With the increasing uptake of social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target markets via a whole new channel. Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies can release a new product in the morning and have it talked about by millions of users on thousands of sites by the afternoon.

The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there’s the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it’s not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It’s anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.

Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg’s unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don’t Digg Being Dugg.

Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers are calling it the “Digg Effect” or the “Slashdot Effect”. Buzz for a site can cause more than good or bad publicity. As Kim found out, the effect can cause traffic overload sometimes resulting in site downtime and lost business.

Social media can also kill the reputation of a brand instantly. Take the Microsoft Windows Vista Laptop Scandal for instance. No stranger to the benefits of social media, Microsoft had allegedly tried to exploit the power of the blogosphere at the end of last year, by sending a number of A-list bloggers a free Acer Ferrari laptop loaded with the yet-to-be-released Windows Vista and Office 2007.

The pitch was a request for the bloggers to “review” the new Windows software in their influential blogs. Many bloggers did write a review, but some did not disclose their free gift. When this fact was discovered later, the bloggers were hammered by large portions of the blogosphere for what they saw as a clear conflict of interest. Microsoft were tagged both literally and figuratively as bribers and Windows Vista was widely panned with parody tag lines such as “Vista: So Bad We Had to Give it Away”. Not a great start to an online product release.

Another example of the damage that social networking can do to a company’s online reputation is the National Pork Board of America’s recent battle with breastfeeding advocate and well-known blogger Jennifer Laycock. Jennifer was sent a harshly worded letter from the Pork Board’s representing counsel, threatening her with legal action for allegedly stealing their pro-pork slogan “Pork: The Other White Meat” in a pro-breastfeeding t-shirt she had designed that read “The Other White Milk”.

The letter suggested that their case for trademark infringement was probably solid. Unfortunately for the Pork Board, the poorly-worded letter also suggested that they were insensitive to breastfeeding mothers and the plight of starving infants. The Pork Board didn’t count on Jennifer’s influence in the blogosphere and the power of social networking to carry her defiant response to the world. The Pork Board ended up receiving bags of hate mail and thousands of flame emails via their online contact form, forcing them to issue a public apology to Jennifer from the Board’s CEO and a generous donation to the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio in order to save face.

To their credit, the Pork Board did the right thing. They also made sure that all persons who complained about their approach to Jennifer received a polite, measured email response from the CEO. As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them. Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It demonstrates how seriously they took the complaints. The wording of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing each and every complainer personally is impressive. It would’ve been tempting to ignore all the flames and issue some stock standard release.

Their choice of legal team may have been questionable, but the Pork Board’s public relations team mobilized quickly, upgraded to full damage control mode and did a great job of mopping up the PR mess before it spread too far. Social media might have damaged them, but the Pork Board’s reputation was ultimately salvaged by quick thinking and a swift online response.

Such situations underscore the growing importance of online reputation management (ORM) in our Web 2.0, social media-driven world. Companies should be tracking their online reputation on a daily basis to check for negative commentary via social media in order to avert potential PR disasters. Major search marketing players such as Andy Beal recognized the potential growth in ORM a long time ago. But I wonder how many PR/Search Marketing agencies currently offer this service?

With brand reputation increasingly at risk, you can be sure the smart agencies will be adding ORM to their service offerings faster than you can say “Can you Digg it?”

By Kalena Jordan

Just when you believed you had all your SEO tactics figured out, the web goes and changes on you. Not just the rules of the game but it takes the whole web platform right out from under your feet and changes it. What’s a poor webmaster to do?

Web 2.0 changes the whole ballgame. It not only places the Internet user squarely in the middle of things, but it gives that user the means and power to create and manipulate data. Web 2.0 dramatically changes how we view and use the web. Actually, in many respects, it creates a whole new Internet.

What Is Web 2.0?
Just what exactly is Web 2.0? What does it mean? Is there a precise definition that all webmasters can get their heads around and understand? Not really, many believe Web 2.0 is just another one of those contrived buzzwords, signifying mostly marketing hype!

However, perhaps the simple definition can be found in the word “you”! Time magazine probably summed it up best by making reference to the “you” in user generated content. Web 2.0 is basically all the platforms that give us this brave new user-powered interactive Internet, generally referred to as ’social media’.

Web 2.0 can be seen or manifested in such sites as YouTube, MySpace, Del.icio.us, Digg, Squidoo… Web 2.0 uses scripting languages such as Python, Perl PHP, RSS… to construct interactive platforms that websites can use to create all this user-generated content.

Many refer to these evolving formats and scripting platforms under the name AJAX and no this does not refer to the popular cleaning agent under your kitchen sink! This AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) comes from Google and takes web based interactive programs such as Google Maps, something that’s usually associated with desktop applications, but is now being applied on the web. If you have used Google Earth, you will realize how powerful and revolutionary these new applications can be, not to mention, they are a whole lot of fun.

Where Did The Name Web 2.0 Come From?
Many point to Tim O’Reilly, the constant innovator of many technological changes on the web. O’Reilly has been at the forefront in discussions and conferences on the nature and substance of the ‘meme’ open source platforms dominating the new social media.

How all this new media plays out is anyone’s guess, but all webmasters should optimize their sites for this new Web 2.0 and take full advantage of all the SEO possibilities presented by this brave new Internet.

Here are a few SEO suggestions you can try:
1. RSS/Blogging: You must place a blog and RSS feed on all your sites. This is a fairly simple procedure to do with free server-based programs such as Wordpress. Having a blog and RSS feed will place your site into the whole tagging process. Each category you create in your blog will be seen as a tag by such sites as Technorati. RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and your RSS feeds will get your content distributed across the web. A simple and easy way to tap into the new Web 2.0 universe.

2. Create some Google Juice!: Join as many of these highly interactive sites as you can: MySpace, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Digg, Wikipedia … my favorite is Squidoo, where you can create Lenses on different topics that interest you. User driven content that’s utilized by all the major social media sites. Of course, link back to your sites in your posts and creations in these user-created content havens and watch your PR ratings go way up.

3. Use Interactive Scripts: Place interactive JavaScripts and platforms on your own sites. Have membership forums, polls, blogs, feedback forms, user-contributions… to build unique content driven sites. Become the spider!

4. Tagging (Folksonomy): Be constantly aware of the tags (keywords) you’re creating with your blogs and sites. This can have a very beneficial effect on your traffic and rankings. Closely relate these tags to the content on your sites and build higher rankings in all the major search engines.

5. The Long Tail: Especially important for affiliate marketers, you need to cover special niches where there is less competition and content. These narrow niches make up a large portion of the whole vast web, creating content in these unique areas will get your site included in the search engines a lot quicker and keep them there a lot longer.

6. Holistic Web 2.0: Be constantly vigilant in placing your sites in the whole ‘Interactive Game’, building links and partnerships with the important YouHubs: MySpace, Del.icio.us, YouTube, Digg, Squidoo… the more connections you have, the more your own sites will prosper.

Be The Spider!
No doubt, Web 2.0 will play an ever increasing role in the development and evolution of the web. Make sure your sites are optimized and in the ‘You’ game. Create blogs, RSS feeds, interactive forums, membership areas, user-generated content and truly make your sites interactive havens in their own right. Just remember to tag everything and your sites will reap the benefits of this new Web 2.0 generated SEO gold rush.

By Titus Hoskins

Many websites currently offer a resource library for visitors - an area filled with articles covering relevant topics to the industry with which the site is connected. The articles may cover how to do something or define a particular aspect of the industry, but they do not usually directly sell the company’s products or services.

Benefits of a Resource Library
While it’s true that a resource library, on the surface, exists to benefit site visitors, it doesn’t end there — they also provide benefits that can directly impact any business. First of all, they spread goodwill among a business’s prospect base – and its non-prospect base as well. The site is seen by visitors as offering free information about important subject matter – and that makes it a more attractive site to return to in the future when a purchase will be made or a service established.

Second, with a solid resource library, the site puts itself in a great position to organically attract important inbound links. Outside sites will notice the offerings of important and unbiased information and link to individual articles or to the resource library as a whole. This will boost traffic and rankings overall.

Third, if the articles in the section are optimized properly, they will also boost rankings for popular and competitive keyphrases, driving additional targeted traffic to the site. The traffic may enter the site at the articles, but visitors are then likely to click for further information about the site itself.

A Common Objection to Adding a Resource Library
The most common objection a search engine optimization company hears when recommending that a site add a resource library is “I want to sell my product, not educate.” However, this is shortsighted. It is important to reach buyers at all stages of the sales cycle. For example, if someone is just starting to investigate a product or service, a site with an appropriate informational article will reach him or her at this critical early stage. The prospect will then likely remember the experience when he or she is ready to buy and will return to the site.

In addition, a site with a resource library can help a salesperson save valuable time. With quality articles freely available on the site, the salesperson will no longer need to take the time to explain the basics to a prospect - the site will have already taken care of that. Instead, the salesperson can focus on speaking to the people who are ready to make a purchase.

Examples of Successful Resource Libraries
There are several sites that serve as great examples of this approach. Let’s look at three of them – Bed, Bath and Beyond; Lowe’s; and Step Two Designs (an Australian consulting firm).

Bed, Bath, and Beyond opens its resource library with a friendly “Need help shopping?” and follows it up by telling visitors that they can “browse through the sections below for helpful shopping hints on a variety of topics.” There is no mention of specific sales at any point on this page, which is found at www.bedbathandbeyond.com.

Taking a deeper look, one will find that the targeted phrase “window treatments” brings up Bed, Bath, and Beyond’s guide on the subject on the first page of Google. This phrase has the impressive monthly search estimate (using data from WordTracker) of 55,304. Note that this page, which is an unbiased article offering tips on choosing different types of window treatments, and not a retail sales page, is what achieves the rankings.

The home improvement chain Lowe’s actually has several resource libraries available on its site, from buying guides to an extensive how-to library. Its buying guide page, found at www.lowes.com, notes, “Work Smarter: We’ll help you find the right equipment and tools you need for all of your projects.” And the company’s article on choosing floor tiles appears on the first page of Google for the targeted phrase “tile floor,” which has a monthly search estimate of 2,046. Again, it’s an informational page and not a product page that gets the great rankings.

Both of the above examples are great, but you don’t need to be selling a product online - or even be in the retail business at all - to use a resource library to your benefit. Step Two Designs is a consulting firm that offers a resource library of whitepapers on its site at www.steptwo.com.au. Its article “How to Evaluate a Content Management System,” for example, establishes its usefulness right at the top, stating that “No vendors or products are mentioned in this article: this is not a survey of current commercial solutions. Instead, it provides tools to assist you to conduct a review of suitable products.”

This article appears on the first page of Google for the targeted phrase “content management systems,” which has a monthly search estimate of 2,356. While this may be a lower number than the Bed, Bath and Beyond example, a consulting firm’s average sale will likely be greater than that of a single purchase from a retail outlet, and so these visitors are potentially more valuable. Even in this type of business, a resource library will quickly prove its value.

Conclusion
Resource libraries clearly offer something of value for everyone involved. Prospects appreciate their existence, search engines reward sites that have them, and salespeople are relieved of the burden of explaining basic concepts to early prospects. You can either create your articles in-house or, if you’re not sure where to start, hire a search engine optimization company to help you with everything from idea generation to writing. In either case, with just a little bit of effort your site too can realize the benefits of establishing this type of section.

By Scott Buresh