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When I first started investigating social media my only interest in it was for Link Building

I know most of you are not aware that there is anything wrong with Link Spam. This post is non judgmental.

The reason you aren’t aware of Link Spam is because, like me, you were only interested in Getting Your Message Out… you used social media the way most newspapers are using it: as a one way medium.

You post, well that’s what you tell yourself you’re doing… what you are doing is ad blasting. You’re so proud of yourself… it’s working

(well it appears to be working)

Social Media is NOT a replacement for SEO (search engine optimization)

You signed up for dozens, if not hundreds of social networks, it was no easy feat (it certainly was time consuming) you EARNED it. You’re a “glass is half full kinda person, you reframed that time spent as time well invested (it was).

So now, with a little 140 character to 350 character blurb (complete with a target url) you can press one button and an entire chain reaction of social networks is blasting YOUR message all over God’s Creation.

It is… gotta couple of quick questions for you:

Is anyone actually reading your stuff?

Do you unfollow someone who pounds you over the head incessantly with an offer you know you aren’t interested in?

Do you stay subscribed to dozens, perhaps hundreds of “friends” and “followers” only to ignore almost all of them?

Are you answering your twitter? (Did you even know you *could* answer it?)

Our local Frederick Maryland newspaper The Frederick News Post sends out twitter tweets… one way Ditto for the Washington Post

They both have Direct Message turned off, Why?

Is YOUR direct message turned off?

I’m fully aware you didn’t set out to do this… no one “tries to be an a**hole”

Here’s how it happened:

You signed up for a social network… it was cool, your friends there said “hey come sign up for this one, and that one”, before you knew it you were signed up for a bunch of em. Then it occurs to you that you can monetize this, you always wanted to start a business, with social media the entrance level is MUCH easier to meet.

When’s the last time you actually replied to an incoming direct message? Or a blog comment? Or an email for that matter (OK, you did see that one)

Social Media is not a replacement for Effective SEO
In untrained hands, social media can effectively blast your company url all over God’s creation: that is not effective SEO. While it gets your link out there it’s also link dumping (1)

Getting Eyeballs on your site
Eyeballs on your site beats no eyeballs on your site, but if you’re going to get any real traction, you’ve got to keep the followers you get to follow. If I had all the twitter followers who followed and quickly unfollowed I’d have tens of thousands of followers by now.

Redefining Effective Use of Social Media
To use *a* social media property, one tool at a time is not going to get near as many eyeballs on your site as if you hook them together using an aggregator.  The graphic below depicts how to do this and it will “get eyeballs on your site” but will they buy anything?

Then there is Google’s consideration of a bounce rate (2)…

What this does is get tons of people exposed to your message, for a few seconds… long enough for them to see that you aren’t really going to join their MLM or that you weren’t what they thought you might be.

If you post to Stumbleupon and immediately get 100 “page views” to your post, look again, look at your Google Analytics report: of the 100 you might get 4 that stayed on your site for more than 12 seconds.

Does a 12 second visit constitute a “real visitor”?

If someone clicks and clicks away in less than 30 seconds, were they going to buy anything?

Participation (Follow Me On Twitter)

Participation is what makes a blog, a blog.

Participation is the sole reason Google favors blogs over static websites.

In case you are one of the people who don’t “get it” a blog will beat the living hell out of a static website in Google ranking everyday (assuming both are new sites). A static website has ZERO chance of outranking a blog.

If you are attempting to compete against an existing website that already has Google trust, and you keep hammering away with a blog, you will rank right next to that competitor… for as long as you post. Stop posting and you disappear.

What makes social media effective is the two way participation, that IS the reason Google favors them.  No participation and you’ve turned a blog into a static website.

So I’m doing my penance. I’m unhooking my twitter from most of the networks illustrated in the graphic

When I first started using Social Media I kept finding web 2.0 properties that allowed, even encouraged posting to my personal Facebook Profile, my wall.  I learned that according to Facebook’s terms of service our personal profiles are not to be used for commercial purposes, that’s what a Company Facebook Page is for.

This flow chart of how to integrate your participation of social media to maximize your company or your brand image in the public eye.

But I signed up for everything under the sun! When I post to one, I post to a half dozen or more.

End result?

My personal Facebook profile gets all my tweets in stereo or triplicate. Effectively making many friends ignore my posts (unless of course they have a vested interest in the services I offer: Local Search Ranking for brick n mortar small businesses)

So here is my effort to sin no more.

I want people to tweet me as if it were my telephone.
Tweet Me, I’ll respond

I want people to post to my Facebook Fan Page Wall.

I want participation, that means I’m going to have to go to almost full time moderating my pages to keep the MLM offers or googleads posts or forex offers from filling up my sites.

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1) Link spam (wikipedia definition)

Brian D. Davison, associate professor at Lehigh University, defines link spam (which he calls “nepotistic links”) as “… links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.”

Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google’s PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it.

2) Bounce Rate

From Google’s Help Section:

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Tagged as: answer the twitter, bounce rate, link dumping, link spam, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social media seo