The Easter holiday shopping season is in full swing and it may just be your last chance to make some big sales before the back to school season starts. Many merchants are expecting this to be a rather slow summer shopping season so taking some time now to build a few additional inbound links and position your brand on virtual product shelves across the Web will serve you well in the meantime. Let's let at a few must-have back links for e-commerce stores and how to go about acquiring them.

Before we start I'll go ahead and include the standard disclaimer: the sites listed below present opportunities for you to build back links and nothing more. There will be an investment (at least of your time) so understand that you'll need to build relationships with the users of these sites as you would anywhere else, ensuring message consistency across channels, revisiting frequently to promote competitive positioning and testing product offers to see what works in which community.

Also, even though you are participating in these sites for the purpose of gaining new inbound links (and hopefully sales), keep in mind that you will want to track the upstream traffic, monitor conversations and brand mentions and periodically assess your competition to make sure your e-commerce store is being seen in the best and brightest possible light.

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Kaboodle: Users of this social shopping community (owned by Hearst) are able to find, recommend and share products with others and retailers are able to get exposure with those serious about shopping. The main feature available for retailers looking to get into Kaboodle is the Brand Profiles offering. Users can add products themselves of course but merchants can aggregate products from their main domain, showcase popular products, interact with the Kaboodle community and access activity highlights within the community involving your brand through the use of these profiles. Perhaps the best part of it all is that your site will get a link for all that participation in the Kaboodle community. 

Wists: Backed by Gawker Media, Wists is a similar social shopping and recommendation site for power-shoppers but it has far less traffic than Kaboodle. The upside (again) of course is that they will indeed provide a link back to your site but you'll need to do some legwork to get that done. Publishers/merchants can include "add to wishlist" buttons on their site that will automatically extract thumbnail images of catalog items.

StyleHive: Another social shopping/e-commerce bookmarking site worthy of mention is StyleHive. Users of the site (which could include the likes of you) are able to add any product and a link to where users can find it. StyleHive was recently purchased by ThisNext (the two companies rebranded as CurateMedia) another identical service in the social shopping arena.  

StyleFeeder: Now a division of Time, Inc., StyleFeeder positions itself as a personal shopping engine and it has long made waves in both the e-commerce and affiliate marketing space. Retailers interested in getting seen on StyleFeeder will need either to submit product data feeds apply to affiliate networks, (GAN, CJ, SAS, etc.) or work with Stylefeeder to receive a custom quote for bulk data uploads or special promotions. 

Number one: What's your objective?

Number two: How are you going to measure it?

These two questions aren't revolutionary - they're among the first questions that should be asked at the start of planning for any new project. Yet they often seem to get left by the wayside, or at the very least poorly answered, when it comes to social media marketing projects.

Question #1 is pretty straightforward, though the answers are often anything but. Some days you get lucky, and the answer is clear and concise - "increase unaided brand awareness from 10% to 15%" or "drive 20% more traffic to our new landing page." All too often however the answer is either vague - "build buzz" - or confuses the objective with the means to achieve it - "get more fans and followers!"

Don't be afraid of "why?"

In the latter case, a quick "why?" is probably in order, as in "why do you want to get more fans and followers?" What actually matters to the project owner? Do they think having lots of fans and followers is a means to getting more traffic for their web site? If so, consider resetting the objective to that, and later in your planning process evaluate building fans/followers as one of many possible tactics to achieve it.

Measurement can clarify the issue

If the response to "what's your objective" was clear and concise, "how are you going to measure it" has been largely answered. Now you can get down to the details of which measurement tools you'll use and who's accountable for tracking and reporting.

But if the stated objective is vague or confusing, then asking "how are you going to measure it?" can be incredibly liberating. It focuses the conversation around what really matters to the project owner - "buzz" for example might mean getting lots of social media mentions to lay the groundwork for a glitzy new PR and ad campaign. It might mean getting lots of positive blog posts pointing to a new landing page. Or it might mean inspiring a bunch of product reviews on all the right recommendation and e-commerce sites to influence future purchase decisions.

Who knows unless you ask, and you're setting yourself up for failure if you don't.

By asking "how do you measure it?" you force the project owner to cut through the fluffy vagueness of "awareness" "buzz" or "education" and get down to what's actually important, what the real business objective is. And by arriving at common agreement on the actual, concrete objective and exactly how and what you're going to measure, you've helped ensure the strategy and tactics you generate are driving to the correct goal right from the start.

For some great posts on the topic of social media measurement as it relates to goal setting, I recommend starting with the The Practical Social Media Measurement Series by Amber Naslund of Radian6.

It’s still a combination of folks I follow on Tumblr and Twitter. I also find out about new bands from the Hype Machine. And I get my social radio fix from last.fm.

The new thing in the mix for me is Extension.fm which I’ve written about before.

And I love all of these services. They are simply amazing.

However, I’m wondering if this mix of tools is the right approach or does a more focused service need to exist to be laser focused on providing the best social network experience for music.

Right now, last.fm does a great job keeping track of my music playback history with their scrobbler. It works across multiple third party services and that data is pure gold.

But there isn’t a timeline. The logged in home page doesn’t look social even though there is a lot of social stuff built into the guts of the service like friends and neighborhood radio..

Here’s what the home page looks like:

That’s not the timeline or dashboard interface I’ve come to love from my favorite social nets.

There are also a variety of other tools out there that keep track of stuff my friends buy or consume (think Blippy). When a friend of mine buys a new record, shouldn’t that stuff show up in a music social net timeline? Or when they heart their favorite track on hypem or tumblr. Or when they see a live show?

I think there is a lot of opportunity to create a lightweight, simple & focused music social network that does a few things right and supports other services too.

The danger is that it becomes a dysfunctional swiss army knife which would be a missed opportunity.

Many of the brands I work with are extremely interested in the Chinese market. With a burgeoning economy and a billion people, it's easy to understand why. In fact, one of my clients got back from China just in time to fly to Austin for this conference. Her description of the differences was fascinating.

So if we're going to want to look at social media marketing for the Chinese market, we need to understand social media in China. That's why I attended "Social Media and China: Different than You Think" at SxSW. The panelists included:

• Jacqui Zhou from Dell
• Benjamin Joffee from Plus Eight Star; and
• Sam Flemming from CIC

Social Media Penetration

While the Internet population in China exceeds that of the United States, the initial question was about socia media usage, and whether or not it's popular. And it is. There are 221 million blogs, 117 million BBS and 176 million social network users. While Facebook is blocked, most people use a local Chinese social network, QZone, which was built by Tencent.

Note the Bulletin Board System reference there. While they are called that in China, they are not a throwback to the 1990 BBS systems in the US. You can upload pictures, video and more, in an anonymous forum, and it's among the most popular ways to spend time. And chatter about brands is more likely to take place on BBS than anywhere else. The most popular platforms are listed below, showing clearly that people have multiple accounts as there are only about 400m online users in China:

• Tencent (1B+, 485m active)
• Qzone (310m)
• RenRen 200m (50m mobile)
• Kaixin001 (75M)
• 51.com (160m)

What Do People Do Online?

272 million on instant message, 222 million on online video, 108 million on online shopping (The market leader beat eBay and chased them from the market), 265 million on online gaming and 321 million using online music.

Looking at the social technographics ladder, America has 21% of people who create original content, while China has 40% of people who create content. That's a very significant difference. While the inactives are equal (25% of each population), and people in the US are more likely to join social networks than Chinese (25% to 23%), the large percentage of creators is potentially interesting from a marketing standpoint.

Zhou noted the difference between the stereotype that Asians are less likely than Americans to speak directly and wondered if anonymous BBS systems are popular as a result. Flemming agreed, but noted that it's also a reaction to a media system that isn't fully objective. So the people spread the word themselves through many of these social systems. Virtual currency (at QQ, pictured above) is so popular that it's now taxed by the government. That's a shocking sign of its ubiquity.

What Are they Talking About?

By industry, the chatter varies dramatically. In order of declining popularity, conversations center around

1. Automobiles (~13m)
2. Mobile phone (~7m)
3. Sports (~3m conversations)
4. Computer
5. Baby products
6. Cosmetics
7. Healthcare

Flemming is finding that these conversations are changing the way people buy cars. His friend went online and asked if anyone wanted to buy the same car as her so they could get a discount. Two weeks later, 55 people went into the same dealership and bought 55 cars together. Needless to say, they got a very good deal by using this "group purchase" concept. Not surprisingly, mentions of "group purchase" in China have grown dramatically over the last two years.

Chatter around the Ford Focus found that more than half of people discussing the car didn't use the official brand name. They instead used a popular nickname for the car. Absent that local knowledge, the conversation tracking system could be set up incorrectly. In fact, a whole new language called Mars language has been created online and many people use them to speak both online and off. (I'd hate to have to build a monitoring system to track a made up language.) These slangs and languages are so pervasive that the university system had to ban the use of net slang in entrance exams.

China Learned from Korea and Japan

Joffe noted that China learned a lot from Korea and Japan. Korea's popuar Cyworld and Japan's Mixi, MobileGameTown and Gree (all of which are listed on the stock exchange and selling virtual goods). The online advertising market is not as valuable in China, so monetization occurs largely through sales of virtual goods. In fact $5 Billion worth of virtual goods were sold online, which is 5 times bigger than the US (down from 25x in 2008).

Tencent made over $1.5B USD (which is roughly 3x what Facebook made). Tencent is third largest internet company in the world, after only Google and Amazon. Most Americans know nothing of it, but their net margin is 40%, which is astounding.

Online Gaming in China

Love Farmville? The first farm game was made in China by a company called 5 minutes. That was inspired by a Japanese game, and then Zynga copied it and brought it to the U.S., but they weren't the first by any means. The original explanation for popularity was "because there are lots of farmers in China." The popularity of Farmville in the US, however, largely debunks that.

Doob.cc has a very popular game in China. It has a virtual goods component, and it looks like a standard rhythym game (think Dance Dance Revolution), but you dance with someone else via the network. The boys buy the girls they meet online virtual gifts, just as you would buy a drink in the bar. Suddenly the game is extending social life and even dating online.

The 5 Cs of Chinese Innovation

1. Copy: We always start with something.
2. Combination: By combining two things (i.e., instant messaging and virtual goods), you can get a great idea.
3. Competition: As soon as there are two strong video sites, for example, they need to compete and differentiate, which leads to innovation.
4. Constraints: Because you can't do everything, the constraints foster innovation, even knew business models (because online advertising isn't workable, for example).
5. China: It has to work for China, and the unique settings of the country, which might be different than for example a Japanese consumer.

Fewer Credit Cards

With much less popularity of credit cards, how do you get the payments for virtual currency? QQ began by selling scratch cards in stores. You'd buy it in store, scratch off the code, enter it and have the money deposited into your account. Very clever.

Other Examples

Zhenai is the most popular dating site in China (and the world, with 22 m profiles it's bigger than Match.com). Since they couldn't use teh same model, they have 350 people on staff who call people up to arrange a date. Then they call you back to see how the date was. They then get feedback from the person dating, and give you feedback on how you did on your date. That should, in theory, make you a better dater. They charge ~$450 USD for a six month subscription, which is very expensive given then income levels there. But they are adding a lot of value. Would that work in the United States? Interesting question.

• Lihua allows you to order food delivery by IM.
• BabyTree is a social network for young parents where you can also buy goods for the child. It's beginning to become profitable. The limitation on number of children you can have also impacts this site, both positively and negatively.
• Dianping is a Yelp-like site that has many more reviews than Yelp. It also ranks the many dishes at each restaurant in terms of popularity.

While China is known in the U.S. in part for their rampant piracy (software, fashion, films, etc.), it's clear from the level of participation, and the monetization of that participation, that China's innovation also offers lessons for marketers in the United States and elsewhere. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns have moved far beyond simply optimizing <title> tags, page content, and generating incoming links.

Now that Google “universal” or “blended” search has become widespread on almost every search query, a standard organic listing is competing with images, video, news, local, paid and real-time search. Now we can add social search results to the mix. These new sets of results not only deliver content that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, but also have the potential to push other, organic listings off the visible page. That means social media optimization (SMO) is now in direct competition with SEO. However, don’t be discouraged. The good news is that it’s often much easier to get top rankings for a blended or social search category than a highly competitive organic listing. That is, of course, if you understand how to optimize for Google Social Search.

Understanding Google Social Search
It’s important to differentiate Social Search from Google’s realtime search results. Real-time results are labeled “Latest results for ...” and include a scrolling results box for some queries. Alternatively, Google Social Search is labeled “Results from people in your social circle for ...” and results appear with an accompanying image (or avatar) from your social circle.

Think of Social Search as Google “Trust” Search. By personally choosing to “follow” certain friends and websites online, Google assumes that information from these sources is important, relevant and trusted by you and uses these contacts to form your social graph. Then, particular queries will return results from those in your circle — their blog posts, Twitter updates, etc. Google feels this can add yet another layer to search results and improve your overall search experience.

How does Google Determine Relevancy for Social Search?
Google claims to use a normal ranking algorithm when determining what websites to display first in Social Search results. So, page content, number of incoming links, and incoming link quality and authority are the primary ranking factors. However, expect this to change as Google continues to test and tweak Social Search results and puts more emphasis on the Direct and Secondary connections within your social circle.

Optimizing for Google Social Search
First and foremost, you must have a Google Profile that includes information about you, and links to websites you want to promote. This should include links to your primary website and its weblog, and social profile URL’s including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, FriendFeed, Yelp, etc. In short, any active social network profile should be included. While some networks and their content will not be indexed by Google (such as Facebook), linking those profiles to your Google profile (and vice-versa) will offer a better chance of connecting with people through Google and, ultimately, be found in Social Search results.

Establish Connections within Gmail and Google Chat
While time consuming, it is worth gathering as many Gmail and/or Google Chat contacts as possible, as it will increase your exposure in Social Search. Unfortunately, contacts from other networks are not as easily imported. You can’t add Twitter followers easily — they must be added one-byone. But you can import contacts from a CSV file, for example. Remember, not only will your contacts see you in their Social Search results, but you have the potential to be seen by the connections-of-your-connections or friends-offriends. In short, your reach will grow exponentially as you add connections.

Keep Content Relevant and High-Quality
Aggressively pursuing new contacts is important to Social Search success. However, you want to stay relevant and post quality content. Posting low-quality, keyword-stuffed content will result in the same fate as usual — low conversion rates. Or, in this case, you might find yourself banned from your contacts’ Social Search results. Remember, these results are targeted to friends and trusted contacts. So, you want to appear as genuine and trustworthy as possible.

Social Search is Here to Stay
With the explosion of Facebook and Twitter you can no longer ignore the enormous potential in being social. Google wants its share of the social pie, so don’t expect them to remain idle while Facebook and Twitter try to eat into their search market share. However, it is important to keep in mind that Google will continue to test and tweak results. Not every query will result in Social Search results, and you can expect many changes on the results pages and to the social ranking algorithm in the future. In the interim, get ahead of the game by optimizing your Google Profile for Social Search while competition is fairly low. It will benefit your overall social media and SEO efforts.

:: by Dante Monteverde, SEO Corner Columnist at Website Magazine ::

While those are powerful ideas and opportunities, I’m much more interested in things that are focused on the user/patient first.

All the power & magic of sharing, information, social nets, community and transparency need to come to our healthcare system. And I believe it will.

(answered this question using the new Tumblr Ask feature).

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