The value of social media is no secret to this year’s United States Presidential Candidates. Beyond the beautifully designed, Web 2.0 websites of candidates like Obama, McCain, and Clinton lie incredible social media infrastructures that are fully developed and extremely connected. In fact, most SEO’s have a thing or two to learn from these intense Internet marketing campaigns. Some existing for only a year, they have accomplished more than many businesses have ever considered, and thus social media makes history as a powerful player in the Presidential race.

For starters, every candidates’ website has buttons or links to multiple social media sites for bookmarking or social profiles. Check out the bottom of Hillary Clinton’s Website at hillaryclinton.com. There you find links to Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Flickr and Eons profiles, each of which are thoroughly developed and active. Her Flickr page is studded with outstanding photos that are titled and tagged, her MySpace page is customized and has over 186,000 friends, and her Youtube channel is enormous. There are currently 264 videos posted!

Obama is no stranger to the online community either. Notice at the bottom right of his campaign website (barackobama.com) a fairly extensive link list of social media connections. These include the sites mentioned on the Clinton site as well as Digg, Twitter, Eventful, LinkedIN, Faithbase, Glee, BlackPlanet, and more. These candidates are taking the social networking world by storm in a way that is unique to our modern times, executing social media strategies that have SEO’s drooling. Their efforts are explosive but honest and real at the same time, and I don’t see any black hat operations going on here.

Part of the reason these types of social media campaigns are so successful is that they are not overly burdened with the need to build links and get noticed on the search engines. They are using social media largely as an intensive viral marketing strategy with the goal of saturating political, social, and economic channels with content. Presidential candidates are more concerned with branding and image than how they rank for particular keyphrases, and as a result their online presence is huge, subsequently showing some impressive search engine rankings as well.

Now, I know that they also have incredible budgets. However, many of the avenues they are using are free, the only cost being a knowledgeable social media teams to organize and execute the campaigns. Compared to paying for network television commercials or spreads in national magazines, social media costs are minuscule, and if you don’t think social media can have a huge impact on the success of your business, ask yourself, “Why are these political campaigns so invested in social media?” I guarantee you it is not just for kicks and giggles.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization.

The use of video for Internet marketing strategies is predicted to become to a $3 billion dollar industry by the year 2010 by eMarketer Report. What an incredible figure, considering it has only really exploded in the last few years. Why are investors, businesses, and marketing/advertisement firms so excited about video? The answer lies in the numbers. The mass of viewers is so great, that anyone seeking to promote products or brands would be silly not to consider such a huge portion of the population. According to a market trends expert named Brian Haven, 53% of all adults using a broadband connection state that they watch videos online. Considering the current viewing audience and realizing the potential of online videos, it would be would silly not to invest in such a cost effective, wide reaching medium.

An enormous number of videos are produced and posted to the Internet every day by amateurs and professionals alike. From funny happenings to how to videos, there is an amazing surge of content, and it is inspired by the fact that anyone can be heard. Literally, anyone who makes a video and posts it on Youtube, Google Video, metacafe, or something similar, has the opportunity to be viewed by thousands, if not millions of viewers. It is a fantastic opportunity and an excellent way for businesses to make themselves known. This is without even considering the impact video can have on search engine rankings.

Like any content, video can also be utilized as a form of “link bait,” meaning it is valuable material that other websites, blogs, or forums might want to link to. If the video is posted to a video sharing website and optimized correctly, those links in turn bring recognition to the keywords and links associated with that video, which should all be pointing back to the creator. This practice is extremely new, and the results vary somewhat due to the current limitations in search engine indexing, but it may prove to be the most effective strategy. For now, the sure fire way to make sure videos bait to a particular website is by posting directly on that website. While also gaining viewers by submitting to Youtube and others, the object of posting directly to a website is to drive traffic directly to that site. This can be done in a variety of ways, such as a strategic social bookmarking campaign.

There is a video revolution on the move, and those who join will certainly surpass the competition. Not only can videos produce brand or product recognition, they can increase a website’s authority in the search engines and bring in great, relevant traffic. So why not start kicking around a few ideas?

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.

Throughout the history and development of the Internet, social networking has inherently played a key role due to vast telecommunication possibilities. We started with chat rooms, forums, and eventually developed networks like Friendster and Myspace, resulting in an explosion virtual connectivity All of these networks were simply designed to connect people without the issue of distance. Well, at some point people started to realize that networking is also a valuable tool in another major aspect of life, business. Networking is a powerful business tool practiced by politicians, businessmen, and entrepreneurs since the establishment of human commerce. Today it has become so imperative that many businesses pay big money to attend industry specific networking events. Everyone knows the old saying, “its not what you know, its who you know,” and it could not be more true. With the creation of business and professional networking sites, now businesses can legitimately network throughout the web, gaining leads, partners, advice, and an abundance of other useful ventures.

LinkedIn, Fastpitch, Ryze, and Tribe are all social networking sites specifically designed for the professional world and might quite possibly become the most valuable business resources on the net. The set up is simple. By signing up, putting together a basic profile and connecting up with a few friends, you are already well on your way, and networking sites like these make it easy. The setup for each network is relatively the same, but each network has its own advantages and disadvantages, and some are more relevant for specific industries. LinkedIn has begun to rise to the top because of its simple methods of increasing and maintaining your social network. With an easy upload from your existing email or IM contacts, LinkedIn can show you which people you already know on the network, and once you have even a few friends, the network can expand quickly through the friends of your friends. Not only that, but you can easily search for users with names or even keywords.

Once you have established a profile, business networks can be used to post jobs, search for jobs, find services, make partnerships, negotiate sales, consider new ventures, and so much more. It is not at all uncommon for businesses to hold meetings or discuss propositions from the introductions made on a social networking site. Like Internet dating, social networking makes it possible for people to meet that might never have crossed paths in the real world, which greatly expands the limits of possibilities.

The best thing about social networking right now is that most of it is free! What some pay thousands in order to join networking events or groups, they can do for free with the help of online social networks. This will probably change in the future, so now is a great time to get involved and build a network.


About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.

Arguably the most popular online photo management and sharing application on the Internet today, Flickr boast some 1.5 million users and counting. As for many social media networks, businesses are quickly realizing the value of such a dense and active audience, and like any social media marketing campaign, it is important for businesses to not only set up an account with appropriate titles, tags, and so on, but also to become active and productive members of the Flickr community, utilizing the full potential.

By posting quality photography representing local businesses, products, services, or even ideas and tagging them according to location, subject, or keyphrase, these photos have a high potential for appearing in image searches for engines like Google and Yahoo, not to mention the possible visibility on actual Flickr searches. The recent development of Universal Search has upped the ante yet again by making it possible for images to appear in the main organic ranking results. When photos gain this kind of visibility, they can begin to greatly impact viral marketing efforts, actually search engine rankings, and especially web traffic, which is why so many businesses are jumping on the Flickr exchange.

The success of a photo or group of photos depends on many things, but mostly on the “interestingness” of the images. Now this may seem somewhat arbitrary, but I assure you it is quite the opposite. Flickr has employed an algorithmic ranking system to rival the Googlebots. An image’s interestingness is based on the number of people who view it, comment on it, and mark it as a favorite. If those who mark it as a favorite are themselves favorites of a host of others, that vote is weighted more, and thus it is an ever changed and growing web of users that gradually push the best material to the top. Though the Google and Yahoo image searches work on a similar principle, the results found on Flickr searches are vastly superior, and thus the image search experience is becoming hugely popularized by this new social media platform.

Though some business marketing campaigns focus on Flickr for the potential impact on organic search engine rankings, many quickly find the rewards from actual Flickr searches surprisingly fruitful. Yes, regular participation, quality images, and strategic tagging can find their way into major search engine results, but the large base of avid users found on Flickr alone can provide companies with a wealth of traffic and recognition. I highly recommend creating an account and spending the time to become an active user, you might even enjoy it. If you and your staff are finding it difficult to navigate or strategize, seek the advice or services of a knowledgeable search engine optimization company that has an active social media department.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.