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.

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.