SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

A

sk any child over the age of 10 what MySpace is, and you’ll get a pretty

good description. During the conversation, you’ll also probably hear

about other places like Flickr, FaceBook, ShoutLife, YouTube, Twitter,

and Jaiku. These are all examples of the different social networksthat have

become an Internet phenomenon over the past few years.

Social networks are groups of people who are linked by some type of connec-

tion. MySpace is a social network where friends — people who know each

other — connect. New friends come into the mix. Friends’ friends come into

the mix, and eventually you have a network of people (shown in Figure 18-1)

who may not know each other in the real world but are connected on the

Internet.

The phenomenon part of the social network is how quickly people have

adopted it. And using the connections made available by social network-

ing, the category of social mediahas grown nearly as quickly.

Social media are contents generated by social networking. The publishing

mode for social media is many-to-many publishing. What this means is that

a group of people publish a work or works that are distributed to another

group, or several groups, of people.

Literally defined, social media are the technologies and practices that people

use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and multi-

media. These technologies and practices can be translated into all different

kinds of social networking. Table 18-1 is a short list of some of the types of

social media and social networking available.

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IN THIS CHAPTER

What is social-media

optimization?

The value of social media

Social-media strategies

Measuring social-media

optimization

Adding Social-Media

Optimization

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