For social media marketing, you need a group of friends. He has several hundred friends on MSN Messenger that he leverages. Guillaume defines social bookmarking as a way to allow Internet users to store, organize, search, and, most importantly, share bookmarks. Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Furl are examples of popular social bookmarking sites. Within social bookmarking there is tagging, which is the “web 2.0” way to say “keyword.” Tagging helps you to organize and categorize content. Popular tagging websites include Flickr and Technorati.
The benefits of social bookmarking are that it helps your site index better in search engines, it achieves a high amount of natural incoming links, it creates a presence in online social communities, increases brand awareness, builds traffic from alternate sources, and influences traditional media.
He provides some tips on how to tag effectively. Check how other people are tagging the sites you like and want to remember. When in doubt, pick the most relevant or popular tag in the tag clouds. Avoid separating your tags with commas. Get together with your friends and collaborate on how to match up your tagging efforts.
Next, Guillaume talks about manual vs. automatic tagging. Manual tagging maintains a presence on the web for several years (through hyperlinks, anchor text, and keywords). You can create your own set of tags to represent your content. Manual tagging works best with images and encourages high participation due to personalization. Examples of manual tagging include de.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Automatic tagging is an algorithmic system that extracts tags from the content. There’s a lack of creativity from a human standpoint. An example of auto tagging is Facebook.
Problems with tagging include abuse and content degradation. As social bookmarking and tagging sites become more mainstream, the added incentive for manipulation will result in decreasingly reliable content (unless the algorithms get smarter).
Guillaume does a quick overview of various tagging sites. He begins with Technorati and later discusses Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook. He finishes with some Beatles references that get some chuckles.
Michael Gray is up next. He’s focusing his presentation on del.icio.us. He defines del.icio.us and dissects a bookmark on the site. Different people interpret your page in different ways, which gives you clues about what people think are important. The advantage of common tags is that they can give you an idea of a tag for that page that you hadn’t thought of. Posting history identifies the people who have bookmarked your page. This is important because people who bookmark first may be industry leaders, which is why they’re discovering the content.
You can get social on del.icio.us by adding friends to your network. You also have the ability to subscribe to certain tags on del.icio.us. If you’re interested in travel, for example, you can subscribe to the “travel” tag and keep track of those related stories. You can also share links with your friends.
The del.icio.us home page changes more frequently than the popular page. You get screenshots of the featured pages on the home page, how many people are bookmarking the pages, and all the different tags being used. The advantage of del.icio.us over Digg is that Digg is a young male, tech-centered audience, whereas del.icio.us is more worldwide and embraced as general use. You can have non-tech-related success on del.icio.us.
What’s interesting about del.icio.us tags is that there is no wrong tag. It’s all about what makes sense to you. As a marketer, you want to find the tag that most people are using (singular vs. plural, for example). Spacing can be an issue–the most common thing Michael sees is people will separate two words with a plus sign (e.g. “new+york+city”).
Michael touches base on what tag clouds are (the ones that are bigger are more popular, while the ones in red are those that Michael has used). To expand your exposure, identify tags that are popular and active and tailor your content to fit into those tags. Add bookmarking widgets and buttons to your pages, and be sure to enhance the bookmarking with optimal titles, timing, and tagging.
Time your bookmarking efforts to take advantage of update times (the del.icio.us Popular page is updated about every four hours), and use your friends to help influence the suggested tags. Don’t create multiple accounts, as they can get discounted.
Lastly, Neil Patel is up once again to talk about how to leverage StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon doesn’t really get you links, but it does drive lots of steady traffic. You won’t get 12,000 visitors in one day, but you will get a nice, ongoing stream, which provides a great branding opportunity.
Step one is to install the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you like a page, thumb it up; if not, thumb it down. After you’ve created an account and installed the toolbar, add lots of friends. Step 3 is to submit new sites. Titles aren’t that important since users are just getting a random piece of content. Neil recommends adding keywords that are rich in search to your title. Step 4 is to leverage your friends. Use the “Send To” feature and send a message to all of them by saying “Hey, check out this new site.” Your friends will see a little “(1)” next to their Stumble icon, so they have to visit your page before they can start stumbling. Step 5 is that your friends will have to see your page and will probably thumb up the content. It’s *technically* not spam because it’s a feature StumbleUpon has provided, so you’re just taking advantage of it.
Q&A time. I’m going to drink more water. (By the way, more SMX coverage is available at SERoundtable and Search Engine Land.)
