How do you do Social and Viral Media Marketing? – My Cole's notes from SMX 07

I just got back form Danny Sullivan’s SMX Advanced and one of the presentations was of particular interest to me – SEO meet SMM.

Basically the track was about leveraging social marketing and viral marketing to build links and manage your reputation. It was an excellent session. I’m not going to try and recreate the wheel here, these are my cole’s notes and here is some link love for the the guys who are responsible for my notes. ie: the credit should go to Rand Fiskin and Neil Patel – presenters. (you can download their PPT slides using the links at the bottom).

We love SMM – there is a lot of buzz right now, and we don’t expect it to change, so get involved…

What is Socail Media Marketing?
Creating Profiles on “Web 2.0” Sites
Building Friends & Relationships in the Blogosphere
Building Links through Free-to-Create Profiles
Controlling Your Brand by Protecting Names at Popular Portals
Reputation Management – Swarming the SERPs

Why do you do Social Media Marketing
Rule the SERPs
Control Your Brand
Get Link Love
Show the Community You’re a Participant
Get Traffic
Influence Traditional Media

Social media marketing website
1. YouTube
2. Wikipedia
3. Yahoo Answers
4. Yelp
5. LinkedIn
6. Amazon Blogs
7. MySpace
8. Technorati
9. Judy’s Book
10. Newsvine
11. CitySearch
12. WikiHow
13. FaceBook

Viral marketing websites
1. Digg
2. Reddit
3. StumbleUpon
4. Del.icio.us
5. Netscape Anchors Recommended
6. TechCrunch
7. Boing Boing
8. Fark
9. engadget
10. Newsvine
11. Techmeme
12. Lifehacker
13. Yahoo Picks

Strategy:
1. Build a brand you can leverage . (hint – why not get a younger, tech savvy female involved – I bet the rest of the 20 something guys would love it)
2. Add tons of friends
3. Become a top user
4. Participate
5. Use their features against them (their tools give you the ability to network so network).

Hints:
Do what is ethical
Don’t jeopardize your brand
Think long term
Add information first – links second

Keys to success on digg‘s algorithm
Number of votes
Time
Voters
Submitter
Friends

Track our buzz or success using a tool like http://www.serph.com/

Download Rand’s PPT Neil’s PPT here.