Tips for Building Your Online Personal Brand: SEO on Social Networks

Nowadays, online reputation management has become a very important aspect of winning projects, getting more clients or being recruited. To investigate one person, the first common place people will mostly pass by is Google. Then it would be useful if you can control as many of the top listings about yourself as possible. These listings should be ideally the professional profile, company pages, media mentions or similarities. To do that, a good SEO strategy will definitely help to optimize your “brand” in a positive way and to help ensure the ranking as highly as possible in search engines

By starting the SEO strategy from identifying your strengths and capitalizing on them, people can get their online personal brand highlighted by utilizing every media available to spread the word about the “brand”. Nowadays, small businesses and individuals can expand its horizons drastically and effectively by taking advantage of social social media networking websites, which are mostly free of charge, such as YouTube, Twitter, Blogger, Flikr, My Space and Facebook. Here is an illustration on which and how popular social networking sites can contribute to your personal branding strategy:

Keeping that in mind, it is agreed that social networking sites, are valuable resources and tools for online brand building at an extremely low cost. Nevertheless, the issue is how to take advantage of their power to benefit your brand. Here are the tips:

• Blogging and Guest Blogging

A blog is an excellent way to generate positive personal content that will turn up in searches. A professional and trusted blog can strengthen your company, attract customers, build reputation within an industry and, through your profile page, show who you are. If hundreds or even thousands of people are subscribing to read your content and expert opinions, then this is clearly something you want searchers to find when they come looking for you online.

However, having your personal blog may not be enough, even if you update the content regularly and keep it fresh. Posting additional articles on similar and related websites can be even more beneficial. You can reach a wider audience and enhance your online reputation.

• Twitter

Based on similar concepts to blogging, Twitter is also a great way to improve your SEO. By following relevant users and providing valuable tweets, your trusted profile page will be highly regarded in the search engines. If potential clients are looking for more information about you, then a Twitter profile containing expert advice and related conversations is going to help strengthen your reputation in the eyes of the searcher.

• Linkedin

It has become popular and effective to build your personal brand on business social media networking sites such as Linkedin and Plaxo, where people can show a professional profile containing career history, skills and networks of employers, colleages and industry professionals. From being largely used to reconnect with past co-workers and trusted colleagues in the past, LinkedIn now has extended its capabilities to serve as a brand building platform for professionals looking to network, engage, and communicate with like-minded peers. Visible public profile, editable URLs and ‘inbound links’ (links to Linkedin profile from other websites) can help to optimize your profile and improve the SEO easily.

• Online Presentations

Workshops, seminars, and conferences are a great way to impress potential business partners and clients. Uploading your presentations on sites, such as SlideShare and Scribd will allow viewers to download and review your speeches and supporting documents. It will also give them a chance to share it with others, which is a great way to continue optimizing you and your company’s name. Using a headline of “Presentation name by Author name” helps to increase your SEO effectiveness.

• Online Videos

Although not much different from seminar speech uploads, video uploads can highlight a variety of life presentations and increase your online exposure, especially if you use targeted headlines, specific keywords and title tags. If someone is searching for more information about you and can find an online video presentation on familiar websites such as Youtube or Vimeo, this could go a long way towards enhancing your reputation to the searcher.

• Social Networking

Social networking is one of the fastest and easiest ways to generate a lot of personal content, in both the good and bad ways, depending on how you control and monitor them. As social networking sites tend to be ranked high on search engines; thus, professional and consistent profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc will definitely help to spread out your online brand performance effectively. The more exposure you have, the quicker your personal brand will become a major hit on all key search engine ranking pages and lift your profit margin to new heights.

In order to success in your personal branding strategy, it requires a consistent brand image on various online platforms with a professional and trusted web presence. On-site SEO and social activities are keys to promote your personal brand to wider public. However, more importantly, defining your target audience and goal clearly from the beginning will direct your online branding strategy more relevant and effective. Last but not lease, you should remember that the ultimate purpose of online activities is to support your true life, thus, make your online information real and trustworthy so that your personal true life, when needed, can totally back up your online brand.

The Underwater Iceberg of Location-Based Mobile Services

Last time I have mentioned about the concept of location and geo-fence as one of the expected trends in mobile marketing this year. It becomes hotter with more competitors, including established services, emerging businesses and big online companies. All of them are joining the geo-location battle.

Currently there are two most popular location-based mobile apps, Foursquare and Gowalla, working as both a social network and a game, built on GPS function and user-generated contents. Basically, they two all allow users to share their location with friends. So, when you walk into a bar or restaurant or mall, you probably "check-in" on your cell phone, and your friends will see where you are. You get rewarded for frequent check-in activities. That’s quite simple!

Just in case you really still have no idea about what they are, or for further information, here are the summaries of FourSquare and Gowalla on CrunchBase

What are their differences?



Here is a brief comparison done by Mashable:

What do users get? 

• Connecting with friends, knowing where they were and getting tips from other people for each location

• The fun of earning badges and various perks from the places where they check in.

• Accessibily to your check-in history, giving you a snapshot of “What, Where, When, Who”

Let’s talk business!

The clever part here is that you get points for checking-in. But the really cleverer part is more about business. These geo-social networks are certainly capturing marketers’ attention. Through smartphones that signal someone’s location, stores and brands like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi are getting live information about when and where people are shopping. Some companies are turning Foursquare or Gowalla into a virtual loyalty-card program, while others are creating their own location applications, customers discounts or other rewards for shopping.

So basically, Foursquare and Gowalla are rolling out free analytics programs that will give participating businesses detailed information on who is checking-in to their locations, and give them the ability to communicate with the visitors. That’s what set these services apart.

The risky side

While some may find interested in sharing their location, the concept of automatic geo-location a little hard to accept, especially in terms of privacy concerns, Are people ready to share their personal locative information? Probaly. Or not really.

A recent poll on some reasons more people aren’t using check-in services revealed privacy and security concerns as a number-one reason.

The future

• Giants get into the game with motivation of the true value which comes from targeted advertising based on locality. The only question for these businesses to answer now is whether or not location-based rewards are the killer feature or if location can stand alone.

1. Facebook has been actively testing multiple location products and considering various implementations of some form of location feature.


2. Twitter has announced their official plans for location. “Twitter Places”, the product enables users to “tag Tweets with specific places Additionally, the product integrates with Foursquare and Gowalla. However, Twitter isn’t implementing a badges service right now. 

• Database of consumer behaviors and lifestyle can be built from location-based services. For instance, insurance companies can start tracking this data to have a more accurate way of determining risk and rates.

• Companies and retailers will have more creative approaches, incentives and campaigns to encourage consumers using these check-in services.

Social Games – No More Playing Around!

If you have a Facebook account, you're probably familiar with games like Farmville, Mafia Wars or Texas Hold’em Poker. The world of social network gaming is seen as a comparatively gentle one. Players are more likely to be growing crops and cooking dinners than slaying monsters and killing bad guys. These games might seem like a good way to entertain with no entrance condition. However, anyone who is involved deeply into it will find that it’s only the surface of the iceberg. So what’s more?

1. What are Social Games?

Social Games = Casual Games (user engagement) + Social Networking (viral distribution)

Basic types of social games include:

• Multiplayer games that utilize the social graph as part of the game. (Parking Wars, PackRat,..)

• Games which mainly involves socializing or social activities like chatting, trading, or flirting. (Farm Ville, Pet Society, Friends For Sale…)

• Turn-based games that are played within a social context or with friends. (Texas Hold'em Poker, Scrabble,…)

• Competitive casual games with friends-only leaderboards. (Who Has the Biggest Brain?, Word Challenge,…)

2. Working Principles

Most of social games work on four basic principles:

• Simple gameplay, which does not require much tactical or strategical thought. Just simply click on something and get the reward, then make it to other higher rewards in similar steps 

• Real-time based element, which require you to wait for sometime when starting a process and doing activities. It doesn’t take much time for each visit but requires you to come back everyday, or even several times per day.

• Microtransactions, which are the solution for the dilemma of real time elements. To advance faster, game players need to buy more clicks or more rewards per time unit. For those who don’t want to spend money, they can do something like signing-up or taking a survey with the game company’s commercial partners

• Network connections, which means using the power of social networks. Friends can help or recruit each other in a social game even if you aren't online at the same time. 

So basically, the common rule is to get people hooked with easy rewards, then block them from gaining those rewards as fast as they want, make them pay you money directly or via another company, and encourage them to invite all their friends to participate. In fact all of these games can be played without spending any real money, and without signing up for shady offers to receive more in-game currency. But in-game earnings will never be enough to keep things interesting. That’s the story!

3. Top Games

4. Top Companies

Most of social-game companies have built their entire business model around relatively tiny micro-transactions. Because the games are free, what companies are trying to do is get as many people engaged in the game as possible. Then they try to maximise the number of those players that we can offer something interesting to - that they would be willing to pay money for. Furthermore, the companies also try to maintain players’ interest through constant updates. 

Current big players include:

• Zynga - 700 employees and $200 mil revenues in 2009, the developer of Facebook.

• Playfish - 250 employees and $75 mil revenues in 2009 

• Playdom - 300 employees and $50 mil revenues in 2009, the leader on MySpace

Even these companies have made huge revenue, their reputation is going down. Last year, Tech Crunch revealed a video featuring Zynga CEO Mark Pincus saying the company "did every horrible thing in the book" to make money off of player. It was a hit to the company and players at that time

5. Security and Social Risks

• To accumulate significant amounts of currency, players can either purchase some with their credit card or sign up for an account or do some surveys with a third-party service. But it found that these surveys contain risks with its request to get your mobile phone number and end up at subscription for an unknown service at a specific cost.

• Being targeted by hackers and viruses is another possibility of playing social games. Some bugs can destroy all of your game progress.

• Spamming friends by numerous updates, requests or invitations might cause inconveniences and may lead to losing some “real” friends

6. Future of Social Games

• The expansion of social networks in terms of size and popularity will bring social games to more users. Furthermore, social networks are widely seen as the new email and the new SMS diving rich, shared content that capitalizes on mass interaction

• The development of smartphone market, app market and social networking usage on smart phones will enhance the popularity of social games.

• Game companies are planning to build up their own social networks

• Current social game players are aged between 18 and 34 but the 40+ market and the “mass market” are also present and potential.

• The upcoming social games will be more targeted and diverse in categories in order to cope with the increasing competition. 

• The second generation of social games will be more developed in terms of gameplay and graphics. With Flash 10's 3D capabilities, 3D games may be coming to social networking sites soon.

• More channels and methods of trading virtual goods will be established. More online platforms to support game players will become popular.

Quit Facebook Day – To Leave or Not To Leave?

May 31st is the first officially unofficial Quit Facebook Day. To mark protest against issues such as privacy, data management, fake warnings and phising attacks, the day is when users plan to delete their accounts and leave Facebook altogether. It was formed by a teamed-up group of dissatisfied Facebook users in an effort to organize a mass, coordinated exodus from Facebook--and they're using social networks to do it.

However, quitting Facebook isn't easy. Facebook is engaging, enjoyable and addictive. It keeps people in contact with family and friends. Quitting Facebook is like quitting smoking. To many people, Facebook is the internet. 

Therefore, not many people have seemed to like the idea of quitting Facebook. Up to this moment, only 34506 have committed to delete their Facebook accounts (counts on quitfacebookday.com) Considering the fact that Facebook has somewhere in the range of 500 million users, 35,000 just doesn't seem substantial enough to make Mark Zuckerberg shed a tear. The lack of interest thus far is a telling indication of the average Facebooker's indifference to the ongoing privacy debate.

Currently, Facebook’s privacy policy has 50 different settings, 170 different options and contains almost 6,000 words, longer than the US Constitution! Although there is an evolution in privacy issue to protect users (check this LINK for more details), Facebook makes it difficult for the average user to understand or manage this.

So the simple rule is this: if you don’t want your personal information made public, don’t post it on the web. That’s especially true for sites where data sharing is an integral part of the system.



In the end, what's your decision? To leave or not to leave?

Should Marketers Do Social Marketing in Vietnam?

As somebody may know, I’m a Vietnamese living in Singapore. So sharing my understanding about social media in Vietnam is something I enjoy to do. This article is writing based on reliable research and reports on Vietnam online consumption behavior and digital landscape, and certainly my personal insights and experience. 

“Social Media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it's finally done there is surprise it's not better.” says Avinash Kaushik at Google. Coincidentally, this is quite matched to the situation in Vietnam, where social media is emerging and businesses are seeking opportunities online. To understand more, there are 5 main points to mention in the large picture of Vietnam social media landscape.

1. Who are online in Vietnam?

Vietnam internet population is very young with 76% from 15-34 and they spend a lot of time online and enjoy the increasing high-speed connection. It makes Vietnam the fastest growth in internet penetration, outweighing other neighbours like Thailand or Philippines. 50% of urban Vietnam is regularly online - even more in Hanoi. If you live in urban Vietnam and do not access the internet, you are fast becoming the minority.

2. What are they doing?

According to Cimigo's recent report of Vietnam NetCitizens , main online activities of Vietnam online users are:

• Gathering information. Reading news and using search sites are the most common activities online. Google is the most widely used website in Vietnam. Online newspapers are also in top-visited websites


• Online entertainment. Online music, movies and gaming are most popular. Zing, the integrated entertainment and networks website, shows the second largest penetration in Vietnam. 


• Online communications. Communications is a further key activity on the internet. The most frequent usage is chatting and emailing. SMS online and instant messaging are coming next.


• Blogging and social networks. Social network become familiar with Vietnam online users with the blogging trend. The need of interaction and networking increases significantly


• Online business. Although there is an increase in online business activities, Vietnam online commerce has not been highly developed yet. The payment system is still weak and the threat of illegal payment is quite high.

3. How’s the social media landscape?

As Vietnam has only had internet access since 1997, social media in Vietnam is relatively young; however, it has been growing rapidly for the past one decade. Some popular social media platforms includes:

• Social networks. Self-expression demand in Vietnam is very high. In the past, social networking in VN just means “blogging”. While the world was eyeing on bloggers.com and wordpress.com, in Vietnam, Yahoo!360 ruled with more than 2 million users. It was not a tool specifically designed for the Vietnam market, but the market took it anyway, with great passion and enthusiasm. Since it closed in July 2009, Facebook becomes the fastest growing market in Vietnam. Local social networks also grow significantly.


• 


• Photo-sharing sites. Most of popular photo sharing sites in Vietnam are forum based with online gallery. The community used to focus more on professional photographers but now it opens to everyone who is interested in photography. And Flickr is the largest and most popular photo-sharing community in Vietnam


• Video-sharing sites. There are two popular video-sharing sites in Vietnam, YouTube and Clip.vn. However YouTube shows more advantages with better speed,great navigational and usability, reasonable advertising and huge community, while Clip.vn has slow speed, too many banners, weak usability and can not expand community. Therefore, YouTube is leading in video-sharing in Vietnam with fast growing community


• Music sharing sites. Popular sites are Yeuamnhac.com, Nhacso.com, Zing MP3. However, majority of users just visit, listen and download music without community interaction


• Career network sites. These websites, such as Cyvee.com or Caravat.com, are for sharing resumes and discussing about career and recruitment trend.


• Integrated-service sites. These “all in one” websites,mostly locally designed, such as Zing.vn or Zume.vn, offer everything from blogs, news, videos, music to photos. 


• Forums. Forum seeding is still very effective in Vietnam. Popular forums are Webtretho.com, Otosaigon.com, TinhTe.com, Hihihehe.com, DDTH.com and GameVN.net. 

The recent disappear of some popular social networking sites such as Facebook due to government censorship has raised another issue in Vietnam social media situation. It pushed Facebook’s users in Vietnam looking for “black” tips to access to the site. Before that, the government mostly blocks pornographic and political websites, which are against the culture and the government. But this recent censorship on social network sites for invisible reasons is not widely supported by online users.

4. Why doing social marketing in Vietnam?

• Decreasing traditional media. It is undeniable that TV and Print still dominate in Vietnam but they are losing their attention and all decrease for a “new kid on the block”, online marketing, which is more effective and cost-saving in the current economy situation. The size of the online advertising market in 2009 is estimated at VND 278 billion VND (approx. USD 15.5 million)


• High penetration rate. Internet user in Vietnam is expanding with “miraculous” speed with 66% home penetration in 4 key cities in Vietnam.


• Targeted. Social media provide chance to reach the “right” target, especially young audience. 


• Easy to measure and tracking. With the provided tools and programs designed for social marketing, it is easier to measure the effectiveness.

5. How to apply into practice?

• Follow the users. Marketers should understand and use what they are using. Interacting with them on Facebook, Blog, RSS, Twitter, Flickr , YouTube , Newsletter and Forums reasonably and wisely should be considered


• Increase traffic by quality. In order to maximize your traffic, microsite is still ideal for short or seasonal campaign. However, in long terms, marketers should ignore “quantity” and go more for “quality”. A well-designed strategy from the beginning including SEO, SEM, E-mail marketing, E-PR still an effective way to drive traffic.


• Have an umbrella. Nobody remember tons of micro-sites everyday. Therefore, building and maintaining the corporate website together with your micro-site campaign is crucial. Having brand account on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. is necessary.


• Measure, measure and measure. Marketers should use social marketing statistics, tools and program, such as Google Analytics, traffic tracking, site ranking, conversion rate, etc. to analyze and measure the effectiveness of their online marketing plan.


• Connect with offline activities. In Vietnam, social media is not everything. Lots of people are online, but also lots of people are still out there. Social media is just wings for tiger, it’s not replace everything

Overall, there are a lot of opportunities in Vietnam with 25 millions of online population. Young people become more and more familiar with social media. Many online emerging trends have been established in a fast pace. Vietnam online advertising spend continually reaches new highs. So the opportunity is here but the challenge is also here. The decisions are all in hand of marketers.

(Sources: Cimigo’s Vietnam NetCitizens report, Vietnam digital landcape by Mr. Hieu Nguyen)

 

Does What Happens in Facebook Stay in Facebook? - How to Control?

Definitely unsure. Today, what happens in Vegas stays in Facebook and what happens in Facebook may stay…everywhere. So has society become less private or is it Facebook that's pushing people in that direction? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway? Do people no longer need to keep access to some of their personal information online limited just to trusted friends?

Nowadays, people probably are becoming more comfortable telling the world at large about more and different parts of their lives. But it doesn’t mean it's ok to take away peoples' choices and force them to make public some of their information all the time. Facebook became a huge success on that premise and ought to be able to continue to thrive without doing a 180-degree turn on privacy. 

More than millions, tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world have reason to limit visibility of their personal information from the web but still want to be able to share that information with trusted contacts. But privacy doesn't mean secrecy. Therefore, people need to know about privacy settings to monitor their social networking presence effectively.

Have a look at the answer of what really happens on Facebook in this video below before thinking of making some changes for your Facebook profile.

Facebook's continuous security problems make its users not happy. Among its 400 million users, many have been threatening to delete their account due to the security and privacy issues that keep surfacing. Most of the complaints are stemming from the older users, mostly aged over 35.

So how to control things, not to end it up? These are some Facebook’s basic privacy settings, which could help to avoid threats caused by the public to your personal life

• Grouping friends into lists (using “tags”) to apply specific privacy policies to them. 


• Remove yourself from Facebook search results. There are numerous reasons you may not want to be found by others on Facebook.


• Remove yourself from Google. If you want to be easy to find, making your search profile can be a great idea. However, many other people may feel unpleasant when everyone can “google” their name and comes out which every single aspects of their personal life on different social networking sites. 


• Make your contact information private. Frequently people we don’t know end up contacting us and we have no idea how they got our contact information. So it is better to public your contacts to people you want to share only.


• Avoid the infamous photo/video tag mistake. You let loose for a few hours one night (or day) and photos (or videos) of the moment are suddenly posted for all to view, not just your close friends who shared the moment with you and the result can be devastating. 


• Protect your albums. By setting specific privacy on them , you will ensure that the only people that can view your photos are the ones who you really want them to see.


• Prevent stories from showing up in your friends’ news feeds.  Sometimes it is not good to let all of your friends and business contacts hear that you just break up with your girlfriend or are in any new relationship


• Protect against published application stories. Frequently, a news feed item is immediately published to your profile when you add an application. But it is unsure that your professional contacts are interested in seeing “Nick just published to the world that he is having sex!” after your visit to a so-called “Have sex” application. 


• Avoid embarrassing wall posts. Just because you use Facebook for business doesn’t mean your friends do. That’s why once in a while a friend of yours will come post something embarrassing or not necessarily “work friendly” and it can end up having adverse effects. 


• Keep your friendships private. It’s often a good policy to turn off your friends’ visibility to others to avoid people make use of your friends’ profile for different purposes while some of your friends may not want to live public lives. 

All in all, the best way to prevent embarrassing items from showing up on Facebook in the future is to not make bad judgments in your personal life. We’re all human though and being completely paranoid about every choice you make is probably not the best way to live your life. Be aware of what privacy settings are available and be conscious of what your friends may be publishing about you.

In the worst situation, when your online presence is turning bad, there are some websites could provide solution to delete your existing social networking profiles and virtual friends such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine or Seppukoo.com or DeleteYourAccount.com. However these sites are facing the social network giant Facebook’s strong protest. Whatever it happens, they still receive a lot of visitors and do many “deleting” actions each day. Hopefully everything goes well with your social networking experience, so you do not need to visit these sites. Good luck!