Social Media Tip of the Day: Google proves the importance of social bookmarking.
Have you seen these little symbols following many Google search results lately?
Those mean that there are tags in social bookmarking sites (specifically StumbleUpon) with the key terms you entered, or that the resulting URL has been tagged.
So, if you do not have one yet, you should be thinking seriously about launching a social bookmarking strategy.
The Social Media Power Team
A shout for our social media e-book.
JD at Social Media gave our e-book a shout, saying it was
…worth the price for anyone looking for a grounding in the nuts and bolts of social media.
And, that it
…will give you the underpinnings for the elements you need to address in your organization’s social media strategy.
Thank you, JD!
The 30 Minute Facebook Application
Continuing our series on tapping the power of Facebook, we will demonstrate a way for anyone with an RSS feed to painlessly build a Facebook application in only 30 minutes.
First, what is a Facebook application?
If you are familiar with Facebook, you probably have an application or two on your page or profile already. If not, read here about the various Facebook applications you can utilize. Yes, some of them are silly things that you will never use, but many of them can really help enhance your business Facebook presence. Thousands of people search this application directory every day, so having your own application on Facebook gives you much more exposure within the social community.
Now, creating your application:
To create your 30-minute Facebook application, you will first create a widget of your RSS feed, then turn that widget into an application on Facebook.
1. Gather the following information:
- The URL of your feed or blog
- A good list of key terms that describe your feed or Website (key terms are what people might enter in a Google search box if they want to find your site)
- A title and description of your feed or Website that uses several of your key terms
2. Create a Facebook profile, if you don’t already have one.
3. Get an account at Widgetbox and create a “blidget.” This blidget is a simple widget that contains the listings from your RSS feed that others can customize and place on their blog or Web site (you can see a link to our blidget in the sidebar to the right). Don’t get too hung up on definitions here, though. These tools really are easy to use; all you need is your feed URL, title, description, and key terms or “tags.” It will take 10 to 20 minutes to create your blidget. You can find more information on making a blidget on Widgetbox, here.
4. Now that you have created your blidget, you can turn it into an application on Facebook, Bebo, and a number of other social sites. Widgetbox provides a very easy-to-use interface that will even open your Facebook account in a frame so you won’t have to move back and forth. It is best to be signed into Facebook before you begin the process, though. Click to find out more information about building social applications using Widgetbox.
5. An application needs to have at least 5 subscriptions before it can be listed in the Facebook directory, so invite all of your Facebook friends and fans to subscribe.
And, that’s it! Really. Your very own Facebook application in 30 minutes, give or take…
The Social Media Power team
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Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.
Deltina Hay is the principal of Dalton Publishing and Social Media Power
Social Media Tip of the Day: Build a Solid Social Media Strategy
All of the social media tools and technologies that are out there can be overwhelming, no doubt. But, if you focus on the sites and tools that truly make sense for your business, you will find that the choices narrow down substantially. Take the time to build a solid social media strategy before you begin that includes:
- Gathering and preparing your best content, media, and key terms
- Web 2.0 tools to add to your existing Web site
- How you will enter the blogosphere - if at all
- One or two social networking sites that are good fits for your message or business
- Several social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing sites whose content tends toward your message
- Media communities to share images, events, video, etc. based on media you already have
- Badges, widgets, and feeds to pull all of these tools together
That concludes the Social Media Tip of the Day, but we want to add a special offer to this topic, without confusing it with the content of the post.
Our e-book, A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Optimization, is a perfect tool for building a sound social media strategy.
For a limited time, our subscribers and regular readers can enter this discount code: SMPFEED and receive a 25% discount on this easy-to-use, no nonsense guide to social media and Web 2.0.
Offer expires 09/15/2008.
Click the “Add to Cart” button below to purchase and download the e-book now, or read more about the book here.
Thank you for your support!
The Social Media Power team
Social Media Tip of the Day: Recommended Tool- Widgetbox.com
Widgetbox is one of Social Media Power’s favorite tools. It is a tool for creating and sharing widgets for blogs and Web sites. What we like most about this tool is that we can show clients how to create their own RSS feed widget in about 10 minutes - once they have decided on an optimum title, description, and tags - that is. Widgetbox calls this type of widget a “blidget,” and all you need to do to make one is enter the URL of your blog. You can see SMP’s blidget in the sidebar of this site. You can do much more with this widget, too, like turn it into a Facebook or Bebo application. I am planning a full post of instructions on how to do this soon.
Social Media Tip of the Day: Keep Your Feed Healthy
It would be nice if we could just create a feed once and assume it will never go out-of-date or that it will remain error free, but that is not the case. And, if you are not monitoring your feed subscriptions regularly, you may not even notice there is a problem. If your feeds are burned to Feedburner, go to Troubleshootize/Feedmedic and look at the generated error report for each feed. Otherwise, go to W3’s Feed Validation Service or Feed Validator to validate and troubleshoot your feed if necessary.
All About Social Media News Releases
A social media news release is just like a traditional news release, except it is also social media and Web 2.0 optimized. In short, this type of news release encourages interactivity, is easily shared in the social Web, and contains other Web 2.0 elements.
Generally, these elements include:
- Multimedia items such as downloadable images, audio/video files, or PDF/DOC files.
- A way for readers to comment directly on the news release content.
- An obvious and easy way for readers to bookmark the news release in social bookmarking sites or to share it via email.
- Technorati tags and links to purpose-built del.icio.us pages.
If you or your business produce online or email press releases on a regular basis, you should be using, and therefore benefiting from, social media news releases. Like everything else on the Internet today, there is an expectation that content will be interactive, easily shared, and will offer sources to similar information. If your news releases do not live up to these expectations, it may hurt your chances for major media coverage. It’s easy to create your own social media releases, or you can use a service like PRWeb. And, since a social media news release is just a traditional release with added elements, you do not need to change your present format, just include some additional sections. These added elements include:
- Multimedia section: Here you will offer a number of downloadable items, including PDF or Word documents (book excerpts, advanced reviews, white papers, brochures, etc.) and images (author photos, company executive photos, book cover art, company logos). Also provide any relevant podcasts and video clips in this section.
- Technorati tag section: Use this section to list links to Technorati pages that are tagged with a list of key terms relevant to your release.
- Social bookmarking section: In this section, provide links to any of your relevant del.icio.us pages. Here you could also provide links to relevant pages on Digg.com or any other social bookmarking or crowd-sourced news site.
- Sharing and commenting: In addition to the above sections, you should also make it easy for your readers to share or bookmark your release in any number of ways. Allowing visitors to comment on your news release makes it truly interactive.
- Social media section: If you don’t have a social media newsroom to refer readers to, you should consider adding a section to your news release that lists where you have a presence in the social Web. Link to your profiles in places like MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.
Check out some social media news release examples here:
http://owenegertonnewsroom.com/?p=54
http://www.hiddenlandsofnodnewsroom.com/hiddenlandsofnod/?p=33
http://www.puresoapboxnewsroom.com/puresoapbox/?p=13
Social Media Tip of the Day: Make it Easy for Others to Share Your Site
There are a number of nice tools out there that can make it painless for your readers to bookmark, email, or share your site or blog posts with others. Yes, you can add a widget from many different bookmarking and crowd-sourcing sites, but why not use one widget that will allow addition into all of them?
Here are a few we recommend:
Social Media Tip of the Day: Add Your RSS Feed to Your Email Signature
If you have burned your feed on Feedburner, you can easily generate code that will allow you to have a little mini-feed in the signature of your email messages. This is a nice way to expand your reach and encourage others to subscribe to your feed. You can find this feature on Feedburner by going to Publicize/Headline Animator/Email Signature.
Social Media Tip of the Day: Take the Time to Optimize Your Blog Posts
Posting a blog entry once or twice a week is a lot of work in and of itself, so taking that extra few minutes to optimize the post can make it worth the time you spent creating it.
Here are a few things you can do to optimize your blog posts:
- Add them to appropriate categories.
- Add tags that are relevant to each post.
- Use a good SEO plugin so that your posts will get indexed properly in the search engines. Then, add good descriptions and key terms to each post using the plugin.
There are many other things you can do, but these suggestions are easy to get in the habit of doing every time you post.
