After a delicious lunch at the Good Karma Vegan Cafe it’s back to the Social Media track here at SES San Jose 2008.

This panel is again moderated by Pauline Ors of IBM and features Kendall Allen of Incognito Digital, David Snyder of JRDunn.com and Liana Evans of KeyRelevance.

First up its Kendall Allen on the topic of the Advancement of Integrated Data. The old days of Social Media used to be things like Listservs and Chat Rooms and has transformed into something that users can take with them where ever they go. This sort of Cross Platform storytelling is an interesting morph of online content that if done correctly can help drive your brand farther into the marketplace.

Talking about Search when thinking about a Social Media campaign is something that should be addressed from the onset states Allen. I couldn’t agree more. If you are going to attempt to promote your business through Social Media you need to keep the brand consistent across the board. Keywords and taglines should be the same everywhere you or your company list themselves.

Ning.com is one of Allen’s favourites for getting people engaged and keep a  conversation going

Social Spark, a blog network is a ‘Social Marketing Network that connects advertisers and bloggers through an online marketplace.’

Linda Evans is up next to address the topic of joining Social Media sites just for links. Social Media is about the interaction of people and most people can smell a rat pretty quickly so if all you are looking for is links back to your site you will be doing your business a disservice. Social Media is great for links though and the links are worth something but as long as you are engaging people in a conversation you should be fine

Evans is now referencing Charlene Li’s book Ground Swell and how web users are segmented into different roles online with the most being what Li calls ‘Inactives’ or those that surf and do not contribute. They may want to contribute but aren’t sure of how to do this or if there are tools out there to make it is easy to be a ‘Creator.’

She is also siting Snausages Breakfast bites, a product that was 100% driven by users on the Dogster.com site and it has been a very successful product for them.

Social Media can be used badly such as the case with Walmarting Across America so beware before you jump in and make sure your message is not only correct but also transparent.

Lastly Dave Snyder is up talking SERP(Search Engine Results Page) control through SMO(Social Media Optimization)

Creating profiles on sites such as Twitter or MySpace and other networks become heavily weighted in brand recognition. Always optimize your profiles or listings and link specific keyterms to landing pages on your site.

Engage your users through interaction is great way to maintain link equity. If you and others are sharing links in Social Media sites you are further elevate your brand on the web.

Flickr, the best online photo sharing site in the world(IMHO), is a favourite of Snyder. I can attest the to the quick indexing properties of Flickr and how powerful a correctly titled/tagged image can generate traffic to your site.

Having a correct profile name that not only identifies your company name to visits but also helps search engines recognize that there is a connection between say your YouTube channel to your site. If you have a YouTube channel don’t give it a vague name or use an employees name but in the case of YouTube make sure you spell your display/username correctly as there is no way to change it. Flickr will let you change your username but you cannot change it back.

Please take this into account when setting up profiles. Always dot your Is and cross your Ts

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com