Unwrapping the mystery of social media networks – apps

The social media realm is a vast and expanding ocean, so don’t make the mistake of getting on the boat to catch search engine whales with fly rod applications.  You’ll be letting the whales sail by, oblivious to your feathery lure and all your hopes for success.

And don’t let a so-called SEO experts talk you into buying their customized bamboo rod and set of hip waders, a package that will cost you a bundle and net poor search engine results.  This article will tell you how to choose the right applications that consistently hook search engines.  These are applications that you can find and use yourself and at little or no cost.

Building your own Social Media Network with the Best Apps – How?

If you want to build a social media network that rocks you have to make sure you choose applications that are going to catch and keep search engine power. You have to understand how the applications you are considering serve as part of your social media thinking.

The following is a discussion of application categories, how they work and how they can work for you. Presented here are applications are proven to work well with search engines. Our goal in any social media plan is to have the most possible first-page search engines results for a brand by category.

Blogs

I choose blog applications that are well developed and which allow search engines to find and index my articles. WordPress, Google, Posterous, Yahoo! Pulse and TypePad are my suggested blog applications.  These companies are not paying me to tell you this.  I recommend them because these companies are designed to work with all search engines, are easy to setup and work with Google Analysis. WordPress, for example, allows you to register your blog with the big three search engine companies.  It’s also a quick step route to ensuring all a lot of details are looked after for you, such as making sure your web site is verified so your pages are indexed. Blogs are social media networks of users who are interested in posting opinion and business-related content. In building your network you  must consider whether the other applications you use connect and or work with these blog applications.  Note that having more then one blog  is common practice.

Twitter

I view Twitter as the AP wire service of the Internet. It’s a social media application allowing others to follow your content, but at  the same time, it will also collect snippets of posts form your blog.  This allows interested parties can link back to your blog content. You don’t need to do this manually. If you choose the correct blog application, Twitter is allowed to connect your content and update your Twitter account automatically.

News Feed Sites

Sites such a Digg, Mixx, Reddit and NewsVine are news aggregators from users all over the world. These social media applications allow users to follow articles, breaking news newsworthy opinion and articles about a company or brand. They allow for connections or linking back to your Twitter and blog accounts. These application categories also allow you to post or have links that present your web site or blog to users. These kinds of sites permit keywords and categories to be added to articles posted. They can also link back to your original blog posting. In any case, they are excellent mechanisms for connecting users to your content. They have the famous share button at the end of every article, which lets users and groups share your content. They also work well with search engines. Traffic driven back to their sites from search results generates ad revenue, sadly just for them.  But you can take advantage of their traffic to get your content noticed.

Content or Original Material Sites

Applications in this category include sites that function on original material, such as new articles, undistributed product reviews and the like. They do not just accept just any content. They are looking for information content, not promotional material.  So you can’t send them content promoting or linking to other web sites that advertise products or services. NowPublic, HubPages, Associated Content and others are a social media sites driven by users and contributors writing and sharing opinions about everything. They do not like duplicated posts of content across other social media sites. They look for original work, opinions, reviews and general editorial content.   These sites are enormously advantageous for the social media network builder.  They integrate with blogs, news feeds and Twitter and are search-engine driven, meaning they need traffic from search engines results to keep their page views coming in. If you use them, your content is more likely to appear on first pages when users are searching for your content-related items.

Tools and Apps for Automation

The value of social bookmarking in building your social media network can’t be overstated. Generally, they automate the spread of your content by generating references, thus increasing your content reach on the Internet.  I recommend Delicious and Google Buzz.  All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default, although users can mark specific bookmarks as private.  Also, their imported bookmarks are private by default.  The site is not focused on storing private (“not shared”) bookmark collections. Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool from Google, designed to integrate into the company’s web-based email program, Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in “conversations” and visible in the user’s inbox.

This allows users to bookmark and share your content with others easily.  As well, Delicious and Google Buzz are owned respectively by Yahoo! and Google and, therefore, work well with these massive search engines.

Friend Feed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates updates from social media and social networking websites as well as social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates and any other type of RSS/ Atom feed.  To put it more simply,  this little app can be the locomotive that  distributes and update your content automatically across all your social media sites once they are connected.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary Feed) provides summaries of web content in a simple format. It is available through an RSS feed reader, or through some browsers. It will show you what’s new since the last time you checked the feed, without having to visit the website itself. FeedBurner is my preference because it’s easy to set up once you’ve got everything in place.   Search engines work well with this application and will integrate all your content from any site automatically.

Reports

Google Analytics (GA), a free service offered by Google, generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a web site, blog or social media site account. Many sites discussed in this article offer a connection directly to Google Analytics. GA has a clear advantage in that its service is aimed at marketers and speaks directly to their needs and interests.

Keywords

AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Web site owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue, on a per-click or per-impression basis. Using the tool a company can predetermine the best keywords to be used for a campaign. Within the described group of social media application discussed in this article, most have tools that will suggest the best keywords so that your content gets robust search engine placement.

If you use the recommended apps highlighted here, you will easily establish at least 20 site accounts for yourself, increasing your traffic and conveying your messages.  These will be working hard for you every day as you add content to increase search results about your product or service.