Talking about Social Media to increase SEO for Vote From Abroad, photo by Democrats Abroad Cambodia

I’m just back from the Democrats Abroad Asia Pacific Regional Meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was representing Democrats Abroad Malaysia and gave a short talk on using Social Media to increase site traffic to our online voter registration tool, VoteFromAbroad.org

One of the main points made in my presentation was that regardless of how people found you, they’re here now. Many organizations are warming up to the idea of embracing conversations about their ‘brand/product/company’ off site. We can’t assume that because we built a great website with community tools that people will always come to our site to talk. Conversations happen where people happen to be that’s increasingly on communities like facebook, youtube, forums, etc.

This is incredibly valuable because the authority (popularity/traffic/page ranking) of these sites and their links back to you provides a boost to your own search result rankings. When Youtube, Wikipedia, Facebook and blogs are all linking to you – google notices.

For a site like Vote From Abroad, the main goal is to be discovered by Americans living overseas and helping them with the process of registering to vote.

This requires a sustained social media campaign using social media optimization and SEO techniques.

Some of the recommendations I’ve made include:

• Link to votefromabroad.org in relevant profiles, media descriptions, web posts, forums & wikis.
• Use of micro-blogging tools (Twitter).
• Cross posting (TubeMogul, Ping.FM)
• Join or create Democrats Abroad groups on social networking sites (and link to votefromabroad.org).
• Community promotion of sites through social bookmarking (Digg, Reddit, etc.)

I also encouraged people attending to start a blog and touched on WordPress. WordPress can deliver great SEO results when configured correctly and provides all kinds of plugins and widgets for mixing in data from your social sites. Folks living abroad have some natural topics to blog about; living overseas, travel, exotic foods, culture.. The easiest way to start is by reading blogs. Should you find yourself following many blogs, look into an RSS reader to have all your blogs delivered in one shot for offline or easy reading later.

Note to Americans living overseas. Register to vote, your vote matters. Join Democrats Abroad to connect with some of the most dynamic, progressive and thoughtful Americans you’ll ever encounter. This is a great way to meet and socialize with other American expats while living abroad.

• Americans in Malaysia – Americans Abroad for Obama
• 50 ways to use social media for marketing

Best not to talk local politics when your an American in Malaysia. I’ll let Raja Petra talk instead.

“There is a growing consensus in government that those who run websites and blogs should be held accountable and this means that laws should be used to take action against those who defame and spread disinformation.

“If not, we are going to have a situation where everyone will be free to make all sorts of allegations with no downside at all. There is a fear that the trust level with BN would be very low if nothing is done, ” said a senior government official familiar with details of the meeting.

The prevailing mood in the government against the alternative media is one of frustration. After decades of being able to control newspapers and television stations through a raft of legislation, government officials and politicians are finding that their tools are useless in setting boundaries for new media.

via mt

• Social Media Optimization project: Democrats Abroad
• Fast companies use social media

A recent study by The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research reveals that of the fastest growing fortune 500 companies, 77% reported using social media in their business.

According to the study’s authors, “26% of respondents in 2007 felt that social media is “very important” to their business and marketing strategy. That figure rose to 44% in approximately one year. It is clear that this group of fast-growing companies considers the use of social media as a central part of its strategic plan.”

Social networking is the most familiar of the technologies. In 2007, wikis were the least familiar but they have since leapfrogged over podcasting.

It’s notable that the study’s authors found much more extensive use and growth in use in the fastest growing 500 US companies than they found in the Fortune 500, the largest companies. It would be a logical fallacy to argue that the fastest growing companies are growing fastest because of their use of social media, but it could be a factor. It could also be the case that insurgent companies have a greater incentive and proclivity to experiment than incumbent industry leaders.

via ReadWriteWeb

• 50 ways to use social media for marketing
• Small business social media use increasing

I am testing the theory that it is vital to occasionally post lists to generate viral traffic. So I present to you the top 10 lists of bloggers blogging about blogging lists.

1. 8 Reasons Why Lists are Good for Getting Traffic to your Blog - Problogger
2. A Guilty Pleasure of the Blogosphere and Social Media: Lists - Adam Singer, The Future Buzz
3. The Resource Linkbait – Using Lists to Build Authority, Traffic and Links to your Website. - DoshDosh
4. Why Lists are Good for Getting Traffic - Noeren, Inoeren
5. 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work - Copyblogger
6. 7 Reasons Why I Don’t Like Lists - Matthew Peters Pandemic Blog
7. Why they call me “The List Maven” – Deborah, The List Maven
8. 5 Reasons You Should Write a List Post - Deb, Network Blogging Tips
9. 7 Tips to Writing a Blog Post That’s Scannable - Susan Gunelius, About.com
10. Top 6 list of top lists to list on your blog - Future-Phobia

• WordPress Plugin Idea: Auto Link Karma
• 50 ways to use social media for marketing

The most recent version of WordPress has a tab called “Turbo” in the upper right hand corner of the admin dashboard. This is where you can configure Google Gears for a speed increase in WordPress administration. The speedup is noticeable however it does not feel quite like an app running off of you drive. Promising tech however and I look forward to seeing how far they can get with offloading repetitive code chunks to my local machine rather than having to download them every time.

• MyBlogLog plugin working with WordPress
• Broadband video spot for Digi

Earlier attempts at cross-posting to myspace blogs from wordpress worked initially but caused a few wordpress panics along the way that required turning off that plugin. I looked for another solution and came up with pingPressFM which makes use of the ping.fm API. At first I was concerned that this would update facebook and twitter status with blog posts but it is configurable to update via status, blogs & microblogs. I’ve got status turned off and blogging and microblogging enabled. Right now pingPressFM is updating blogs / microblogs on twitter, tumbler, pownce and myspace.

It does three updates in total. One status update (facebook, myspace), one micro blog update (twitter, jaiku), and one blog update (blogger, livejournal). You can easily configure each of the three ping types in your WordPress settings.

• Cool Skype widget for WordPress
• Cross posting to facebook and myspace

Upgrade went very smooth here.

More here

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