Obama has declared he’ll be using YouTube to provide weekly addresses to the nation and the world, I want to start taking snapshots of the analytics in order to understand the changes that are happening to our world. Each generation has it’s medium, and this one is the web –let’s see how our leadership grasps this.
The following is the most subscribed channels of all time. I use this as a primary measure as if someone subscribes it means they’re asking for updates whenever new content is published, preference. The following is a snapshot of numbers of the most Subscribed (All Time) YouTube Channels.
YouTube’s Top 5 Most Subscribed Channels of all Time:
This skit act from a very hyperactive spaz who had too many moutain dew and twizzlers publishes ‘burst’ style videos featuring non stop high-pitched clips stringed along designed to keep the attention of pre-teens, teens, and the occasional web strategist. Fred is now the star of the New TV conference. Notice the few amount of videos Fred has produced and high viewership.
Type: Comedian
Videos: 35
Joined: October 01, 2005
Videos Watched: 16,203
Subscribers: 647,697
Channel Views: 19,314,418
Two college age guys produce skit comedy.
Type: Comedian
Videos: 60
Joined: November 19, 2005
Videos Watched: 20,161
Subscribers: 597,161
Channel Views: 21,898,415
The only ‘mainstream’ media channel to make it to the list, this shows TV clips and shows as a secondary medium to the TV screen. They’ve published a whopping 8k videos, a scattershot strategy, far beyond any of the other top 5.
Type: Director
Videos: 8,905
Joined: August 23, 2006
Subscribers: 499,766
Channel Views: 18,214,102
The only mainstream music group to make the top 5, the Jonas Brothers Music publish vids, behind the scenes videos and tour updates.
Type: Musician
Videos: 72
Joined: May 11, 2007
Videos Watched: 1,474
Subscribers: 385,888
Channel Views: 18,845,718
The reason I’m posting these channel numbers is because I’m watching carefully the changes that will happen from Obama’s promise to be a YouTube president. He plans on publishing weekly videos from the white house to provide a human face as well as accepting feedback in a conversational way. Let’s stop and think about mediums used by past Presidents. Franklin D Roosevelt understood the power of the radio (during an economic crises), and was able to reach millions of Americans in ear shot, John F Kennedy harnessed TV, used makeup to keep his cool over his sweaty opponent and beat out and reached millions of American homes to beat out Nixon by 100,000 votes. Now, Obama is using the internet to reach millions around the globe, all at no additional cost of publishing than Fred. Here’s Obama’s stats on his official channel:
Obama used social media tools for awareness, fundraising and word of mouth marketing. He has committed to doing weekly YouTube videos and publishing on Youtube and Change.gov to the nation and the world, here’s the first video.
Type: Political
Videos: 1,823
Joined: September 05, 2006
Subscribers: 137,570
Channel Views: 19,705,785
Change Dot Gov
Also, this channel has just been created this past week, and is just getting started…
Type: Political
Videos: 4
Joined: November 05, 2008
Subscribers: 4,550
Channel Views: 29,779
Fred vs Obama
Although Fred has almost the same number of Channel Views (both 19million) as the next president, Fred has 640k subscribers, 4.6 times more than Obama’s 137k subscribers. Of course, Fred’s preteen target audience is more likely to be regular YouTube users with registered accounts, they’ve all opted in for his videos.
I’ll be tracking Obama’s YouTube stats as we move through the next four years, in the meantime, here’s the first of his weekly YouTube video.
Saturday, November 15, 2008 06:00am EST, at the time of this embed, there are only 3,858 views.
This blog is focused on web professionals, and to be that, I’d like for you all to have jobs. Given the state of the economy there are three tips I want you to start on immediately, regardless of your rank, industry, or location.
There are actually great opportunities for those during a recession for professionals, restrained resources and competition will force you to become excellent in whatever you do. You’ll be forced to learn new skills and be more efficient than you’ve ever before. Some layoffs will leave opportunities for vertical growth and leadership opportunities.
You’re going to need a leg up in the market whether it be in your company, outside of your company, or to win new clients. You should start this process now, a simple three letter acronym that you should repeat during your day to yourself. Ready?
Growing your Career: Do at GUT Check:
G: Grow Your Network Before You Need Them
Nothing is more sad that seeing someone getting layed off and groveling to their non-qualified friends and family the need for a job. After this, they’ll go to their professional network to help and network with others, but the look of desperation is evident –no one wants to be hired out of pity. Be prepared.
Therefore you should always be building your professional network, espicially when your job feels secured. There’s really no excuse as many real world networking events are free, but if you’re in Juno, err Juneau Alaska, you can heavily lean on the digital tools, they’re also free. You should start by building your online profile in social network sites, finding the communities most tied to your industry, then reading, then answering some of the questions in forums. The trick here is to add value, not just ask for help, demonstrate your expertise by answering questions in an intelligent way and helping others. If you’re a web professional, start with my Facebook group, or if you’re a social media professional, I created this one for you. I’m not scalable –but networks are– so you’ll have to connect with others around us to grow.
U: Uncomfortness Leads to Growth
When you look at a candidates resume, and you see (esp in web industry) they’ve not grown in the last 3-5 years with their skillsets (not skillets), you ought to be worried. In a tough market, employers and clients want self-starters, those that go beyond the regular call of just doing the minimum requirements. Being Uncomfortable means trying something new, and eventually growing.
When I was an intern right out of college, I made a promise to myself to bug everyone in the IT department to teach me a new skill or task. You’d be surprised how thankful they were that someone so young wanted to learn from them. Each day, you should do the same, find someone and ask them to show you something or teach you something new in your career. What am I doing? I spend two hours each morning reading and blogging before I look at email, and I just started Guy’s latest book, Reality Check.
T: Tout Your Successes
Getting found online is part of the game, recruiters are going to do web searches before they purchase time on my job board, so you want to easily make yourself found. By this time if you’re a web professional and you don’t have your own personal domain I’m concerned for you, what are you waiting for, it’s only 10 dollars to register and 5 a month to host at some places.
If you’re worried about looking like you’re trying to find a new job, you can use your initials and just list the industry that you’re working in to protect your identity. If you’re still concerned, rather than post your resume on your own website, keep your LinkedIn profile updated with the higlights.
At industry parties and events I always ask folks: “What do you do” it’s surprising how folks are unable to articulate what they do, they beat around the bush, are self-deprecating, or try to avoid the topic all together. Instead, develop a single sentence describing what you do, practice your delivery, and learn how to ask an open ended question to trigger a conversation.
One caveat, this does not give you the right to be a raging egomaniac on your blog or website (sorta how I fear I come off sometimes) but is the chance for you to list what you’re capable of doing, what you’ve done, and what you can do for others.
Everyday I want you to do a GUT check, practice these skills, build your arsenal, don’t hesitate but do it now. Are you an HR professional, career development expert, or just learned a helpful tip along the way?? Now’s your time to leave a comment here with some other tips to demonstrate your own tips. Leave a comment or suggestion to help others.
First start by connecting with folks in the Web Strategy Facebook group there are 8688 members that are web decision makers, join in the discussions, read the topics, or post questions. If you’re a Community Manager, or trying to become one, this Community Manager Facebook group has 2050 members to network with. I noticed that Community Managers are in demand, as on the web strategy job board, I was able to check the admin panel and see there were far more submissions to community manager roles than all others.
I’m not scalable in helping people find jobs (getting more and more request) so do try to use these resources as a first source. I suspect we’re going to need to connect more than every before in the coming months and years.
I know the Sun AR, PR, Corp Comm, and Agency read my blog, I think there’s really a chance to show your human/open side –after all, that’s what your CEO and mission statement preach to the market.
This post is a response to last night’s event at the Horn Group called Is Social Media Killing PR?Sam Whitmore moderated Kara Swisher (media), and Susan Etlinger (PR) and me (analyst) for a lively debate, which resulted in the crowd chiming into the issues. I don’t think the conversation evolved as far enough as I wanted to see it go, so here’s what I wanted to share.
For years the Public Relations industry has ironically one of the worst reputations –esp since they are hired to look after the reputations of their own clients. Things only got worse as some brands got punk’d; the introduction of self-publishing tools that allowed anyone to connect to each other using social technologies, causing a shift in power. We’ve already talked to death about the risks and the changes that are happening to this industry, yet I’m hoping to elevate the viewpoint out of the gutter and focus on the larger opportunities –and risks at the industry level.
Four Business Opportunities for the Evolved PR Agency:
1) Enhance Existing Functions
First of all, some things that are already in place need more focus, for example, it was discussed last night that now that influencers (press, media, bloggers, analysts, customers) can directly be reached by clients –PR professionals can be bypassed. In fact, when you look closely, everyone’s doing press, analysis and media.
A) Be a filter for clients: There’s a tremendous amount of noise now being created, creating an opportunity for PR folks to filter, sort, and prioritize what matters. You’ll need both access and understanding of brand monitoring tools as well as the ability to see patterns in the noise. B) Council rather than conduit: Although strategic council has been happening for many years, now that clients and influencers can connect directly, this could result in a business shift resulting in more focus on coaching, less on pitching. Mary Trigiani suggests the same. C) Extend Social Strategy: Most firms don’t have a strategic response to social media across the whole firm. While the young digital natives may use these pervasive tools, they lack strategic insight, yet the immigrant executives don’t fully understand how these tools change the communication lines.
2) Differentiate
Two potential customers were at the event, and both lamented that they can’t tell the difference between one firm to another –they all offer similar promises and relationships. The opportunity for PR firms to be more vocal in the areas of expertise they provide are at hand. PR firms should become part of the community they serve –regardless of the client they have on the accounts receivable. Instead, be known as the expert firm in your industry, not just pitching, but also serving and helping beyond your clients needs. There’s a business opportunity here for some smart entrepreneur to create a VRM system that allows clients to recommend PR firms to other brands.
3) Extend to the Entire Customer Lifecycle
I alluded to this yesterday in the panel, but this is perhaps the single largest opportunity for the evolved PR firm. As we know “Public” relations involves prospects and customers, social technologies mush up the lines between when this starts and stops. As a result, PR firms how learn how to offer value to other areas of the organization beyond corporate communications can find new revenue buckets in product marketing, product management, product support, and beyond.
4) Fix Your Own Damn Reputation
I’ll hit this again: it’s very ironic that an industry so focused on keeping the image of their clients reputation pristine is unable to shine their own shingle. Use these social tools to tell your story –and to get your clients to tell your story –on your behalf. Although the HORN group was the only firm to take this challenge head on, the industry as a whole needs to fix this, but it can’t be insular within the PR community, but looking outside the circle of pros.
Related Resources (I’m updating this list)
Nov 14th, the next day: There’s really a tremendous amount of different voices, angles and perspectives on Wed’s discussion, read below.
Do read the responses from the attendees in twitter (the audience has the control), they tagged it with #prblog.
Left Image: Blake Commagere of Ohai tells of the success he’s had porting his popular apps from FaceBook to Bebo at AOL’s Mountain View campus.
Last night, I was invited to AOL’s offices in Mountain View to learn of Bebo’s Dev Nite, a public courtship to startups and developers who make web applications on social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Hi5 (Examples: Vampires, Scrabulous, Superwall). For anyone that didn’t get the association (it slipped my mind for a sec) that Bebo was acquired by AOL, they keep the branding very loosely separated –likely on purpose.
Bebo, a unique Social Network
Bebo’s community segment focuses on user sharing and media, and is somewhat in between the experiences of the wild ‘self expression’ MySpace and more refined Facebook ‘communication’ experience. They claim to have over 40 million users, and has strong traction in UK, and other English speaking countries.
Bebo Reaches for Application Developers, and sets some parameters
While there were several things announced, Bebo’s has launched a 10 point based system that rates and ranks quality applications, defined by ‘engagement’. I asked, and they define engagement as repeat visitors and time on site. Developers are rewarded in this ‘game-like’ type of scenario so the top applications (scoring 10) will have the ability for some of their applications to appear on newsfeeds of users that do not install their apps. Translation: the opportunity for viral growth.
Bebo should also reward developers that attract new members to the Bebo sites. T
Porting applications from Facebook to Bebo and beyond
he first presentation from Blake Commagere of Ohai who created some of the more popular (but useless?) applications shared his case study of how he was easily able to port over Facebook apps to Bebo. It was discussed that OpenSocial, which is coming up on it’s 1st aniv still has a ways to go, as developers still have to cater to different protocols with each social network. Learn more at the Bebo blog –which transparently admits to having some issues with the platform.
Enterprise Companies reach for Startups
Why would Sun or Microsoft care about some scrappy vampire developer? With the rapid growth of social network adoption from consumers and businesses, some (most will not) of these garage startups will have needs to fill up their data center, (or cloud) with servers, storage, software and professional services.
As a result the Sun Startup Essentials team was there, (I’ve been tracking them for years, since I was at HDS) and offered developers free hosting with their partner Joyent (learn about the developer program), as well as access to Sun hardware, open source software, professional services, and connections with VCS. Sun should create an online community for startups, or build one inside of existing social networks to further extend their cause.
Microsoft, (who was not involved with this event) recently launched BizSpark, has far to go, and must truly join the community they want to serve. In my pre briefing meeting with them a few weeks ago, I recommended they reach and join this community, much like how Scoble did in 2005-2006. I expect them to work with existing social media stars, and to aggressively reach for this space.
The Bottom Line:
The culture of each social network is unique, don’t expect applications to easily be ported and successfully run on different social networks –customization is always required.
Expect to see more applications on Facebook to also appear on Bebo and other sites, due to the catering of developers, as well as technologies such as OpenSocial.
Brands should explore relationships with these application developers who have success on more than one social network, this makes marketing more effective. Brands should first leverage existing sucess rather than build their own –this space is highly fast moving and specialized.
Bebo’s measurement index (although extremely limited in attributes) will not only encourage good behavior by those rascally developers, but also helps brands identify who they will want to work with.
Expect to see more enterprise companies catering to startups, in order to plan architectural seeds. Although most startups won’t bloom, some will turn into lush tropical forests, bringing ROI full circle.
I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.
I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.
Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.
Web Strategy Summary
As scrutiny over marketing budgets will increase, there is more discussion online about the value of marketing and advertising on social networks. Although we continue to see anecdotes and case studies, we’ve yet to see any social network offer a ROI on marketing efforts –or even public data.
Vision: Where Zuckerberg sees Facebook heading Mark took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in SF, and was interviewed discussing his vision for the future of Facebook, business, users, and international growth. Perhaps one key stat is that 50% of users visit the site once a day.
Monetization: MySpace planning for Virtual Gifts
Hot on the heels of Facebook’s Virtual Gifting features, MySpace makes some plans to roll out their own.
Marketing: Social Network Post Election Analysis
Even this French newspaper is impressed with the Obama campaign to utilize the new tools of today.
Revenue: Facebook Advertising and Marketing
Although this article shows that advertising spend will be down in the next year, Facebook continues to focus on engagement ads to tie customers and brands together.
Redesign: MySpace launches profile
Although I was briefed by this minor design update, it’s not getting a warm reception from press blogs at Reuter and articles. I do know from research that self-expression is key with this market, so everything that helps this is in the right direction.
ReOrg: Six Apart Restructures and Refocuses
Although they’re reducing their headcount by 8% what’s interesting to read is the strategy focuses that Six Apart is going to aim for, including: Creating Six Apart “Genius” group, Growing Six Apart Services, and Six Apart Media.
Marketing Mix: Integrating social networks in other mediums
This study indicates that linking to social network sites in an email campaign may be a less than effective way to reach prospects and customers. Of course, the brand should first figure out if their audience even uses these social tools first
Case Study: Nike’s social networking efforts grow
Great example of how a brand can reach a ‘lifestyle’ of runners using compatible products (iPods) and social networks as well as their running gear to reach a market.
Culture: Why Italians may not want your social software
Interesting lifestyle perspective shows how some Italians may prefer face to face networking over an online tools. Culture, for sure, plays into technology adoption.
World: Map shows “top” social networks by country
Although they’re only getting data from Alexa (questionable at best) this map shows the top social networks by country. Keep in mind, there’s a million ways to cut data, this is only on of many ways to do this.
If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.
I slowly work on this digest through the week in draft format, collecting information that I see is interesting, and it only takes me a few minutes on wed morning to publish.
Above Video: Come join me on my “walk through” videos (see others) to meet Boulder’s tech community.
I took the day off from work yesterday, and did some sight seeing of the Rockies (thanks to long term friend Kit who was one of the organizers of the Thin Air Summit) and had an opportunity to meet the large tech community at the “Tea House” in Boulder. I quickly learned that the tech scene is active, there’s many startups, events, and a VC community (including this incubator program called TechStars) that helps spur this eco system forward. What makes it attractive? The opportunity to be exposed to the great outdoors, the clean (yet expensive) Boulder area, great food, and healthy lifestyle.
Being in Silicon Valley, we’re so centrist in our thinking and don’t get enough exposure to the other tech communities around the country and globe (although I’m trying hard to meet each community) as a result we haven’t heard that much about Colorado’s tech corridor.
I observed that the entrepreneurial spirit runs high in Colorado, many folks want to strike it out on their own (I wonder if this is tied back to the silver rush and early settlers) vs many in Silicon Valley may prefer to join startups and exit rather than building their own sole-propertiership. The environment was warm and people shared –even with risk of sharing competitive information.
Despite the warmth of this community that’s nestled between the Rocky mountains and the great plains, they’re very insular and don’t share their story to the rest of the world. I’ve visited countries where they actually have government sponsored outreach programs just to tell their story in order to attract buyers, partners, and employees –Colorado could really benefit by not only focusing inward, but being a bit more extroverted and sharing their story with others.
Well, if anyone in Colorado was hoping to keep their ecosystem a secret –too late now, I just told my community.
Above, I interviewed Kit Seeborg and was joined by Jason and James both of Room 214, a local pure play social media agency.
Left: I met much of the founding team of Demand Media last week in SF at the Web 2.0 expo.
A few days ago, I had lunch with Richard Rosenblat, CEO of 2.5 year old Demand Media (who recently purchased Pluck) to learn about his unique business model which sits in between self-publishing and mainstream media. This company has been pretty tight lipped but after Richard’s presentation at Web 2.0 Expo and an interview with Kara Swisher, he was interested in briefing an analyst. If you’re familiar with the long tail concept you’d be aware of the large head, long tail –and fat neck. Overused metaphors, but visually it helps to explain this concept.
[Successful media websites are fueled by fresh quality content --yet the cost of rapidly creating content requires talent, staff, and resources]
Currently, there are two predominant publishing models on the web:
1) Enterprise Generated Media
Mainstream media publishing existing content (TV, Newspaper, Magazine) or spending quite a bit of resources or high quality created content like Funny or Die. This content is easy to spot, it’s highly refined, quality is often high, and is expensive to create.
Content: Refined
Cost: Expensive
Model: Broadcast, Large Head
2) Consumer Generated media
The second model is everyone who is self-publishing from their own blogs, websites, podcasts and videos, they’ll often create their own content, find advertising revenue opportunities and may band together forming blog networks like B5, Glam, BlogHer, and Federated Media.
Content: Varies, but can be low
Cost: Inexpensive
Model: Social, Long Tail
Now, a third model is appearing that blends both styles
The third model, which we’re just starting to see is a hybrid of both models, which we will call Curated Social Content (CSC).
Content: Varies, semi-professional
Cost: Moderate
Model: Curated by third party, big neck.
3) Curated Social Content (CSC)
This model is unique as it scoops up the best of CGM and serves it up to EGM sites who need it. Here’s how Demand Media is doing it:
1) SCC company finds EGM “passion verticals” where there’s a strong desire for content –but they don’t have resources to create it all. For example: Lance Armstrong wants to launch a health site.
2) The CSC company issues a request for consumer experts to write articles, they get paid (Richard of Demand Media told me it often starts at $15) in which they buy and own the content. For Example: Demand asks Health experts to submit articles, a team of editors will determine which article will get paid.
3) Content is posted on the EGM site and attracts visitors, as well as boost SEO. Advertising generates revenue. For Example: Lance’s health site will have a regular influx of new content from industry experts, content hungry people will visit the site, and then interact
4) Both parties have revenue share from advertisements and the CSC company, like Demand Media, takes a cut. For example: Lance’s health site will generate clicks through advertisements (or other revenue opportunities) as new members are attracted to the site.
[Content-starved mainstream media websites can now outsource to third-party content curators --who will crowdsource, and revenue share with content creators ]
Impacts to mainstream media sites: In times of economic downturn this could be a model that purchases media on demand for a large base of creators, content that is often customized. This could reduce the full-time staff at a publishing company. The upside is the increased content created by the crowd, yet reducing the risk of unqualified content. The risk? Media companies still need a strategy, editorial guidance and need to ensure quality and consistent content is provided to the site.
Impacts to content creators: If you’re an expert at a topic and already blog about a topic, now there’s an opportunity to get compensated for it. This plays to the future of ‘everyone can be a freelancer’ using the distributed web. The risk? While your content will now be featured on mainstream sites, the content is now legally owned by Demand Media, you don’t have direct ownership of the content. Also, not everyone will be able to be a publisher, as you have to demonstrate expertise in your arena. This seems competitive to companies like Wikia, Mahalo, and other curated website content, as well as blog networks I mentioned earlier like B5, Federated Media, and others.
Talk Back:
Is this a viable content strategy for mainstream media companies?
Will community experts embrace this way of monetizing their knowledge?
During an economic downturn will this be a cost effective way for both publisher and creator to generate revenues?
I’m sitting here at the Thin Air Summit in Denver, anyone who is here on a Saturday is very serious about social media –I guess I fit the bill. I don’t know that much about SEO when it comes to social media, so I’m going to blog some of the key findings.
Moderator: Micah Baldwin
Panelists: Brett Borders, Elizabeth Yarnell, John Fischer
Elizabeth a book author had a desire to promote her book Glorious One-Pot Meals –without using a traditional publisher. Her advice? The goal is to be found, rather than focus on traditional marketing which is ‘target markets’.
Think beyond keywords and be actionable
Bad: “Elizabeth Yarnell, Author” instead use the title bar to put in keywords about your product, you’ll have better search results.
Better: “Learn to cook fast meals with Elizabeth Yarnell”, notice the call to action.
Existing social media sites score high
She suggests that social media sites (like flickr, myspace, blogger) already get lots of traffic, and page rank, and will increase your SEO ranking.
Social Media is about the abundance theory
It’s about giving away what you know and to share with others, in return they will come back to you.
Learn the keyword search tools on the internet, such as keyword tracker, google tracker, word tracker. Many are free, some are expensive.
Brett Borders provide some highlights of what SEOs are doing within social media, he doesn’t advocate these tactics.
Create video to dominate universal search results
Since Google launched ‘universal search’ (showing images, video, beyond just text) these are opportunities to score well on your search results. Create content in multiple mediums that all support your marketing effort. A snapshot of the video will show up on the universal search results.
Free Google Adwords
How to do free google adwords? Have you blog post create similar content pointing to the video, then submit to digg. It can ‘sometimes’ provide Google ads. (I really don’t get this)
Ego Searches influence your SERP –but not everyone else’s
If you do lots of ego searches for your own domains, Brett suggests that personalized search will actually cause your results to show higher –but that’s just what you see, not everyone else. You can go to your web history tools and have your history cleared which will prevent this from happening.
Persona Blogging (flogging)
Create a branded human character, as a facade, and ‘uplift’ the community, then link to your site every 25 times. There are agencies that are doing this. The risks? like the Edelman fiasco can get the ill will of your community and can result in brand backlash. These tactics will be found out in a few years.
Make Friends –make links
Create profiles in social networks such as tribe, then make a lot of friends which will send traffic back to your profile –which links to your website.
Follow folks on Twitter
A discussion talking about an automated way to gain followers on twitter, despite the limit of 2000, you can remove them then add more. These get more followers then you can spam them with tweets.
Link Tuning –and tone down adsl
Suggests that webmasters tune their page so not important pages have a ‘no-follow’ so Google doesn’t index it. Also he suggests that new blogs not be adsense heavy so it doesn’t look so commercial.
John Fischer runs a sticker company called Sticker Giants
Suggests that search engines don’t want marketers to focus on SEO, they just want you to do naturally link building.
Focus on business goals –not your personal name
After reviewing one of the attendee’s website suggested that her website content/titles focus on her business goals, not her given name. People will search on her business, not her name
Show off your media
On your blog, make it obvious and promote your social media content: youtube, flickr, ustream, seesmic, perhaps use a friendfeed widget, so readers know who you are.
Understand the difference between long and short term SEO strategies
There’s a long term and short term strategy. While there’s a lot of things you can do in the short term to generate traffic, it can result in you getting banned in the long term. The short term low value may build up long term value.
Be pervasive with a sticky post
Suggests creating a ‘sticky post’ that stays at the top of a blog and lists all the important information regardless of what you’ve posted recently. I think a header or footer could also help accomplish this
Summary
From the crowd, isn’t it better to be passionate about a topic and work on long term relevance? This way Google won’t discount your efforts in the long term.
The end suggestions were to be passionate about whatever you’re doing, it will help you to be relevant in the long term.
Me? I don’t do any specific SEO tactics in order to get search relevance, I just focus on writing content that people will link to, tweet it, and the rest happens by itself. I encourage you to avoid the short term tactics and focus on building the long term relationships –go for the long haul.
For the first time in a while yesterday, I felt back at home.
Although I’ve been traveling all about speaking to different companies and business conferences, it’s been some time since I’ve gone to conferences in my core passion area of social media and web 2.0. Although I was only able to attend the third of three days, Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit really gave a good show in the most literal meaning. The 3k ticket price brought forth amazing speakers from Mark Zuckerberg, Arianna Huffington, Jerry Yang, Lance Armstrong, Issac Mao, Marc Benioff, Kevin Rose, and an inspirational keynote by Al Gore.
Unlike previous Web 2.0 events the theme was very clear to me, these social tools are now impacting so much more than the tech blogger circle jerk that we all tire of. With our future President launching a blog on Wednesday, Lance Armstrong discussing politics, ego and the web, and Al Gore on stage discussing how energy and global crises can help be solved from collaborative means.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been at a tech conference where we didn’t fondle the hammer and actually focused on building the house. Actually choosing an objective to apply these tools to much bigger problems: cancer, health, politics, global warming, energy crises, and connecting the world.
In an earlier panel we saw the bumping of elbows between Google, Microsoft, MySpace and Facebook each pitting themselves against each other in this cage match panel, yet it was more inspiring to hear in Al Gore’s closing keynote, he talked about having a purpose to using these tools to impact something far bigger than ever before.
