SocialTrending

We’re sorry about the article shortage over the non-denominational winter season, we thought leaving the office for a bit sunlight would help us re-calibrate and get some much needed photosynthesis.  We’re back in flow and economic crisis be damned, 2009 is another great year for Social Media and an excellent time to look into Social Media Monitoring and investigating your Social Media Strategy.

*Obligatory Warning:

Comments in blogs, forums, or news sites that blatantly just pimp a website with out adding value get blocked or removed, make you look like a tool, and guarantee that your message will not get out, your link will not be built and your reputation will diminish.

Proper commenting presents genuine, factually correct views or resources, which add value, and establish you as a non-douche expert on the subject.

Follow-up Social Trending with Google Alerts, and establish a reputation as well as build quality links through Google Alerts.

With understanding of where customers are discussing the industry, products, and you on the web, building links and reputation can begin.  Read articles (blogs, forum posts and other) related to the subjects you wish to discuss and then share your knowledge, simple as that.  Responding, correctly, to questions, ideas, and articles (not to directly promote your company) reflects as a subject matter expert, gentlemen & scholar, and also uses key words in anchor text to link to your site.

Wait, what’s the catch? I wouldn’t really call it a catch, you just need to format how you respond a certain way.

Most articles require some amount of personal info to leave a comment.

The three most common bits of information they ask for are:

1. Name
2. Email (which they swear they won't share!)
   
3. Website address
   

Now for how use this to your advantage:

For the Name, input the words on your site that you would like to optimize. Our friends at the tea shop rotate a couple of different phrases they are optimizing including “Online Tea Shop” and “Buy Tea Online”.

For the email address, you should use your website's generic email address so that customers can contact you if they have any questions about the information that you mention in your comment.

For Website, you can do one of two things. You can include your main web address, which helps optimize those words to your home page, or, you can use the page that would best fit the phrase you input as your name. When our friends at the tea shop use the phrase Online Tea Shop, the link they use is the direct link for their online tea shop.

Go forth and link build but DO NOT spam using this method. If you are going to make a comment, make a real comment that adds value, a new perspective or something that was left out of the article. More and more blogs and news sites are moderating comments so if you have no value to add, your link will not be created.

Stay tuned for next time when we will discuss ranking links value i.e. link popularity.  We hope to get into the swing of posting more regularly but we are working on a lot of projects at the moment and it has eaten into our free time.