An optimized foundation is essential to overall success in the Social Web. This series will show you how to achieve it.

Author, publisher, and Web developer Deltina Hay will explain:

• what an RSS feed is, and why you need one
• how to start a blog without breaking your back or the bank
• the basics of social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing
• why you want to share your images and video in media communities
• in which social networking sites you should establish a presence
• how to use a social media newsroom to highlight your presence
• how to optimize your Social Web presence
• how to integrate your entire Social Web presence to save time and money
• why you will need an optimized Social Web presence to survive in the future Internet

Instructor: Deltina Hay

Multi-session Series Class:
Class #1 - Introduction to Social Media & Web 2.0 Tools and Technologies
Class #2 - Building an Optimized Foundation in the Social Web
Class #3 - Integrating Your Social Web Presence

Class Date and Time:
Wednesdays, July 1, 8, 15: 5:00 p.m. EST

Cost: $30, includes audio recording and handouts

Click here for more information.

Since 2007, the Socialmedia.biz blog has gained a reputation as the top source for the most current information about the Social Web. And, shortly after unveiling the new site on February 25, Socialmedia.biz ranks as the number two return in a Google search for “social media,” just under the Wikipedia listing, making it the top-ranked business.

Socialmedia.biz founder J.D. Lasica, an entrepreneur, author, and prominent blogger, recognizes that “2009 is turning out to be about collaboration,” providing him with an excellent opportunity to bring these social media “experts together to help businesses enter this brave new world of the Social Web.”

Through the collaboration of seven strategists drawing on personal successes and bouts of trial and error, Socialmedia.biz provides end-to-end solutions for corporations and small to mid-size businesses seeking success in the Social Web. Visitors can find out which social media initiatives are proving successful for businesses or not via reports, white papers, and books offered in a directory on the site, and they can get help from the experts themselves to achieve maximum impact through campaign strategies.

The seven strategists coming together for the new joint business venture are:

• Chris Abraham, co-founder and principal of Abraham Harrison, an international consulting group that specializes in online word-of-mouth/conversation marketing and online business and technology strategy advising.
• Deltina Hay, owner of Dalton Publishing, founder of the social media Website service PlumbSocial.com and author of the upcoming book, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web.
• Christopher S. Rollyson, a pioneer in corporate innovation, strategy, and transformation for 20 years who has had a leading role in launching such game-changing offerings as Java with Sun and e-business strategy with PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consulting.
• Ayelet Noff, founder of Blonde 2.0, a consulting firm specializing in helping brands understand how to use social media tools such as blogs, social networks, and social software to launch conversational marketing campaigns and create brand awareness.
• J.D. Lasica, one of the earliest social media strategists, founded Ourmedia.org the first video hosting site, wrote Darknet, a book about emerging media, and was one of the first 50,000 bloggers on the planet.
• Joanna Lord, co-founder and CMO of TheOnlineBeat.com, a resource for online job searchers and an expert in online marketing and social networking.
• David Spark, owner of Spark Media Solutions, a new media production company that specializes in reporting and producing at live events and developing brand and thought leadership through storytelling.

Using a variety of Web 2.0 tools, the experts of Socialmedia.biz will announce upcoming events, share photos, videos, and other multimedia, and report on new developments in social media and Web 2.0. Since each collaborator brings a different strength to the project, Socialmedia.biz can offer businesses a comprehensive and integrated approach to their social media strategies.

“By banding together,” says Deltina Hay, “we can bring our success stories to a much broader audience and draw on the expertise and resources of other participants. These kind of collaborative models work for only one reason: the client benefits from a one-stop shop.”

Socialmedia.biz offers a broad suite of services ranging from strategic planning to online publicity; grassroots and new media marketing to business intelligence; search engine services and online reputation clean-up. Each principal has a successful track record working with a number of clients, including Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Sharp Electronics, Schering-Plough, T. Rowe Price, McCann Digital, Fresh Air Fund, International Medical Corps, and many others.

The joint enterprise Socialmedia.biz is founded by leading experts in the business use of social media with locations in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Austin, and Tel Aviv. The group blog operates on WordPress with development provided by BlitzLocal, a Boulder, Colo. company specializing in local search for professional service firms and franchises. BlitzLocal CEO and co-founder Dennis Yu raves that Socialmedia.biz is “the prototype of a 21st century business model that harnesses the power of collective intelligence.”

Read the PR Web press release here…

• Gathering and preparing your best content, media, and key terms
• Web 2.0 tools to add to your existing Web site
• How you will enter the blogosphere - if at all
• One or two social networking sites that are good fits for your message or business
• Several social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing sites whose content tends toward your message
• Media communities to share images, events, video, etc. based on media you already have
• Badges, widgets, and feeds to pull all of these tools together

About the Author:

Deltina Hay is the author of the critically acclaimed book, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization. The second edition of her book, renamed The Social Media Survival Guide, will be released in spring 2011. Learn more about Deltina, her books, and her availability for speaking engagements at Deltina.com. You may also enjoy listening to Deltina’s video tutorial series on YouTube: The Internet Empowerment Series.

Generally, these elements include:

• Multimedia items such as downloadable images, audio/video files, or PDF/DOC files.
• A way for readers to comment directly on the news release content.
• An obvious and easy way for readers to bookmark the news release in social bookmarking sites or to share it via email.
• Technorati tags and links to purpose-built del.icio.us pages.

If you or your business produce online or email press releases on a regular basis, you should be using, and therefore benefiting from, social media news releases. Like everything else on the Internet today, there is an expectation that content will be interactive, easily shared, and will offer sources to similar information. If your news releases do not live up to these expectations, it may hurt your chances for major media coverage. It’s easy to create your own social media releases, or you can use a service like PRWeb. And, since a social media news release is just a traditional release with added elements, you do not need to change your present format, just include some additional sections. These added elements include:

• Multimedia section: Here you will offer a number of downloadable items, including PDF or Word documents (book excerpts, advanced reviews, white papers, brochures, etc.) and images (author photos, company executive photos, book cover art, company logos). Also provide any relevant podcasts and video clips in this section.

• Technorati tag section: Use this section to list links to Technorati pages that are tagged with a list of key terms relevant to your release.
• Social bookmarking section: In this section, provide links to any of your relevant del.icio.us pages. Here you could also provide links to relevant pages on Digg.com or any other social bookmarking or crowd-sourced news site.
• Sharing and commenting: In addition to the above sections, you should also make it easy for your readers to share or bookmark your release in any number of ways. Allowing visitors to comment on your news release makes it truly interactive.
• Social media section: If you don’t have a social media newsroom to refer readers to, you should consider adding a section to your news release that lists where you have a presence in the social Web. Link to your profiles in places like MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Check out some social media news release examples here:

http://owenegertonnewsroom.com/?p=54

http://www.hiddenlandsofnodnewsroom.com/hiddenlandsofnod/?p=33

http://www.puresoapboxnewsroom.com/puresoapbox/?p=13

The most effective way to easily build an optimized site is with WordPress. Yes, WordPress is a blogging platform, but it can also be used as a content management system (CMS) to power your entire Web site.

Use these resources to get a good feel for how WordPress operates:

• WordPress
• Empowered by WordPress
• The book, WordPress for Dummies

And, for an explanation of the basic elements of a WordPress site, check out “The Basic Anatomy of a WordPress site” post on Empowered by WordPress.

Planning your Site:

Make an ambitious list of what you would like to have on your site. Don’t hold back on an idea you may have for your site based on an assumption that it will be too difficult or too expensive to implement.

The plugins available for WordPress are at:

• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

This site will give you ideas on the types of things you can add to your site. You will discover that you can easily utilize plugins to accomplish seemingly difficult functions.

I find these are pretty typical functions most entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and publishers are looking for:

• Image Galleries
• Streaming Video
• E-commerce
• Amazon Widgets
• Blogs/Podcasts/Vidcasts
• Random Quote Generators
• Newsletters
• Mailing list sign-up
• RSS feeds from other sources
• Events listings
• Forms for submissions
• Social Media Newsrooms

Choosing a Theme:

• Go to http://themes.wordpress.net/

Make certain you only search for themes that are “widget ready.”

• You can also purchase themes from TemplateMonster.com. Again, make certain any theme you choose is “widgetized.”
• Do not choose a theme before you plan your site, however. You want your theme to accommodate your content, not vice versa.
• Choose at least twelve themes that you like. You will find that you will not be able to use many themes that you choose for various reasons.
• Try and look only at the overall look and feel of a theme, with the idea that the colors, fonts, images, and most anything else can be customized to fit your needs.

Installing WordPress and Beyond:

• Use the following documentation to help with all of these steps:
  • http://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress
  • http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons

• Installing WordPress
  • Choose a host. WordPress works best on a WordPress-friendly host. I use WestHost. They are affordable, reliable, and have fantastic tech support. Their personal starter plan for $6.95 a month is all you will likely need.
  • For a list of other WordPress-friendly hosts, go to WordPress.org.
  • Carefully read the installation guide on WordPress.org. WordPress is installed differently when you use it as a CMS than if you only use it to blog.

• Next Steps
  • Installing your theme
  • Customizing your theme
  • Deciding which plugins you need based on your initial plan
  • Installing and setting up your plugins (Always read the readme.txt file!)
  • Setting up your sidebars
  • Building your pages
  • Posting blog entries

On Open Source Etiquette:

The developers have put a lot of time into these projects. Please show them respect by:

• Never deleting the credits from the footer of a theme, or from a plugin
• Making donations to the open source developers whose plugins you are using

When using the support forums:

• Always search the forums thoroughly for an answer to your question before posting.
• Give back if you can: check the recent posts for questions from newcomers you might be able to answer.

Here are some sites powered by WordPress to help inspire you:

• AlaskanArtandPhoto.com
• AccoladesPublicRelations.com
• DaltonPublishing.com
• EmpoweredbyWordPress.com
• LesMcGehee.com
• OwenEgertonNewsroom.com
• JoeOConnellNewsroom.com
• GaryKentFilmmaker.com
• RicWilliams.com
• KelleyBurrus.com
• OwenEgerton.com
• RobertStikmanz.com
• AmyWink.com

And, if you’re looking for even more information, rest assured that help is readily available to you. WordPress and the people who contribute to it are perfect examples of the Social Web in action. On WordPress.org you will find a plethora of help, not only from their documentation, but also from the community that has sprung from this demonstrated spirit of interactivity, sharing, and collaboration.

And don’t forget to have fun!

Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

Facebook Pages

If you are a business, you should have a Facebook page in addition to a profile. Using a page tells Facebook users that you are serious about representing your business in an authentic way, as opposed to falsely personifying your business in a profile as many do.

Once your page is in place you can start adding applications to help represent your product or service in your own unique way. To find applications to add to your page, click on the word “Applications” in the upper left corner of your page, or search for them here.

Applications are not difficult to install and are usually very easy to set up. A general rule of thumb when choosing an application, is if you can’t figure out how to set them up after the second try, find another one. There is often more than one application out there that will accomplish the same task.

Let’s look at a case study:

Here are two screen shots from Dalton Publishing’s Facebook page.

On this Facebook page, Dalton Publishing utilizes the following applications:

Book Share Books: This application lets readers share their favorite books with their friends, as well as rate them and comment on them. This is a perfect application for a publishing company wanting to showcase their books.

My Flickr: Display photos from your Flickr account using this application. These photos can include logos, book covers, photos from author events, etc. You are provided many options of how to display the photos, too.

Upcoming: Add all of your events to upcoming.org, and you can easily display them on your Facebook page with Upcoming’s Facebook application.

YouTube Box: Allows visitors to play your YouTube videos right on your Facebook page. This is handy for book trailers or promotional videos.

Simply RSS: This is a nice application that allows you to display up to 8 RSS feeds on your Facebook page. It is a convenient way for Dalton Publishing to display the feeds from their main site, as well as to their authors’ newsrooms.

By implementing these applications, Dalton Publishing has created a page that gives their visitors a personable look into their business. You will likely find many applications that can do the same for your business. And, when you find you are using a particular application regularly, consider donating to the author – they do not get paid to develop them.

Remember that the social Web is about connecting, so be real and have fun!

Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

If answering questions and keeping up with comments on your blog is becoming too overwhelming, you may consider building your own wiki. However, while a wiki may be a good solution, keep in mind that a wiki requires quite a bit of maintenance.

A wiki is used by entering content directly from a Web page, so anyone can add to any wiki at any time. By definition, a wiki is a collection of wiki pages that users create, edit, and add to at their convenience. Wikis can be public, meaning anyone can contribute to them, or private, meaning that a user needs certain permission to add new content.

To start building your own wiki, you can install a wiki using the same open-source software used to power Wikipedia – MediaWiki. You can also use a service, such as Wikidot.com, to start your own wiki. The documentation is very good, so do not be intimidated, be empowered!

Send us your Social Media success stories – we want to hear and share them!

Not only a place where they can learn more; but a place where they can:

• View all your major media coverage.
• See all of your past and present press releases.
• Look up all of your past and future events.
• Read all of your book reviews.
• Download multimedia material like author photos, book cover art, press kits, sales sheets, podcasts, vidcasts, book trailers, etc..
• View your biography, along with links to any social or business networking profiles you may have like LinkedIn, Myspace, Second Life, etc.
• Check out your own purpose-built del.icio.us page linking to other sites relevant to you or your book.
• Subscribe through RSS feeds to any portion of information on the site.
• Share any content of the site with their friends or colleagues, via email or by posting to social bookmarking indexes like del.icio.us or Digg with one click.
• Send you an instant message using AIM, Yahoo Messaging, MSN, Skype, etc.
• Link directly to your latest blog posts.
• Search the site or the entire Web using either Google or Technorati.
• Link to other blogs or Web sites that are relevant to your message.
• See all Technorati tags related to your content.
• Comment directly on your media coverage, press releases, events, and book reviews.

This place is called a “Social Media Newsroom.”

You may have heard the buzz about “Web 2.0” or “Social Media” and brushed it off as a passing fad; but the reality is that social media is the future of the Web.

By definition, social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. Social media sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact.

The social media newsroom fulfills this purpose while also taking advantage of the tremendous indexing opportunities social bookmarking services like Technoratti, del.icio.us, and Digg provide. Imagine that each and every entry made in your newsroom (this includes all of your media coverage, book reviews, press releases, bios, photos, book images, podcasts, events, etc.) was not only indexed in Google and all of the other search engines, but also in every social bookmarking index – accessible by millions and millions of bloggers. This is the true power of the social media newsroom for authors — exposure.

Beyond this fantastic exposure though, lies the reason the social media newsroom was created to begin with. It has become the blueprint for the new media – a media that understands multimedia, that wants a one-stop shop for every bit of material they will need for their coverage: fully downloadable and print ready, easily shared with their colleagues, along with links and searches that will lead them directly to more relevant information. Most importantly, though, is that this is a place that welcomes their comments, and interactivity.

Now, many of you may ask: “I already have a Web site with most of these things on it, why do I need a newsroom?” And a valid question, too. Here are two main reasons:

First of all, a newsroom tells the members of the media, book sellers, and reviewers that you are making a serious effort to make their jobs easier. A social media newsroom is like a press release: Imagine how difficult it would be to extract the information the media needed if everyone’s press releases took on a different format? Now, imagine that every time a reviewer or columnist needs information on a book or author, they first have to learn to navigate the site to extract that information. The standardization of the social media newsroom is, therefore, like the standardization of the press release. And it won’t be long before sites without newsrooms will be overlooked in favor of those with them, the same way a non-standard press release is ignored over standard ones.

Secondly, as we mentioned earlier, a social media newsroom means that each of the entries in your newsroom, from a press release to a simple image, is automatically indexed in search engines as well as social bookmarking services, since each entry is itself a separate page of sorts. This means that someone could find your site by running into an image of your book, or by searching for a blog on the subject of your book, or by looking up relevant sites tagged in Technoratti or del.icio.us. Think of it this way: You can have one lottery ticket in the pot, or one hundred – you figure the odds…

A social media newsroom should not necessarily replace your existing Web site, though. You still want a place to be blogging and to have a more traditional place to present other information – especially if you have other faces. You will also do all of your “selling” on your Web site – YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA NEWSROOM IS NOT A SALES TOOL! Your newsroom is meant to be a neutral place to present all of your media materials – just like a press release – just the facts! All of your sales tools will reside on your newsroom, however, so you can easily send buyers there to download your catalog, sales sheets, etc.

Many authors may not have enough media coverage or reviews as yet to justify a complete newsroom; but that does not mean they can’t take advantage of social media optimization. Those authors should consider building their Web sites using a blogging platform like WordPress to power their sites. You get all of the benefits of social bookmarking, RSS feeds, etc. as well as a very easy way to build and maintain a feature rich Web site. Vistit http://www.empoweredbywordpress.com for more tips. Of course, the perfect scenario would be to have both!

Check out the two author’s sites below:

http://www.owenegerton.com

http://www.joemoconnell.com

Both of these sites link to a social media newsroom, so that the sites themselves are freed up for other uses.

Or, go directly to their newsrooms here:

http://www.owenegertonnewsroom.com

http://www.joeoconnellnewsroom.com

Contact the authors, comment on the entries – that is what it’s all about!

Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

Here are the main elements of a SMNR:

• A section offering links or pdfs to major media coverage.
• A section listing links to traditional or Social Media Press Releases.
• Sections for events and other industry-specific sections – like a book review section for authors.
• A multimedia section containing downloadable items such as logos, book cover art, pdf documents like press kits or sales sheets, podcasts, vidcasts, book trailers, downloadable promotional material, etc.
• Bios on each key person in the company, along with links to their social or business networking profiles like LinkedIn, Myspace, Second Life, etc.
• Purpose-built del.icio.us pages.
• RSS feeds that allow subscriptions to different sections of the room, like media coverage, news releases – or to the entire room.
• A way for readers to share the content of the site, via email or by posting to social bookmarking indexes like del.icio.us or Digg.
• Instant message indicators for key media contacts using AIM, Yahoo Messaging, MSN, Skype, etc.
• Ability to search the site or the Web using either Google or Technorati.
• Links to other blogs or Web sites that are relevant to your message.
• Technorati tag clouds.

SHIFT Communication’s Todd Defren ultimately designed the template for the Social Media Newsrooms that Social Media Power develops. He has put together a very nice presentation explaining all of the elements of the newsroom in greater detail.

You can see SHIFT’s newsroom here.

And here are a few examples of Social Media Newsrooms we have developed:

Kelley Burrus, Brand Publicist

Joe O’Connell, Author

Owen Egerton, Author