Perhaps this is some serious nit-picking, but it’s excessively annoying when a product named “Google+” has to be called “Google Plus” because you traditionally can’t use a plus sign in many web form fields, branded URLs and other areas you’ll come across as the most unknowing of times.

For instance, if you were to create a page URL on Squidoo or Hubpages using the officially branded word “Google+”, the system wouldn’t accept the plus sign. If you were to create a shortened Google+ URL on Bit.ly, you’d get the same error message. Hell, even the Wikipedia page for Google+ shows up in search results as “en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%2B”. Ugly.

What’s most annoying is that nobody uses the “Plus” word, but rather the plus sign. So, you’ll have to weigh your content toward “Google+” and its title as “Google Plus,” or else, the + will be ommitted and you’ll be attempting to rank for the single word “Google.” Ugh.

Maybe I’m looking too much into this! Damn my OCD.

It’s Really Corporate-ish

As expected with any Google product, Google Plus really has that corporate-baked flavor to it. It’s structured and vanilla in design, much like everything else in your Google Accounts assortment. This leads me to believe that the average layperson won’t “take” to it in the long-run. Those of us with IT and marketing backgrounds will give it a good run, though.

What makes Facebook great is that it’s a brand name, “Facebook.” It’s not “x.bigcorporation.com,” it’s a household brand name, with a logo and a style of its own. I just don’t see people saying “can you Plus me?” or plus.google.com being one of the hottest 3 sites on on Alexa.org.

One thing you can’t deny about Google Plus is that it’s really polished. Facebook has more of that 1990s look and feel with drop down menus and a million things to click, but it’s faster and more convenient to get around in Plus.

Will You Re-Write the Dictionary?

The first thing I did when I got in to Plus was to shoot off a few emails to a couple friends, asking them to add me so that we could learn how to use it together. That’s when it kind of dawned on me – do I really want to do this with the 200+ people I know? No. I really don’t. Actually, the thought of it makes me want to take a nap.

Google has a massive handicap here. How on earth are they going to get people to rip themselves away from Facebook when it’s not only at its height of popularity, but so intertwined in our lives? Everyone has Facebook. And, the people who don’t are either liars or don’t know how to turn a computer on. It’s the place to be, because everyone’s already there. Amidst the bitching and complaining, it’s a great site. It’s also like being in the Mafia – once you’re out, you get pulled back in…but, it’s mostly because you’ll be alienated in life if you don’t.

Will my Farmville-addicted friends be willing to give up their 80+ level accounts for Plus? No. If Zynga ever creates Farmville for Google Plus, will they be willing to start over at level 1? No.

There’s no necessity to leave Facebook at the moment. I don’t know if the concept of Plus was built around Facebook’s privacy issues (that appears to be the point of “Circles”) but I don’t think the general population is angry enough at those issues to leave Facebook.

Are Circles *Really* Revolutionary?

With “Circles,” you can create tons of “bucket lists” to put friends into. Then, you drop your friends into these lists, each of which have their own specific privacy settings. Err, Facebook already has this. Go to “Account” >> “Edit Friends” >> “Create A List.” Call those things “Facebook Circles” if it makes you feel better.

A lot of people didn’t bother to organize their Facebook friends list, but it’s because they’re lazy. I can’t really blame them, since most of us have around 150-350 friends and you have to organize each individual friend in a list, but it’s really worth it. You can stick your parents into a bucket where they can’t see certain photo albums or wall posts, or you can put your ex in a bucket where she can’t see certain parts of your profile information. This stuff already exists, everyone, it’s not revolutionary.

However, it is marketing. Package the same thing in a different and more attractive way, and people will think it’s new and exciting. I’m really not trying to be facetious, but that’s how I see it being played out so far.

Is Privacy Really Improved with Google Plus?

I somehow doubt it. Think about this: in order to log in to Plus, you’re also logging in to everything in Google Accounts: and that includes Gmail, Calendar, Youtube, etc. So, you’re not just logging in to one entity (like being on Facebook) but a whole fray of them. As usual, that also means you’re dropping a cookie and creating a session, so you better be damn sure you log out of your account if you’re at your college computer lab or your friend’s house.

Since all of these accounts are linked, they all kind of converge to your Google Account, which is basically like a big online profile that lists everything “Google” that you manage. That means you have to portray yourself the same way on everything “Google” and that pretty much eliminates any possibility of anonymity.

At least with Facebook, I can just log in and out and not worry about the site being linked to anything else at the same time.

If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re probably freaking out about how Plus (a social networking system) is yet another entity whose data is being mined along with Gmail and Calendar and Youtube and everything else as well. I digress, though.

Is This Really for the Desktop, or Mobile?

Maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. I’m a hardcore PC desktop guy, and I’ll never stop being one. I’m judging Google Plus as a desktop PC user, but it looks like this platform is making a huge push on Mobile. I got this impression when I saw my friend’s feed on Google Plus, with several comments about how his friends have already gotten the Android app for Plus. Maybe this will really explode on the Droid? I don’t know. I have a 1st generation Droid and it’s dying of old age, so, perhaps if I get a Droid 3 at the end of the year, I can re-evaluate Google Plus’ mobile advantages.

As for Plus on the desktop, I kind of had the same old feeling come back when I got my preliminary Google Wave account, logged in, and stared at my monitor not knowing what emotional reaction I should have.

Will Google Plus Help Diminish the Need for SEO?

Here’s where I get really optimistic about Google Plus:

We’re starting to see trends in internet user behavior. In the olden days, we searched for “mechanic,” then a few years, “BMW mechanic.” Then, “BMW mechanic in naples FL” or “BMW mechanic in 34101.” We later evolved to just going on Facebook and posting “any of you guys know a good BMW mechanic in the area?”

Will Plus evolve this even further? Will people stop using search engines entirely, because their social buckets are so precise and geo-local that they can simply get questions answered by human beings they trust, rather than reading star reviews on Yelp?

This is what excites me the most. The best part about it is that little +1 icon appearing in search results on Google.com – they appear if you’re logged into Gmail/Plus/anything else. So, the probability of them being used will be vastly increased if people take a liking to Plus and browse while logged into it.

Now, you can ask your friends (or Circles) to +1 your websites. Or, just suggest them through Google Plus yourself. If anything will tip the scales of an algorithmic search engine, an evolved social network could be it. Other people +1′ing your site means that it’s cemented to the top of their search results, as long as they’re logged in to Google. Sweet. It’s like a little hall pass to excuse yourself from the algorithm entirely.

This also means that your website better be pretty damn helpful to earn +1′s from the people you DON’T know. You’ll have to earn that click more than ever, since it modifies search results. People won’t want to see a piece of crap a the top of Google page 1, so they’ll be quick to un-plus it if it’s not up to par.

This is still day one of Google Plus – there’s plenty more to hear about from other people, and I’m dying to see what average users have been saying about Plus. Want to voice your opinion? Check out the poll I just posted on my Facebook page about your first impressions of Plus!

If you’re logged into your Gmail (or Google Account) right now, do a search on Google for anything and you’ll now see the new +1 button appearing next to everything in the SERPs. Thankfully, it’s not a resurrection of that horribly executed feature where people could “vote up” a search result (remember that?) but something more involved. Those little +1 buttons will “sticky” a website to the top of your SERPs for the keyword you searched to find it. Much like its predecessor, the feature only exists if you log in to Google.

However, clicking that button is basically your first step into discovering “Circles,” a new part of the “Google Plus Project” that appears to be taking on Facebook itself. Yeah, another one of those social networking things Google is trying out that requires you to be logged in to Gmail…or your Google Account, or any of its ten bajillion services that most people can’t name more than five of.

The implications for Google Plus and the discerning internet marketer (that’s you) are heading toward your creation of cool, unique content that will do well in a social sharing atmosphere – not a machine-operated algorithmic one. Wait, did I just describe Google Wave? Or, umm, Google Buzz…yeah, that’s the other one.

The skepticism I have with Google Plus is that it’s yet another “side project” to join the fray that Google seems to have been experimenting with over the past few years. Should I, an already busy internet marketer, take yet even more time out of my regular schedule to build up a Google Plus account, master its in and outs, optimize my pages for Plus users and change my strategy to include Twitter, Facebook and now Plus? Or is this going the way of Google Buzz, of which nobody I’ve ever known has ever used more than once or twice?

I like Google Plus’ justifications that social networking is too impersonal, to the point where we “lump” everyone together as a “friend” although our definitions of “friend” range from “significant other” to “some guy I went to school with and say Happy Birthday to once a year.” If Google Plus remedies this, there is no doubt that Facebook will crank out another new update to perform a stalemate.

Don’t get me wrong, Google Plus and the whole “Circles” feature looks damn cool. I just don’t like how you have to be logged into your Google Account to get to it. I don’t like being on foreign computers and dropping a cookie to my Google Accounts login. Or forgetting to log out. Or having my email auto-saved to the login field when someone clicks it.

This is truly what I believe is the biggest downfall to these Google services – they’re all integrated through Google itself. You’re not just visiting www.whatever.com and logging in like you traditionally do. It’s like you’re using some kind of intranet where all of your most precious data is intertwined and accessable amongst each other. Who leaves their computer on all the time while logged in to Gmail, anyway? I use Gmail multiple times a day, and I log out after each session purely through force of habit. I rarely ever search Google while logged in to it.

I know a lot of people who use Gmail, but I also know a lot who don’t use it, and let’s face it – no Gmail account pretty much means no Google Accounts account, either. I find all of this to be overly sophisticated for the average lay person. I doubt they’re going to “get” it. Internet marketers will jump all over it, though.

If Google Plus does succeed, it will mean huge benefits for the ever growing tablet and smartphone user market – specifically Android, of which already has the Google Plus app. However, that’s considering that Facebook is going to sit still and do nothing about any of this, and I think we can predict the possibility of that happening.

Lastly, are you really willing to give up on using Facebook? If not, are you really willing to use Facebook and Google Plus? Seriously?

As of now, I have bad memories of Wave.

Squidoo is the original affiliate marketer’s dream. This “social portal” service lets you create one-page websites for all of your product shilling needs, or lets you write articles, or do whatever the hell you please – relatively unrestricted and with good search engine standing…but now, it breathes new life into the system with the introduction of a whole new points system, where you earn points for creating new “Lenses” (the term for a new “page” that you can create), or for the actions that other people take on your lenses. Regardless if they leave comments, click around on your polls or do just about any other actionable event, you earn points…then, you level up, and unlock mini-quests (scavenger hunts) and other surprises.

Cool. Hubpages just got that more boring :)

It’s not all about leveling up, though. It’s also about getting cool Squidoo badges (they call them “monster trophies,” but let’s be honest, this is so Foursquare-ish!).

If you’ve been on Squidoo in the past and your attention deficit got the best of you, don’t worry – the point and trophy system is retroactive. Log in, and you’ll get your multi-year badge, and badges for whatever threshold of lenses you’ve already created. Check out my Giant Squid badge…even though I earned it a few years ago, it’s still displaying the Sept. 7, 2010 launch date.

Squidoo maintains a list of the top 100 Monster Board, which updates a list of Lensmasters on an hourly basis. There’s no doubt that the “gaming” aspect has fostered a huge morale boost in the Squidoo community. The Squidoo forum is more alive than ever, too. What matters most, though, is that the twinks and gankers are going to have a very hard time cheating this system. Long gone are the days of swapping Squidoo 5-star ratings and attempting to nudge the algorithm.

This pop-up appears every time you get points for something

If you haven’t had the chance yet, by all means – get a free Squidoo account and check the site out. If you’re in affiliate marketing and you haven’t heard of Squidoo, I’m ashamed of you, but I’ll forgive you :) While the allure of the new point and trophy system will be a part of the overall picture to newbies, anyone who was with Squidoo since the old days will appreciate the new life that has been brought into the site. I can nearly guarantee it will compel you to keep logging in (I’ve already accepted this as a new part of my hourly routine, next to Facebook).

To learn more, read the original announcement about the New Squidoo, and a full description in the Squidoo Monster FAQ.

Since this might not make much sense to most of you, let me give you a visual:

See that little heart on the right? It’s hyperlinked, and it points to a site called LikeMyThought. I started seeing this stuff pop up a few days ago, until the little heart icon caught my eye – knowing that it was a hyperlink, I had to see what it was (mostly because I knew it was something created by some new, aspiring internet marketing genius).

When visiting the site, I was astounded to see that it was nothing but some big Facebook API-driven list of nonsense quotes, mantras and phrases that you could “like” and have appear on your Facebook feed, through Facebook connect. The quotes were ranked by “most liked,” which appeared at the top-most portion of the page.

Check this out: visit the site and hit “refresh.” A new quote appears, and the page’s <title> changes to accommodate it as well. Below it is an AdSense 335×280 ad, and a medium banner at top. That’s it. Gee, I thought AdSense banned content-less, RSS-driven or auto-generated sites? Hmm.

There’s more?!

Well, for whatever reason, I managed to see another one of these quotes appear that one of my friends “like”d. I hovered over the heart…but…it wasn’t that same site. It was another one, named LikeFever.info. It’s basically like LikeMyThought, except it looks less cluttered and fits one column. There’s another one, too…it’s called GoLikeUs.net. Oh, and Likesy, too. Ok – I’m guessing this is some kind of new trend here. How long until we see “Facebook Like Site CMS clones” popping up on marketing for-sale forums everywhere?

Dumb or not, these “like” sites are getting oodles of Facebook traffic. While they don’t seem to be ranking for anything worthwhile according to SEMrush, Alexa.com puts LikeMyThought on their map as it is currently around #87,800, with the lesser visited LikeFever at around 194,000…the latter of which has a nice stalagmite spike on its chart. LikeMyThought even has its own Facebook Page as seen here. Looks like they’re harvesting new visitors through good old social networking, rather than putting out the website and hoping for the best.

Just for the hell of it, I searched Google for “♥”, which wound up throwing back a “Your search did not match any documents” reply. Hmm, so much for the hypothesis that they were attempting to appear on Google page 1 for an ASCII character.

Viral Without A Cause

What’s the point of creating these sites? AdSense clicks? Does anyone even click them? For that matter, what’s the motivation of spending more than a few seconds on these sites? The worthiness of any site to get massive Facebook love is obvious, but what’s the resolve – a couple AdSense blocks that can’t possibly be paying more than a penny or two per click? The sites themselves don’t have any backlinks – I’ve counted around 30. However, they must have oodles of Facebook backlinks.

Just like all of the other fads in the past including Hot Or Not, Million Dollar Homepage & others, this has the potential of being a new contender in the quest to copy (and hopefully improve) on a popular new concept. Where it goes, however, is yet to be seen.

As for me, I’ll click the “unlike” icon next  to this one (if it actually existed).

In the realm of social media tracking, there aren’t many contenders. Here at the office, we use both Radian6 and ViralHeat. They both serve different functions, are to be used by two different user-bases, and come with entirely different price tags.

Slim ‘Pickins for Social Media Analysis Tools

While Radian6 is your typical full-fledged corporate social media monitoring tool, it’s not exactly user-friendly out of the box, nor is it affordable at a starting price of $600 per month.

For the at-home internet marketer, ViralHeat is the more practical decision: it gives you the only tools you’ll probably ever use in a social media tracking campaign, without all of the bells and whistles that you never will. Oh, and it starts at $9.99/month with a “pay by month” system – can’t beat that, even if you wanted to do a one-month taste test.

Using ViralHeat’s $9.99 per Month Package

The low-end package with ViralHeat gives you 5 “profiles.” A profile is simply a single keyword. For instance, “3D TV,” or “Sony.” When you select one of these keywords, the system will go forth all over the internet and look at all recent activity that has used those keywords, giving you an in-depth report in the form of line charts, lists and percentages that represent activity on all social media sites. These 5 profiles can be changed or deleted at any time, making it a top choice for the stingy (I mean, thrifty) small business owner who isn’t willing to pay more per month for a larger package.

The plan includes a 7-day history chart, as does the middle-grade $29.99/mo package. This 7-day spread gives you insight into trends over the past week – a good way to measure offline media’s impact on your company or any other upcoming, trendy topic. Metrics for these charts include Google Buzz & Twitter, Facebook, realtime web (blogs) and video (Youtube + all others: MetaCafe, Vimeo, etc.)

The only downside to ViralHeat’s lowest pricing tier is that it leaves out sentiment analysis, which identifies positive and negative mentions in social media. It’s something you’ll want if you are using Facebook for your actual company or product, and are about to do a big launch. Sentiment analysis is a key part of due diligence; make sure people aren’t spreading a lot of BS around about you or your product. If they are, be there to correct it immediately.

Tracking Twitter and Google Buzz

The following screenshot shows a view of the “microblogging” dashboard on ViralHeat. It’s a mash-up of both Twitter and Google Buzz, showing both combined and separate statistics for both.

As you can see, all of the information you really need to know is included in this account: you get an overview of positive and negative Conversation Analysis, lists of top influencers (people who talk about you the most), and trends that display which day was most successful. It will help make things painfully obvious when asking “why did my traffic spike?” The bottom of the screen shows actual Tweets. They can be sorted by sentiment: positive, negative or neutral (an internal filter stuffs them into one of these three categories for your convenience).

Tracking Facebook

For Facebook social media tracking, you’ll get similar treatment with a 7-day chart and detailed statistics on what went on during the week.

There’s no doubt that the analytics provided directly with your Facebook Page is ample enough, but ViralHeat tags on additional metrics including top fans and posts, sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) and an actual mash-up list of all Facebook posts that mention your selected keyword or company name. As with all other charts, you can export your metrics to an Excel document.

Tracking the Realtime Web

This section within your ViralHeat account acts as a general bucket for web activity, where you can track what bloggers are article writers are saying about your selected keyword.

It’s the most meager section in terms of the metrics it provides, but the real beauty in it is that it lists all of the recent backlinks that term has gotten right underneath the chart, so that you can visit them directly. They’re categorized by what country the domain is in, and each one has a “stats” link that gives you insight into what that particular page is contributing to the term.

Tracking Video Campaigns

Lastly, ViralHeat will give you insight into the world of social video sharing, and how your researched keywords or company names are being perceived on the likes of Youtube et. al.

This dashboard gives you a statistical overview, listing of the top video sites mentioning your targeted term, and the top videos related directly to them. Best of all is a mash-up of links pointing to specific videos, presented below the chart.

It saves a hell of a lot of time as opposed to visiting Youtube, Vimeo and other popular sites and searching for/weeding through results on your own. I like to think of ViralHeat’s video analysis section as a big convenience, above all else…especially since we run corporate Youtube campaigns that coincide with TV advertising.

Choosing a ViralHeat Plan

First off, ViralHeat has a free no-obligations trial so that you can actually see what you’ll be getting. I first started off with the basic $9.99/month plan when signing up, but we had the desire for sentiment analysis at the office, and upgraded to the highest $89.99/month plan.

Personally, I think that plan is overkill for any at-home business owner, as the only notable perks you’ll get are the 40 profiles and 30 day history (instead of 7). However, we have both a PR and Marketing team totaling a couple dozen employees that uses the account daily.

Is Social Media Tracking for You?

If you’re looking for the most affordable and practical way to measure social media analytics, ViralHeat is your current best  bet in terms of useful metric reporting and price.

In all, it’s not worth your while to bother with social media tracking if you’re throwing out Facebook Pages and videos for the hell of getting backlinks or casual followers, but it’s a must-have if you take it seriously and really integrate these technologies with your brand name, or to maintain relationships with your customers. You’ll WANT to see how it’s doing, otherwise, you’ll be missing out to the point where your campaign will be mediocre at best.

Until Google Analytics supports social media analysis (which I doubt, unless we’re talking about Google-sponsored social media services like Buzz, Wave and the alleged Google Me), ViralHeat is a solid contender that won’t hurt your budget.

Newbie forewarning: most, if not all of these sites are “nofollow.” Note that this shouldn’t be a deterrent in any way, as “links are links” and they all contribute to your site’s success, especially in a world where social is influencing SERPs! More recognition (and a constant stream of it) is what you’ll be looking for these days in the world of social SEO evolution.

Note that this is not a list of all bookmarking services with buttons – just the ones that don’t suck and are worth your consideration!

Social Networking & Bookmarking Buttons for General Topics

Facebook Like button: The new “like” continues to be liked itself amongst the webmaster community. Simply insert some simple code on your site with the iconic “Like” button, and it will get sent straight to someone’s Facebook page feed when clicked. Facebook’s opportunity doesn’t have to be explained these days; therefore, it’s not something to ignore. I’ll always feel that Facebook Like works best on universally “interesting” articles, especially if it’s humorous.

• Use it if: Who doesn’t have a Facebook account these days? Hell, just use it, period! Facebook is on fire right now, and the “Like” script is unobtrusive. The audience is so huge, that it includes tons of interest level subsets. It can’t hurt to try it out!
• Solid alternatives: MySpace Share, Twitter Retweet button

Twitter Retweet button: Still a valid way to share, Twitter seems to be getting overwhelmed by the fact that Facebook serves the same purpose in a more engaging way. Regardless, it’s still a big platform that can give your articles a great deal of exposure if seen to the right user(s). Thanks to things like hash tags, your article can get further exposure based on what category it’s hashed under. Twitter continues to be one of the big three (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube) in the realm of social media analytics and sentiment analysis.

• Use it if: …you use Twitter as a part of your branding strategy. Since you’re on the site a lot, it would be a good idea to tie this functionality into your articles so that you can not only get more Twitter exposure, but more followers as well.
• Solid alternatives:  Facebook Like button

Google Buzz button: You may or may have not used it already, but it’s kind of like a social networking mash-up. Think of it as having the mobile “where in the world am I?” geo-targeting of Foursquare or GoWalla, combined with the front page feed of Facebook. It’s mostly used by tech geeks and lesser known by anyone else at this point in time. People who use the Droid and other Google-sponsored phones may have the Buzz app on it. Do individuals’ Buzz results show up in SERPs? No…at least, not at present. Technically, Buzzes go to a “user account” rather than a public web page like other popular social bookmarking sites. However, they can go viral, and Buzz is a perfect example of a ‘trust marketing’ tool, as people are recommending links to their friends (of whom trust their judgment). Don’t believe it? Just look at the Google Buzz activity that Mashable.com’s articles get.

• Use it if: …you have a lot of internet geeks, marketers or otherwise who visit your blog. Presently, they’re one of the biggest user bases of Buzz until the program becomes more publicly accepted.
• Solid alternatives: Google Wave This

Digg “Digg This” button: This site constantly evolves, and continues to be the quintessential news sharing site. Digg traditionally shines for articles that reveal something new (the newest smartphone dissected, a new planet or dinosaur fossil found, a political blunder, a bizarre tradition, etc.) or otherwise incredibly interesting or off-beat. Digg and especially the Digg community have gotten harsher on backlink-hungry webmasters than ever before – expect your submissions to be “buried” if they point to affiliate sites or promotional pages.

• Use it if: …your site deals with occult, interesting, amazing or unique situations in article or picture format, feature a Digg button on the upper left of each article page.
• Solid alternatives: Mixx button, Reddit button, Yahoo Buzz Up button, Slashdot bookmarklet, Newsvine seed
• Second string alternatives: Kirtsy This button, Propeller bookmarklet

Delicious.com “Bookmark on Delicious” link: A lot has changed beyond the old URL it was once known for (del.ico.us). It has become a major player in the social sharing world and is even used as a top social tracking metric in social analytics. Delicious is a top choice for personal bookmarking, too. It makes it easy to ‘tag’ and associate links with a nearly limitless number of tags that are limited to your imagination – a great way to classify a link with a long-tail niche term (you can use pluses or minuses in place of spaces between words in a keyword). Hey, if giant sites like Flickr use it throughout their entire site, it must be worthy.

• Use it if: …you don’t know what other bookmarking service “fits” for your site. A lot of people use Delicious, and it’s a safe blanket-bookmarking service to rely on.
• Solid alternatives: Diigo button (formerly Furl.net)
• Second string alternatives: Faves.com Fave It

StumbleUpon Submit button:  In terms of worthiness, StumbleUpon has been one of the most controversial sites amongst webmasters. Many favor the rolling bursts of traffic that it can foster, while others ridicule its inability to be part of a solid backlinking strategy due to its short-term or one-time-only results. Regardless, it’s a huge site with a community of “Stumblers” who can bring attention to your page, video or picture. The StumbleUpon button “stumbles” your site, or gives it a notch, increasing the chances of it being seen via random stumble within its category. Stumbles build an inertia-like momentum; the more stumbles you get, the more probability your site will show up at random to site users.

• Use it if: …your user base mainly includes bored people looking to kill time – StumbleUpon is a great time killer for people looking to discover new things. If your site is interesting enough to fit the bill, it might be a good match with a StumbleUpon Submit button. Note: I almost considered not putting StumbleUpon on this list due to the more-than-likely chance of a short term traffic burst,  but results may vary.

Social Networking & Bookmarking Buttons for Niche Topics

LinkedIn Share button (WordPress only!): Regardless if you use it or not, LinkedIn has still positioned itself as the “Facebook for professionals,” and is more notably being used by recruiters sick of bad Monster.com or CareerBuilder applicants flooding their inbox. It’s also a place where people create and join groups relevant to their background or profession; in essence, a site of niche businesspeople. This button will let LinkedIn users share your page with their entire network.

• Use it if: …your site is a job networking or job seeking site, LinkedIn Share is an obvious fit in either case.

Sphinn “Sphinn It” button: Got a site dealing with internet marketing, SEO, SEM or online business strategy? This community is dedicated to these topics, and is frequented by marketers looking for quality advice. It’s a place to get noticed for all of the hard work you’ve put into that SEO hypothesis, those flowcharts proving some kind of point about online marketing trends, or anything else that would be of extreme interest to an online marketer.

• Use it if: …your blog is primarily about internet marketing and/or any of its facets, and you write meaningful, content-rich articles that serve as valid resources.

Tip’d “Tip It” button: It’s a social bookmarking site for financial news only: the Tip It button will give your article a notch on the site, hopefully pushing your article more toward the top (think of it as a financial Digg). The best part about Tip’d is that it caters to the topics that tend to never do well on other social sites: primarily, those about law and accounting or economics.

• Use it if: …your articles pertain to topics in the fields of law, investing, real estate or economics.

Fark “Fark It” button: Fark’s purpose is to draw attention to various articles of interest elsewhere on the internet, as chosen by its site users. Sites that get the green light will make it to the front page, which is a high visibility area that may result in the dreaded “Digg Effect” of server congestion. The Fark button is simple and doesn’t include a counter; however, it gives your page a vote to appear on Fark’s home page.

• Use it if: …your material is quirky, humorous or deals with “stupid news.” Make sure it’s a unique story you’ve pursued on your own, and not just a copy of something else.

N4G News Tips link: N4G or “News For Gamers” is a social article site dedicated only to gaming-related news in the current day. The popularity of stories on N4G is signified in temperature-like “degrees.” Only the most popular articles of the day make it to the front page, out of hundreds of daily submissions.

• Use it if: …your run a video game news site dealing with game reviews or topics of interest only of today’s game releases.

Select a Button…and Run With It!

Using the guide above, choose which sharing button makes the most sense on your site.  If two prove to be a good fit, include both. Just think: many people who have Twitter also have Facebook, just like many people who use Buzz might also use Digg.

The best way to know a good combination is to look at the big sites that are already savvy on social networking: Mashable, Time.com, CNN. They’ve already done their research before making a final decision. Look at the big sites in your niche…what are they using?

If you’re a “regular” on any particular site, it would be insane not to use that site’s button on your pages. So, if you Mixx all the time and have built up an impressive profile and friend list, it would only make sense to use the Mixx It Up button on every page of your blog!

How About Those All-In-One Social Bookmark Services?

If you simply can’t or don’t want to pick one of those ‘everything in one’ buttons that create a rollover displaying multiple bookmark icons (i.e., ShareThis, AddThis, Social Marker, Add To Any, etc.) is a perfectly valid thing to do. Just beware of the fact that people are less likely to use a specific service in those buttons, and that many visitors hesitate to even use them at all. (Personally, I think ShareThis is the superior one amongst them all – it even has its own built-in analytics, and also an official ShareThis WordPress plugin).

In essence, this shows a pro and con of using specific buttons: they’re very convenient for people who use those particular services, but worthless for those who don’t.  On the flip side, all-in-one buttons are great because they include all of the popular services. However, many people are too lazy to use them, especially if they can’t find the service they use if it requires clicking the “more” link within the pop-up.

What’s the Best Place to Put a Social Bookmarking Button?

I think it’s safe to say that the most advantageous places to stick them are within the upper left corner of your body content, underneath the heading (considering you don’t already have an AdSense banner stuck there).

Otherwise, it’s commonplace to include it under the header, flushed left or right – your choice. A really bad place to include it would be away from the content, such as in the page header or in the sidebar – that wouldn’t make much sense at all.

Consider ending your article with yet another social bookmarking venue, rather than making your visitor scroll all the way up to the top to access it.

Perhaps certain bookmarking services do better under an article than above it? How about a quick way to have your visitors publish your link on their Facebook feed with a “Facebook Like” link right after your article’s conclusion, while the awesomeness of your article is still fresh in their mind and potentially of interest to their friends? These are the tests you should perform.

Whatever button ‘fits’ with your site should be considered an overall part of your site’s marketing strategy. It’s a tool that makes your site become easy to share on a specific social bookmarking service, as opposed to hoping your visitors will copy and paste the link into their account. Using the more relevant service will mean more pleasing results – do some due diligence and decide which one makes the most sense for your individual sites!

This link is located on the right-hand column of your main feed, under the heading “Get A Facebook Sneak Peek.” The page that follows explains the concept of what is undoubtedly Facebook’s stab at Yahoo Answers, a well-aged service where people who have a free Yahoo account can browse a massive, ever-updating database of questions and community-submitted answers. Yahoo Answers enjoys great search engine rankings for very competitive terms (check out my Yahoo Answers case study, if you hadn’t already).

In other words, this certainly isn’t anything new. There’s no doubt that Facebook will keep tapping into this massive community to perform even more functions than it already does – if they didn’t, they’d be stupid not to.

Where does it go from here? A “Facebook Answers” section could prove to be successful, given the sheer number of Facebookers currently out there, and the site’s standing as one of the most visited websites on Earth. However, will it compete with a household brand that already does well on search engines? Maybe, if it also starts getting loved by Google, Yahoo & Bing. Otherwise, it will be a closet accessory.

What does it mean for internet marketers? It depends. On Yahoo Answers, you can at least reference a link back to your site once you’ve reached a certain “level” with your account, making it a no-follow (but potentially high visibility) backlink. Will Facebook follow suit, or will they restrict links? Will they have mercy on affiliate marketers, or punish ‘em like they do with affiliate links posted on Facebook Pages? The answer to that will determine if this is another good venue for bringing from FB traffic to your site(s). Only time will tell, of course!

Here are the Cliffs Notes on Community Pages: for quite awhile, anyone was able to throw together a Facebook Page and foster ridiculous numbers of followers (called “fans”) in a short amount of time, thanks to 400+ million Facebook users, and good old viral-ness. Many of these pages were associated with brand names and trademarks not belonging to the page owner. This pissed off a lot of companies who wanted a strong presence on Facebook, but were thwarted by the numerous Facebook Pages that already existed for their brand. Hence, Facebook came up with the idea to turn those lay-person owned Facebook Pages into a new concept called Community Pages, which doesn’t appear to have much repercussion, until you look under the hood…

What Community Page Conversion Means for Your Facebook Page

Regardless if your page has anything to do with a brand (i.e., Coca Cola, McDonalds, etc) or not – it’s now subject to being found by Facebook and converted into a Community Page. What this does is it differentiates your page from an official corporate-owned page. It doesn’t appear to look like anything visual has happened with the Facebook Page. You’re still the admin and can edit it. It still has the “vanity URL” (facebook.com/mypage), and nothing else has been edited to the look and feel of the page. However, once you cross a certain undefined threshold – for instance, a million fans – the page gets ripped from your clutches and released to the community, where it will be treated like a Wikipedia page for all to edit. You lose — good day sir. (Kudos if you got that movie reference).

What’s really unfair here is the prospect of losing your baby, even if you did nothing to upset the corporate gods and their trademarks. So, your “I like picking my nose and sticking it on a basketball” page might become community-run if it becomes too popular. Why? It really makes no sense. The TOS for Facebook Pages say that they’re supposed to represent a brand, company, famous person or similar, but Facebook Page culture has shown it to evolve into a modern day meme, where pages represent the old “did you ever notice…” humor that many people can’t resist becoming a fan of.

By the way, the word “fan” has been ax’ed for the word “like.” So, you’re not getting “fans” to your Facebook [Community] Page anymore, you’re getting “likes.”

What a Facebook Community Page Looks Like

You might have already seen a Facebook Community Page without even knowing it: ever since Facebook made a major update to segregate your profile’s “Likes and Interests” sections into categories like “activities,” “interests,” “music,” “books,” and so forth, many of the generic Facebook Pages you once fanned have now become Facebook Community Pages. A few examples are “small business owner,”  “80s” and “cigars.” Notice how all of these pages have a permanent fixture at the top of the page:

Our goal is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic. If you have a passion for Cigars, sign up and we’ll let you know when we’re ready for your help. You can also get us started by suggesting the Official Facebook Page.

Do you think the original people who created and maintained these generic pages for years have gotten pissed at the fact that those pages are now public hubs, controlled by Facebook? Yeah, super pissed is my guess.

Protesting Your Facebook Page’s Conversion

If you feel that your page was unjustly targeted, you can protest the change to a Community Page, but it all comes down to having to state your Page’s business credentials, as you can see.

This is only good news for big corporations, looking to secure their vanity URLs and identity online. I can’t really talk that situation down, as I’ve worked in the corporate world to get back cybersquatted vanity URLs, and I own one for my own business. I also openly hate socialsquatters, which I’ve talked about many times before.

With your new knowledge of the Facebook Community Page fiasco scenario, know that your casual viral campaign days may come to an end, and put more of your attention on official business-related Facebook Pages. That’s where the security’s at. Also, if someone pilfered your Facebook vanity URL, it’s never been a better time to wrestle it back!

For starters, I don’t really use Twitter for anything but business. Having a Twitter account for personal use is rather pointless, considering how often I use Facebook multiple times per day, every single day. For me, Twitter is a good way for me to keep my web visitors engaged on what I’m doing to update a site. That’s it.

The difficult part here is that Twitter has created a culture of “follow back.” People get offended if you don’t follow them back. Well, some do. Others will just delete you if you don’t.

So, you’re somewhat obliged to follow your followers, which in turn transforms your dashboard into an endless stream of worthlessness. Don’t get me wrong, I love my followers, but I don’t care about their lunches, current events or what their family members are doing. However, I have no choice but to see this. I do, however, follow several web developers, template designers and others who affect my business, and it’s important for me to read about their plans and updates. However, they get quickly buried in the pile.

Twitter somewhat addressed this by letting us organize visitors into buckets. This let me drop in the developers I follow into one bucket, the designers into another, and so on…however, it creates an extra step, since I’ll have to visit the bucket, and click a user to read all of their updates. It also defeats the core purpose of Twitter – being able to actually see their live Tweets as they happen.

With that being said, I’m never surprised at all of those statistics talking about how Twitter has an awful retention rate, or how they’re having such a hard time holding on to active users. At least with Facebook – I can simply “hide” someone from my front page live feed if they (or their gaming updates…or their constant selfless promotions) annoy me.