
Are You Promoting MySpace or Yourself?