E-mail and social media work great together for marketing your website.

Whenever you are researching how to start and run an Internet business, you should include research into integrating your business with social network sites. There are many ways these sites enhance your email marketing campaign and drive traffic directly to your site.

Once you get your business website going, you should also link in with sites such as the ones mentioned above. While it is true that the social sites such as Facebook and MySpace are less formal, you should still set up your page and profile with the same level of professionalism as your site.

You can use these sites to promote brand recognition and loyalty, which is the main reason why you want to stick with a more professional appearance. You want your customers to recognize you and your products.

Social networking sites give you a level of insight into your customers which has never been available before now. Not only can you get immediate feedback from them, but you can also respond just as immediately to that feedback. On these sites you have the opportunity to directly interact with them.

Once you establish a good customer base, those customers will help you spread the word via these sites. When you have a good “fan base” established, you will see how these sites drive traffic to your website and get more people to sign up to receive your emails.

Speaking of emails, remember your autoresponder tool? Your autoresponder is one of the best tools that you have available to you. Once you have driven traffic from social networking sites to your company website, they have come because they are interested in your product or service. If they choose to sign up to receive your information, they will still need to choose what they want to receive from you. Your autoresponder handles this for you.

It can send them a special welcome greeting thanking them for their interest. These greetings are no longer bland text format. Nowadays you can send them welcome videos with personally recorded messages.

You can also use networking sites for other email marketing such as press releases. These sites have newsfeeds on which you can let your customers – and any one of their friends who can see those newsfeeds – know about any new information you have coming out.

These are just a few ways that social networking sites and email marketing campaigns can work together. So don’t choose one or the other when you can both.

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

How To Make Websites Work With Social Networking Sites is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Twitter has become an important communications tool. Here are some tips to optimize your tweets.

Who would have thought? I have to admit that when Twitter was first launched, I was one of those folks who thought it was downright silly. Who cares that you’re sitting in a coffee shop texting a 140 character status report? Sheesh. Bound to disappear in a few months…

Wow, was I ever wrong. Twitter has taken the world by storm, providing communications for everything from patriots in repressed regimes to emergency information services. And, yes, you’ve still got those nerds tweeting about sipping a latte at Starbucks, too. Oh, well…

Twitter has been a natural magnet for SEOs and Internet marketing tweeple, er, people.  Twitter allows an unprecidented way for an individual or company to get immediate insight from around the world, allow you to break out of your social group (follow friends of friends, industry leaders), grow your channel of distribution and build your brand.

Here’s a list of twips, er, uh, tips to make your tweeting twouble fwee, ah, er, uh, trouble free!

• Don’t follow every conversation. It will drive you nuts. Be selective, but participate. Jump in and out of conversations.
• Incorporate “Tweet This” functionality on your landing pages to encourage, well, tweets! For WordPress blogs, check out the plugin appropriately named Tweet This.
• Ask questions. There’s no better way to get started, make friends and become known.
• Answer questions. Let others know that you are an authority. This is particularly great for companies.
• Bring attention to others, not just yourself. Keep self promotion to a minimum.
• Answer all of your direct messages (DM) and replies (@).
• Tweet brief information that is not worthy of a full blog post, but valuable information nonetheless.
• Tweet regularly, but not too often. Think value, not volume, just like with links in SEO.
• Drop links to valuable sites and information.
• Reweet good stuff. This can be really powerful and can become viral.
• When someone retweets you, thank them.
• Seek out and engage people who retweet in your industry.
• Keep your tweets to about 120 characters to allow room for retweets.
• Tweet with care. Remember, once you tweet something, it’s out there and can’t be deleted.
• Follow folks who you might want to direct message (DM). You can only DM with folks you follow back.
• Follow @spam. This is where you can report spammers by DM. @spam will follow you back.
• Be personable. Even if you are using Twitter for a company profile, make it appear there is a person there, not an autoresponder.

And, chances are you will find yourself monitoring multiple Twitter accounts. Check out the Twhirl client, my current favorite. Not only does it handle several accounts, you can set it up to auto update Ping.fm and Jaiku with your tweets.  Seesmic offers the Seesmic Desktop client, too, which now interfaces with Facebook. And, a lot of folks swear by TweetDeck. Check them out. They’re fwee, uh, FREE!

Read more SEO 101 articles in the SEO Training category of this blog.

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

SEO 101: Twitter Twips, uh, Tips for Tweeps is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

SEO and Social Media optimization are pretty much integrated these days.

As promised, though delayed a bit, here is the follow-up to SEO & Social Media Integration with some tips for optimizing your social media and integrating it into your overall SEO mix. Naturally, the more social links you have, the more you’ll be noticed (Hey, I’m here!) and linked to and crawled, natural SEO in any book.

• Complete your profiles and put your web site or blog URL in ALL of your profiles. Including your web site link should be a no brainer, but LOTS of folks forget this. Social content is definitely showing up in search results. For instance, a search for my name in Google comes up with several of my profiles (LinkedIn, WebPro News, Plaxo, etc.)  as I write this. Include jobs, use keywords, never turn down interview or podcast opportunities that can be included.
• Check industry trends through services like Google Alerts. Jump into breaking subjects with blog and social media posts.
• Promote blogs, social media and RSS feeds of those who link to you through your own RSS feeds. This has a viral effect that sends more links to you.
• Develop a series of “How to” videos and post them on video sites like YouTube (now 25% of Google searches). People LOVE these and will embed the videos or link to them. Post them on your own blog and in the social sites, too.
• Content is king on Twitter, just like in standard, run of the mill SEO, so use keywords and hashtags (like the #bsg tag for Battlestar Galactica fans).
• Utilize Facebook fan pages. These can have unlimited followers and can be optimized.
• Subscriptions are gold! Social Media Content = Subscriptions + Links!
• Transcribe your podcasts and post them on your blog.  Include keywords and links.
• Create widgets that will pull your RSS feeds from blogs, social media and news feeds. As a rule, links in RSS feeds are direct links without redirection or the dreaded “nofollow” tag!
• Re-optimize blog posts after their “shelf” life. Rework them and monetize them for breaking subjects. Any given blog post URL or page has history and links, so update them to keep current, ranking and posted in the social media.

OK, as always, these just scratch the surface, but you can see the optimizing for SEO and social media are pretty much one and the same these days. What you do with one totally effects the other.  Anyone who thinks they can be an SEO and ignore social media is, well, NOT an SEO.

Next up: Optimization for Social Media Integration: News

Optimization for Social Media Integration is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Take a look at the following and see what you think:

• Create great content, including articles
• On page optimization
• Links from authority sites
• Get content on industry sites, providing contextual links
• Get noticed in Social Media
• Get noticed in search
• Get into niche sites

Sounds like the basics of SEO, right? Well, these apply to Social Media, too. Any SEOs out there who are still avoiding the Social Media bandwagon are, well, stuck at the bus stop without a token.

Social Media and search engine optimization have become so integrated that you can’t really separate them anymore. Social sites like Twitter, which many of us laughed at when it first came out, are pushing a revolutionary shift in how information is found on the Internet because they add interaction and community to the equation. In addition to the basics above, they throw in features like:

• Participation
• Voting
• Comments
• Friends
• Trust

That last one, Trust, is a BIG one. Social sites are working more like search engines these days and there’s a huge difference between they way they dish out results and the way the search engines do. The social sites look at what your friends think about a subject and their results are based on that. You trust your friends, right? A perfect example is Twitter search. It’s based on tweets from folks you can check out and follow or who can follow you. And, look out Google, it’s really fast! And, it’s immediate. You can catch what is happening right now. Wanna see what the fans of Battlestar Galactica are tweeting? Check it out in real time (Or, if you’re a real Twit, check out by the hash tag #bsg).

The search engines dish out results based on the trust of folks you don’t know (PageRank, back links etc.).

Which begs the question, will trust kill the algorithm?

So, think of Social Media sites more like search engines that can help your visibility in, well, search engines.

Confused?

Don’t be. It’s simple. The more social links you have, the more you’ll be noticed and linked to and crawled. It works pretty much the same way as SEO.

Next, Optimization for Social Media Integration. Look for this post soon!

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

SEO & Social Media Integration is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

There’s one thing that I can say about search engine optimization (SEO) today – it’s not for the faint of heart.

Anyone in the trenches these days knows that SEO left the era of tweaking title and meta tags a long time ago. With universal search, personalized search, social media, a global economy and a little thing called Twitter (who would have guessed?), keeping on top of things on a daily basis takes almost Kryptonian endurance.

Rather than going the way of the bell bottom, SEO continues to grow and expand into previously unknown territories, adapting with each. Anyone who says SEO is dead must be hiding in a cave waiting for the economy to revive. Those of us not hiding and continuing to fight the fight know that, if anything, SEOs are busier than ever in this economy, some even passing up business because they can’t handle any more work.

What’s keeping them so busy?

1. Personalized search – If you haven’t noticed, traditional ranking reports are dead because what I see as a search result in Palm Springs can be totally different from what you might see in New York City. Personalized search can follow you around by IP address and dish out a focused localized result. And, get this, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE LOGGED IN for Google to do this.
2. The Mobile web – Everything is going mobile. That iPhone or other smart phone that you carry around means the web is becoming more integrated into your life on both personal and professional levels. This means content for the mobile web needs to be developed to stay in front of the consumer. This can be in forms like widgets, listings on mobile maps and even visibility on Twitter, which is very popular on mobile devices.
3. Social Media – Need I say more? The exploding popularity of Facebook, LinkedIn and, again, Twitter, means that opportunities to optimize and create content for these social markets are exploding as well.  Create social media link bait in many forms – content, video, badges, widgets, etc. And, remember, what was once the playground of the young is maturing. Older folks have joined in, too, so don’t think your target audience is made up of all kids.
4. Local search – National and international chains are filling the local search space, so if you are a small guy, you need to claim your spot fast! Local search is HOT! Get your clients in there while you can and fill their listings with great content, links, images and video.
5. Globalization – For all of the talk of local search optimization, the global market can’t be ignored and isn’t, so if you have a site that is ripe for a global market, get with it because your competition will definitely jump in. Keep in mind that globalization requires a form of localization. To reach a market in another country, you can’t just translate your site without keeping local vernacular and customs in mind.
6. Transportability – Is your content available in multiple formats – PDF, widget, video, etc. that can be given away and posted on other sites? If not, you’re missing out on a great opportunity for branding and linking. Everyone loves something free, especially rich media, so why not provide content that can be given away to benefit you? Besides, site visitors pretty much expect rich media and freebies these days.
7. Multiple listings – Universal search means that you can’t just create web pages anymore. Search results dish out images, video and rich media all at once, so to compete, you have to generate and optimize all of these as well. If you really want to dominate the first page of the search results with your web pages, blog postings, videos and images, SEOs now have to wear all of these hats.
8. Affiliates – With the increasing popularity of social media, these programs are on the rise. And, as mentioned above, as the mobile web takes off, affiliate offers will be right there with it, so building a solid affiliate network is essential.
9. Twitter - This microblogging site that many passed off as useless has become the darling of the search marketing world. If you don’t have a Twitter account for your business, get one. Although you are limited to 140 characters in your tweet, this free service has proven to be a boon to many online businesses for branding, customer service and just plain fun. Take a look at @zappos , the Twitter profile for the CEO of the online retailer Zappos. Nearly 300,000 followers tells you something in itself! Post updates, items of information, even your inventory as it updates, but don’t make it all promotional. What folks want is useful information.

Whew! And this doesn’t even mention the day to day optimization of a site (on page, content writing, architecture and all of that fun stuff).

So, how does one keep up with all of this? Naturally, you need to attend SEO conferences as often as the budget will allow. These are treasure troves of information that sometimes just can’t be found online (and the networking can be priceless). Also, subscribe to and read SEO news and information sites like Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land and Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal, among others.

On the home front, try to get SEO integrated into the production cycle. This can make things so much easier than going back to retrofit everything. Yes, I know, getting everyone on board with this can be a super human effort itself, so take off those glasses and grab your cape. Your best bet is to grit your teeth and be nice, even sickly sweet. Play well with others. Maybe they’ll get so sick of it they’ll beg you to stop if they do what you want!

Just joking.

Bottom line is that an SEO has to be more than an SEO these days, with expertise in rich media, social networking, affiliate marketing, mobile web, global optimization and search engines.

And growing…

SEO Today: Adapting and Evolving is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Guy Kawasaki of AllTop.com said he was late to blogging. First year was easy because he just regurgitated his existing content. Second year was tough. Third year he hit the wall. Then, he discovered Twitter.

“I was born to tweet!”

It took him a month or two to figure it out. At first, it was “what is this crap?” Only 140 characters?

Now he says, do you know how much better the world would be if all communications was limited to 140 characters?

“Twitter for me is a weapon to promote AllTop.com. I believe I have to tweet high value, very informative links so that people will tolerate my promotion of Alltop.”

Alltop.com is Kawasaki’s topic related “magazine” site.

The moment you go to search.twitter.com and search for yourself or company, you open yourself up to finding conversations, he says.

One of his favorite tools is Twitter Hawk which always looks for a string, drafts auto tweet and sends to persons looking for that string. Twitter Hawk records that it sent a tweet to a Twit and will not send to that person again. It also costs .05 each to send the tweets to help reduce spamming. Check it out at http://www.twitterhawk.com/ .

Isn’t this spamming?

“If I do it, it’s good marketing. If someone does it to me, it’s spam,” Guy says with a smile.

Another great utility he recommends is Tynt. With Tynt, you copy a line of javascript into you blog code. When someone copies text from your blog, an attribution link (your blog) shows up. Great for content theft because it drives traffic back to you and it provides a management console where you can see what is being copied. Check out http://www.Tynt.com .

And, Guy thinks that the more dumb an idea, the more likely it is to work, citing examples of ideas that sound so far out that they sound ridiculous, but are successful.

His current book is Reality Check and his web site is http://www.guykawasaki.com .

Guy Kawasaki at PubCon Austin is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Here’s how it works. They’ll Tweet “Contest is on. The first person to Tweet ‘I want my free sunglasses’ to @framesdirect is the winner of a new pair!” at any random time of day. Just follow them on Twitter and be the first to Tweet back the exact phrase “I want my free sunglasses” and you’ll be looking ever-so-cool before you know it in a pair of whatever sunglasses they give away for that particular contest. They’ll announce the winner in The Eye Zone blog (your name and city) and ship the new shades off in a jiffy!

That’s it. You’ll never know when they’ll announce the contest (at least once per month), so stay tuned!

As I write this, the contest is on for a pair of Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, so check it out!

Win Sunglasses on Twitter! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

1. Don’t go into it just for the links. You’ll get shot down by the community instantly. Social media is all about conversation and creating advocates for your brand, so share and engage in the conversation. Active conversations about specific topics attract passionate audiences.

2. Give your visitors a voice. Social media gives consumers some control and a voice. If your site doesn’t include a way for visitors to comment on or rate your content, you’ve got some work to do. A static web site that’s one-way (the visitor can only read it) won’t cut it anymore. Interactive sites are the norm these days, so you need to join the 21st century.

3. Join in on the top social activities. These are currently watching videos and sharing photos. In addition to posting and sharing on YouTube and Flickr, consider adding video and photo sharing to your own site, if appropriate, and create videos that can be shared (see Video Optimization). Just be careful with Flickr. They are cracking down on accounts set up by companies and deleting them. They only want personal use of their service.

4. Social media is NOT a substitute for SEO or PPC. Social media optimization must be integrated into your complete marketing plan.

5. Great customer service. This is a natural outlet to social media. Visitors can leave comments or questions on your site or on other sites like Facebook and you can respond. It is essential to monitor the various social outlets, not only to provide service, but to head off any problems or complaints before they build into something difficult to manage. Among the many tools that I use are Google Alerts and Tweetscan to send me alerts for Google and Twitter mentions.

6. Lock down branding. Combining SEO, PPC and social media can be great for this. Great rankings in the organics, advertising and social presence are a dynamite combination.

7. Grab your Twitter name. Twitter is incredibly powerful for weighting in the serps so use it! Just be sure to grab your name before someone else does!

8. Link to your profile pages. Make sure visitors can find your social site pages. Make your first weighted link to your profile pages a link from your company site.

9. Treat your YouTube videos just like HTML pages. In other words, give them a title, description, tags and make sure the very first thing in the description is the URL you want folks to land on.

10. Last but not least. If you don’t know where to start, go for videos and move on from there. In addition to YouTube, videos can be distributed and shared through Metacafe.com, Yahoo Videos and scores of others. Heck, even Flickr has video now.

Keep in mind that many of the top traffic sites these days are social media sites and that Web 2.0 is really about empowering users, not promoting you. And, take note that social search is different than web search because in social search, it’s about sourcing information from trusted people as opposed to general information that is dished out by a search engine.

Once further tip – using cloud tags can give you an idea of what is generating conversations as well as alert you to trends. I use one on my own blog, but there are a ton of other WordPress tag cloud plugins available.

Until my next list of inspirations, good Internet marketing!

Social Media Tactics is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

So, here are some of my observations for this amazing little communications device. You might also want to read my initial iPhone review or watch the iPhone review video.

For those of you who think that Apple products don’t know what the three-fingered-salute (that we Windows users have become so accustomed to) is, think again. The iPhone has locked up on me several times over the past few months. This really surprised me the first time, but the iPhone is, after all, a computer.

To do a hard boot to get the phone working again, there is a two-fingered salute. You press the sleep button at the top right of the phone and then the home button at the bottom for a few seconds. The iPhone will reboot and get back to business. One thing to keep in mind is that when the iPhone locks up, it keeps draining the battery. Mine apparently locked up after I ended a call one day and I didn’t notice until I got home a couple of hours later. I rebooted and found my battery almost dead.

Granted, it’s only two fingers for the iPhone. Guess that’s a little improvement.

There was also a period that I couldn’t get YouTube videos to play. I can only assume it had to do either with an Apple software update (they’re almost as frequent as Windows updates) or a side effect to doing the hard boot mentioned above. After a little research, I turned on Airplane Mode for 15 seconds then off again and, voila, the YouTube videos were playing once more!

I used this baby a lot at SMX West in Santa Clara. It was still pretty new to me then, so I was finding out what it could and couldn’t do well. For instance, I used the camera to take photos of the sessions. In good light and up close, the camera is really very good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do so well in low light and could certainly use a zoom function. I just couldn’t get close enough to most speakers for anything but distance shots.

But, what was really impressive was that as soon as I took a few photos, I could use the iPhone e-mail client to send them for instant posting to my Flickr account with titles and descriptions, while the session was going on! According to the SMX West conference site, I had the honor of posting the very first photos from the conference. They weren’t the best, mind you, just the first.

It became addictive. I found myself sitting up front in every session and address that I attended to grab some photos, send them to Flickr and then start writing my blog coverage on my laptop. I could get the article written, use the Flickr photos I had already uploaded to illustrate the article and be published within minutes, frequently right as the session ended. I started out as a journalist way back in the 1980s and I can tell you that this is a dream come true. Absolutely fantastic!

I could also Twitter quick notes out to my followers, including those subscribing to my blog RSS feed since I have the feeds connected. SMX West provided free WiFi so I had a good connection, but I could have still managed with the really slow Internet access provided by AT&T.

At home or on the road, I can catch up on my SEO feeds just about anywhere with the iPhone. Even without the rumored forthcoming broadband Internet access, I can pull up Google Reader in Safari and read the latest from my favorites like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and SearchNewz. You’ll see me sitting at many a coffee counter with my nose in my iPhone. For me, this is one of the handiest features.

And, I love the iTunes integration. I don’t buy a whole lot of music, but I am subscribed to a ton of SEO podcasts and listen to them religiously on those three-mile walks. I hate when The Daily Searchcast isn’t, well, daily! (Hope you’re reading this, Danny).

In a nutshell, the iPhone has become a very important part of my daily life. As I mentioned in my initial review, it’s not perfect. I’d still like a real keyboard, broadband Internet access and a way to share that access with my laptop when needed.

But, it’s one Hell of phone/iPod/camera/Internet appliance…well, you get the idea.

Living With My iPhone is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

It was magic. It was innovative. It was fun.

It had power! Thousands of musical artists and acts got their careers started with music videos and a lot of forgotten acts were rediscovered. For example, a simple weekend marathon of the old Monkees TV show resulted in the once trashed group getting together for what turned out to be the biggest summer tour of the year 1986. New records by the group, more reruns and the rebirth of a made-for-TV band followed.

But most of all, MTV was exciting!

That’s where I see social media today. Like MTV in the beginning, social media is all of the above with innovative features being rolled out right and left and the ability to connect with folks around the world 24 hours per day. It’s like magic!

But, again, most of all, it’s exciting!

And, it’s now a part of SEO, which some have also likened to magic.

Unlike MTV, which was one-way, social media is about interaction. You connect with folks who connect with other folks and everyone provides user generated content and links that help bolster your SEO, traffic and conversion goals. You do this through photo or video sharing, news and networking sites as well as blogs.

There’s the power!

And, like the young MTV viewers of the 1980s, social media users tend to be cutting edge, comfortable about innovation and technology. Using sites like YouTube, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and del.icio.us, etc. just comes naturally.

So how do you tie your SEO efforts into all of this excitement and power?

1. Tune in regularly. Join some of the social media sites and commit to participate every day. Yep, it’s very time consuming, but there are no shortcuts.

2. Have a hook. Like an MTV VJ, learn what is popular in each specific community and segue your content and participation in that direction.

3. Be anonymous. Just as you voted for your favorite MTV videos using different phone numbers (remember that?), don’t make it obvious that you are promoting yourself. That’s a big breach of etiquette. Promote from a different IP and account. Get your friends to help. If your office is participating, be sure they all cast their votes and submissions from home and NOT on the office IP. Too many coming from the same IP address can get you into trouble.

4. Become a groupie. Connect with influential users of the service. Later, take a look at their friends and see who else might make good connections.

5. Vote for your fave. Cast votes for good, quality content, not just yours, every chance you get and Stumble at the same time.

6. Have variety. Let’s see…rock or rap? Submit quality articles, content or videos from a variety of sources. If all you do is submit your own, you’ll be labeled as a spammer or your submission will just get killed.

7. Promote. Got a new gig? Social networks are great for introducing your blog to your network of friends.

8. Get subscriptions. We’re not talking 16 Magazine. Social news traffic is short term. What’s on the front page is gone tomorrow, so to keep some of those viewers coming back, get them to subscribe to your feeds.

9. Use Twitter! No, Flock of Seagulls hasn’t released a new album. Twitter is what you’d call a mini instant messaging system. I have to admit that when Twitter first came out, I thought it was kind of silly – 140 characters to alert your friends about what you were doing? Didn’t make a lot of sense, but it sure does now. Tie your Twitter account into your social accounts to let people follow you automatically. For instance, you can use a WordPress Twitter plugin on your blog called Twitter Updater to automatically send a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit a WordPress post. A similar web-based service, Twitterfeed, can be used as well. Facebook has a Twitter application that you can install that will feed blog entry status to your Facebook status updates. Twitter is also great for customer or visitor communication. Feel free to follow The Web Optimist on Twitter.

10. Name the band. Register your company profile on all of the social networks. Grab your company name as quickly as you can to prevent someone else from doing it and pretending to be you.

Where to go from here? Once you are established as a reputable social media user, you’ll find that connecting with the Linkerati, influential social media linkers, bloggers and journalists, will be easier. Your doors will open wider. Hey, make a video!

So, it’s an exciting time to be in social marketing and SEO. Let’s just hope social media keeps its focus on what it is and doesn’t do an MTV on us.

I miss my MTV!

Social Media & SEO: I Want My MTV! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO