Social Networks

Social Networks are based on the way we live as people.  We create groups of friends and share ideas with these friends.  We can create friends that are friends of friends.  We have groups of friends at work.  We have groups of friends at Church.  We have groups of friends from the coffee shop downstairs (maybe we should make a television show about friends).

Facebook, Myspace, Digg  and all the others work pretty much the same way.  You register and create your own identity, then you start making friends.  You group your friends together, you meet fiends of friends.  The idea is you share thoughts with our firends.  On facebook you chat with your friends, you share your pictures, your favorite song, and web pages you enjoy.  Sites like Digg are designed to share your favorite web page.  When you read something you find interesting you digg the article (think back to the 60’s can you dig it man).  All of your friends can see what you find interesting, they can digg the web page as well, which encourages more people to read the web page.  The whole digg site then finds the content that is recommended by the most people and list this on their front page.  Del.icio.us does a similar thing with bookmarks, you share your bookmarks and others can see your bookmarks.

There is a dark side to social networks.  Myspace is popular for young children, so pediphiles found that it was a good place to meet children.  They work their way into the confidence of the child and then they prey on the children. 

Social networks can also be a good way to keep up with your friends from all around the world, the use is up to you.

RSS feeds

Here is a little more detail about RSS feeds. 

This is a little simplistic, but it does show you the purpose of RSS feeds.  RSS help you find new content on the Internet.  An RSS feed is an xml website, this means the information is not formatted to look graphically appealing but rather the format allows a computer program to read the content.  The computer program identifies the title, a summary of the content and most importantly the link to the content.  The program remembers what content you have read so it highlights new content to you.  You can quickly look at the information and see what is new to you.

There are two types of programs that normally reads RSS feeds, a feed reader and an aggregator.  A feed reader is a program that runs on your computer and reads the feeds on the Internet.  Many times these are build into your e-mail program.  Thunderbird and Outlook make your RSS feeds look like e-mail.  They will display the feed like a new e-mail account.  It will mark items that you have not read just like an e-mail message.  The other type of program is an aggregator, these are websites that display the RSS feeds.  The advantage of the aggregator is it on the Internet so you can see your feeds from any machine.  The advantage of a feed reader is it appears like an e-mail message.  I use iGoogle, iGoogle is a web home page, I can add your favorite RSS feeds.  Now every time you start your web browser you see your feeds.

The big advantage of an RSS feed is that it can not be spammed.   The reason you get spam in your e-mail is that anyone can send you an e-mail message.  No one can send you an RSS feed, you need to go to a site to get the feed.  If you do not want it , you just stop getting the feed, you are not depending on someone else removing you from a list.

RSS feeds can be very powerful, they help you find content on the Internet.

Helping the search engines find your site

In the last post I talked about setting up the text, title tag, and links to represent the key words for your content so that the search engines can find your content.

All the SEO consultants agree on using these things to help. There are differing opinions but they agree on these points. The other aspect they all agree on is inbound or back links. These are links from other sites to your content. So how do you develop these back links?

One good way is to use Press Releases. If you can get the leaders in your industry to publish a link to your content it goes a long way. It can be difficult to get the “Press” to read your articles, but maybe there is a trade association for your industry. Can you submit articles to them, if they like it will they publish a link on their website for all their members.

Blog about your website. Now you have your blog cross promoting your website and your website promoting your blog. If nothing else you have twice the opportunity for someone to find you. They can find your blog, if they like it they can find your site.
Use RSS feeds. I will write a whole post on RSS feeds later. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, think of the news services providing a ticker tapes. Anyone can syndicate. An RSS feed is a special website, rather than trying to impress people with a snappy design they are just the facts. They are formatted (xml) in a format that machines can read. They are used by a device called a reader or aggregator. Their purpose in life is to highlight new content on your site. The feed reader reads the information, it already know which articles you have read, so it can highlight only those you have not read. The feed contains the title of the content, and a short summary of what the content is about. If you want to read more you click and go to your site. These help in several ways, first many professionals on the Internet monitor these RSS feeds, for information they can write about. RSS aggregators are web pages that publish RSS feeds and the links back to your page. Finally Google likes that you have feeds and gives your site a higher priority.

Get into social networking. For this purpose think of social networks as groups of people recommending content on the Internet. Make friends, make it easy for people to Digg or Stumbleupon your site, this can help others find your content.

It will not happen over night, but if you have quality content, and do your part to make it easy to find your content and people will come.