Transcript Social Media “Hacks” Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts © 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected].

Social Media “Hacks”
Stephan Spencer,
Founder & President, Netconcepts
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
“Hacks”
 Every social site has its own unique opportunities,
quirks and anomalies
 O’Reilly definition:
– tools, tips, and tricks that help users solve problems
– aimed at intermediate-level power users
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Wikipedia
 Build up your street cred (long & virtuous contribution history, user profile page
with Barnstar awards) before doing anything at all self-serving.
 A link on a high-profile article is worth gold, as it builds your credibility &
visibility with journalists and bloggers. Negotiate with an article’s “owner” to get
this.
 Monitor your articles with a tool that emails you (e.g. trackengine,
changenotes, urlywarning, changedetect). Don’t just rely on Wikipedia’s
“Watch” function
 Flow PageRank internally with Disambiguation pages, Redirects, Categories
 Make friends. They will back you up in AfDs
 Don’t edit anonymously from work. (Have you heard of WikiScanner??)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Wikis
 Plenty of other wikis out there that are a lot more editfriendly than Wikipedia
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ShopWiki
The NewPR Wiki (thenewpr.com)
WordPress Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org)
Conference wikis (e.g. Web20Expo)
 Some even pass link juice! 
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Digg
 Strip away all commercial links during the initial Digg swarm
 Friend popular Diggers. Better yet, get a popular Digger to
submit your story.
– Consult the Top 100 list of Diggers at DiggAnalytics.com
 Time your presence on the Digg front page for daylight hours
 Craft a killer title using this formula from Muhammad Saleem:
number + adjective + key phrase
– E.g. “13 Most Chilling Haunted Hotels” or “16 Incredibly Unconventional
Hotel Rooms”
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
StumbleUpon
 Force your friends to stumble your stuff using the “Send
to” function in the StumbleUpon toolbar
– They have to view your URL before they can continue with
their random channel surfing
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
YouTube
 With most popular YouTube promotions, YouTube gets the links
and the original site usually does not. Stack the odds more in
your favor by creating a microsite and making the microsite URL
your username.
– E.g. “willitblend.com” is BlendTec’s username
 Use as many tags as possible while still being accurate
 Run a contest and recruit popular YouTube users to enter. Their
video submission will get pushed out to all their subscribers
– E.g. Intuit’s “Tax Rap” contest
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
YouTube
 Be creative but unpolished
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Eepybird’s Bellagio Fountain of Diet Coke + Mentos
BlendTec’s “Will It Blend?”
Heroes spoof commercial (“Zeroes”) – an NBC creation
John Cleese Backup Trauma webisode
Intuit’s “Tax Rap” content
SolarDave’s SMX spoof with cut-out figures as the actors
“Hat Swap” spoof of “Wife Swap” reality show w/ SEOs
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
MySpace
 You need an impressive number of friends. Establish critical
mass by friending bands, models (male and female), fiction
authors, actors, go-go dancers, DJs, etc. They’ll take anybody!
– Find them using the “Search Profiles for People with Similar Career
Interests” as part of MySpace’s Search function.
– Then remove them later on when you no longer need them.
 Long page load time will drive your profile visitors away. Disable
HTML in your comments so users can’t fill your page with slowloading pictures of LOLcats etc.
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
LinkedIn
 Add links to your website, blog, and one other
URL and select “Other” so you can specify the
anchor text. Don’t use the pre-selected
categories “My website” etc.
 Add a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) or two to your network.
– i.e. a “promiscuous sneezer” (in Seth Godin-speak)
– Use the TopLinked.com list. e.g. Flip Filipowski
 Add your email address to your “professional headline” so folks 4+ degrees
away don’t have to waste an InMail to contact you
 Post a “question” to LinkedIn Answers that serves your own purposes
– e.g. “We’re looking to hire an SEO analyst and are willing to pay whatever it takes
to get a top-notch person. What job boards do you recommend?”
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Flickr
 Always use tags – as many as possible while still being accurate. Put multiple
word tags in surrounded by quotation marks “”
 Make descriptive titles for your photos
 Create thematic Sets for your photos
 Links on profile, set and collection pages are not nofollowed 
 If the photo is location specific, go into Flickr’s tools and geotag the picture
– Go into the Flickr set tools, and locate the location on the Yahoo! Map, then drag
the picture onto the map to pinpoint its location
 Creative Commons license your photo and put how you want the user to credit
you in your photo’s description
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Meetup.com
 Get involved with local Meetups and get your meetup.com
member profile page linked from the meetup’s page, which will
pass juice to your profile then on to your site
 Actually there are many social sites with profile pages that pass
link juice...
– http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/22-dofollow-social-media-sitesoffering-profile-links.html
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/22-dofollow-social-media-sitesoffering-profile-links.html
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Blogs
 First, get involved via comments and build rapport
 Careful about making the commenter name keyword-rich
 Comment on blogs that “dofollow” comment links
– e.g. Mark Cuban’s Blogmaverick.com, Rimm-Kaufman Group’s
www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog
 Submit to blog carnivals. Host one (requires that you have a
blog). Start a new one.
– http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/2008/02/blog-carnivals-a-linkbuilding-secret-weapon
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Blogs
 Be a contributor to a group blog (e.g.
BusinessBlogConsulting.com, Shop.org Blog)
 Be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog (e.g.
TechGazing.com*, Problogger.net)
 A Tip Jar indicates the blogger is desperate for cash
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Twitter
 Create a microsite dedicated to Twitter
– E.g. twitter.zappos.com
 Circumvent spam filters and inbox clutter using direct messages
 Influence the top influencers in your Twitter network by
influencing those in common with you
– Identify the common “friends” with tweetwheel.com
– Send your request as a direct message
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/22-dofollow-social-media-sitesoffering-profile-links.html
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/22-dofollow-social-media-sitesoffering-profile-links.html
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]
Thanks!
 This Powerpoint can be downloaded from
www.netconcepts.com/learn/social-media-success.ppt
 For three hours of screencasts on link building, email
[email protected]
 Questions after the show? Email me at
[email protected]
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com [email protected]