A Guide For Distributing Your Content Online

1. HOW TO USE
SOCIAL MEDIA
OPTIMIZATION
CREATED BY ROHIT BHARGAVA
Best-Selling Author of Non-Obvious
O R I G I N A L I D E A S . A L W A Y S U S E F U L . N E V E R O B V I O U S .
AnEasyGuideToMarketing&
DistributingContentOnline
2nd EDITION – FEATURING 8 NEW SLIDES!

2. @ROHITBHARGAVAFOR MORE FREE PRESENTATIONS, VISIT WWW.ROHITBHARGAVA.COM
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION:
THE BACKSTORY
In2006,Ipublishedablogpostthatobservedanelementofdigitalmarketingthatseemedtobe
emergingwhichIthencalled“SocialMediaOptimization.” Thatoriginalpostwentviral,tosaythe
least,beingsharedhundredsofthousandsoftimes,sparkinganewacronym(SMO)thatwould
eventuallybeaddedtoWikimedia,andinspiringdozensoftranslationsoftheoriginalpostinto
multiplelanguages.
Fouryearsaftertheoriginalpost,Ipublishedanupdatein2010inthatreimaginedthe“5rules”in
lightofthegrowingimportanceofsocialnetworkingtoolslikeTwitterandFacebook.
Now,anotherfouryearslaterin2014–thispresentationsharesthosenewrules,revisitedonce
moreforaworldspeedingpastitssophomoreexcitementaboutsocialmediatoolsandkareening
intothenascentpromiseofwearabletechnology,virtualreality,andthecomingInternetofthings
thatpromisestosurroundeveryoneateverymomentwithaninescapableembraceoftechnology.
RohitBhargava
Author,5BestSellingBooks
Professor,GeorgetownUniversity

3. What is Social Media Optimization?
A process of optimizing your
site/blog to be more visible
in social media searches
and sites, more easily
linked by other sites,
and more frequently
discussed online in
blog posts and
other social
media
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

4. Why do we need it?
The Shifting Media Landscape
• Everyone is a content creator
• Technorati currently indexes nearly 60 million blogs
• Google searches for most terms return millions of results
• The rise of human filtered search
• The long tail, meganiche and wisdom of crowds
Bottom Line: There is an increasing amount
of “noise” online – which is leading to …
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

5. And then comes … Marketing
What we will cover today:
• How to Implement Social Media Optimization
• A Case Study of SMO
• Using Typepad for Marketing
• A Checklist for Marketing Blog Posts
Marketing Your Blog
The Basic Elements
Branding  Positioning  Integrating  Claiming  Syndicating
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

6. Getting Started with Implementing SMO
5 rules to consider …
1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

7. Increase Your Linkability
Focusing on sticky content and links …
• Update your content as
often as possible
• Create sticky content
features
– Downloads
– Lists/Rules
• Use catchy headlines
and branding
• Follow the Permalink
conventions
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

8. Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy
Increase your visibility with new tool …
• Use quick buttons to let people
save your blog to any social
bookmarking tool they use
• Add relevant tags to each blog
post so these posts can appear
in aggregations listed by
keyword on sites like Technorati
• “Claim” your posts first by
bookmarking them in del.icio.us
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

9. Reward Inbound Links
Making it worthwhile for others to link …
• Display trackbacks, comments on your blog
automatically
• Add a list of “blogs that link here” or “recent
comments” to feature contributors to your blog
more highly (and therefore potentially send
more of your traffic to them)
• Offer thanks by adding a comment to a linking
blog post or directly thanking linkers
• Add links to further thoughts as updates on your
original post
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

10. Help Your Content Travel
Syndicating and submitting your content …
• Syndicate your content in RSS
and provide direct links for
visitors to subscribe
• Offer email subscriptions to
content through services like
Feedburner
• Don’t be afraid to submit your
own posts to sites like Digg or
Marktd, assuming the content is
relevant (relevancy is key)
• Tell other bloggers about your
blog or a recent post –
especially bloggers you admire
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

11. Encourage the Mashup
Sharing and distributing your blog …
• Choose a Creative Commons
license for your content (and
don’t get ruled by your lawyers)
• Find blog networks that can
help you distribute your content
and fit the premise of your blog
• Pursue guest author or
contributor arrangements with
blogs in your industry to spread
the word about your own blog
(be sure to retain rights to
republish your work on your
blog, if you choose to)
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

12. Using Typepad for Marketing
The Swiss Army Sidebar & Widget Marketing
Basics:
 Categories
 Blogrolls
 Recent posts
 RSS Feeds
 Site Search
 About Page
Other Ideas:
 Auto-translate buttons
 Email subscriptions
 Top 10 Most Popular or
Favourite Posts
 Widgets:
• Feed Crier
• Squidoo Lenses
• Del.icio.us Tagrolls
• WhoLinked
• Lots more in the Typepad
Widget Gallery …
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

13. Marketing Your Blog Posts
A Checklist for Individual Posts
Within Typepad (or other SixApart platforms):
 Send trackbacks & pings
 Add tags and keywords (in form + in post)
 Use categories
Other tactics:
 Click your own links
 Add your entry to relevant social bookmarking and news sites
(note: relevancy is key – make sure your content fits the site)
– Examples include: Digg, Del.icio.us, Marktd, New PR, etc.
 Directly contact bloggers that you think will be interested
 Submit your post to get covered on megablogs:
– Examples include: Slashdot, BoingBoing, PSFK, etc.
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

14. Case Study: Social Media Optimization
How SMO Caught Fire …
• 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization – 08/10/06
• Added tags, bookmarked, emailed and submitted
post to other social bookmarking sites
• Within two weeks, 5 others added rules 5-16 to the
original post and built on the original idea
• Over the span of 3 months since the original post:
– More than 100 other marketing pros discussed or
bookmarked the original post, and Technorati shows
215 links to the original article
– 8 others translated all 16 rules into French, Dutch,
Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, Greek and
Portuguese over the span of 3 months
– SMO was added to Wikipedia as a term over two years
ago and still exists as a growing entry
ORIGINAL SLIDE - 2006

15. Evolution: Social Media Optimization
How SMO Has Been Updated …
• 5 New Rules of Social Media Optimization – 08/10/06
• http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2010/08/the-5-new-
rules-of-social-media-optimization-smo.html
• Over the 4 years since the original post – the
Internet has become a place where far more focus is
devoted to sharing content than commenting or
having robust conversations. This fact more than any
other prompted the creation of the NEW Rules of
Social Media Optimization.
• The following slides describe these new rules.
UPDATED SLIDE - 2010

16. UPDATED SLIDE - 2010
The Evolution Of Social Media Optimization
• Over the 4 years since the original post –the Internet has
become a place where far more focus is devoted to
sharing content than commenting or having robust
conversations. This fact more than any other prompted
the creation of the NEW Rules of Social Media
Optimization.
• 5 New Rules of Social Media Optimization – 08/10/06
• http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2010/08/the-5-new-
rules-of-social-media-optimization-smo.html
• The following slides describe these new rules …

17. UPDATED SLIDE - 2010
Old Rule #1 – Increase Your Linkability
New Rule #1 – Create Shareable Content
Four years ago I focused on linkability because the main
currency that could drive up your traffic was how many
people were linking to your content. Today content can be
liked or tweeted and it is about more than links – it is about
creating content that is shareable. The better your content is,
the more people will want to share it with their entire social
networks whether they link it, like it, dig it or share it.

18. UPDATED SLIDE - 2010
Old Rule #2 – Make Tagging & Bookmarking Easy
New Rule #2 – Make sharing easy
Following from the previous point, tagging and
bookmarking only scratch the surface of the many ways
that people can share content with others. They can post a
short link to their profile, embed a video, send out a tweet or
create a hashtag for a conversation. Limiting the ways of
sharing to just tagging or bookmarking doesn't make sense
anymore. The core of this rule, however, was the point about
making it easy and that is still at the heart of this new rule.
Once you have shareable content, it has to be one-button-
easy so people will do it with minimal effort or thinking.

19. UPDATED SLIDE - 2010
Old Rule #3 – Reward Inbound Links
New Rule #3 – Reward Engagement
In 2006, the main thing most marketers were concerned
about were inbound links. It was a time when Technorati
was the standard by which we all measured the
performance of our content and many bloggers focused
more on their number of inbound links than their
readership or traffic numbers. Today the real currency is
around conversation or engagement. While there are a
million definitions for "engagement" ranging from
comments and discussion to posting or sharing content –
this is the behaviour that matters most in the social web and
the one that we should all focus on rewarding when it
happens.

20. UPDATED SLIDE - 2010
Old Rule #4 – Help Your Content Travel
New Rule #4 – Proactively Share Content
This was the weakest of the original 5 rules, as the original
rule simply talked about publishing your content in other
formats such as PDFs or videos and submitting them to
other sites. Instead, the essence of the new version of this
rule is all about proactively sharing content in a different
way. This encompasses everything from creating slides to
post on Slideshare or documents to share on Scribd –as
well as tweeting about your content or offering
embeddable versions of it, or using RSS feedsto syndicate it.
Proactively sharing even includes posting your content to
social networking profiles or creating profiles on video
sharing sites.

21. UPDATED SLIDE - 2010
Old Rule #5 – Encourage The Mashup
New Rule #5 – Encourage The Mashup
The last original rule of SMO is the one that Iwould leave
intact. The concept of the "mashup" where people take and
remix your content by adding their own input and voice has
only grown over the past four years. The mashup will be
around to stay, whether the termcontinues to beused or
not. Allowing people to take an ownership over the social
content you publish will continue to bea key way that you
can optimize your content for the social web.

22. UPDATED SLIDE - 2014
Final Author’s Note
Despite having written hundreds of blog posts since the one introducing SMO
back in 2006, the original and “New Rules” posts remain among my top ten
blog posts every single week.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of SMO’s evolution over the past decade is
just how many new agencies, marketing professionals and freelancers are
actively using the term and practice as a way to describe their own expertise.
In what may have been the perfect “full circle” moment, I once sat in a room
back in 2012 listening to a small agency describe their digital marketing
approach as using “Social Media Optimization 2.0.” When I asked what that
was – he referred the question to a 20 something year old team member he
called their “SMO specialist.”
Which is perhaps the greatest sign of adoption anyone could expect. After all,
it’s relatively easy to invent a digital marketing acrononym … but when you see
the earliest adopters starting to promote themselves as experts in doing it, you
know it will probably be around for a while.

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