Content Authority
Becoming an authority online in your niche not only involves content production for your own sites but also how much you share across all the platforms. Gaining visibility starts first and foremost with adding great content and value to your audience, fans and readers. If you don’t have it, forget it. This is the foundation of any online PR.
Content Syndication
Once you have great content, you have to think about how you go about sharing it. Social media networks have been around for several years now and it does not seem to be going away. The last group to join, the laggards are slowly getting up to speed. What strikes me today however is that there are still so many people who think it is a huge billboard to be painted on or to be read. They have yet to understand that the social factor that existed from before the age of technology is still important in the virtual space. The tools that interface the expression of our human sociability may have changed but behind it all one still finds these social individuals.
Old Media Audience Behaviour
© Bogdan Dumitru - Fotolia.com
© Bogdan Dumitru - Fotolia.com
Along these lines, what I notice is that many people still just read, watch or like without ever saying a word or asking a question. They are like flies on a wall. These same people are dying for people to interact with their content. They have yet to understand that every single comment or conversation they engage in online on other people’s sites or even on their own is a conversation with a real person. We all know that we love to be acknowledged as well as helped. This anchors the relationship of know like and trust which are the essentials of business building. The other thing this does is that it leaves a virtual footprint.
Google‘s Social Algorithm
Google has been tracking with a social algorithm since 2006 and only recently started to unveil some of how they will use all this information when it delivers us pertinent search content. If you noticed that when you do a Google search today, not only do the top 10 show up but anything anyone of your online contacts may have liked with a +1 or shared is starting to show up at the bottom of the page. The other day I was searching for pizza in my town and at the bottom was an article from a blog that was written 2 years earlier from one of my mentors who lives in Australia. I laughed my head off. But you see, Google showed it to me just in case the social proof coming from this contact of mine may influence whether I looked at that article or not.
I am sure you have heard all the noise about Google +1. You may want to pay attention. If you have a gmail account, Google profile, YouTube account, blogger or Google friend connect, Google has been tracking all your connections and interactions. Google knows when you share someones blog or video who it belongs to and measures how far it goes. If you go into your Google dashboard under social connections you will be surprised what they know. Six degrees of separation will take on an entirely new perspective to you. They are even ranking what is going on in the social networks.
New Media Interaction
What I am saying is that what you do online is important to your online visibility not only for your friends but also for the SERPs. If you want to show up in search then start taking more responsibility for how you interact. Create good content and then interact with others. All of it is included in the algorithms. Social in the virtual space is essentially the same as the physical space. That is the foundation of new media.
Thanks for reading
Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal
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