© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Social Media “Hacks” Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts “Hacks”  Every social site has its own unique opportunities, quirks and anomalies  O’Reilly definition: –tools, tips, and tricks that help users solve problems –aimed at intermediate-level power users

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Wikipedia  Build up your street cred (long & virtuous contribution history, user profile page with Barnstar awards) before doing anything at all self-serving.  A link on a high-profile article is worth gold, as it builds your credibility & visibility with journalists and bloggers. Negotiate with an article’s “owner” to get this.  Monitor your articles with a tool that s you (e.g. trackengine, changenotes, urlywarning, changedetect). Don’t just rely on Wikipedia’s “Watch” function  Flow PageRank internally with Disambiguation pages, Redirects, Categories  Make friends. They will back you up in AfDs  Don’t edit anonymously from work. (Have you heard of WikiScanner??)

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Wikis  Plenty of other wikis out there that are a lot more edit- friendly than Wikipedia –ShopWiki –The NewPR Wiki (thenewpr.com) –WordPress Codex ( –Conference wikis (e.g. Web20Expo)  Some even pass link juice!

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Digg  Strip away all commercial links during the initial Digg swarm  Friend popular Diggers. Better yet, get a popular Digger to submit your story. –Consult the Top 100 list of Diggers at DiggAnalytics.com  Time your presence on the Digg front page for daylight hours  Craft a killer title using this formula from Muhammad Saleem: number + adjective + key phrase –E.g. “13 Most Chilling Haunted Hotels” or “16 Incredibly Unconventional Hotel Rooms”

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

StumbleUpon  Force your friends to stumble your stuff using the “Send to” function in the StumbleUpon toolbar –They have to view your URL before they can continue with their random channel surfing

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts YouTube  With most popular YouTube promotions, YouTube gets the links and the original site usually does not. Stack the odds more in your favor by creating a microsite and making the microsite URL your username. –E.g. “willitblend.com” is BlendTec’s username  Use as many tags as possible while still being accurate  Run a contest and recruit popular YouTube users to enter. Their video submission will get pushed out to all their subscribers –E.g. Intuit’s “Tax Rap” contest

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts YouTube  Be creative but unpolished –Eepybird’s Bellagio Fountain of Diet Coke + Mentos –BlendTec’s “Will It Blend?” –Heroes spoof commercial (“Zeroes”) – an NBC creation –John Cleese Backup Trauma webisode –Intuit’s “Tax Rap” content –SolarDave’s SMX spoof with cut-out figures as the actors –“Hat Swap” spoof of “Wife Swap” reality show w/ SEOs

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

MySpace  You need an impressive number of friends. Establish critical mass by friending bands, models (male and female), fiction authors, actors, go-go dancers, DJs, etc. They’ll take anybody! –Find them using the “Search Profiles for People with Similar Career Interests” as part of MySpace’s Search function. –Then remove them later on when you no longer need them.  Long page load time will drive your profile visitors away. Disable HTML in your comments so users can’t fill your page with slow- loading pictures of LOLcats etc.

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts

LinkedIn  Add links to your website, blog, and one other URL and select “Other” so you can specify the anchor text. Don’t use the pre-selected categories “My website” etc.  Add a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) or two to your network. –i.e. a “promiscuous sneezer” (in Seth Godin-speak) –Use the TopLinked.com list. e.g. Flip Filipowski  Add your address to your “professional headline” so folks 4+ degrees away don’t have to waste an InMail to contact you  Post a “question” to LinkedIn Answers that serves your own purposes –e.g. “We’re looking to hire an SEO analyst and are willing to pay whatever it takes to get a top-notch person. What job boards do you recommend?”

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Flickr  Always use tags – as many as possible while still being accurate. Put multiple word tags in surrounded by quotation marks “”  Make descriptive titles for your photos  Create thematic Sets for your photos  Links on profile, set and collection pages are not nofollowed  If the photo is location specific, go into Flickr’s tools and geotag the picture –Go into the Flickr set tools, and locate the location on the Yahoo! Map, then drag the picture onto the map to pinpoint its location  Creative Commons license your photo and put how you want the user to credit you in your photo’s description

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Meetup.com  Get involved with local Meetups and get your meetup.com member profile page linked from the meetup’s page, which will pass juice to your profile then on to your site  Actually there are many social sites with profile pages that pass link juice... – offering-profile-links.html

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts offering-profile-links.html

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Blogs  First, get involved via comments and build rapport  Careful about making the commenter name keyword-rich  Comment on blogs that “dofollow” comment links –e.g. Mark Cuban’s Blogmaverick.com, Rimm-Kaufman Group’s  Submit to blog carnivals. Host one (requires that you have a blog). Start a new one. – building-secret-weapon

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Blogs  Be a contributor to a group blog (e.g. BusinessBlogConsulting.com, Shop.org Blog)  Be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog (e.g. TechGazing.com*, Problogger.net)*  A Tip Jar indicates the blogger is desperate for cash

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Twitter  Create a microsite dedicated to Twitter –E.g. twitter.zappos.com  Circumvent spam filters and inbox clutter using direct messages  Influence the top influencers in your Twitter network by influencing those in common with you –Identify the common “friends” with tweetwheel.com –Send your request as a direct message

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts offering-profile-links.html

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts offering-profile-links.html

© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Thanks!  This Powerpoint can be downloaded from  For three hours of screencasts on link building,  Questions after the show? me at