Rand Fishkin discusses 5 major ways that social media can contribute to SEO and inbound marketing. These include discovering the right content to create, sharing content with an audience likely to spread it, building relationships with influencers, acquiring direct links and citations, and conducting indirect brand building. Fishkin provides many specific tips under each category such as finding content inspiration on Q&A sites, using tools like FollowerWonk to find influencers, and sharing content across multiple social profiles and sites.

1. Social Media Marketing for SEOEarning links, tweets + shares from social media to influence search engine rankings Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz April 2011

2. Social Media Marketing for SEOEarning links, tweets + shares from social media to influence search engine rankings Download at http://bit.ly/socialseosydney Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | April 2011

3. At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!! We don’t offer any consulting.

4. Social is so much more thanTwitter + Facebook

5. Big Opportunities in Social Come from Being an Early Adopter + Valuable Contributor

6. 5 Major Ways Social Can Contribute to SEO, Links & Overall Inbound Marketing #1: Discover the Right Content to Create #2: Share your Content with an Audience that will Spread it #3: Build Relationships with the Right Influencers #4: Acquire Direct Links and Co-Citation References #5: Conduct Indirect Brand Building Leading to Positive, 2nd-Order Effects

7. Discover theRight Content to Create

8. Q+A Sites are Awesome Content Inspiration Sources I should write a blog post about that! At the very least, I’d recommend checking out http://quora.com, http://stackexchange.com, http://linkedin.com/answers, http://formspring.me, and http://answers.yahoo.com.

9. Searching Twitter + Facebook for Relevant Keywords Works Too Searches like “anyone know,” “need help finding,” “where can I,” etc. combined with keywords/topics will often reveal needs. Once you have that content, you can tweet back 

10. Finding + Curating Contributions from Experts Can Be a Huge Traffic/Link Draw Not many people are doing this yet, but it’s an awesome way to get roundups and content that others (especially those you’ve curated) are likely to share.

11. Top X Lists of Influencers in a Space is Like Cheating for Link/Social Sharing Acquisitions Enterpreneur magazine online does a segment on “Five to Follow” in dozens of topical areas - http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/fivetofollow/. Naturally, they get tons of tweets + traffic.

12. Timing Matters w/ Topical Content. Social is the Best Way to Stay Ahead of the Crowds. When I want to find good stuff to tweet (and earn more follows/RTs), I click “New.” I find something good almost every time. I like http://news.ycombinator.com because it’s relevant to stuff I do, but you can find news sources + social sites in virtually every field (or follow key Twitter accounts in those).

13. Raw Curation of Top Sources in an Industry Can Quickly Generate 1000s of Followers Note the short, punchy, well written (but many times rewritten) headlines used before the link, followed by relevant hashtags. An easy place to start for inspiration is http://popurls.com – you want to find those types of aggregators in your niche (often, “most read” lists from news/content sites work very well)

14. Share Your Content with an Audience Likely to Spread it

15. Use Bit.ly or Goo.gl to Measure + Test Your CTR and Ability to Earn Retweets/Shares My shorter tweets have higher CTR I wrote a post about how to do this here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/calculating-and-improving-your-twitter-clickthroughrate

16. Ask for the Action at the Right Time, in the Right Place This box with the link + Facebook like button drops down using CSS once you reach the end of the article, making it impossible to miss. Brilliant! Check this feature out in action on http://blog.okcupid.com/ (OKCupid’s blog is brilliant, BTW)

17. Be generous. Retweet, share, link to and spread the content of others. These retweets help spread the message, but the original tweeter will rarely see them. This retweet gets seen in @ replies and search. It also helps to separately reply and comment on the tweet/link or even ask a smart question to help build engagement and awareness as you’re being generous.

18. Build a private, industry group for content sharing + feedback A tool like Mailchimp (http://www.mailchimp.com) can be very good for this, and the first 2,000 subscribers to a list are free.

19. Build Relationships with the Right Influencers

20. Find influencers using FollowerWonk It really is that easy to find highly followed influencers in any niche. Line of text

21. Use Lanyrd to Attend the Right Events Anyone who attends or speaks at events as part of their marketing role needs to start using http://lanyrd.com. It’s amazing how easy it makes it to find events that have the right audience.

22. Send Personal LinkedIn/FB/Twitter Requests There’s a very high chance the contact will see this message, click through and share it (if they like it) The same thing works on LinkedIn, DMs through Twitter and… even email!

23. Take Photos. Upload to Facebook + Flickr. Tag. Repeat. This not only gets these people to your pages, but if you have a company profile page on Facebook, it gets them “liking” your page, too 

24. Testimonials Build Lasting Relationships Giving a testimonial or posting one is a fantastic way to build a shared marketing relationship. Both parties feel invested in one another. BTW – http://trunk.ly is a genius tool that everyone doing social media should be using.

25. Acquire Direct Links andCo-Citation References

26. You Should Have a Profile on Every One of these Social Sites (and probably at least a dozen more) Facebook Company Page SlideShare Profile Google Profile Twitter Profile Crunchbase Page Reddit Account LinkedIn Company Page Quora Profile StumbleUpon Account YouTube Account About.me Page StackExchange Account Crunchbase Page Scribd Profile Wikipedia Profile This is my top list of social sites to register with, but there’s likely more that are relevant to your niche.

27. Follow this Formula with Each Social Site: Step #1: Setup Build your profile out completely. Connect w/ friends + content on the site. Step #2: Contribute Contribute 2-5 hours of time participating in the community, sharing content, etc. Step #3: Measure Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact Step #4: Repeat Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

28. Share Good Content EVERYWHERE! 13,308 views for a deck I initially presented to only 300 people! I often upload decks to Slideshare, Tweet to them (which connect to my FB and LinkedIn updates, too), then embed them on the blog and link to them in Quora answers or blog comments.

29. Make Your Profiles + Social Content Useful for Search Engine Co-Citation I use words/phrases that I want connected with my name through Google search (and do the same with “SEOmoz” and “SEO Software” BTW – If you haven’t filled out your https://profiles.google.com yet, you should!

30. Double+Triple Share Content. To Make it More Unique, Share Links to SERPs or Different Locations Tweeting links to a Google SERP also increases branded search volume and CTR on your listing 

31. Use Your Profile/Bio to Get Great Anchor Text to the Right URLs One Bio to rule them all! I recommend changing this up every 6-9 months to be fresh and get more variance in your link profile.

32. Conduct Indirect Brand Building, Leading to Positive, 2nd-Order Effects

33. Content Advertising on Social/Content Sites Works Wonders. Smart advertising from Microsoft Via http://techmeme.com

34. Blog Commenting + Answer Posting Accrues Social Karma Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy

35. When Possible, Own + Brand Your Social Channels Visually Via http://www.facebook.com/redbull

36. Don’t Forget Reddit; It’s the New Digg http://www.subreddits.org/ is a good resource for this

37. Be “Authentic” = OK Advice. Be “The Best Part of Yourself” = Better.

38. Misusing/Abusing Social is a Terrible Idea.

39. Black Hat SEO Gets You Banned. Black Hat Social Costs You Friends.

41. Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

42. Email: rand@seomoz.org