Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee’s actions off the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures that could embarrass the company.

Read the entire story at CNet.

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Eventually, though, should one decide to take a vacation there comes the question about what to do about your social profiles, especially if you use them to promote your business. Will people stop following your Twitter if you don’t post for a few days? Will the ranking results of your blog be affected if you don’t update as regularly while you’re gone? Perhaps worse yet, will anybody notice you’ve been gone at all?

When taking a break from work, should weaning off Twitter and Facebook and other profiles apply as well? A long weekend, for example, shouldn’t merit too much concern – you may miss a few gems from favorite “Tweeters”, but depending on the regularity of their posts it may not take too long to catch up on their news. Facebook allows you to parse friends into different lists, so if there are people you wish to follow more closely you can set that up easily and check the site sporadically if the urge to log in to the Net usurps the call of your destination’s amenities.

If you plan a lengthy break from work, which may include time in places where the Internet is not accessible, you may consider preparing advance promotion tactics to keep visitors and readers informed of your business. Blogs provide the ability to queue posts to release on scheduled dates, allowing you the flexibility to map out future material. Twitter widgets such as TweetLater works on a similar model, assuming you have not imported an RSS feed into your account.

If you work alone, you may also wish to consider hiring a temporary “ghost Twitterer” to handle keeping your online persona alive while you enjoy your vacation. It’s not uncommon for celebrities to have people tweet in their stead, and a quick glance through an online freelance database will reveal hundred of freelance writers and SEO agents ready to bid on your work.

Depending on the length of your absence from the office, smart advanced planning can keep you socially active on the Internet even if you aren’t logged in. Take advantage of the tools available to you to keep your social status thriving.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on social media optimization and Virginia web design.

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Recent studies by ranking sites like Quantcast and Compete place Facebook in the top 5 of most used and visited Web sites in the US alone. That Facebook is set up to parse users into specific “networks”, mainly geographical, is helpful because it can allow you to promote properties to people within your region, while the viral aspect of the social network extends your reach to possible buyers elsewhere in the world.

Once you set up a Facebook account for the purpose of boosting your real estate business, you will want to recruit friends. Encourage visitors to your Web site to join by placing buttons on your site or blog, or anywhere else you have an online presence. Because Facebook now allows vanity URLs you can select a proper tag for yours (like “virginiarealtor” or “isellhomes”, depending on your location and what’s available), it is easier to use the addresses on business cards and print materials. Use the Photos function to upload pictures of available properties you have listed, and import an RSS into your Notes box to run new listings.

For other ways to maximize Facebook to your advantage, you can set up a “fan” page for your agency and invite friends and colleagues to join and share information about the neighborhoods you sell. Join a local group based in your area and become active in the conversations, sharing information on available homes and tips for open houses and home loans. You could also form your own group and provide expert information to people seeking advice on buying and selling homes. In the long run this could prove beneficial to you as people just may contact you to represent them at a later date.

If you’re not connected to Facebook, don’t wait to sign up. As social media grows in popularity and importance, so you can improve your real estate business and exposure through this network.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia Beach homes for sale and downtown Norfolk condos.

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Depending on your skill level and knowledge of the site’s purpose, writing the content may be the simplest or most challenging task in achieving your promotion goals. Once you have the information written and made live on your site, exposing it through social media is perhaps the easiest thing to do, and it doesn’t take long to generate a buzz. Here are four ways you can help light the fire.

Add links to social media sites on your Web pages – If you make use of a blog program through Blogger or WordPress to supplement your site content, you’ll know there are widgets available to help you advertise content for social media. Icons and links implore readers to add the content to Facebook or Twitter, all you have to do is click a link to make it happen. If you know a bit of HTML code, though, you can set up links on static Web pages for people to use to add your content to social networks. Decide which social sites you want to focus on the most, then get the code to create the links.

Import your RSS feed into Facebook – Whether you have a personal Facebook account or a fan page related to your Web site, you can use your profile to promote your work. Facebook’s Notes application allows users to import the RSS or XML feed of a blog or site, and will upload the content of the feed into your profile. Then, every time you add to the feed, it’s updated on Facebook and your friends are alerted. If you don’t use a blog for your site, you can create one just for use of the RSS capability for social media, then track referrals from Facebook and Twitter to see how effective it is.

Bookmark your content – Every time you write an article for your blog or site, add it to your social bookmark collection. Whether you prefer Delicious or Digg or any of the myriad of competitors, generating that buzz can help bring more attention to the rest of your site. Get friends and employees to set up similar accounts and help promote the links.

Write more content – For an author, the best way to promote a book is to write the next one. This tip applies to just about anyone using article or blog marketing to optimize Web sites…keep on writing! The more content you offer, the better the opportunity for showing up in search. A visitor may catch one article and come back to read more, and buy more.

Maximize your content through social media – writing, linking, and bookmarking. It’s a great way to maximize your business and your profits.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on SEO writing services and local PPC advertising.

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For larger companies, branding is important – it’s no secret that some brands have become practically synonymous with the products they promote. We don’t always ask for a “soda,” but may refer to every carbonated beverage as a “Coke.” If you’re feeling a sneeze coming on, you might request, “pass me a Kleenex,” rather than the generic “tissue.” In a previous post, we touched briefly on choosing a domain name for your company for SEO purposes. The same rules should apply when considering the suffixed name of your social network profiles as well. As more people utilize Twitter for news and search, so people may be more inclined to follow your posts if you not only provide relevant information, but are presented in a manner that brands your expertise. As individual Twitter profiles gain momentum in traditional search, having a vanity URL closely describing yourself or your business could be helpful in catching the attention of visitors.

Say you operate a local staffing firm. You could use the name of your firm after twitter.com to showcase your actual brand, but if people are searching under more generic terms that could work for you as well.

http://www.twitter.com/virginia_jobs

http://www.twitter.com/atlanta_cars

http://www.twitter.com/jacksonville_apartments

Showing people what you do, rather than telling them who you are up front, could be beneficial in search.

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While it may appear to be a good idea in theory, let’s look at the result: if you were to blindly select a thousand people on Twitter to follow, chances are a good-sized percentage will follow back. Sounds good, huh? In theory, you might think you can convert all these followers into customers or clients, but consider why many people are on Twitter in the first place: to market their own products. What is more likely to happen is that a thousand people will follow you with the intent of converting you to purchase their goods. A top turn-off for some who choose to follow Twitter users is receiving that initial automated greeting message – you know the one, there’s usually a URL and a pitch. You haven’t read one of the person’s “tweets” yet and already they’re on the hard sell.

In order to get the most out of social networks as a means of promotion, a few things you’ll want to bear in mind are:

It isn’t necessary to follow everybody who follows you. If you follow too many Twitter folks the chain of messages received becomes diluted. Posts from people you truly want to follow may get lost in the shuffle of numerous advertisements. True, you want people to follow you, so it’s important to set your profile up as one that contains pertinent content, yet doesn’t appear to constantly hustle readers. If, however, you are set on using Twitter to promote your business, set up a separate account for personal use.

To become attractive to Twitter users, be an expert. “Socialization” is the key to succeeding in any social media network. Not only should you use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to relay information on your favorite subjects, but you should interact with users as well. If you sell sporting goods, ask followers and friends what brand baseball bat or glove is the best, or who they think will win the Series this year. Put a personality behind the avatar and you may find people will recommend their friends to follow you.

Don’t be afraid to promote other things. If you see a news item related to your line of business, share it. Never feel as though you are helping “the competition” in any way. In fact, sharing this information could help you in a way, as it might inspire followers to “re-tweet” your findings and credit you. This in turn could lead to more followers, and perhaps more business.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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In short, if you blog, does it make sense to feed the blog’s RSS into Twitter and Facebook, and anywhere else it may fit? Is there the risk that somebody who follows all three of your profiles will become bored or irritated by the repetition and drop you altogether?

The answer is hard to determine, as one can’t truly determine how social media optimization will work for everybody. What works for Company A could backfire for Company B. However, there are pros and cons to repetitive content that can be explored and considered by those interested in getting the most out of their social media profiles.

Duplicating Content: Advantages

Tools exist that allow you to feed your blog posts into your Facebook profile and your Twitter account. Though there is no discernable way to feed a blog into MySpace’s blog, widgets can be set up to present an RSS version on your material on your profile. The main advantage to having everything connected is that you can create content at one source and distribute it easily to several places with the click of a mouse. There’s no need to log into several profiles. With the addition of bookmarking tools on your browser menu bars – for social bookmarking sites like Delicious and Digg – you can reach diverse audiences with your content.

Also, optimizing specific keywords to link back to your main site can be helpful in boosting your search rank.

Duplicating Content: Disadvantages

If you spend enough time in the Twitter and Facebook worlds, you may tend to read from other users of their dissatisfaction of some profiles. While it’s a given that anybody who sets up a social profile is advertising to some degree, to simply set something up as a droning feed may be a turnoff to some users. “Social” is optimal word in social media, so if you do have these profile it is encourage to use them beyond their RSS functionality and converse with the people who choose to follow your exploits.

It may take some experimentation to find the perfect balance between your content and the way it is presented. Study how you use social media, and learn what works and what doesn’t.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Virginia web design.

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Avoiding the Hustle

So let’s say you set up a Twitter account, and slowly but surely people are following what you have to say. That’s great, that’s what you want to happen. Once you establish this captive audience, however, you want to keep them in place and perhaps get them to “re-tweet” your posts and spread the love. It’s important to do this in a way that doesn’t lead followers to think you are constantly trying to sell to them. If every tweet you post implores people to buy this or buy that or hire me, you risk losing followers. The point of social media networks like Twitter and Facebooks is the social aspect of them. To keep people tuned into you, you must engage them directly.

So what does this mean? Well, if you’re an author and readers follow your social profiles, talk to them via the medium. If you receive a note complimenting your work, return with a thank you but don’t feel pressured to deliver a hard sell of your other works. You would be amazed with how your name or brand can stick in someone’s mind just by being yourself.

Maybe you operate a business catering to local markets – talk about the weather, what is going on in the city. Reply to a follower’s remarks about favorite television shows and music…let people know there is an actual human being behind the social avatars, lest anyone suspect the profiles are there merely to regurgitate sales copy. If a follower enjoys your content enough to click through to your site, your profile has served its purpose and may just attract new followers through word of mouth.

Give it a try. You just might find you can build trust among your online following…and customers.

Kathryn Lively

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Recently we scored phenomenal success with a client by creating a Facebook page that attracted nearly 2,500 fans in less than a month! That the client practically sells itself – a southern travel destination – helped enormously, but the fixes we made to the site allow us to update with pertinent information without having to log into every single network profile we set up. As you take charge of more accounts, knowing the shortcuts to take when promoting websites can be a boon to your own business.

RSS is Your Friend

The beauty of syndicating content is that once you place it in a primary spot, usually a blog, you can set up a feed practically anywhere else. If you have a client for which heavy article marketing is conducive, you can set up a weblog with RSS capability (WordPress and Blogger, for two), and use the content to feed an accompanying Twitter account and Facebook page. Squidoo, a growing social network for business users, also accepts multiple feeds into their pages.

Maintaining a blog for a client, too, permits the use of widget to bring in supplemental content that can be helpful for blended search. Feed the blog with RSS or XML links from video sites like YouTube, plant the client’s social bookmarking links from Delicious or pictures from Flickr.

Essentially, one task for an SEO client could look like this:

Article posted to off-site hosted blog > fed to Facebook page, Twitter, Squidoo lens, and RSS widget embedded on main site.

Depending on the business involved, more specialized networks may permit feeds. A good SEO trick for a book author would be to sign up for Amazon.com’s AmazonConnect program and feed a blog into that client’s page.

The only caveat to this approach: it is advise to check up periodically on the social pages and profiles you create. You can’t always rely on e-mail to notify you when a visitor makes a comment or when somebody tries to spam your space. Plan your course, monitor your progress, and you will find you can become quite adept at juggling multiple SEO clients through social media.

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In creating a website for the purpose of selling products or services, content is the key to high search rankings. Your text must be concise and precise as far as keywords and phrases go, and with clear links to supplemental information and a working contact form. When using social media to promote your site and encourage click-through traffic, you are allowed to be more verbose, as you must create searchable content that encourages third-party sites to use your content – and in turn display the obligatory links to your main site. The rise of social media as a means of promotion can help establish relevance for your website.

As you create content to point to your site, you will find several options for promotion, many of which interlink to create a steady routine one should follow. It is said the best way to sell products or advertise services is to be an expert on said subject. As you write, it is necessary to become an expert on social networks and social bookmarking, so you will know the best avenues for distributing your information.

What do you plan to achieve with your website? Do you sell clothing, promote real estate for sale, or offer accounting services? Think of an article you could write that is relevant to your site’s content – 250 to 300 words on average is a good length, but be careful not to overload on one particular keyword as that may trigger spam filters of some sites where you plan to submit. Once your article is written and the necessary keywords and links to your site are in place, here is a suggested plan of attack. As this schedule of submissions becomes routine, take note to check your site’s stats and referral links as they relate to your SMO efforts.

Submit the article to an article bank – Hosts of content-driven websites tend to look for supplement writings to their sites in order to draw traffic. When a site owner uses such content, they are obliged to link back to the author. As you write articles, find a reputable online article database and submit your content. As others use your work, you gain the opportunity to have your site links from several third-party sources.

Blog your articles – Create a weblog for the purpose of archiving your expert articles. Because Google and other engines hold blog content with high relevance in search, you increase the chances of click-throughs to your main site. Set up a simple blog account through Blogger or WordPress or another source, and link your articles to your main site. If the blog has an RSS feed, take advantage of it. Apply the RSS feed to any social networks that allow implementation. Facebook, Squidoo, and Twitter are just three networks that can feed such content into their respective profiles.

Bookmark your articles – Once your articles are live, use social bookmark sites to promote your work. Sites like Digg and Delicious are constructed to collect links of relevant content. As you create accounts, save the various blog links and article links to these sites, and as people search the social bookmarks for this content they just may find you.

The more content you create and distribute, the better the opportunity for exposure. Considering the millions of people who use the Internet daily, the more sources available to you for placing content can help bring more awareness to your main website, and in turn drive traffic directly to you.

Kathryn Lively

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