Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

The Blog eConsultancy has a great post by Jake Hird that I wanted to share here on 10 Steps to help you become a Social Media Ninja:

1. Preparation

You need to do your homework. It’s no good rushing in, without a clue about what your overall business goals are.

Once these have been established, then you can figure out what place (if at all) social media has in helping reach your objectives. Leading on from this, it will also become easier to identify key areas of engagement and therefore allow you to focus on the areas that will be of greater benefit. Econsultancy’s Social Media Template Files contain a strategy guideline that you might find useful as a starting point.

2. Patience

As the adage goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. The same thing applies to any social media activity: it generally takes a fair bit of time to establish a positive presence.

There has always been some discussion as to whether Google pays any attention to the “keywords” meta tag when ranking web pages. For now, that discussion can be put to rest. Today, Matt Cutts, Google’s page ranking head honcho (he refers to himself as the head of Google’s Webspam team) put out a video and several blog posts that state conclusively that Google disregards the keywords tag.”At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking.”

He notes that the “description” meta tag is used to determine what a page is about, and it is also used as the short summary that is part of a web page listing when it appears in a Google search results page.

Research shows that 44% of US shoppers have already started their Christmas shopping, and the trend looks similar in Australia.

According to data from a Google survey, 44% of US shoppers have already started their Christmas shopping and researching.

Eric Lopez of Google’s retail team also points to the search giant’s own trend data, saying “In taking a look at query volume using Google Insights for Search, we see that search interest in ‘christmas gift’ has upticked sharply over recent weeks, demonstrating this increased research activity.”

A similar query looking at search interest in ‘christmas present’ and related terms in Australia reveals the same trend — though with predictably lower volume and less data available.

TOOL ONE: Custom URLs
Facebook now allows you to create your own custom URL for your page. This means your business can have its own permanent http://www.Facebook.com/YourBusiness URL. Visit www.facebook.com/username to secure yours.

TOOL TWO: Social RSS
Social RSS is an application that allows you to synchronise your blog with your company Facebook page. This means every time you blog, the post will also automatically appear on your Facebook page on the Blog/RSS tab. The benefit is that you don’t need to login to Facebook every time you want to post blog content.
Download Social RSS for Facebook

TOOL THREE: Involver
Involver allows you to synchronise your Tweets and You Tube videos to your Facebook page. Again it saves you time & allows you to keep fresh content up on your Facebook page with no extra effort. Tabs for Twitter and YouTube will appear on your Facebook fan page. There are also plenty more things you can do if you upgrade to the paid version.
Download Involver for Facebook