Orangecast Daystream

Links, tips, videos and other serendipitous social media finds
 

Important SEO and reputation management development: Google Sidewiki

Logo-google

Full disclosure: I have not yet checked this out Google's new Sidewiki feature fully, but just a quick skim of the following article suggests that this is an underrated yet important development from Google:

http://www.nextdayflyers.com/blog/google-sidewiki-if-you-have-any-web-pages-read-this/

One of the most jarring comments from the above post is that these new sidewikis (essentially, a commenting page for every page on the web) actually create SERPs of their own...and could theoretically outrank the site upon which they are based!

From a reputation management perspective, anything that you do not own/control is something that must be understood and monitored. Add these sidewikis to the list. We will be investigating this more fully in the weeks and months ahead.

Posted October 20, 2009 by Orangecast Social Media 
 

Which is better: search engine traffic or social media traffic?

Excellent article forwarded to me by a social media buddy a few minutes ago. The english/grammar isn't perfect, but the points are very sound as the author compares/contrasts the traffic you can receive from social and the traffic that comes from search engines.

His ultimate conclusions are very similar to what we've found: social media (i.e. digg, reddit, stumbleupon, etc.) certainly has its positives, and you want to have a presence, but it requires a lot of work to really drive consistent, significant traffic. Search engines, on the other hand, tend to drive visitors that interact more with your site and that spend more time with your content. It obviously requires a lot of effort to ensure that your site has good SEO fundamentals, but often this effort has a greater ROI than the time investment for social media.

You can't forget about either, but the article suggests the path we typically follow: more time, focus on SEO.

http://www.smashapps.org/2009/06/search-engine-traffic-vs-social-media.html

Posted October 20, 2009 by Orangecast Social Media 
 

Micro Persuasion: Posterous is Changing How I Think About Blogging - Jerod's Blog

via primility.com

Posterous is basically a blogging platform that is in between microblogging services like Twitter and blogging engines set up for more long-form posts, like WordPress.

We are just discovering Posterous and getting comfortable with it, but the amazing thing is that EVERYTHING can be done through email. And it is super easy to integrate with all of your social bookmarking accounts. For instance, this post is instantly being created on our posterous account, at our blog, and on our twitter account. Amazing.

The following is a great comparison between Tumblr and Posterous, the two most prominent of the mid-size, "lifestream" platforms, and provides a good background on what Posterous has to offer:

http://mashable.com/2009/06/29/posterous-vs-tumblr/

It certainly makes blogging easier and more fun. Moving forward, we will be looking into find specific ways that it can help businesses profit both tangibly and intangibly online.

Posted October 19, 2009 by Jerod Morris