Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Heck, we’ve been blogging about SMO since 2006! Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.

The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful:

• howsociable.com – Social visibility score
• knowem.com – Profile building tool
• Social Media for Firefox – Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites
• semrush.com – Find competitor organic search rankings
• Google Insights – Keyword demand trends
• Page Inlink Analyzer – Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags
• majesticseo.com – Historical back-link tracking
• trackur.com – Social media monitoring
• socialmention.com – Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research
• bit.ly – Search friendly URL shortening with analytics
• analytics.postrank.com – Track social engagement with combined Google & social analytics

Below are screen shots of each tool with a more detailed description of how you might use them.

HowSociable is a useful tool to quickly gauge the social presence of a particular keyword or brand name. Agencies like TopRank Marketing will use this kind of tool (customized) to take snapshots of customer social presence metrics for social media optimization programs. For each social site polled, you can clickthrough to see specific mentions.  This is a characteristic of more advanced social media monitoring tools, but for those that want a quick glimpse, HowSocialble is easy to use and the price is right, just like these free social media monitoring tools. However, if you want more comprehensive brand search and monitoring, then a paid social media measurement tool is worth the investment.

KnowEm is both a free and a paid service that will help you easily and quickly check whether your brand terms or other keywords have been registered as social profiles on a wide variety of social media web sites. Everything from blogging platforms to social news and bookmarking services are included. If you don’t want to complete all those profiles yourself, you can pay knowem to do it for you.  Companies invest a lot in building their brand, so this tool is helpful both for creating off site promotion channels as well as guarding against brand name squatters.

Social Media for Firefox is the only browser addon in our list and can be a handy tool to identify upcoming news items that are gaining popularity on certain social news and bookmarking services. A big part of building a more influential user profile is to be a consistent source of submissions for articles that become popular. This addon helps identify articles that are becoming popular on services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon giving you a heads up to submit to other services.  The logic is that if a news item becomes popular on one service it has a good chance of becoming popular on others.  Relevance, timing and focus are key as is patience for this kind of tactic.

SEMRush is an interesting tool for identifying the keyword visibility, both organic and PPC, on Google for pretty much any domain name you might be curious about. Your own or competitors for example. A common question for marketers is, “What are my competitors optimizing for?”. This tool helps uncover that insight and in combination with other standard and social keyword research, can be very helpful insight in a social media optimization program.

Google Insights for Search is a handy tool to research trends in popularity of various keywords on their own or in combination.  Filters for search type, geographic location, industry or topical category and timeframe allow you to refine some pretty useful information about what’s in demand.

Eric Miraglia ’s Inlink Analyzer is a back link analysis tool based on Yahoo’s Site Explorer that not only counts and displays source links to a particular URL, but it also shows if the source links were bookmarked on Delicious and what keyword tags were used. This kind of insight can be quite useful for understanding the relationship between social keywords and link popularity. It would be nice if there was a CSV export option.

Majestic SEO is easily one of the most powerful and useful link analysis tools available. There is a free version that gives you link acquisition counts over time and if you are a site owner, you can get full reporting for your site once you validate it.  If you use the paid service, you can get the juicy link details on your competition.  This tools is useful for finding high impact links for standard SEO but it’s also useful for finding out which social media sites your site or competitors’ site are getting  the most links from.  Also, which of your own social destinations (blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc) are getting inbound links and from where.

Andy Beal’s Trackur service is a very easy to use social media monitoring tool that offers a free version that will satisfy many beginners in the social media optimization space.  Social media monitoring services are keyword based, (queries and negative or exclusionary) and that means some very useful information about how popular certain keyword concepts are on the social web. Of course you can use it to monitor what people are saying about your brand, identify a certain measure of influence and where they’re saying it. But seeing social keyword popularity trends can be quite useful for taking advantage of real-time marketing opportunities.

SocialMention is a free real time and social search tool that offers an array of search options (just blogs, just forums, just bookmarks or all) and output in the search results. You can get an indication of basic sentiment and the top social keywords associated with your query. As a free service, you don’t setup an account and save your search results, but you can easily download them into a spreadsheet. This is probably one of the most useful, free social search tools online.

Bit.ly URL shortening is very handy since they’re included as a default service on Twitter and many other Twitter applications. Bit.ly is rock solid reliable with uptime, which is pretty critical when you’re relying on their URL redirect to send traffic to whatever it is you’re promoting. You can also get basic statistics for each URL that your shorten to show how productive the site is where it was shared.  In today’s succinct social web with Twitter, status updates and micro-content, being able to conserve space with a reliable URL shortener is very helpful. Stats on top of that make this a “go to” URL shortening service.

PostRank offers a nice measure of engagement at the individual document level and if you pay attention, you can get that data on any web site in their database, not just your own. You can easily see what content on your competitors blogs are getting popular and where.  If you sign up for the PostRank Analytics service, you can incorporate Google Analytics data with social engagement metrics. These are essential comparisons in a social media optimization program and can help you understand where to plan your time on the social web.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEO and Social Media Marketing tools. What low cost or free tools have you found to be effective for social media optimization tasks?

Have you ever wondered, “How do I promote my fan page on Facebook?” This article reveals 5 Killer ways to use the power of Facebook to grow your fan base.

Why Do You Need a Facebook Fan Page? You may ask, “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” Here’s why: Right now Facebook has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the 2nd most trafficked website next only to Google!

This means your Facebook page will get indexed faster on Google and other search engines, so if you don’t have a fan page, be sure to create one and promote it.

Here are 5 Killer ways to grow your Facebook fans:

#1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friends List

Do you have your personal friends and professional colleagues segmented into lists on your Facebook home page?

I have a number of lists in my personal Facebook account.

You can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page rather of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.

When you click “Suggest to Friends” on your fan page, start typing in the name of your friends list in the filtered friends section; for example, “Social Media Experts.” This will automatically send an invitation to your facebook fan page to all of your colleagues listed in that category.

It’s possible that it may take a while before you start seeing those known faces pop up in your fan page because people are busy. There have been a few occasions where I’ve softly nudged them with an individual invite, but I keep that to a minimum.

As you add more people to your network, remember to go back to your same lists and send the invite to the new people you have added. The names of those who have already been invited will be “grayed out” and the invite will only be sent to your new contacts.

#2: Find People With Facebook Search

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you offer.

There is even an option to search “Posts by Everyone,” which gives you a glimpse into conversations of people who may not even be connected to you. After entering a search term, there will be a display, “Posts By Everyone.” This allows you to view conversations from others who aren’t in your friend lists.

Here is a screenshot when I entered “buying a home” in the Search field:

As you can see, there is a person saying “I think we are buying a house tomorrow.” If this person is already in your contacts list, the following is a very easy conversation starter: “Hi ______, I saw your Facebook comment about your plans to buy a house tomorrow. Do you need any help with school information in that particular area?”

There is another person stating that they plan to stay in their house for a long time. This can be a potential candidate for a loan refinance. Again, if this person is already a friend on Facebook, it would be very easy to start a conversation without sounding like an annoying salesperson.

#3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring. Would you like to become a fan too?” It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

This strategy requires a small budget, but can be very effective in finding your target market. It is very important to do a Facebook search with specific keywords in your particular niche to find out if it’s being talked about on Facebook (see #2 above).

If you click on “Promote With an Ad” on your fan page, you can start a campaign.  You can set a daily spending limit of $10, $25, or other appropriate amount. Because I market mostly to businesses with my keywords (such as real estate broker, loan officer, real estate investor, and so forth) which are in numerous profiles as job descriptions I have been able to use Facebook Social Ads effectively for my fan page.

It’s possible to run your Facebook ads for only 4 to 5 days with a $25 per day budget. Then stop the ad for a few weeks if you like and run the same ad again. This allows your fan page to grow in spurts and I have found it to be very effective in growing my fan base without spending a lot of money at once.

#4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App

The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page. This is just pure genius to drive traffic from another source right to your page.

There are other Facebook and Twitter integration applications; however, this is the one that leads people directly back to your page. This gives them an option to become a fan of your page right at that moment if they click on the bit.ly link from Twitter.

#5: Facebook Fan Box Widget

The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly. This is just one way to promote your page across several social media sites. It is important to cross-reference all of your social media sites so others can find you and your websites on other networks.

How Do SEO And Social Media Play Together?

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By Lisa Lacy, ClickZ,   			Sep 25, 2009

Time spent on social networking sites nearly tripled in the past year, and ad spending on those sites very nearly kept pace, according to new data from The Nielsen Company.

Consumer activity on social networking and blogging sites accounted for 17 percent of all time on the Internet in August 2009, up from 6 percent a year ago, Nielsen estimates. At the same time, it believes ad spending on social networking and blogging sites grew 119 percent, from an estimated $49 million in August 2008 to $108 million last month. Expressed as a percentage of total U.S. online ad spend, ad expenditures on social networking sites climbed from 7 percent in August 2008 to 15 percent last month.

While they may be directionally accurate, Nielsen’s precise spending figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Media value estimated by Nielsen and other firms is based on rate card pricing and does not necessarily reflect true media costs.

Jon Gibs, VP of media analytics at Nielsen Online, said, “Outside of maybe video, these sites have been some of the core drivers of Internet growth and so there’s been a natural tendency for dollars to flow in that direction.”

Few will be surprised to learn Facebook has been the main beneficiary of the spikes in user activity and ad spending. A recent blog post from Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted the site now has 300 million users worldwide, up from about 100 million last September. The company does not break out active U.S. users, but according to Nielsen, Facebook had 38.2 million users in August 2008 and 103.8 million in the U.S. one year later.

It’s not just the number of Facebook users that’s growing. Gibs said the average person now spends five hours and 46 minutes per month on the site, up from one hour and 40 minutes in August 2008.

As a result, Facebook has seen significant growth in ad impressions, accounting for 14.7 percent share of U.S. display ad views last month, up from 1.8 percent in January.

According to Nielsen, while several industries decreased their overall online ad spend year-over-year in August — including travel, business-to-business, automotive, software, financial services, and telecommunications — spending on the top social network sites increased across the board.

The entertainment industry led in growing its online ad dollars, increasing ad spending on social networking sites by 812 percent. Travel advertisers increased their ad spend on those sites by 364 percent.

Gibs noted that advertisers have historically had concerns about social media advertising but these numbers indicate they have since overcome their fears.

Local business owners should tap social media to help promote their goods and services online. With just a little effort and imagination, most businesses can use social media to effectively network and connect with nearby prospects.

What Is Social Media?

Social media, which enables online conversations, is powered by sharing and networking applications such as blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and many more Web sites. Social media is a now a more popular way to communicate online than e-mail, according to these Nielsen stats.

Many specialized networks can work well for particular types of businesses and industry niches. TripAdvisor, for example, is a powerful place for sharing information and advice about resorts, accommodations, tours, and other travel-related topics. On Yelp, people have contributed more than 7 million reviews of local businesses, including restaurants.

Other Web sites include social media features as a part of the online experience they offer their visitors. Many applications, like Twitter, have tools that allow users to interact with others using their cell phones, so the experience no longer depends on being tethered to a PC.

IPhone networking applications are springing up like crazy, too. JustBoughtIt enables users to share photos of and comments about their shopping experiences and search for deals and advice from other shoppers. Yowza, another shopping app, helps bargain hunters find and download discount coupons from retailers close to them.

What Does Social Media Have to Do With Local Search?

Social media allows you to search for and find people who are talking about you and your business online, so that you can listen in and join the conversation, when appropriate. This helps you to monitor and manage your online reputation by replying to customers who are less than satisfied and thanking those who speak well of you.

You can search for topics related to your business, such as commercial real estate in Denver, and try to connect with those discussing the topic. This can put you in touch with prospects with whom you can share your industry expertise, potentially resulting in leads and referrals for your business. It also allows you and others to search for people talking about your geographic area, the products and services you sell, and your areas of expertise.

More social media applications than ever allow you to search for and find people by location. Those near you are the best prospects for actually becoming your customers. They can’t find you if you aren’t there.

The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Don’t assume that your enterprise, products, and services aren’t being mentioned online. People continually talk about their experiences with local businesses when they chat about what they eat, where they go, who they interact with, what they do, and other daily activities. They also ask their connections for opinions and advice about everything from, “Do I look good in this dress?” to “What dentist do you go to?” to “What’s your favorite pizza place?”

These are the same kinds of things people have always asked their friends. Only now, most of us have many more friends than we ever could have imagined due to the Internet, and we can quickly and easily interact with multiple connections with minimal time and effort.

Social media isn’t a fad. It’s here to stay. Your customers are using it and your competitors are using it. So, you need to use it, too.