Social Media Linking and Promotion by Eric Ward The surge in social media usage has created opportunities (and frenzy) among link building, SEO, and public relations professionals. It's true that links are shared now by people in multiple ways that didn't exist just a few years ago. But what is the true effect and strategic value of these shared links? How do you encourage or spark the sharing of links and what is the impact on click traffic and search rank? In this session the panelists show live examples of the many ways social media can be used, and sadly abused, for link building and publicity purposes. @ericward Speaker Logo Here

Social Sharing Like It’s 1999… http://www.urlwire.com/newsarchive/111599a.html @ericward Speaker Logo Here

Social Sharing Like It’s 2011… @ericward Speaker Logo Here

What Is Social Media To You? Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Linkedin get the majority of the publicity, but social media tools and communities exist for many niche subjects and groups as well. http://pupaya.com/ List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites @ericward

Tweets, Likes, and Shares Can Already Be Purchased, Making Them Algorithmically Untrustworthy. @ericward

Too Many Signals? If You Are After A Search Rank Boost Via Social Media Interaction, What “Signals” Should You Be Pursuing? @ericward

The Folly of Followers? The Signal Metrics Of Social Media, Sharing, Following, Etc., Are Still Being Evaluated. NOBODY can say with certainty what signals matter the most and what those signals will be a year from now. @ericward

Twitter Example If you were a search engine, would the number of followers a person has be an important number? Not by itself. What about the profiles of those followers? Are they attracting followers as well? How often do they tweet? How often does what they tweet get re-tweeted, and by whom? When someone tweets a link, how often is it clicked or shared, and by whom? @ericward

The Like/Share Resistance Effect How eager are you to “like” or fan Depends adult diapers, or Compound W wart remover, or tweet about how RID lice treatment helped your kids? Or about that addiction treatment center? Compare those to Lucky Charms Cereal or Hot Wheels cars. It’s human nature. So, are products that work well in embarrassing verticals banished to no-likeville forever? How will the engines account for this effect for rankings purposes? @ericward

What Do We Know, and What Can We Do About It? The engines want to include social link sharing data Early tests (live tweets in Google searches) and self selected networks (circles), where my search results are only affected by people I’m already connected to. Re-tweets. Social signals can be gamed, and if it can be gamed, people will try The engines therefore must focus on the few truly helpful metrics and influencers You have to find the influencers in your vertical, and seek engagement @ericward

Find the influencers in your vertical, and seek engagement Find relevant Twitter users with: http://wefollow.com/ http://www.twellow.com/ Find relevant Twitter lists http://listorious.com/ Find local Twitter users http://www.twitterlocal.net/ http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood http://www.localtweeps.com/ @ericward

Where I see the real value in Social Media as a link building engine is in recognizing that many people using Social Media tools like Twitter or G+ have trust and influence in very specific subject areas.  @ericward

Closing with an example: If I want to build links or create awareness of this site http://www.audiology.org http://bit.ly/sqTxR4 @ericward

- Social media’s surface allure is at first about fame and followers - Social media’s surface allure is at first about fame and followers. Social’s deeper value is in researched discretion, introducing our content to the right people. If that content is truly worthy, it will be shared. - Worry less about search engines and more about resource sharing among a handful of experts, often behind the scenes in the corners of the web most people ignore. - Ironically, it is often these very niche experts that can impact your rankings, because the engines can identify and respect their social footprint. @ericward

LinkMoses Private from Eric Ward 10-15 Link Opportunity Alerts (LOA's) and linking strategy posts  sent to you individually via private email every month @ericward