SES 2007: Social Bookmarking Strategies

This afternoon I attended the Social Bookmarking Strategies session within the Search Engine Strategies 2007 NY conference which was moderated by Alex Bennert and the speakers included: Todd Malicoat, Lee Odden, Neil Patel, and Michael Gray. I was looking forward to hearing Neil speak but for some reason he was only part of the q&a portion. Below are my notes. Honestly, for most of the CN audience, nothing will appear new.

Lee Odden

• Lee discusses why web based bookmarks are better than local bookmarks. Goal is to get people to share your content with others via these sites.
• Difference between social news (digg, reddit) and social bookmarks (delicious and furl). News is hot now, Bookmarks are for the future.
• Shows Delicious as the most popular social bookmarking site. Then shows how to actually bookmark a link with Delicious! WOO!
• Shows Furl and explains that they cache content.
• Shows Blinklist and their excellent widget for syndication.
• Shows Magnolia and says they are basically low to medium for marketing. Notes that you can group things together.
• Shows Google Bookmarks and explains that personalized results will be affected. Also offers an IE toolbar for the bookmarks.
• Use this 301url.com/social-bookmarks to find hundreds of social bookmarks.
• Tips: become a user, pick a tool, place buttons prominently, don't overkill, match bookmark service to audience, track referrals.

Todd Malicoat aka StuntDubl

• His presentation is dated 2006 - I sure hope this is not a rehash of a year ago!
• Why use Del.icio.us? Bookmark aggregation, Repeat traffic and loyal visitors, Real traffic and Great users
• He explains how you should spam your friends and buddy lists to help you hit the home page of delicious.

Michael Gray

• Why do research for social media? -- find out whats working and not working -- discover trends -- discover key players -- watch the competition -- find out what people are saying about you
• He loves RSS
• Explains how to use the Digg feature for research - I disagree with him completely
• Shows Netscape and how it has no search feature
• Shows StumbleUpon and its research capability with its stars function
• Shows Delicious and the history feature for a post
• Discusses how to track your company and the competition using the news services and social media sites

Microsoft adCenter: Today and Tomorrow

I got here a bit late, but most of the beginning stuff is just promo stuff as expected. Quality, inventory, yada yada. I will only chime in when I hear something new.

The showed stuff from adCenter beta...

Molly is now up... She is talking about customer service. Here sides are pretty hard to read, due to the background.

Then talks about the adCenter community team. Talks about how they help people in forums, blogs, etc.

NEW: They are launching adCenter Accreditation with official tutorials, verification and logos.

Unlimited negative keywords on the campaign level coming this Summer.

Now there are Q&A

The Value of Blogging & Editorial Content in a New Market

If you wanted to enter a new market one of the easiest ways to get ready to enter it is to start a blog or editorial content site about the topic.

An editorial site has the following advantages over a straight commercial site

• It is easier to link at an informational site. There is a huge pool of links open to bloggers that is not open to purely commercial sites. There are people out there who WILL NOT link to commercial sites but will link to content sites.
• It is also easier to trust a commentator as an unbiased industry source than a person building a new company.
• If you write things that are link worthy they will spread much more quickly than if they were hidden away deep inside a commercial site.
• When you write you create connections and gain exposure and trust, all of which can be leveraged to help push your ideas or get feedback on your ideas.
• If you seem like a fan of your topic it is far easier to access people with competing business interests, before they even think of you as competition.
• By studying and tracking a topic without committing to any business model, you learn the topic and then can build a business around opportunity