1

Table of Contents
SMO Elite: Documents ........................................................... 5
Introduction: SMO Elite ......................................................... 6
Chapter I: The World of SMO ................................................. 7
Just What is SMO .....................................................................................................................7
Why is SMO so special? ...........................................................................................................8

Chapter II: The History of SMO Techniques ...........................10

It all Began with SEO............................................................................................................. 10
SMO is the Next Wave .......................................................................................................... 11

Chapter III: SMO Elements ....................................................13

What Types of SMO Media Are There? ................................................................................ 13
Social Networking ................................................................................................................. 13
Social Video Logging ............................................................................................................. 13
Social Book Marking ............................................................................................................. 14
Social Journalism .................................................................................................................. 14
Social Applications ................................................................................................................ 15

Chapter IV: Foundational SMO..............................................16

Understanding the Rules ...................................................................................................... 16
Learn and Apply Basic Rules ............................................................................................. 1117
Time Frame of Implementing SMO Rules............................................................................. 19

Chapter V: 9 Successful SMO Characteristics .........................20

Chapter VI: SEO-SMO Combination .......................................24
Benefit from SMO until Your SEO Efforts Mature ................................................................ 24
Get Your Website Noticed Quickly with SMO ...................................................................... 24
Going After Your Target Market ........................................................................................... 25

Chapter VII: Must-Do SMO Strategies ...................................27

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 5 Must Do’s for Your SMO Strategy ..................................................................................... 27

Chapter VIII: SMO in Motion .................................................28

Activities to Implement SMO Techniques ............................................................................ 28

Chapter IX: Molding Your Online Business.............................33

Creating an SMO Strategy Specific for Your Business .......................................................... 33
SMO Elite Worksheet ........................................................................................................... 35

Chapter X: 10,000 Visitors .....................................................37

Driving 10,000 Visitors to Your Website .............................................................................. 37

Chapter XI:
Build & Dominate Using Single Media Strategies ...................39
Using Main Stream Social Networking Websites ................................................................. 39
Using Social Video Log Sites ................................................................................................. 40
Using Social Applications ...................................................................................................... 41
Using Social Bookmark Tagging Strategies ........................................................................... 43
Using Social Bookmark Group Strategies ............................................................................. 44
Using Paying Social Networking Sites ................................................................................... 46
Becoming Part of a Community............................................................................................ 47
Submitting Content .............................................................................................................. 48

Chapter XII:
Build & Dominate Using Multiple Media Strategies ...............51
Getting Your Site Noticed in 1 Day ....................................................................................... 51
Using Syndication ................................................................................................................. 53
Going Deep and Going Wide with SMO ............................................................................... 54
Using “Add Me” Trains to Gain Fast Popularity ................................................................... 55
Getting Your Friends to Help ................................................................................................ 56
Using SEO and SMO .............................................................................................................. 57
Using Multiple SMO Media .................................................................................................. 58

Chapter XIII: Build & Dominate Using Content Strategies ......61

Strategies for Blogs .................................................................... 61

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 Strategies for vLogs .............................................................................................................. 62
Strategies for Podcasters...................................................................................................... 63
Strategies for Photo Submissions ......................................................................................... 64

Chapter XIV:
SMO Strategies for Various Online Business Types ................66
Network Marketers .............................................................................................................. 66
Artists.................................................................................................................................... 67
Trade Professionals .............................................................................................................. 68
Merchandisers ...................................................................................................................... 69
Service Websites .................................................................................................................. 70
Auctioneers .......................................................................................................................... 71

Chapter XV: Parting Thoughts ...............................................73

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SMO Elite: Documents

Copyright Notice

All Contents are Copyright © 2007 by SMOElite.com & BusinessShakers.com (Authors: Errol Potok & Ivan Correces). If
you have this file (or a printout) and did not pay for it, you are depriving the author and publisher of their rightful royalties.
Please pay for your copy by purchasing it at SMOElite.com.

All Rights Reserved Worldwide. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever,
electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without
express written, dated and signed permission from the author.

Earnings Disclaimer

The author is not responsible for the use or misuse of the information contained within. The information contained in the
book is for information and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as professional advice or a recommendation to
act. Before engaging in any activity mentioned in this book, seek legal advice and consultation of a competent
professional, and only act upon that counsel. Although the best efforts have been undertaken to ensure the quality
information within is accurate, the author does not make any such warranties as to that accuracy.

There are some companies and/or websites that are mentioned in this book, but only for the purpose of providing
additional information and aid you in your own search. The author does not endorse any of them, or makes any official
claims on their behalf. Please research any moneymaking plan that you may be considering with the same diligence that
you’d apply to any potential business activity.

We make every effort to ensure that we accurately represent these products and services and their potential for income.
Earning made by our company and its customers are estimates of what we think you can possibly earn. There is no
guarantee that you will make these levels of income and you accept the risk that the earnings and income statements
differ by individual. As with any game of chance, your results may vary, and will be based on your individual capacity,
experience, expertise, and level of desire. There are no guarantees concerning the level of success you may experience.
Each individual’s success depends on his or her background, dedication, desire and motivation.

There is no assurance that examples of past earnings can be duplicated in the future. We cannot guarantee your future
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Legal Notice

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the Author nor the Publisher
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The Author and Publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any Purchaser or Reader of
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5
Introduction: SMO Elite

S
o you have a website and perhaps maybe even a product. If you’re
wondering what you’ll need to do to in order to become a success,
understand this concept first. You’ll need to get traffic to your site and lots
of it! Flooding traffic to your site will take work, but with these SMO
strategies, you’ll be sure to see success in your niche market! Learn how easy it is to
build your strategy and quickly put your plan into action to make money online.

SMO is an acronym for “social media optimization”. The term, first coined by Rohit
Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations in 2006, has seen growing recognition as the
newest trend in internet marketing. His introspective view has sparked many
discussions and has been used repeatedly as the topic of choice for career bloggers
and online marketing specialists alike.

With the emergence of social media sites like MySpace, digg, del.icio.us, and YouTube,
the concept of SMO makes perfect sense. Socialize to advertise. SMO is really a
proactive effort based on SEO tactics. It’s taking SEO to the next level! With these
various media sites, the result is more visibility, more inbound links, and of course, more
targeted traffic for you!

Let’s get started!

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Chapter I: The World of SMO
Just what is SMO?

To understand what SMO is, we need to understand what social media is. The base
content of social media is normally found as blogs, video logs (vlogs), podcasts, and
pictures. These content items are created and spread to various audiences via
community sites that are created by the community for the community. These creators
many times, are not professionals, but rather, they are regular people choosing to
express their views and opinions in an organized format.

Still lost in the definition? A great example of a successful form of social media that has
had widespread notoriety is MySpace. Created by the community for other MySpacers
to enjoy, review and see, MySpace has become a leader in the social media market. It
has also become a social media phenomena highly visible trend in youth and young
adults today. People are drawn to MySpace because it’s the perfect place for
socializing and interaction. People can present themselves as being any way they want
to (whether it’s true or not) and express themselves in just about any way.

For the optimization portion of SMO, as stated by Rohit Bhargava,

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so

that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on
custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant
posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

In less technical terms, this means that you tweak your site so that other users can link
to it easily. It also means that you can gain popularity as the community votes for your
post via custom search engines such as Technorati. As you obtain more votes for your
posts, you escalate to achieve top rankings where you would not otherwise be able to

7
obtain using SEO techniques. We’ll cover the difference between SEO and SMO more
in depth in the next chapter.

Why is SMO so special?

With SMO, you gain popularity and rise to the top via popularity votes versus with SEO,
through a computer algorithm. You gain popularity not only on the content you provide,
but you also gain popularity based on the relationship and reputation you build for
yourself. SMO is unique in that it is a social measure. As stated in a post by Lee
Odden, “New Rules for Social Media Optimization”,

SMO tactics can drive huge amounts of people to a website and can also
determine whether a startup, website or idea will make it or not. It involves
driving traffic to a website through new channels because search engines aren’t the
only sites that drive big traffic anymore. While it’s not taking over SEO yet, it has the
potential to someday soon.”

Keep in mind the last quote. With the presence of internet commerce growing at
startling rates, people still desire a way to connect with each other. Business is still
about relationship more than it is about peddling products and ideas. Technology has
still not been able to eliminate people from the scheme of business and we see that with
the rise of SMO techniques becoming the fastest growing marketing trend.

Often called duct tape marketing, social media optimization has been highly criticized as
well as highly praised. While there are pros and cons, it is safe to say that the cons
deal mostly with the way the relationships are made and if they’ll have any long lasting
benefits. Most of the negative reports of SMO are based on the premise that SMO is a
speculative market with it being very new. The truth is that foundational SMO practices
have been around as long as SEO was. In order to create solid SEO practices for their
site, one would have to make solid connections with other peers and basically network
themselves. The same practice is still being done today!

8
What SMO sites have done was basically organize those networking efforts and create
a place where favorites are stored and shared by members within the same community.
A social bookmarking site is basically a catalog of stored favorites. It has taken what
was already being done and organized it on the web.

“People don't want to be ‘marketed TO’

TO ’; they
want to be ‘communicated WITH’
WITH’.”

- Flint McGlaughlin

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Chapter II: The History of SMO Techniques
SMO techniques are still relatively new. The concept only became a major topic of
discussion late last year in 2006. That’s good news! As an online entrepreneur, what
that means for you is that employing SMO techniques in your market is still a fresh idea.
Practices may still be minimal to non-existent in many areas and you will still be able to
capitalize if you put your plan into action quickly. Luckily, you found this guide that’ll
help you do just that.

Where did SMO come from? What is SMO all about? More importantly, how can SMO
help me build my business and spur me on to internet success? SMO is still fairly new
and many types of media are still developing in the marketplace. SMO is going to be a
technique that grows as technology grows. SMO is going to be a technique that
develops as its media market matures. Many of the media that are used in social media
optimization are still new prototypes of what will become perhaps one of the most
exciting sales and marketing phenomena this century!

It all Began with SEO

Many businesses, only now, understand the concept of search engine optimization
(SEO) as a tool for site performance. With this growing understanding, SEO techniques
are becoming standard practice rather than an option for online businesses who desire
online growth. The early stages of SEO were seen by businesses having vague
attempts to manipulate search engines. Now, online businesses are seeing the value
that SEO offers. As a result, you aren’t the only one using SEO to improve search
engine rankings. Within a few years, SEO will be used by just about every online user.
Search engines will then come up with another way to measure a website’s value and
performance.

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If you’re new to SEO, search engine optimization involves the use of key words and
links in your site and ranks them against all the other sites available on the web.
Search engines pick up the key words and links in your site and basically compares
them against key word searches made by online users. The placement of where your
website ends up in a particular search is determined by the strength of your key words
and links as well as the popularity of your site (the number of visitors you attract to your
site). SEO has been well studied so that you are able to purchase key words to
increase the visibility of your site in search engine rankings (which is great if you can
afford to pay, but not great if you can’t). Influenced by more factors than these, your
sites performance can take weeks and perhaps months to tweak as you overhaul your
site’s contents to conform to SEO rules.

SMO is the Next Wave

SMO is the next wave to hit online marketing. Quickly being studied and implemented
by many online entrepreneurs, SMO focuses around people. Internet business
practices are noticing that consumers appreciate interaction and relationship
development rather than a cold, hard sale or pitch. What’s more, what is seen as
popular is voted on by the people rather than by a machine. SMO takes aspects of
SEO and incorporates people in the process of determining a site’s performance and
value. The more your content is appreciated by online users, the more your page’s
rankings improve.

While it does not replace SEO techniques, SMO offers an additional way to improve
search engine site rankings. SMO also offers a way to receive notoriety without the
normal search engine just by developing a relationship or reputation. In the event your
content is not strong in SEO, you can still achieve high visibility within a relatively short
amount of time. What’s even better with SMO is that the tweaks you need to do to
optimize your site’s performance are relatively simple and quick to perform. A little
knowledge in HTML and some relationship building is all it’ll take to get your business
on track with success! Using special search engines that rank pages by a social voting

11
process, your content can achieve great results without relying solely on SEO
techniques. That’s great news for online businesses that are relatively new to SEO and
SMO!

“What helps
helps people, helps business.”
business.”
- Leo Burnett

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Chapter III: SMO Elements
What Types of SMO Media Are There?

People love interaction with other people (even if they don’t think they do). As a result
the number of networking sites has vastly increased. Interestingly, the use of the
internet has grown from being an informational research tool to incorporate online
socializing. People, who socialize together offline, have even started to use the internet
to socialize online. People have also gotten braver and have expanded their socializing
practices to include other online users. As a result the number to media that have been
created to facilitate this process is being developed more and more.

Social Networking

Mainstream social networking is one of the foundational pieces of social media being
used today. Pioneered by MySpace, social networking has gained much popularity
across a wide spectrum of people. MySpace not only serves Generation Y, but many
Baby Boomers as well. MySpace has also catered to the needs of socialites and
businesses alike to facilitate networking and relationship building opportunities. Paying
social networking sites are another development of this trend. Sites like Facebook and
Squidoo cater to users looking to make some extra cash with the items they post online.
Sites like DirectMatches pay for referrals of paid users to their site.

Social Video Logging

Social video logging is another quickly growing aspect of social media. As seen in the
popularity of YouTube, video logging is a way for many people to communicate a variety
of ideas in an easily portable manner. YouTube has made it easy for content owners to
link to different sites by providing a snippet of code directly on the page you view.

13
Social video logging is popular as a mainstream form of expression. People are
flocking to the internet to create their own video journals! See live streaming video or
pre-recorded media and rate and comment on the message. Social video logging is
definitely a heavy hitter in the social media today.

Social Bookmarking

Also, quickly gaining popularity, social book marking is one of the premier ways to
quickly gain popularity votes. If you already have good, relevant content that many
people enjoy, adding the aspect of social book marking to your site will greatly enhance
the number of page views. With well over 15 different book marking sites to choose
from, adding several of them should be a part of your SMO practice. Digg and
del.icio.us are a couple of the most popular sites available, but depending upon the
nature of your content, other sites such as Newsvine and Netscape may also prove to
work well.

What social bookmarking does is provide a way to organize favorite page views on the
web. You can vote for or against these page views and that determines whether the
page or post makes it to a front page ranking. Using special, unique search engines
that measure web pages based on the ranking system, you can witness quick popularity
in theory without ever having SEO in place.

Social Journalism

Social journalism, also called citizen journalism, is a quickly growing trend in written
media. What was once deemed as a career only for professional writers, social
journalism opens the doors of opportunity to the lay people to express views, explain
how-tos and be a regular source of reads. What’s more, is that this trend also shows
that social journalism is quickly becoming a preference among households rather the
workings of professional journalists and copy writers. The amazing fact is that social
journalism is taking place everywhere on the internet! Blogs are being produced in

14
great numbers as stand alone pages or as incorporated into social networking sites
such as Yahoo 360o or MySpace. Also with the growing need for SEO Content articles,
many do-it-yourselfers have submitted articles to places such as eZine Articles,
GoArticles or even another growing site, Helium.

Social Applications

Other minor applications are also growing in popularity as forms of social media.
Presence applications such as Twitter or Dopplr appeal to the college crowd. Twitter is
a function that allows short blogs of information (no more than 140 characters). These
blurbs can then be sent via SMS, instant messaging or email to another online use.
Dopplr displays the location of a user to let others know where that person is located.
Event calendars such as Yahoo’s Upcoming display events and attendance status on its
page. Let’s not forget the social media aspect in online gaming. Online games have
always been favorite gathering grounds for online users.

While these applications might seem like minor applications, when combined with other
SMO media, they might provide just the right support to your online audience. Also up
and coming is that many of these applications are still in the infancy stages of the
marketplace. Still to new to say whether or not they’ll be successful, these applications
have a lot of potential for future marketing efforts. For now, let’s just say that they
provide good support SMO tactics.

It’s no wonder that SMO is on the rise. With so many media options available,
developing relationships as well as income opportunities on the web has become much
easier to do in today’s fast paced society. Sharing thoughts, opinions and portions of
our life has become much easier to do through the developments on the web.

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Chapter IV: Foundational SMO
Understanding the Rules

One of the first things to understand about SMO is that your goal is to connect with
people and to have them spread and promote your site to their connection. Everything
you will do or add to your site must help your audience connect with you in such a way
that they have a positive experience every time they spend time on your site.

Take a few minutes to quickly evaluate your site. Place yourself in their shoes and try
to visualize what they would see. If this gets too difficult, ask a friend to evaluate your
site. Hey! That’s another way to get people to visit your site – invite them to review
yours!

1. What was their overall impression of your site the last time they visited?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

2. How SEO compliant is your site?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

3. Was your site helpful or user friendly?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

4. Did they get entertained or learn something?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

5. Are there any improvements that could be made?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

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Learn and Apply Basic Rules

Learning to apply the SMO Rules to your site will benefit and greatly enhance the
success of your site. It’ll provide the foundation for the activities that you’ll be doing to
in order to obtain the maximum benefits that SMO can provide. Using these methods,
will help to develop the relationship you’ll have with your audience as well as make you
more accessible to people.

An important thing to remember is that people will get engaged in your site when they
can interact with you. They’ll want to express their viewpoints and perhaps be
entertained. By employing these simple rules, you can create a foundation for your site
that will ensure the success of reaching and keeping your customer base.

Rule #1: Make your site and your site’s content easily accessible. Finding
you is one thing, but what will they find when they get there? Can your audience
easily link to it? How can they be notified of updates to your site? How easy is it
to broadcast or syndicate? How easily can they reach your site over and over
again?

Rule #2: Include buttons and links on your page that’ll make tagging and
book marking easy to do. Adding bookmarklets to your site makes it easy for
your audience to have a say or express the value of your site. It makes it easy
for them to promote and comment as well. Provide the resource and let them do
the rest!

Rule #3: Reciprocate any incoming links. Use perma-links, track backs or list
recently linking blogs that come to your site. It’s an added incentive to keep them
coming back over and over again.

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 Rule #4: Make your content portable (even off the web) using mp3s, pdfs,
etc. Make it easy to link to or easy to add on their site. One of the best
examples of sites that do this is YouTube. They provide a URL as well as an
embed code that makes vlogs portable. With the rise in cell phone use, making
content available through formats such as pdfs and mp3s definitely improves
your usability.

Rule #5: Allow others to take your idea and make it their own. We’re not
talking about plagiarism, but about collaboration. Some of the greatest ideas can
come as a result of someone taking your idea to the next level. At the very least,
your audience will appreciate your ideas and give you some acknowledgement.

Rule #6: Always act as a resource for your audience even when there’s no
apparent benefit. The more helpful you are, the greater your efforts will be
appreciated and these benefits will materialize over the long term.

Rule #7: Be free with giving recognition and praise to your audience for
providing insightful and useful comments on your site. People love to be
noticed for their contributions. Make them feel good about you by making them
feel good about themselves.

These rules provide the foundation for your SMO strategy. It should be the baseline for
your website. By incorporating these rules as a part of your site’s plan, you’ll see
immediate benefits as well as be prepared to take your SMO strategies to the next level.
You’ll soon see that working with all aspects of SMO, volumes of traffic can be created
for your site in a relatively short amount of time!

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Time Frame of Implementing SMO Rules

Most of the changes are quick to implement. You can easily revise most portions of
your site by adding book marking, tagging and voting features. Some knowledge of
HTML is good to have, but not required. Most of the social media sites already provide
“user friendliness”. As a result, adding bookmarklets of various social media to your site
can be done quite easily.

One important thing to add is that placing a few bookmarklets on your site is almost a
must do in order to reap the full benefits of social networking. Spend some time doing
this. There are also bookmark utility applications that will help you by combining
bookmarks from several locations into one site. Consider taking a look at AddThis or
Socialite which provide bookmarklet codes for you. For those of us who like tidy
websites, these applications provide all the bookmarklets and feedlets for a variety of
social media fronts. These applications also come in handy as keeping track of the
numerous sites can be cumbersome! The great thing is that you’ll set this up once and
you won’t have to touch it again.

19
Chapter V: 9 Successful SMO Characteristics
The basic rules are wellH basic. Their intent is to set a foundation to implement the
SMO strategies, but there are still additional elements that your site should have in
order to make it a successful. The interesting thing is that these elements have nothing
really to do with the technical aspect of your site, but everything to do with you as the
site builder.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other
people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
-- Dale Carnegie

In social media optimization, your goal is to rise in popularity with people. How you
choose to interact with them or not interact will determine the resulting influence and
appeal you have over your audience. These soft-skills may seem immeasurable, but
they are actually not. You’ll eventually see them as a lack of popularity (meaning lower
ranking pages) even with volumes of visitation. You might also experience a lack of
“stickiness” or loyalty with your site.

1. Begin participating and interacting with your audience as well as with your
peers. Start commenting on various posts and getting involved in discussion.
Blogs were meant to be interactive, but how many blogs are there that are
without comments? The key here is to get the ball rolling starting with you. Don’t
wait for someone else to comment on your site. Get out there and start some
action yourself. Once you get things going, your activities will snowball and you’ll
see why SMO is so huge!

2. Know who your audience is and how you will reach them. Every post you
make is for your audience. It’s your message, but it’s for your audience and you

20
 can’t leave them out of the picture. Many times we focus on what we’d like to
say and forget about who is actually listening to us. In order to rise quickly with
SMO, we’ll need to appeal to our audience.

3. Create compelling, meaningful and relevant content for your audience. Will
someone actually take an interest in what you have to say? When you comment
on a post, is it mindless gibberish on a serious toned blog site? Think about what
you’re saying before you write because your reputation is already in
development.

4. Be sincere, honest, and transparent on your site. “Fake it ‘til you make it”
doesn’t work here. No one likes a con and one of the contributing factors to the
rise in social media is because no one likes to be “had” by the professionals.
The reputation you’d rather build is one that is trustworthy. You’re trying to gain
their trust and respect and let it not be done in a glass house!

5. Be humble and always act with respect. When you start witnessing the
compounding results that SMO can do, don’t forget where you came from. You
might be highly knowledgeable, but with a snooty attitude, you could wreck
everything you built.

No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
-- Don Swartz

6. Don’t be afraid to try new things.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn*”

-- Lloyd Alexander

21
 SMO is still a fresh and young marketing strategy that is constantly evolving. As
new technologies come into play, you must learn to adapt and change in order to
stay on top of the social climate on the web. What’s popular today might not be
tomorrow.

7. Plan out your SMO strategy and implement it. Write your plan out and be
ready to improvise and make changes as you begin to measure what works and
what doesn’t. Remember that the best plan is the one you actually use.

8. Choose appropriate SMO media as part of your strategy. Not all forms of
social media may be effective for you. You’ll have to research and find out which
social climates are right. For example, you can’t expect to get great results on a
network marketing business blog when it’s placed in an environment that
discusses family issues. You’ll be canned for spamming almost immediately!
Again, do some research and be aware of the audience that you intend to send
your posts to.

9. Make SMO a part of your regular business process and best practices.
Learning to incorporate SMO with SEO while it’s still in its early stages keeps you
at the forefront of the game. Every effort you make in using SMO methods will
make a huge difference over time and you’ll reap the benefits!

With social media marketing, your goal is to rise in popularity with your audience.

The goal is to get people to share your content with others via these sites.”
-- Lee Odden

Learning to apply and portray these characteristics in your SMO strategy will make a
huge impact on the appeal you’ll have. Not only do you want to set a technical
foundation in your site for SMO, but you’ll also want to have a basic social skill set you

22
practice and continually develop. Learning the best way to interact with your audience
will also determine your success with SMO as well.

Plain and simple – it’s people that’ll take you to the top and interacting with them is a
must. The thing that drives social media is that it’s social! By practicing SMO
techniques more and more (and it will get easier to do), you will enhance your popularity
quickly and you’ll soon see just how great and simple it was to drive free targeted traffic
to your site!

“You must
must have mindshare before you can have
marketshare.”
marketshare.”
- Christopher M. Knight

23
Chapter VI: SEO-SMO Combination
Benefit from SMO until Your SEO Efforts Mature

There’s no doubt that SEO takes time to develop and build. Keywords, search engine
rankings and pay per clicks are just a few of the techniques that get you to rise to the
top. But as a new business in development, using all of this can seem overwhelming.
So what are you to do? A quick search online shows numerous other sites with more
key word strategies in place and links beyond abundance. Just how will you compete?

As a new site, SEO compliancy should also be a part of your site’s strategy. SMO does
not replace SEO as SEO is still a major part of the way search engines rank you.
Choosing to capitalize both ways is a sure path to realizing traffic success! Using SEO
in conjunction with SMO is a sure way to experience the exponential growth.

Get Your Website Noticed Quickly with SMO

If you have great appeal, the results obtained by SMO efforts can be almost viral.
People spread the news about your site and they’ll spread it fast. Word of mouth is one
of the best and quickest ways for your site to get noticed. In fact, once you start getting
people to notice you on the web, you can almost sit back and enjoy the ride. The
objective here is to get the ball rolling and then witness the snow ball effect taking place.

With SEO, you’ll be competing with every site on the web for search engine rankings.
With SMO, your competition is significantly decreased by default due to the nature of
how bookmarks and tags operate. Bookmarks, tags, and favorites are targeted markets
that are selected or “hand-picked” by their owners. Let’s say your tag is “online
business startup ideas”. It’s probably not likely that the user has tagged every single
site available that uses the key word “online business startup ideas” so by default your

24
competition is significantly decreased. That means that you’ll have greater opportunity
to dominate certain key words that you wouldn’t normally with regular SEO techniques.

Going After Your Target Market

SEO efforts work only if a search is being performed. Some one types in a key word
and SEO takes over to list sites according to an algorithmic ranking. SEO is a great tool
for users to connect with a site when they don’t know who or what they are looking for.
But let’s say that you’d like to be noticed by a certain group or community and you don’t
really have great SEO operating on your site just yet. What SMO does for you is that it
allows you the ability to connect with your group or community via bookmarks or tags.
You can also essentially get noticed by your group peers just by the sheer fact that you
are attempting to connect with them by participating in their group.

Without going to deep into the psychology of “favorites” or how or why SMO works, just
know that people like to know what everyone else is looking at. The beauty of the
concept of “favorites” or “voting” is that people are drawn to know what is hip, cool, and
popular. Gossip to some and news to others, people just like to know what’s going on.
The providers of social media sites also desire to become top ranking sites as well and
they are more than happy to give their online users the information they’d like to have.
It’s good for their business and it’s good for yours!

SMO provides a way for you to engage your audience much more quickly than waiting
for SEO to kick in.

With SMO, you’ll have to be out there interacting with your audience and potential
audience in order to get your site noticed. You’ll soon see that one opportunity to
interact leads to another opportunity to interact and soon, more and more people begin
to visit your site! SEO is more of a reactive activity whereas SMO is a proactive activity
to increase the popularity of your site.

25
What this is basically saying is that you are in charge of making your site a success
instead of relying on search engine rankings to do it for you. You are responsible to
reaching out to your audience and if there’s none, then you’ll create one. You draw the
people to your message and form a community. You be responsible for creating your
audience! In case you missed that, you are responsible for creating your audience!
SMO makes it very possible for you to obtain phenomenal success within a short
amount of time. It’s all up to you to do!

Here’s something to think about as well. With the growing number of sites with SEO
strategies coming into fruition, the next level of optimization will be through SMO
methods. SEO will most likely never be replaced, but it can and will be enhanced with
SMO. You’ll begin to understand the benefits of a site’s “stickiness” as you see the
number of visitors to your site escalate!

26
Chapter VII: Must-Do SMO Strategies
5 Must Do’s for Your SMO Strategy

This is by far the best and most fun part of SMO strategy because you’re actually
working the audience. This is the place where you’ll see how your interaction efforts will
determine your success and you’ll also be able to see results. Here is where you get
your audience to respond to you! What should you be doing?

You should be setting an amount of time to work your audience. How much time should
you allow? Well, let’s put it this wayH The more people you reach out to, the faster
you’ll gain visibility. You decide how fast you’ll want to pursue this and how much time
you can afford to spend. Every situation will be different and every attempt to interact
will be distinct and unique as well.

1. Become a part of a community. Choose a social network site and become a

part of a group or forum. That alone will get you noticed because many of the
social network sites feature new users. Not sure which community works? Join
several and study them. Find the ones that appeal to you. Every community has
a different “flavor”. For example, a business community on MySpace could be
totally different than a business community on “Direct Matches”.

2. Develop rapport with other owners and visitors. Start adding friends or
commenting on blogs. Find a point to make a connection with someone and then
do it. Comment on their post or page or remember them on their birthday. Get
creative and find new ways to provide a “high touch”, welcoming environment
whenever you’re around.

3. Participate in discussions with meaningful responses. Some responses

obviously don’t have anything to do with the group. Some groups allow blatant

27
 spamming while other groups keep a “neighborhood watch” for any potential
spammers. Know the social environment of the group before posting responses
or participating in discussions. Take some time to study the people and the
interactions already taking place within the discussion. Read through some old
posts to find out the concerns of the group. If you study your audience, you’ll be
more prepared to write or post something that is relevant and meaningful. This is
surely important because you’re building a reputation and trust within the
community.

4. Be genuine and sincere about your responses. Generally speaking, most

people don’t like blatant rudeness even when they’re the ones being rude
themselves. You know the old idea, “it takes one to know one”. Don’t ruin the
work you’ve put in by reacting in an insincere manner or by “putting on airs”
because you have to prove something. People can spot that a mile away and
you’re not likely to be received well in the community.

5. Be consistent about making contact with your audience. Make initial contact
and then contact them regularly – perhaps weekly or monthly. Set up a schedule
and be diligent about it. Eventually you’ll want to be the one they think about
when they need information about your topic. You’ll want to be the one they
consider the “guru” and the go to person when they have a need or question.
This part takes time to develop, but it’ll prove to be a stronger bond that builds
brand loyalty.

Hopefully at this point, you are beginning to see that you are trying to engage your
audience. In fact, as you interact with them more, they’ll get more connected with you.
If you’re truly interested in getting more visitors to your site, you’ll see the value that
these activities provide. You’ll understand that you’re building more than just the
number of visits to your site, but you’re also building trust and loyalty into your site!
Now that’s a business with value!

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Chapter VIII: SMO in Motion
Activities to Implement SMO Techniques

Hopefully by now, we’ve got the idea that SMO is about using various social media to
interact with our audience. We understand that we’ve got to have the right appeal and
be reaching the right people. We’ve got to be making a connection with our audience
much sooner than waiting for our SEO techniques to mature. We’ve been talking about
SMO and about all the great benefits and elements of SMO techniques. But still, what
specifically are we supposed to be doing?

That’s what this chapter is all about. This chapter focuses on specific activities that you
can do using SMO techniques. You’ll want to refer to this section often when you begin
to plan and act on your SMO strategy.

Again, these are basic SMO activities. Doing one or more activities consistently will
produce better results than all sporadically. You’re also trying to build momentum for
your business expansion. You can only gain momentum by being consistent in your
work efforts. You’ll need to get the ball rolling then let it roll!

You’ll also find that as SMO develops further and as newer technologies arise, there will
be more options for activities and older options will die off. People decide what will be
the new “fave” concept and what’s “hot” today might be “cold” tomorrow. This is also by
no means an exhaustive list. You’re only limited by your creativity and your passion to
expand your audience. So start brainstorming and get creative and reach your target
audience.

1. Join a social network and create a page. Social networks are foundational
elements of your social media strategy because the people are already gathered
and organized for you into groups (aka target markets).

29
2. Add friends. The more the merrier and the sooner the better.

3. Send them messages giving praise for their page or asking them about their
product.

4. Acknowledge them on their birthday.

5. Vote for (or mark as a favorite of yours) their material and let them know about it.

6. Start regularly commenting on a great feature of their product or page or about

their blog.

7. If your audience has tweaked an earlier post made by another user, consider
commenting about it on the original poster’s page.

8. Join and group or forum and post regularly.

9. Regularly start discussion in forums.

10. Write reviews regularly.

11. Participate in community activities (I.e. – online gaming, meetings or networking

socials)

12. Use a variety of media formats on your site (if it works to your benefit).

13. Incorporate pictures on your site. Visuals have great appeal.

14. Comment on other posts that are similar in nature.

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 15. Do this carefully – don’t be afraid to go against the crowd.

16. Stop selling them on your idea and get interested in theirs.

17. Use sites like Technorati and FeedBurner to help move your posts.

18. Tag or bookmark your favorite posts with the same tag.

19. Include their RSS feed on your site and comment on their posts.

20. Write often and regularly to article submission sites.

21. Update applications like twitter and calendar functions often. Potentially, it’s an
entry point for discussion.

22. Comment on your site about your audience’s site.

23. Update your SMO sites to reflect your tagged favorites or votes.

24. Translate your content into more languages if possible.

25. Regularly promote your social media efforts with your friends’ colleagues.

Does this sound like a lot of work to you? Don’t get overwhelmed! Take things one
step at a time and choose 1-3 activities that you can do consistently. Start with those
actions and then expand your efforts. Flooding your site with free targeted traffic is very
possible, but how long that takes depends on what you choose to do or not do.

Honestly, compared to SEO compliance, commenting on someone’s post is a piece of

cake. Uploading tags and favorites into your bookmarking application is relatively easy
compared to revamping articles and online content for SEO. Don’t get me wrong. SEO

31
is still a very necessary component of your site’s search engine ranking. But SMO will
prove itself to get you connected with your audience a lot soonerH

“Marketing is not an event, but a process… It has

a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a
process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even
pause it. But you never stop it completely.”
completely.”
- Jay Conrad Levinson

32
Chapter IX: Molding Your Online Business
Creating an SMO Strategy Specific for Your Business

With so many media formats, applications and sites that enable you to use SMO for
your practice, knowing which ones to use will impact the outcome of your efforts. Study
the environments of the various media sites you intend to use. Every one has a unique
flavor that will determine whether or not you will be well received by your prospective
audience. Take the time to plan each step of the way. How long will this take? Long
enough to assess whether the environment is right for your post! Studying will definitely
help you learn which sites are best to use for your post. Keep in mind that sites that
work today will eventually change. The media sites are constantly changing and doing
proper research will prove to be very helpful. Here, we’ll walk you through some steps
that will help you organize your work to reach your target audience!

Step #1 – Define Your Goals and Objectives

Seeing where you’d like to go will help determine which steps to take to get there. What
would you like to accomplish using your strategy? How many people would you like to
reach and how soon do you plan to reach them? Are there any other goals that support
your people goals such as financial and market penetration?

This section also includes measures of success. How do you know you were
successful in reaching your goal? Include a planned measure of success as well as an
actual measure of success.

33
Step #2 – Choose Your Market

Know who your audience is and how you can reach them. What are the demographics
of your target audience? How will they best receive the information you are passing on
to them? What tone of voice will your post take – informational or conversational?

Step #3 – Build a List of Resources for Your SMO Activities

Ideally, these resources are the avenues you’d like to start your SMO activities in.
These are the leaders in your industry or places where you can begin to interact with
your audience. These resources are also the ones who’ll provide you with engaging,
thought provoking content and help to define your voice of authority.

Step #4 – Build a List of Activities to Reach Your Goals

So you know who you want to reach and how many people you want to reach. Break
that down even further into action items you can do. How many people do you need to
interact with? How many people do you need to make initial and follow-up contact with?

Step #4 – Plan Your Responses to Stimulate Interaction

Read your resource’s content and plan a targeted message in response to it. Make
sure your post is relevant and engaging enough to generate a response.

Step #5 – Measure Your Effectiveness in Comparison to Your Goals and

Objectives

Track your effectiveness using web analytics. How many visitors did you receive?
Which pages did they click on? How many subscribers did you receive?

34
FeedBurner and Google Analytics offer free web analytics for your site. Check with
your web host as well to see if they offer any web analytics for your site. Why? You’ll
find out what works and what doesn’t work.

You can also track your effectiveness by reading the posts and comments made about
your site. What are people saying about you? Social bookmarking and other
aggregation sites may publicize comments written about you. You’ll want to know the
good, the bad and the ugly so you can determine what needs to change.

Here’s a sample strategy worksheet to help you define your work activities.

SMO Elite Worksheet

Goals / 1.
Objectives: 2.
3.

Audience: Include a description of your audience – demographics and any special

notes in reaching them.

GOAL ACTUAL SUCCESS COMMENTS

RATE
Social Networking
Resource #1: MySpace
Activity #1: 100 95 95%
Add friends
Activity #2: 30 30 100%
Writing
comments on
friend’s page

Resource #2: Facebook

Activity #1: 100 100 100%
Invite friends
Activity #2: 3 0 0%
Join groups
Bookmarking
Resource #1: Del.icio.us
Activity #1: 10 10 100%
Bookmark sites
Activity #2: 10 2 20%
Add people to
network

35
Resource #2: digg
Activity #1: 1 1 100%
Join and build a
network
Activity #2: 5 3 60%
Submit articles
Blogs
Resource #1: Blog Carnival
Activity #1: 3 3 100%
Submit post links
to relevant topics
Activity #2: 10 7 70%
Comment on
other people’s
blogs in the
carnival

Resource #2: Technorati

Activity #1: 1 1 100%
Join and build a
network
Activity #2: 20 15 75%
Comment on
blogs
Miscellaneous Others
Resource #1: Twitter
Activity #1: 7 7 100%
Start daily
posting
Activity #2: 1 1 100%
Learn to use via
IM and SMS

Resource #2: YouTube

Activity #1: 1 1 100%
Join a group
Activity #2: 10 5 50%
Comment on
vlogs

36
Chapter X: 10,000 Visitors
Driving 10,000 Visitors to Your Website

So finally we get to the place that you’ve been waiting for – getting thousands of unique
page views weekly if not daily. We’ll also incorporate some of the obvious ways you
can also profit off of social media sites if they’re available and many of them are! So
here are just some last tips before you plow off into developing your strategy.

Recognize achievement every step of the way. Breakdown your goal to 10,000 visitors
into steps. Be prepared to build and dominate at each level!

1. 1st goal: 1,000 visitors

2. 2nd goal: 2,500 visitors

3. 3rd goal: 5,000 visitors

4. Final goal: 10,000 visitors

A successful website typically sees approximately 5,000 to about 9,000 visitors so

10,000 visitors is no shabby deal! Remember to celebrate reaching every one of your
goals and know that with each goal achieved you’ll learn something new.

In order to get the most out of the following strategies, consider the following:

• Complete one goal at a time. Your first strategy must be something you can
do consistently. Start with that and then add other consistent efforts.

37
 • Be flexible and ready to make changes, but also give yourself the proper
“seeding time” to succeed.

Take action on your strategy each day.

• Develop daily, weekly and monthly goals to see if you are on track to reaching
your goals. The best strategy is the one you actually use.

• Set aside time each day to review your activities and your results.

Getting 10,000 visitors to your site is no easy task, but implementing these simple
strategies will surely increase the number of visitors to your site. Get the help you need
to succeed by using these strategies today.

“You can make more friends in two months by

becoming interested in other people than you can
in two years by trying to get people intersted in
You.”
ou.”
- Dale Carnegie

38
Chapter XI: Build and Dominate Using Single Media
Strategies

Strategy #1: Build and Dominate Using Main Stream Social Networking
Websites

Social networking sites are like microcosms of communities. You could think of it as
being little groups of people who gather to interact with each other.

Many times free of charge to join, these social networking sites allow you to post your
work, your ideas, blog, or just let people know about you. If you had to choose just one
social media site to work, choosing a main stream social networking site would be the
place to do it because of the large number of people already gathered together.

So what’s the strategy? MySpace is a great pick to implement these strategies, but
there are other sites that are quickly gaining in popularity. Facebook, Multiply, Bebo,
Vox and Facebox are just a few up and coming sites. Check each of them out to see
which social environment is right for you, and then start building your web presence!

• Build your site to feature and highlight your best posts and products. Include
bookmarklets as well.

• Invite as many people as you can to be your “friend”. Many times, these
invitations present an opportunity for your new “friend” to view your page
(which is why you need to make a great first impression with the web page of
your social networking site)

• Join a minimum of 3-5 groups preferably, with high activity. When you join a
group, many times, there is a “recently joined” feature that will let the other

39
 members of the group know who you are. When you start making posts in
groups or forums with high activity, your post is logged for others to view. To
see your page, all they have to do is click on your photo to view your web
page.

• Don’t forget to regularly place comments on web pages. For people who
already have a volume of friends visiting their page, your post is sure to be
noticed and you can get some “Add Me” invitations as well.

• With social networking sites, the more you invite, comment, post, the more
people will see you. The more they see you, the more they’ll trust you – but
you must act with sincerity and ensure you always have good content.

Wondering if and how you can make some money off these sites? Pages like MySpace
offer you the ability to incorporate an HTML code. By doing that, you’re able to place
ads (like Google’s AdSense and other affiliate marketing products) on your site and
allow people to purchase products from you.

Strategy #2: Build and Dominate Using Social Video Log Sites

When people think of blogs, most people think of written format and reading. That’s
understandable. Since you’re on the web, you can expect that most of your views will
have to take place in written form. But consider catching some added attention by
being a little different? Widen your reach by presenting your message in different types
of media. Present some of your messages in vLog format! Not everyone can connect
with you as easily in a written format as some people are more visual.

Kind of like a MySpace on video, YouTube offers a video documentary platform for
those of us who don’t like to read. You can set up some pictures on a slideshow to
music or take some video footage of local events in your community. What ever the
case may be, consider using the vlog format to expand the reach you have.

40
One of the special features about YouTube is that the videos are easily usable within
other media. You can embed them onto your own platform or link to them via URLs.
Video logging also offers places to comment on the material presented.

YouTube by far, also has the most traffic volume flowing through it. Create keyword
focused tags and titles and combine and work the vlog scene in multiple places. Tag
videos as favorites and leave comments on this visual platform. You can also subscribe
to video feeds or bring your favorite vlog posts right to your web page.

Wondering if YouTube is right for you? If your material is best presented in a video
format, then YouTube will work. If you want to use other types of media to enhance
your posts, video logging works! Search the YouTube community for ideas on
presenting your material in video format.

Also up and coming is Ustream.tv, Metacafe, Motionbox, vSocial, blip.tv and iFilm.
Each site is home to a different form of video and a different form of video environment.
Some sites specialize in being weekly talk shows. Some sites specialize in people
video journaling. Just be sure to visit the site and decide if it’s the best environment for
you.

So what’s the strategy here? Do the same as with the mainstream social networking
sites. Join (and many sites are also free – YAY!) and start up a web page. Start inviting
some friends to view your stuff and comment on other people’s work as well. With
these sites, it’s all about content and interacting in video format. It’s a great and fund

Strategy #3: Build and Dominate Using Social Applications

What are these? Social applications take on a variety of forms like presence, mobile,
and calendars applications. These applications focus on serving a specific need or
group rather than a general mass.

41
Places and event applications are gaining quick popularity as media to advertise your
location or your calendar schedule. It’s still a market in development that has many of
its users on the college scene. Who are the application providers? Yelp,
CollegeTonight, MingleNow, HeyLetsGo, Upcoming (recently acquired by Yahoo) and
Meetup are just a few places.

While there aren’t opportunities to really benefit financially from these applications just
yet, it won’t be long before they start to arise.

How can you use these social media? You can use them as places of advertisement
for your calendar or event. The idea here is that your calendar gets shared by anyone
who can see your page. You can also upload your event among your friends network.
This is great for event speakers, performers, bands and other showcase artists.

Mobile applications like Twitter are going to fuel the next market. While much of the
social media today cater to online users, mobile phones are predicted to be the next
new market for social media. With more phones no longer being just phones anymore
(what happened to the good ‘ole days?), user functions will definitely have to increase.
Applications like Twitter are mini-blogs that you can send via instant messaging, email
and SMS text. Message texting with cell phones are popular already and using an
application like Twitter means that you can keep contact with your audience even
offline!

The strategy is to add friends to your Twitter network and send them short messages
daily. You can advertise what’s new with you or send an inspiring quote of the day all
from the comfort of your computer. While this is still an emerging market, there’s no
doubt that mobile applications like Twitter will become a marketing standard in the near
future.

42
Strategy #4: Build and Dominate Using Social Bookmark Tagging Strategies

In order to build your bookmark tagging strategy, you’ll need to find out a few things.
Which bookmarking sites are popular and offer the highest volume of traffic? Which
sites have additional features such as group participation? Is the search function user
friendly?

Here’s a quick highlight of several bookmarking sites and the value they offer.
Bookmark Traffic Syndication Other Comments
Site Volume Opportunities
Del.icio.us high high popular with general media
Furl medium medium cache’s content
Blinklist medium medium
Magnolia medium low group oriented; cache’s
content
Google medium to low medium content access via IE toolbar
Bookmarks
Reddit medium medium news
Digg medium to high high focus on news
Netscape medium medium focus on news
Stumbleupon medium to low low doubles as a social networking
site
Newsvine medium medium focus on news; money making
opportunity by submitting
articles

43
Here’s the strategy:

1. Become a user first. This will help you to get familiar with the site as well as start
creating bookmarks and tags for your posts. It’ll also help you determine which
tool is right for your audience.

2. Select 2-5 bookmarking sites to start working on creating your own network.

3. Add the bookmarklets of the sites you choose onto your posting sites (i.e. –
blogs, web pages, vlogs, etc.)

4. Begin working your audience. A few of the bookmarking sites enable you to join
groups and add friends. Do this on these sites and start sharing some of your
favorites.

5. Coordinate launches of great posts with your network of friends. You’ll need
about 50 bookmarks within a 24hour period to be considered popular.

With a few practice runs coordinating launches, you’ll be in the “what’s popular” section
in no time. The key here is to continue to create great content, continue adding friends
and continue coordinating launches. Essentially, you’ll be “branding” yourself. People
get bombarded by media all the time and on the internet, it’s no exception. When they
start to see your name regularly, you’ll be sure to see more and more success!

Strategy #5: Build and Dominate Using Social Bookmark Group Strategies

Just how are tagging strategies different from group strategies? With this strategy,
you’ll focus on working the group you decide to become a part of on the social
bookmarking site. Many bookmarking sites offer you the ability to create your own
network. You can join one that’s already created (which will be a must do for your
strategy) or you can create your own.

44
Here’s the strategy:

1. Join 2-3 groups on your social bookmarking site and research trends, key players
and your competition.

2. With that information, you’ll begin to start commenting on other people’s posts.

3. Comment strategically. Prioritize your comment making to a certain number of

posts within a certain timeframe or making posts to the same people on a regular
basis.

4. Begin to form your own network and begin adding your “friends” from your social
networking site as well.

5. For those friends that you add, begin commenting strategically on their sites as
well. Be careful to not come off as “spamming”. Remember thoughtful, relevant
posting will be critical

6. Eventually your network of friends will be commenting about you. Find out what
they are saying and adjust your strategy accordingly. You won’t be able to
please all people and a thick-skin will be a must, but you’ll still need to listen to
your intuition as to when it’s time to change up a plan!

7. With this strategy, consistency will be necessary because you’ll be bookmarking

your own site and then focusing on working your audience to bring your
bookmark numbers up.

8. Learn to track your results via Feedburner or some other web analytics site.
You’ll need information that will help you determine if your efforts are paying off
or not.

45
With the group strategy for bookmarking, the focus is interacting with the group and
connecting with various groups to get your message across. Find ones that are fun to
work with and some that offer a different environment. Sometimes we live in the same
box of friends and activities that we feel boxed in and limited. Social bookmarking was
intended to be fun and offer a quick way to categorize the web content. Let it remain to
be fun and you will quickly rise to the top!

Strategy #6: Build and Dominate Using Paying Social Networking Sites

Here’s another benefit to using social networking sites. You’ll be setting up an income
generator for yourself. The money you make will be related to the amount of traffic you
get – so the more traffic, more money! Thinking your not in it for the money? Let’s just
say that it’s wise to set up an income generator for your business. Why is that? Once
you’ll hit thousands of targeted visitors, you’ll eventually have to end up spending
money to increase your market share of viewers. Let the business bankroll itself by
setting up an online income stream.

Direct Matches is one of the leading paid business and social networking sites. While
free up front, Direct Matches is an online business platform that is great for network
marketers and other online entrepreneurs. In addition to the networking environment
being socially acceptable and gracious with spamming and “spreading the word” about
your online business startup, paid social network sites also give the option to pay you
for referrals. That’s an added incentive for “spreading the word” in my book!

There are many other places that are free to join, but will pay you for other things like
blogging. Facebook and Squidoo are a couple of networks that you can get paid from
as well. They are medium volume traffic sites, but you can link your other web pages to
them and invite your friends. While they don’t pay you directly for your referrals to their
site as in Direct Matches, you can get paid from advertising revenue and blogging.
Facebook even has an application that you can add to your page that will enable you to

46
take up a collection and publicize it to your network. It ties in nicely to your PayPal
account for easy access. Raise funds for a party, for school, or just about anything.

So what’s the strategy here? Build and dominate using paying social networking sites
by setting up your income generator. Having income from your posts will help make it
easier to obtain the tools and other resources you’ll need to push your business forward
and beyond. Set up at least one of your social networking sites to become an income
generator for yourself. It’s wise to set them all up as income generators, but do at least
one. Also, choose the one that has the higher volume traffic opportunity.

Strategy #7: Build and Dominate by Becoming Part of a Community

A community is a group of people with a common passion. Choosing the right group
will be a ready made target market for your product or message. With this strategy,
you’ll build and dominate your market by becoming part of a community. In fact you’ll
do it many times over in mainstream social networking sites and as part of your regular
peer networking opportunities.

The idea here is to continue to have massive amounts of opportunity to build your
relationships, but not confine yourself to working just your specific group. Other people
who are not related to your group need to find ways to meet you as well. While they
might not have an interest in your product at the moment, should they ever have an
interest, they’ll search out their online social network first and you’ll want them to find
you!

Here’s the strategy:

1. Join at least one diverse community that has specific groups. For example,
MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo Groups, and Squidoo are excellent places that bring
lots of traffic.

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 2. As you take time building specific and relevant contacts within the group, you
also have the opportunity to reach out to those outside your group as well.

3. Continue to work your specific targeted audience, but also showcase yourself
and your product to the general community via a blog or webpage. You can also
choose to make random comments to friends in your community.

One of the greatest aspects about this strategy is its potential to go viral. If you have
great content and are syndicated well with all your user-friendly buttons in place, you’ll
have the potential to be seen by a wide variety of people within a short amount of time.
You’ll be able to see the power of SMO work almost instantaneously! Now that would
be exciting!

Of all the strategies available, working the right community will ensure your business
stays successful. It’s also important to keep in mind that becoming a part of a
community is a standard with social media optimization. Your goal is to connect with
people and joining communities or networks is part of your work. The strategy
presented here is potentially widening your scope to still remain targeted, but to also
capitalize on the traffic that the network brings in! Now that’s setting your business up
for success!

Strategy #8: Build and Dominate by Submitting Content

Submitting content articles is one of the best ways to get your name out there. It sets
you up as an authority figure and will help you to balance your SEO and SMO practices.
Sites like eZine Articles, GoArticles, Wikipedia and Helium are great sites that you can
add your articles to. Once posted on those sites, other users who are looking for
relevant content for their sites will be able to use your stuff and you get the credit!

One of the added benefits is that some places offer you a portion of advertising
revenues. It may not be a lot, but after many article submissions, the amounts can

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potentially be substantial. Sites like Helium, digg, and Newsvine accept submissions
and will pay you via PayPal.

Here’s the writing strategy:

1. Target your audience and widen the scope. You’ve heard this many times, but
you’ll also have to learn how to target your audience and still widen your scope at
the same time. Let’s say for example, you sell t-shirts for youth. Many adults
also wear shirts with youth designs and is there a way you can reach them?

2. Create your post so that people can easily share it in a discussion. Make it
quotable, summarizable, forwardable, and paraphrasable.

3. Add links and images as resources. One of your goals is to also be a resource
for your audience.

4. Write about topics, interests, and awareness of other people’s posts. You don’t
always have to be the idea originator. When focusing on content, talk about the
latest hot topic if that’s what interests your audience.

5. Be reachable. Allow your audience to interact with you instead of hiding from
spambots. If they can’t reach you, you can’t build a relationship with them. Be
sure to include your bio in places where you can and highlight your features!

Now here’s the strategy to reach your target audience!

1. Blog! Blog! Blog! No matter what form of post you might use, keep and maintain
a blog. Post often and regularly and the more the merrier! Your posting alone
will begin to drive traffic to your post. You’ll need other elements to expand your
reach, but keeping to a posting schedule will definitely drive page views!

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 2. Submit to social article sites like Helium, Newsvine, and digg (which also pay you
for your efforts) on a regular and consistent basis. Helium organizes contests for
it’s writers to encourage participation and the submission of real articles; not just
baseless opinions. Helium also works with publications to get work for the site’s
serious writers. The publications will then pay you for you’re your article
submission if selected by them.

3. Post your articles on your social networking sites along with your AddThis or
Socializer bookmarklet for added user friendliness.

4. You can definitely write and not focus on interacting with your audience much
and still see success, however, in order to see results quicker and faster, start
interacting in your social network a little. Remember, a little goes a long way!

Wondering who can benefit from submitting articles? If you sell anything on the
internet, it’s no longer enough to just sell product. As a small business, you’ll almost
have to do a little extra in order to compete with larger online department stores. What
can you do? As a small business, you can write product reviews or product features.
You can become a how-to resource for your customers. Write up about anything
regarding your products including what’s going on in your market. Write about new
business developments and write about your competition. Just write and keep on
writing proving yourself to be a valuable resource for your customers!

There is so much competition in online commerce. Taking the time to set yourself apart
as a resource will pay off in large ways as you build a dedicated and loyal customer
base.

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Chapter XII: Build and Dominate Using Multiple Media
Strategies

Strategy #9: Build and Dominate - Getting Your Site Noticed in 1 Day

Wondering how to get your site noticed in one day? If you have semi-good content, you
can just blog in order to get a few hits. Is that the kind of activity you’re looking for? Of
course not! For a first time or new user, receiving a 100 unique page views a day is a
tremendous accomplishment but we know you want more. After all, your goal is to get
thousands of unique visitors! Just how do we do that? Focus on one social
networking site that has high activity. MySpace is an excellent choice for doing this
because many of the users of MySpace visit their sites regularly.

Find your target audience for your niche and start making some contacts. How do you
do this? Start making some friends. Add yourself to a group or forum and start dolling
out some friend requests. Create or join an “add me” train. In general, most people
who like receiving friend requests appreciate you taking the time to visit their page and
“add them” to your group of friends. The ones that don’t make it clear up front what
their requirements are when you click on the “add me” link. Many times, I’ve found that
the ones that take the time to get to know you before adding you as their friend will
prove to be longer lasting relationships than the ones that don’t.

Add lots of love to your networking activities. Be quick to recognize and highlight
something on their page. It shows that you actually were interested in being their friend.
Also be welcoming and approachable as a friend and you’ll surely benefit with a visit to
your page.

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Write something on your blog in MySpace. It amazes me just how many people actually
read what you wrote when they visit your page. I guess it’s because they want to get to
know who it is that they are connecting to.

Add “high touch” to your relationships. Remember their birthdays and spend some time
visiting the pages of the friends you’ve added. Here’s an added benefit. Every time you
post a comment on their page, not only do you reach the user, but you also end up
reaching the people that the user reaches. The result is viral!

Consistency and persistency in gaining new friends and working the friendships you’ve
already started will dramatically increase the number of visitors to your site. So here’s
the strategy:

1. Work one social networking site and make yourself visible just about everywhere
you can. If you use MySpace – adjust your page to be creative and appealing.
Write a post for your friends network. Write a post in the groups and forums.

2. Start adding friends and adding friends fast. If you use a train, keep in mind that
MySpace has a limit on the number of friends you can add per day. You’re trying
to build a momentum so keep working your friend’s network.

3. Coordinate your launch efforts on MySpace to make your page widely noticed.
Consider adding friends that already receive a huge number of page visits and
have high activity on their page. If you comment on their page, by default, they
are advertising your page.

4. To build and dominate, repeat this same process with several mainstream social
networking sites and several bookmarking sites as well. Keep practicing
coordinating launches until you see the number of page views that get your page
into the favorites or top ranking SMO pages.

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Strategy #10: Build and Dominate Using Syndication

Syndicating your content makes it easy to retrieve, visit and keep updated. Where they
might be hesitant to give you their email address, RSS provides a way for them to still
build a relationship with you and your content. Trust is what you’re after and trust is still
being built with RSS.

How can syndication be used as part of you strategy? If you update your site often (and
you should be!), this allows a way for your audience to receive your updates at a
convenient location to them. Also keep in mind that in general, syndication is a
standard practice of SMO. Making your posts and product portable and linkable will be
a critical aspect of spreading your popularity fast.

Here are some strategy ideas for syndicated feeds.

1. Get your friends to post your syndicated feed on their pages. Select friends that
have high levels of page views.

2. Incorporate your own syndicated feed on your networking pages.

3. Email your feed URL in an email marketing campaign.

4. Post your feed URLs in free classified ads such as Craig’s List.

5. Make your feed URL a part of your tag line or signature.

Syndication ensures that your audience stays up to date on your postings. You’ll want
them to receive timely and relevant posts and then comment on them. Giving your feed
URL will enable your audience to also link to your feed URL and to pass that on to their
audience network.

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Strategy #11: Build and Dominate by Going Deep and Going Wide with SMO

The idea here is simple. Go wide as fast as you can and then go deep with high touch
activities. Going wide means that you’ll gain wide spread visibility (stemming from
coordinated efforts across multiple social media). It means you spread your name as
far as you can as fast as you can. The more people who see your name, brand, article,
etc. the better. Going deep means that you’ll strengthen the bond you have with your
audience. Going deep also means that you’ll use your audience to further promote your
efforts.

Let’s take a look at going wide first.

1. Concentrate on building compelling start pages and opening accounts with

MySpace, Facebook, MyYahoo, and Squidoo.

2. Concentrate on adding new contacts as many as you can in the social network
as fast as you can.

3. Use multiple social media to enhance the reach you have across the internet
groups.

Then you take the time to build more solid relationships with your audience via
commenting and other high touch activities. Some specific activities to add a more
personal touch to the relationship are:

1. Remember birthdays.

2. Post comments on other people’s pages.

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 3. Instant message people and talk with them.

4. Feature or highlight great things about other people.

The objective is to define a priority on your work here and go wide first, and then add
the high touch activities. You can high touch anyone when there’s no audience and too
much follow up can receive a negative response towards your efforts.

Strategy #12: Build and Dominate Using “Add Me” Trains to Gain Fast
Popularity

This might sound like a great idea, but you don’t have any control over who actually
hops on the train. The problem with trains is that many times, adult content pages are
quick to hop on which is not so good for business. However, the benefit of an “add me”
train is that you can gain a large number of friends within a relatively short amount of
time.

With this strategy, you’ll want to couple the use of MySpace with your other networking
options. To do that, you’ll need to tie in your other networks to your MySpace page via
widgets of rolling favorites or bookmarks. In fact, tie all your other bookmark network
sites onto your MySpace page and be sure to add the multiple bookmarklet available via
AddThis or Socializer. So here’s the strategy:

1. Tie your posts onto your MySpace page. This can come from your blog or vlog,
etc.

2. Tie your other bookmark networks onto your MySpace page.

3. Add a bookmarklet for user convenience.

4. Create an “Add Me” train on MySpace and start adding friends like crazy!

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 5. When your guests add you to their network of friends, they’ll be sure to look at
your page and take action on the posts that are available.

It’s interesting to note that many MySpacers will be willing to read whatever you place
on your page. If take some time to create compelling posts, you’ll be sure to obtain a
great response from this network!

Strategy #13: Build and Dominate by Getting Your Friends to Help

Do you realize people will pay others to create links and write posts for them? Save
yourself some cash and get your friends to help! Use the network that you’ve built up
for yourself in as many locations as will allow. You’ve built your relationships so you
determine whether or not your group will be supportive of these efforts.

• Get your friends to link to you and get them to get their friends to link to you.
Personal referrals are always much stronger than you promoting yourself. The
more you can get referrals to work for you, the farther you’ll spread your
business.

• Get your friends to tag and bookmark your articles. This is part of coordinating
launches, but this can be a part of a regular and ongoing plan to maintain top
page rankings.

• Get your friends to rate you. Again, your friends will be very helpful in
maintaining your success. Allow your friends to help you, but get your network
involved as well. SMO is going to be a team effort; not just your effort!

• Don’t be afraid to ask for a referral! If your audience doesn’t get that they need
to spread your message, then don’t hesitate to ask them for one!

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Many of your friends will be more than willing to help you spread the word and gain
popularity. The good thing about it is that it’ll only take a few people to help you do this
and many more people will jump on in to spur you on to success!

One other aspect to consider is partnership to serve a mutual benefit. As a blogger,

consider partnering with a freelance writer to help you get some of the writing done.
You can also partner with a photo journalist to promote their photos on your blog. The
purpose of the partnership is to increase the visibility in a highly strategic and highly
organized manner.

Strategy #14: Build and Dominate Using SEO and SMO

If you’ve already got a site that is SEO compliant, then incorporating SMO into your
strategy will definitely escalate the popularity of your page! Perhaps the most
dominating and securest form of achieving and maintaining top page rankings is
combining SEO and SMO. Here’s why.

Think about it this way. With SEO, you’ve got search engines working for you to bring
you page views. If you’ve placed your bookmarklets on your post, then it’s a good
chance that you’ll get bookmarked. Now that’s SMO working for you. If you solely relied
on SMO, popularity comes and goes rather quickly. What’s considered to be in vogue
today will not be tomorrow. An SMO strategy can work without SEO practices in place,
but popularity will be short lived.

The most successful strategy will be one that combines both SEO and SMO practices.
SEO is like the backbone or the framework of your success. It provides a steadiness
and comforting security that SMO doesn’t always provide. SMO is based on the likes
and dislikes of people and you know that can change like the wind. Why take the
chance of having all of your work destroyed by relying only on one method? Add
security to your strategy by incorporating SMO.

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Here’s the strategy:

1. Make your post SEO compliant as first priority.

2. Go back to your other posts and website and make them SEO compliant as well.
While key word stuffing your posts is considered bad, using key words is a must
(just don’t over do it).

3. As you create more posts, focus on making them compelling and SEO compliant
at the same time.

4. Dedicate some efforts to applying SMO techniques at the same time. Don’t be
concerned if you are concentrating on SEO or SMO too much. Over the long
run, both efforts will pay off.

Remember that SMO and SEO are really not independent of each other. SEO can
stand alone, but it won’t be strong unless SMO is added to your marketing strategy.
Likewise, SMO will be short lived because it depends upon the people’s likes and
dislikes which changes rather quickly.

Understand your market and know your audience. Knowing how to reach them will
ensure that you apply the right SEO and SMO techniques every time. As you’ll soon
see, the wrong techniques used won’t produce much, but the right techniques and the
right voice will produce a multitude of visitor beyond what you could ever imagine!

Strategy #15: Build and Dominate Using Multiple SMO Media

This is probably the highlight of strategies for you and ultimately where you want to be.
Use MySpace, Squidoo, Technorati, FeedBurner, del.icio.us and Twitter or any
combination of SMO media. Why select multiple SMO media? So you can obtain a
wide range of audiences who’ll have the opportunity to use and view your post.

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Audiences who actually read and review bookmarking sites have their favorites to work
with and as a result, they won’t be participating in every single network available. You
as the author however, still have to make it a point to reach them and become a
reader/reviewer as well.

Participate in several bookmarking sites, but focus your efforts on only one or two at the
beginning. We want to obtain maximum efforts in the least amount of time and build a
strong web presence at the same time. Ad hoc or inconsistent efforts will yield
inconsistent results.

Become a part of the social network, but also become a part of the blogosphere
communities. They will most likely play a strong role in the success of your site
because of the authority they carry. The main idea is though, to remember to network
and continue the networking process long term. Again, consistent efforts are what will
matter and count. People won’t remember you if you make a post, drop off the face of
the earth, then post again. Posting comments is a chance to brand you and your
product or blog.

The great thing about FeedBurner is that you set it up once and basically let it run.
You’ll just want to ensure your feed is properly operating from time to time, but basically,
you won’t really have to do much after that. FeedBurner was also offers some basic
web analytics which you’ll need to track the success of your activities. Use FeedBurner
because it’ll probably be one of the easiest things you’ll ever do!

Twitter is a recommended product not because it offers a lot of value at this time, but
because of where the social media market is headed. Like we discussed earlier, taking
social media mobile is an up and coming market that is sure to see bigger and better
products within the next couple of years. For now, get some practice and get your
audience used to receiving your Twitter messages. In the long run, you’ll be preparing
them as well as your business for the next level of social media which is mobile.

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Hopefully at this time, you’ll already have a blog or at least a MySpace page with
content on it. Start building your SEO compliancy within your site and then blending
SMO practices with it. As you add different formats of social media, you’ll begin to see
the variety of audiences that form of media reaches. Tweak and adjust your SMO
practices to fit your audience making sure to connect with them every time. With that,
you’ll be sure to rise to the top of page rankings and see the success you’ve always
imagined.

“If you build a great experience, customers tell

each other about that. Word of mouth is very
powerful.”
powerful.”

- Jeff Bezos

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Chapter XIII: Build & Dominate Using Content Strategies

Strategy #16: Strategies for Blogs

Written blogs have the widest selection of SMO media availability and thus have a wider
selection of strategies to choose from? Why is that? They’ve also got SEO working for
them as well. If you’ve got a vlog or a podcast, you might want to consider putting it in
writing in some way so that you’ll be able to partake of SEO benefits.

With vlogs, podcasts and pictures, your tags and picture title will impact the SEO
success of your post. Spend some time researching key words and thinking of creative,
compelling titles. We use the term “compelling” so much because your job is not only to
express your thoughts, but it is also your job to do so in such a manner so as to make
people take an action. What would that action consist of? Maybe it’s a change in
lifestyle, but most often, how’s about a vote for a favorite blog site? We’re after
creative, compelling content especially since we’ve only got keywords and titles to work
with for pictures, vlogs, podcasts and photos.

Here are some ideas for strategies for blogs.

1. Using MySpace, del.icio.us, and Squidoo will prove to be a power packed

combination for your SMO strategy. Offering the highest traffic volume, these
sites will increase your visibility.

2. Appeal to the college crowd using MySpace, Twitter, UpComing and Facebook.

3. Appeal to the news crowd using Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsvine and Reddit. This
crowd is definitely more serious! Make sure you have good content and know
your stuff!

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 4. Appeal to the work at home moms (or dads) with MyYahoo. Yahoo 360 is an
excellent format for moms making money online. Be careful though because
these moms also mean business and treat spamming as a cardinal sin!

5. If you’re using an independent blogging format such as Blogger or WordPress,

consider connecting with a larger group that can be resource blogs for you. Why
is that? Forming a blogging network immediately brings attention on a large
scale. You benefit by getting noticed as the group gets noticed as well. Don’t
hesitate to join the blogosphere network!

Strategy #17: Strategies for vLogs

Calling all vLoggers out there! Wondering which places will work best for you? Video
logging is a great way to communicate instructional how-to’s, create an online journal,
or just work on improving your video production skills. Here are some strategies to gain
a wide audience scope.

1. Combine YouTube and MySpace which will offer you high traffic volume and
localized interaction in one place. Many MySpacers are used to seeing YouTube
clips on web pages, but just be sure to not include too many as they can take a
long time to load!

2. Technorati, Digg, and del.icio.us are great places to promote your vlog. Select
appropriate tags, titles and bookmarks and you’ll be well on your way to seeing
success.

3. If your content has educational value, consider taking your vlog to the schools.

4. If your content is geared towards teens and youth, consider going taking your
content to MySpace.

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 5. For business presentations or motivation/inspirational content, consider taking
your vlog to the business blog community.

There are so many ways that vlogs can be used in conjunction with blogs or even as
stand alones. Keep in mind that one of the things you’d like to create in whatever post
you have is appeal. Sometimes a written blog just doesn’t present the right message in
the way that a vlog can. Get creative with your ideas and get creative with the various
formats available. To get that wide appeal, you’ll have to deliver your message in a
variety of formats.

Strategy #18: Strategies for Podcasters

You might be an avid blogger looking for a way to expand your market share. You
could also be an avid podcaster looking for a way to reach more people. If this is you,
then these are great starter strategies for you to use to expand your visibility and reach
the people you intended to reach with your message.

As a podcaster, using RSS feeds will be a must. Applications like FeedBurner make
syndication simple which is exactly what you’ll need. Now for reaching out to your
audience!

Like we said earlier, consider also putting a highlighted portion of your podcast in written
form on a blog so you can benefit from SEO. Don’t rely solely on titles and tags. They
are great aspects, but with podcasting you can afford to break down some of your
spoken content into written form. Consider also doing the reverse. Consider taking
some of your written formats and putting them in oral form. You’ll be making your
messages more portable and reaching people at different locations. Not everyone sits
in front of a computer all day reading your stuff. Using podcasting, they’ll be able to
listen to you as they workout or travel their daily commute. We’re just looking at ways to
reach your audience and encourage brand loyalty for your product.

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Now for the podcasting strategies:

1. Twitter or Jaiku are great applications for podcasting. You can take short
messages and send them out in a relatively quick manner.

2. Combine podcasting and blogging for maximum results in reaching your

audience. Reaching out to them in a written and oral format already places you
ahead of the game and competition. Many people focus only on one format and
forget that with technology, creating a podcast can be as simple as picking up
the phone!

3. MySpace is a great place to post multiple podcasts and get people to listen to
them. MySpace is the place for startup bands!

Strategy #19: Strategies for Photo Submissions

Photo submission strategies are much like vLog strategies. Photo sharing sites are
gaining quick popularity for photo journalists and artists alike, but they are also
increasing their usability in the family setting. Photos get worn out and eventually fade
and deteriorate. With photo sharing applications, you can protect your old photo and
even store and retouch your photo to last for the years to come.

1. Flickr is perhaps one of the most popular photo sharing site out there. Set up a
page on this site.

2. Create a blog about your photos and write about them.

3. Consider partnering with a blogger to promote your photos in their blog.

4. Promote your photos via MySpace. Setting up a page will bring you many page
views and increase your site’s visibility.

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Photos reach very targeted markets, generally speaking. Finding creative ways to
reach an expanding audience means you’ll have to post your pictures on multiple web
pages and protect yourself against copyright infringement. Placing your pictures in
multiple locations and partnering with someone else will definitely expand your
audience.

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in

a great way.”
way.”
- Napoleon Hill

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Chapter XIV: SMO Strategies for Various Online
Business Types

Strategy #20: Strategy for Network Marketers

As a network marketer, your goal is to build your business by word of mouth. SMO
works much the same way in that the more people you connect with, the faster your
business will grow! Network marketers understand the need to reach people. They
understand that they’ll need to make a solid connection with people. Maybe that’s why
many network marketers understand the using SMO practices in their business.

1. Use a social network site like MySpace, Facebook, or squidoo.

2. Do a product demonstration and place in on YouTube.

3. Place your business presentation on YouTube or in a podcast format.

4. Keep a blog of product reviews of your business products.

5. Google business groups are a great form of free advertising with free reign to
spam the group as many times as you like. Here’s the benefit, you can submit
your ads to places like these and network that way.

6. Use a calendar application to share meeting dates and times.

7. Send inspirational messages via Twitter.

8. Write articles of your network marketing business and submit them to news
media sites like Reddit, Digg, and Newsvine.

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 9. Use DirectMatches to network your business.

There are so many business uses for social media marketing. It’ll prove itself to be a
must with any online business wishing to expand their market share. With a well-
planned execution of reaching out to specific places, any network marketing business
will see success. Many products already sell themselves so getting the word out that
you distribute should be your focus.

Strategy #21: Strategy for Artists

Here’s a quick way to get your work noticed whether you’re a photo journalist, an
aspiring video producer, or even an up and coming music recording artist. Many times,
because of the competition that’s out there, placing your work by itself doesn’t get the
attention it deserves. Work on building powerful strategies that help you increase your
visibility in any market. The great thing about videos, photos and music is that they can
be presented in a variety of markets.

1. Keep a blog or MySpace page.

2. Partner with another complementary business.

3. Write a press release about your work.

4. Submit your work to all the sites hosting your media type.

5. Consider collecting royalties for your artwork or photo.

As an artist, you’ll have to find a way to get your artwork into a format that can be easily
linked to or written about. Then you’ll be able to work your audience and network in

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various groups. There are many ways to do this. Just get creative and see your 10,000
visitors viewing your web pages. They’ll soon be on their way!

Strategy #22: Strategy for Trade Professionals

Are you a realtor or a web designer? Maybe you’re a freelance writer or a plumber
trying to capture some online presence. Trade professionals are flocking to the internet
to gain their share of internet marketing. Don’t get left out!

Are you curious in finding out how trade professionals can capitalize with SMO
strategies? If you are, have we got the strategy for you!

1. Write about the news in your industry in a company blog.

2. Write about how-to’s and instructional formats of information.

3. Consider using a vlogger’s work or a photographer to help you create visuals of

your work.

4. Network in your trade and see what’s hot and what’s not.

5. Get referrals. In a professional trade business, contact with your clients accounts
for a large part of your business. You’re able to build a relationship with them
and get a referral for a job well done.

6. You can also work your business online, but offline as well.

7. There may not be many trade professionals online at this time, but joining
business networks that are similar in scope will definitely be worthwhile.

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As a trade professional, you are immediately able to reap the benefits of both an offline
and online business. Like network marketing, advertising and promoting your business
via word of mouth will be a surefire way to see instant success!

Strategy #23: Strategy for Merchandisers

Just how do you capitalize with SMO strategies if you’re a merchandiser? Do you retail
products? Where do you retail your products? You too can benefit from SMO
strategies using just a few simple forms of media.

1. Write product reviews on the products you sell. Keep them in a blog format
about your business.

2. Team up with vloggers or photographers to take pictures of highlighted products

of the season.

3. Spread your message amongst various places like MySpace, but you can also
venture into places like Yahoo 360, Google Groups, Facebook, and Squidoo.

4. You can also work SEO techniques by writing key word articles (write them
yourself or get them written for you) on your industry trends and news.

5. Gain more visibility by participating in eBay to sell your products. You can also
participate in many other auction sites that bring added page views to your site.

A merchandiser’s biggest problem to overcome in SMO is putting their product into a

taggable, linkable, and downloadable format. You’ll have to get your products into
written or visual format (that doesn’t include hanging on a rack). You’ll have to get
creative about finding ways to reach you audience with your product.

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Merchandisers can however, capitalize on the advertising efforts of other businesses
like eBay, and other shopping niche markets. Shopping niche markets are on the rise in
popularity. Check out places like Crowdstorm, Kaboodle, ShopWiki and StyleFeeder
where people talk about their favorite shopping products and experiences. As an online
community specifically for shoppers, sites like these are gaining quick notoriety for the
niche market they serve! Participate as a user and see how your business will benefit!

Strategy #24: Strategy for Service Websites

Does your business provide a service as their business product? There are still ways to
take your offline business and bring it online. In fact, offline businesses are still largely
an untapped market on the internet. With the use of SEO and SMO tactics, your
business can rise quickly just because of the sheer lack of competition in your industry.

How can your business benefit from SMO?

1. Write service testimonials about your business in a blog.

2. Write about your service industry or news about your industry in a blog. In fact,
depending upon your industry, there may be magazine sites who may be willing
to pay you for your article submission to their magazine.

3. Travel blogs and city specific or location blogs may prove to be great to partner
with. Highlight some of your service company’s features and submit them to your
local blog or start your own blog.

4. The best networks to work would be local markets as in Facebook and Squidoo.
You can also check out Yahoo 360 for specific markets to tap into.

Service sites can still benefit from SMO tactics. The obstacles to overcome are placing
your service product into format that can be linked to, uploaded, etc. The other obstacle

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is finding the right local market online for your niche market. Most service type business
will profit offline from an online presence. The business is still local, but trying to
capture more of the market share by capturing more of an online presence.

Strategy #25: Strategy for Auctioneers

Wondering how auctioneers can profit from an SMO strategy? Online auctions are
excellent places to incorporate SMO practices. Not only will the online business benefit
from the advertising that the auction site does, but using SMO, an online business will
also benefit from networking with other online auctioneers. Here are some strategies
that online auctioneers can employ.

1. Blog about the online auction industry market, trends and other news. Use the
blog to promote special products highlighted during the online auction sales.

2. Coordinate marketing efforts to include SMO and auction advertising to gain

maximum benefits of exposure.

3. Create a page in MySpace to change along with your sales promotions. Invite
people to your page, but also incorporate a link built into your page that’ll take
them to your auction listing.

4. Partner with shopping niche social media sites go gain quick exposure.

5. Use syndication and write a blog about your product everyday. It’ll perform like
having regular advertising to your growing network of friends.

There are again many ways for online auctioneers to benefit from SMO techniques.
One of the obstacles to overcome is coordinating the timing of efforts to coincide with
their online auctions. With generally a short time frame for sales, you can capitalize
during the short online sales time by consistently working your network of friends during

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the “off-season” time. While you might not be selling a product all of the time, you’ll
certainly benefit by keeping in touch with your customer base through talking about your
industry, your trade, any news arising in your sales market, or any new trends that might
ariseH

“Understand that you need to sell you and your

ideas in order to advance your career, gain more
respect, and increase your success, influence and
income.”
income.”
- Jay Abraham

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Chapter XV: Parting Thoughts

Putting it All Together

Once you have one or more of these strategies in place, get another strategy and take
action on it. Soon it’ll be time to start expanding your reach and you’ll soon see your
traffic flood in before your very eyes.

There is so much debate about whether or not you should go wide or go deep, but the
from my experience, some of the most successful business focused on both. Learn to
listen to your intuition to determine what your next steps are going to be. Spreading
yourself too thin too fast will produce an unstable business model that you will not be
able to maintain. Furthermore, strengthening your relationship with your audience by
interacting with them will stabilize your business and keep you on track. Remember
that one of the rules to follow is to not be afraid to try new things. Think of it this way,
you can be a pioneer in this new field of SMO marketing and a recognized leader in
your industry because of your cutting-edge practices!

SMO allows us an opportunity to rethink the way we do business and promote our
business. SMO will only be a success if we are well liked so customer service will be
critical to our measure of success. SMO allows us cheaper alternatives to advertising
costs. While SMO does not replace regular advertising, SMO does offer additional
ways to reach a new client base – one that may prove to be more loyal and more
targeted than our current methods produce.

Do What Works and Leave the Rest Behind

There’s no doubt that you’ll hear both good and bad about SMO techniques. There is
also no doubt that SMO does work although for how long, no one knows. There is also

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no idea how far SMO can take a business before its structure breaks down and
perhaps, this is not the forum for that discussion. Ultimately, we believe that SMO is the
wave of the internet marketing future and just about any online business willing to apply
the rules to their marketing plan stand to gain from an already present social trend
taking place on the internet.

Get excited about what you have in front of you and know that SMO is your answer to
setting the foundation for a loyal customer base – one that will continue to grow
throughout the years. You will find that not only will you be able to reach thousands of
targeted visitors, but you’ll also be able to reach much more people than you could ever
do with strictly SEO techniques only.

SEO is a reactive process, whereas SMO is a proactive process”

Take charge of the strategies that you have before you. If you’ve not done so already,
begin to employ SEO techniques, but also take charge of your business success and
begin to employ SMO techniques to your business model. With both methods working
for you, you’ll reach the goals you desire and you’ll quickly see the results and drive
thousands of targeted-traffic to your website in no time!

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