Quick, high level overview of the social media market and how it can be utilized to drive links.

1. Link Value of Social Media

2. Overview Pros of Social Media Cons of Social Media Formula Our Problems The Competition is Ahead Examples Finding the Best Sites Locating Influential Leaders Using your Research ROI and Conversions Playing it Smart Questions to Ask Resources

4. Pros of Social Media Relationship building with industry insiders you may never meet. Find a niche market, you'll find valuable traffic (if you become a reliable source). Announcing new links, articles, sites, specials, news across various outlets can be fairly easy which gains: Exposure potential for faster crawling easy sharing among followers, friends, peers Potential for finding links in new areas. Emotionally fulfilling

6. Formula Social Media Network + Linkbait = Inbound Links Linkbait has limitations. Great for: Inbound links (if you have an effective piece) Search engine rankings (if you can achieve the aforementioned links) Publicity (people will start to know who you are and remember your brand after seeing your site several times through social media) Branding (growing awareness and a reputation) Getting the Attention of Influencers Not Good for: CTR-based ads Conversions Supportive, emotionally sensitive comments Positive re-inforcement (in most cases) Instant subscribers http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-media-traffic-isnt-useless

7. Our Problems Problem #1 – Time Constraints Problem #2 - Creating Linkbait Solution - build relationships through social media to get email/phone interviews, guest articles, etc. Use Spezify, gather data for infographics or other useful graphs, or create content around popular discussions in your niche markets. Communication = Engagement = Reach/Traffic/Link Potenital Problem #3 – No Reciprocal Linking Solution - content sites allow us a way around this, if necessary. Problem #4 – Measuring Value / ROI & Lead Gen One solution – utilizing the Search Marketing tools in Raven to track time, progress, etc.

9. The Competition is Ahead

10. Example of Competitor Tweets

11. Finding the Best Sites Lots of options, articles and opinions are out there. Figure out your angle and work it. 1. Bookmark / tagging sites - Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr (niche), StumbleUpon 2. Article / content submission sites - eHow, Ezine, RSS feeds 3. Profile pages - WikiHow, 43 Things 4. Persona Builders - Yahoo! Answers

13. Locating Influential Leaders Here's where Twitter comes in: WeFollow.com helps you locate Tweeters who are "most influential" and those with the "most followers" based on a specific keyword. Locate these, follow them, find out what they link to/tweet about and create it. Twitter Local can also help find local influencers, either local to you or to your school.

14. Twitter Usage on the Rise 115% increase in usage from Jan 2010. Our best option is to find niche areas within this to drive traffic and attract users who are more likely to “retweet”, post backlinks on their other sites, and refer our services/products to their followers and friends.

15. Using your Research 1. Create pages that provide links back to your site (i.e. Squidoo Lens) - this provides both traffic and link popularity. 2. Create pages that will rank well in search engines for low-moderately competitive terms/phrases - check your Raven tools, use a thesaurus/Wonder Wheel/Search Suggestions for ideas. 3. Build profiles on sites that can attract links, attention and contacts from other members, like Digg, Reddit, Wikipedia or on industry blogs. 4. Contribute to the growth and value of social media sites (i.e. don't spam, influence)

17. ROI and Conversions, Part 1 Redefine “i” in ROI Return on engagement – the duration of time spent either in conversation or interacting with social objects, and in turn, what transpired that’s worthy of measurement. Return on involvement – similar to participation, marketers explored touchpoints for documenting states of interaction and tying metrics and potential return of each. Return on attention – In the attention economy, we assess the means to seize attention, hold it and as such measure the responses activities that we engender. Return on trust – A variant on measuring customer loyalty and the likelihood for referrals, a trust barometer establishes the state of trust earned in social media engagement and the prospect of generating advocacy and how it impacts future business.

18. ROI and Conversions, Part 2 To measure ROI effectively we need to determine what it is we are measuring. First answer, “What is it we want to change/improve/accomplish/incite/etc?” Then we can establish goals and objectives that specifically tie activity into: Sales / Registrations Referrals Links Reduction in costs & processes Lead gen Conversion Inbound activity

19. ROI and Conversions, Part 3 Forecast for SM Metrics 2010 Many CMOs 89%, tracked the impact of social media by traffic, pageviews, and the size of their social graph or communities [in 2009]. However, 2010 is the year that social media graduates from experimentation to strategic implementation with direct ties to specific measurable performance indicators. Top 3 metrics to study for 2010 333% surge in tracking revenue 174% escalation in monitoring conversion 150% increase in measuring average order value Based on study by Bazaarvoice and CMO Club on MarketingProfs recently. (http://www.briansolis.com/2010/02/roi-how-to-measure-return-on-investment-in-social-media/)

20. Play it Smart “If you want to play in this space you need to pick a social community that’s going to give you the biggest bang for your buck and work it.” Debra Mastaler of the Link Spiel

21. Questions to Ask 1. Does this site have good traffic? 2. Is it quality traffic (niche)? 3. Is the community/site active? 4. How spammy is the site? 5. Can this site tie in to other sites so they're all updated at once? (Yahoo/Twitter/Facebook/Digg) 6. What is my focus for this site (traffic, reputation builder, content syndication)? 7. How much time will this take to gain results? 8. Are there other, better options to meet my goals?

22. Resources Spezify http://www.spezify.com/ We Follow: http://wefollow.com/ Twitter Advanced Search http://search.twitter.com/advanced Social Media Traffic isn't Useless http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-media-traffic-isnt-useless Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/4everyoung/313308360/#/photos/4everyoung/313308360/lightbox/