The Sociology of Social Media

by Andrew Clough

While being hired on at StepForth Web Marketing our CEO, Ross Dunn, was interested in how someone with a background in sociology could benefit his company, specifically in understanding social media and how to market to it. Sociologists look at communities and try to dissect them as to what its participants have in common in addition to trends or commonalities within the communities.

Sociologists study society and social action by examining the groups and social institutions people form, as well as various social, religious, political, and business organizations. In essence it is the study of social interactions of people and groups.

They like to watch groups of people and see how they interact and function. Understanding the group's values and ideas is the key because once you understand a group one can participate within it. Participation means that you have the ability to communicate to those within the groups and spread or gain information. The concept of a social media marketer is to gain understanding of a community and leverage it to increase awareness of their own or their client's expertise. Social media based communities are seen as the new web properties for marketing campaigns. Driving traffic and developing information users trust and use is the monetization of the social media world.

This article is a general understanding as to what social media is and its potential for reaching the public. In the future I will be covering more specific areas within social media and helping clients build campaigns that work for their specific situation in this emerging marketplace. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.
Why People Use Social Media

Social Media is a web based venue that shares ideas, values, and information. Social media sites are formed when groups of people want to share information. They are used to keep up with friends and colleagues, to exchange ideas, and get information from those who might have an answer. Social media sites create a community (a group of individuals) based around this shared information. Many of these sites have gained huge followings and therefore are seen as authorities in their particular area of expertise (news, technology, sports, etc.).

Social media creates a community where like minded people can interact, mingle, and explore. They provide information that's judged by those within the community to be deemed noteworthy. It is interesting to note that social media sites have the same basic format in how they propagate the content provided by their users. Individuals are able to vote on the content or respond to the content. In this way, social media sites seek to gain and direct viewers. Social media is about giving control over information back to the masses.

Information provided on these sites is judged on a combination of criteria; its relevance, its quality, and the uniqueness of its content. The information is seen as trustworthy and unbiased because it is peer filtered. The information within these communities will have influence on the people who view it and can determine what actions they take regarding this new found information. As social media sites prosper with large user bases of interconnected individuals they provide a new platform for finding web based information.

Social media is inherently personal. The users provide personal information and ideas, respond to them, share them, and create a social media personality. This is where social media marketing comes in. Marketers want to know who you are and what you like. With booming global communication and technologies social media sites are seen as important venues for exchange. They embrace ideas surrounding information like connectivity, word of mouth, promotion of quality, and trust of those deemed trustworthy. Social media sites are important because they contain information users find interesting, timely and informative.

Marketing is the sharing of information to influence a consumer to purchase a product or service. Social media marketers want to get their messages out across the many mediums (video, interactive, audio, etc.) on social media sites to the individuals spending time on them. Social media sites also provide a space for advertisers to promote and gain insight on their products. These sites are seen as a great venue for advertising because of their ability to reach individuals based on their demographics, like age, location, and search profiles.

In both social media and marketing a niche is a smaller more focused section of a broader market. Niche communities are able to congregate within social media sites and share ideas and fraternize on very specific topics. This idea is very important to marketers and social media because they want to be able to reach the appropriate market for their information. Niche marketing is the process of finding and serving these specific market segments and designing custom-made strategies to profit from them.

Currently social media sites hold huge amounts of information. Social media is a great tool for spreading information and adding to it. Do people want more personalized, up to date and high quality information? What kind of information do users actually get in a current search inquiry? Is there a better way of accessing all the information on the web? These are questions social media is trying to answer. Social media sites are giving the power back to the people for exchanging information; it is a tool that helps society communicate and connect. Society values unbiased, accurate information and access to it. Social media provides personalized information and the chance for your voice to be heard. Social media's ability to influence one's personal decisions will give it huge potential to shape the society we live in.

About The Author
Andrew Clough is StepForth's Social Media Specialist at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Andrew's articles and those of the StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com, Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198

Color: An Important Aspect of Business

by Joann Snell

The world was once black and white. The television had black and white programs and publications were mostly black. However, in the 60s, all that changed to what we see today. Therefore, we know color is now the best means of drawing attention to any media.

We each have our own tastes. Therefore, different people have different ideas in associating colors with products. There is no actual answer on what the best color would be for a product and at one time everything was done by chance. Now you can now find the best equipment and personnel in the design and printing industry that help produce beautiful labels. The same importance is now applied to producing the appropriate label as it is to producing a product. There are many family owned companies that guarantee in creating a label with 100% satisfaction and that gives a lasting impression.

Getting brand awareness that gives a lasting impression is a point of major concern for most companies today. By using a variety of logo or product colors you may decrease your marketing efforts.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of retail space is greatly reduced with the wrong colors. Sometimes, the variety of colors from different products may make a unique product blend with other products on the store shelf. Therefore, uniformity of a color is very important in creating brand awareness and a presence in the retail atmosphere.

The best way of making a product stand out from other products is with colors and materials that pop. Large manufacturers know that value and this is why they are always striving for color brilliance. You too, are sure to experience increased sales when your product has good shelf appeal.

Colors have a psychological influence in marketing The effect of colors in influencing the mind of the prospective customer is high. The moods and the sentiments are represented with colors. Symbolic representation is not blind, but an effective way of communicating the feelings spontaneously and strongly.

The changes we observe on earth with the advent of spring, the blossoming of the colorful plants and the joyful moods of the birds and other living beings. They all have been so synchronized that it stands testimony to the fact that color does have an effect on the human mind and the living beings. Therefore, as we verbally communicate to people in different dialects, so do the effects of colors in nonverbal communication.

The best example would be nature. As a creative artist, Mother Nature has made the best ever color combinations on earth. Whether it is color in flowers, in butterflies or in the other millions of living creatures. We as a civilized world had the basic lessons of the uses and impacts of the colors from Mother Nature.

While Mother Nature has used the same impact for its continuity, reproduction and sustenance, we today make use of the same for our selfish motives. Even more so in getting the target market attracted. To the ever expanding clientele, the language of the color has evolved as an effective marketing tool.

About the Author
Joann Snell is a freelance Graphic Designer. She specializes in print, corporate id, branding, and other marketing tools for small-medium sized businesses. For further information visit Jo's Graphic Designs at http://www.josgraphicdesigns.com.

Competitive Analysis SEO

by Adam McFarland

One of the most telling things you can do in any business is study your competitors. Your competition can reveal weakness in your business and open your eyes to new opportunities in your industry. The same is true in the web world, and with search engine optimization in particular. Why does your competitor consistently rank higher than you for important terms? What programming, content, and link building strategies are they using to help attain those rankings? Answer those questions and you'll be one step closer to out-ranking them and bringing that traffic and those sales to your site.

Who should you study?

A lot of industries will have hundreds of direct competitors, and many more indirect competitors. You can very easily get caught up in "paralysis by analysis" if you try to analyze every possible competitor that you have. The purpose of studying your competition is to better your business, so I prefer to limit my analysis to ten sites or less.

You probably already know a handful of your adversaries. Either they were the incumbent leaders in your industry when you began, or your customers constantly remind you that they have lower prices, or every time you Google a phrase in your industry they come up first in the search results. Those sites are the first ones you should add to your list to research. Fill the rest of the list in by picking sites that consistently rank high for the most searched phrases related to your business. If you haven't already done keyword research, I recommend starting with the SEO Book Keyword Research Tool. Once you understand which terms are searched the most, it will be pretty obvious which sites consistently rank high.

What information should you collect?

There are a plethora of potential metrics that can be used to gauge the competition. The six below can be collected for free in a matter of minutes and do a great job of explaining why a site ranks as well as it does.

Site Age - the age of a site is generally considered to be one of the top five most influential factors in how high a site ranks. While it's something that is out of your control, sometimes you'll see a site from 1999 consistently outranking a better site from 2006 and it's helpful to understand why. You can see the history of a site using a nifty tool called the Wayback Machine.

Y! Links - the number of backlinks the domain has in Yahoo. As you probably already know by now, the quantity and quality of links pointing to a site is extremely relevant in determining how high it ranks. Looking at the particular links that your competition has serves as one of the best ways to learn how they market their site. It is also one of the best ways to brainstorm potential link building ideas for your site. For example, if your competitors products are all reviewed on a popular blog in your industry, there's a good chance that same blog would want to review your products as well (giving you free publicity and quality links).

Pages indexed - this refers to the number of pages listed in a search engines index (also referred to as cached pages). Sites that rank high are generally easy for Google, Yahoo, and MSN to spider and thus have nearly all of their pages included in their indexes. You can check how many pages are indexed by typing in site:www.yoursite.com, or by using a tool like the Indexed Pages tool on SEOmoz. Using sitemaps is a great way to ensure that every page on your site is indexed properly.

Last indexed - this is the date of the last time Google visited the home page of the site. Ideally your site is indexed every single day, but it usually depends on how frequently you update your content. If you update content regularly, you should be being indexed at least once per week. You can find this date by clicking the "Cached" link next to any Google search result.

Home Page PR - this refers to Google Page Rank, a 0-10 score that Google gives to assess the value of a web page. It's primarily determined by the quality and quantity of incoming links, and is a quick and dirty way to see how popular a page is. Since it's a universal metric that all webmasters can quickly check, it's often misused to assume how much traffic a site gets or how high it ranks -- neither of which correlate very well with PR. For our purposes though, it's a nice barometer to look at. It can be checked using the Google Toolbar or a site like PRChecker.

Strongest Pages - SEOmoz has a great strongest pages tool that will list off the most important pages on a domain, based on number of links pointing to it and its current rankings. This gives you an idea of what content on their domain is causing the high rankings. Is it popular articles? Is it product pages? Whatever their strongest pages, you should take note and use those pages as guidelines for potential additions and modifications to your site.

Using the information to your advantage

Pretty quickly you'll start to realize that all of the sites you're analyzing have been around for a few years, are indexed frequently and thoroughly, and have a lot of quality backlinks. So how do you get there? Well there's nothing you can do about site age, but the rest are very much in your control: you can model title tags and page headings after the competition, you can structure your site and internally link the way that they do, you can add sections related to topics that they rank high for, and you can most definitely expand your link building plan by studying what has worked for them. Ultimately, analyzing and understanding your competition will reduce your learning curve and accelerate the growth of your site.

About the Author
Adam McFarland is the co-founder of Faceup-Sites and the author of the Faceup Web Marketing Book: The Perfect Combination of SEO, SEM, and other tactics to maximize results without breaking the bank. Faceup-Sites specializes in helping businesses develop highly customizable sites that are easy to update, visually pleasing, and search engine friendly at a fraction of the cost of what most developers charge.

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