Social Media Optimization Don'ts

You have by now likely read many collections of rules related to best practices for social media optimization. In fact, Rohit Bhargava, VP of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations Rule #1 - Do not create fake accounts (sock puppet accounts) at places like Digg, Del.icio.us, technorati, etc., just so you can fill them with links, diggs, tags, etc., in hopes of artificially boosting your page to the top of those venues. Fake accounts have been around since the first days of email, and who among us doesn't have multiple email accounts, or multiple blogs? So don't act innocent. If you have a bunch of accounts you create solely for the purpose of creating a false sense of buzz for your own site or your client's, then stop it.

Use a little discretion and logic when tagging your posts and articles about any given topic

Rule #2 - Limit your ego-diggs. If you ask a friend or two to digg your latest article/blog post, that's fine, but if you are digg-pandering to hundreds of your "closest pals" then stop kidding yourself. That's just another form of stuffing the ballot box, and you know it. Rule #3 - Stop tag abuse. Say you have a client who's a dermatologist who specializes in the treatment of Acne scars. Bingo. And even within that smaller set of 356 I see plenty-o-tag spam. Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: Eric Ward founded the Web's announcing, linking, and building buzz for Web sites, back in 1994. His client list is a who's who of online brands. Ward is best known as the person behind the linking campaigns for Amazon.com Books, Weather.com, The Link Exchange, Rodney Dangerfield (Rodney.com), the AMA, and PBS.org. His services won the 1995 Award For Internet Marketing Excellence, and he was selected as one of the Web's 100 most influential people by Websight magazine in 1997. Eric is a 4-star speaker at Jupiter's Search Engine Strategies conferences, and publishes

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