I came across a great analogy over at Zen Habits, and it's got me rethinking how I view social media:
If my personal website is my digital home, then my social networking profiles on Facebook and Twitter, etc. are my embassies. Embassies exist to maintain relationships with "distant lands".
Although the post is really about gaining focus and managing your digital life, I think the idea of social media profiles as embassies in distant lands is fantastic, and I'm going to run with it. My apologies to the author (Tyler Tervooren), who probably didn't intend anything I'm about to say.
Here are 6 ways to build up your social media embassies without an international incident…
1. Declare Independence
Before you can really have an embassy, you need to be a sovereign nation. It's great that your Facebook page has 100 Likes and your band's MySpace profile just cleared the double-digit friend mark, but what happens when the rules change? An embassy isn't a permanent home – politics change, alliances shift, and you ultimately have no control over someone else's territory.
The impact of social media is growing, no doubt, but that doesn't mean you should surrender your entire presence to someone else's site. Make sure you have a permanent online home that you control. Your social media embassies should be an extension of that home.
2. Be a Model Citizen
Your embassy is, first and foremost, your face to the world. You don't see countries set up a lawn chair next to a cooler under an umbrella with "Embassy" written on it in permanent marker. It's ok to create a light profile for some recon – you may decide that a given social network isn't for you – but once you're in, remember that you're representing your home country. Finish your profile, and put a little time into it. Connect with people and participate. Nothing says "poser" (or "spammer") on Twitter, for example, like someone with 1 update, no bio, and an egg for an avatar.
3. Respect the Locals
Being on a social media site is like travelling in someone else's country. If you never plan on coming back, you can play the obnoxious tourist all you want. If you want to set up a home away from home, though, you need to respect the locals, their customs, and even their leaders. Don't assume that what flew in some other country will be acceptable in your new embassy. To put it simply: listen first, and then participate.
4. Learn the Language
This is an extension of (3), but it's important to enough to stand on its own. Every social network has its unique lingo, and talking the talk can really help smooth over any diplomatic missteps. Know your hash-tags from your emoticons, and remember that the slang that can be hip in one country can make you look like a loser somewhere else. I'm not saying you have to talk like you're in high-school or pepper every conversation with "OMG LOL WTF?!", but learn to appreciate the flavor of the local language. It will also help you avoid misunderstandings.
5. Bring Your Credentials
Anybody with an email address can set up a social media embassy, and it's easy to forget that being a stranger in a strange land is a privilege. What do you bring to the table? Can you produce the paperwork, if you have to? Treat this as a thought exercise – I strongly believe that the more you understand your own value proposition, the more effective you'll be in social media. Know why you're there, and you'll be able to back it up with real contributions.
6. Foster Allegiances
Embassies have an important function – to be in the right place at the right time when a crisis occurs and to be near the heart of international relations. Your social media embassies aren't just a place to broadcast your opinions and hurl links at people. They're an opportunity to build relationships. I'd estimate that 60-70% of my current consulting business has come from a combination of blogging and my participation in social media.
Take the time to learn about people – Twitter and Facebook blend business and personal relationships in a way that makes it easy to build rapport (if you're sincere about it). Pay close attention to existing allegiances – who do your allies know, and how many steps away are those contacts from you? Done carefully (without pushing your own agenda too hard), it's easy to broaden your circle of influence, sometimes in just a couple of steps.
How's Your Embassy?
How is your own social media presence like an embassy? Are you on good terms with the locals, or are you teetering on the brink of war? This is mostly a thought exercise, and I'd love to hear what other people think about it in the comments.
Photo borrowed from Bodew.com. It really has no relevance to the post, but I was looking for a picture of a flag umbrella with a lawn chair, found this, and loved it. I'm not even entirely sure what it is, but someone please go buy one.
Totally agree Pete - building "embassies" as you call them is often a far more scalable. useful and white hat marketing tactic to build your brand and earn some links to your content/site than a lot of the junk "SEO" tactics (reciprocal link directories, I'm looking in your direction! You too crappy article marketing!).
Just curious - what "embassies" do people feel are critical? My top list looks something like:
I like https://knowem.com/ for this, but not sure about the value of all of those sites (obviously many are niche specific).
Loved your answer but it raises an issue: when you remove article and other directories, what are the techniques that are left? I know I could go back and read all the articles on Seomoz but could you list them in a comment?
A comment might not be the ideal spot, but I promise to do a post or article on this sometime soon. There's SO MANY great, white hat, high value link building strategies that work better in the long run than these, but I realize that for many practioners, these old school, bread-and-butter tactics are the majority of their efforts.
Thanks Rand!
Most of the people and companies I work with are much more succesfull with a targeted, very focused aproach with a few social media outlets.
In my specific case:
And I consider my presence here on SEOmoz (Profile, Comments, YOUmoz, Q&A) one of the most important "Gianluca Fiorelli" embassies.
In general for my clients:
I was just about to say the same. I probably spend more time commenting here than on other platforms. This is true social media for me. You also seem to have predicted and answered my G8 question!
Hello Sir, Can you please send me the invitation for https://www.quora.com/ , without invitation i am unable to sign up. :-/
Syed. Was this comment directed at me? Perhaps you can send me an email and explain what it is that you want me to do/send. Robb
When you talk about "Segnalo", I suppose you are talking about the one hosted by Virgilio... am i right?
I didn't know the site at all, so i'm very curious about it.
Yes, it's that one. Is more similar to delicious than Digg (for that kind of site see OkNotizie)
Hi Rand. As a small business owner I wouldn't really have time to commit to diplomatic ties with all those 'nations'. For practical purposes I might have to stick with a non-niche 'G8'
Facebook LinkedIn Twitter YouTube Quora and, er, 3 others.
Other suggestions for a G8 welcome.
Wow that's a long list Rand. Can you really participate meaningfully in all of those communities? I'd love to say that I'm active in all of these arenas but the truth is that I use FB and Twitter and that's about it - I'd worry I'd be spreading myself too thinly. Where do you find the time?
Maybe you could start to use the philosophy behind this 30 minutes calculator :) (sorry Peter, I had to do it)
I don't think you have to make use of every suggested site. If it fits with your business then that's great. It's better to have 2 thriving accounts than 8 accounts with tumbleweed blowing across the screen :D
This isn't necessarily easy for 1-man companies, I think. Larger ones often don't see the importance, though, and this post should open their eyes.
Interesting to see you name Reddit. Seems to me the general tone of the site makes it fairly unsuitable for commercial / marketing purposes. Never mind all the fake, anonymous and multiple accounts. Anything seen as being basically an advert (bear in mind most Redditors are fairly tech savvy people) is likely to get downvoted to oblivion without having generated much traffic. Surely Q&A sites are better for establishing yourself as an expert.
Guess you missed the conference then ;) Brief summary: if you use it with a bit of creativity, you can get a lot back. Lots of good tips from the speakers.
I think running and maintaining social media embassies (esp. so many) is not a good long term marketing strategy. I should be driving my hard earned traffic from facebook and linkedin to my website and not the other way. I should be creating contents for my own website and not for others. Facebook and linkedin are good platforms for promoting a business as long as I use them as a seconday marketing channels. But when i make them my primary marketing channels or lable them as 'critical' i run the risk of loosing my data and target audience as i dont own either the data or the websites. IMHO ideally all social activites should happen on my website and not on some social network which i dont own.
I do think there's a balance, and where it is depends a lot on your goals. For example, I've driven more consulting business directly from social media than from my own site. Twitter (for me, at least) let me build relationships, develop trust, and eventually cross-connect my other efforts. I still keep a permanent home, built a solid blog, and now that traffic drives business, but the real results started "overseas" for me.
Obviously, if you sell a product directly, it's going to be a bit different, but there are still unique advantages of these embassies, and their role in marketing is evolving rapidly. I'm not sure there's one right answer right now.
Your list is an embarrassing reminder that my Quora embassy is, so far, a "Save the Date - Embassy Opening!" card sent out to 100 people, who showed up to a vacant lot. Time to practice what I preach.
Quick question.
If article marketing is so crappy, why is it listed as your primary form of link building for a client on a blog post dated Jan 7, 2011?
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/our-online-reputation-management-playbook
Correction: It was a YOUmoz post promoted to the main page, but still...
How does one use a Wikipedia profile for SEO value (for either myself or my company)? In my research today I found 1) lots of rules that seem to deny that and 2) lots of deleted profiles -- this includes Rand's profile and most people from a sample of about a dozen people I checked on Knowem who claimed they had a Wikipedia profile.
The idea was mentioned twice in the comments to this article so there must be some benefit but I sure can not see how to do it. Any suggestions?
Keep in mind that SEO is just a part of a larger marketing picture. Wikipedia, while only offering fringe SEO benefits, is a great way to be recognized as an expert in your field.
I like the focus on SMM and hope to see SeoMoz continue to offer even more content like this. Building social "embassies" that can flourish not only brings those more "traditional" marketing benefits, it brings SEO benefits as well. That makes it a very effective leverage point for online marketing, but only when done properly. Which is precisely why articles like these are adding value to the internet marketing community.
I like to break SMM campaigns, or embassy building campaigns if you will, into phases:
Phase 1: Research social media and social technology. Determine where you can setup your embassies and what sort of tools are available to help you manage them, and social technology best practices in general. Make sure you include understanding how SMM impacts SEO here so you can maximize that aforementioned leverage point. Also consider how to prioritize your limited resources: avoid overstretch but don't leave any untapped potential on the table either, find that resource allocation balance.
Phase 2: Planning: Establish goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. In other words, have a real plan that will govern your embassy building efforts, don't walk into this blindly just hoping for the best, if you do you are likely to get results that fall somewhere between wasting time and serious brand damage.
Phase 3: Listen! As you mention above, and as most of our mothers taught us, you must listen and learn before you act. Learn the norms and etiquette of the communities you decide to particpate in... before you participate!
Phase 4: Participate! Once you've listened and learned, it's time to participate. By that I mean strictly engaging in conversations of a non commercial/marketing nature (unless you are in a unique niche community which encourages such behavior). Build relationships before you even think about leveraging them for traditional marketing and SEO benefit.
Phase 5: Content Creation. An important key to maximizing your embassies is the content you create in your "home country". As many have alluded to above, you aren't trying to establish autonomous countries (or collectives for you monty python fans), you are trying to establish embassies which can benefit the homeland. After researching, listening and participating you should have a good idea for what content will be best to share (dare I say, promote?) in the communities you are engaged in. Publish that content to your home site and then share it through your embassies to reach a broader audience.
Phase 6: Generate Buzz! Engage your following. Use social bookmarking. Work that buzz generation magic to get the most out of the content you produce.
Phase 7: Feedback and control. Surely you established metrics and key performance indicators as part of your planning phase? Check for successes and failures, react and adjust your efforts accordingly.
I can tell you the above approach works from experience. It's a great feeling looking at the analytics and seeing a social media segment that was once a flatline start growing into a mountain range. Even better is when you know that traffic is your target audience, not a bunch of kids trying to promote their new record label ;-)
Good stuff - I really like that you've got 4 entire steps that occur before you start pushing out content. Some people rush to exploit social media, but the irony is that, without a plan, goals, and the network/trust to support it, those efforts don't accomplish anything. Sooner isn't always better.
Nice list of steps. Planning is often overlooked... but I've also known people to skimp on step 5 and focus on step 6. That's just as disastrous.
Pete, I love this post so much I can't even tell you! While I agree with all of them, the first one "Declare your independence" really gets to me. I actually just tweeted about this today while I was sitting in a panel at SES NY. The speaker was talking about how to market your Facebook page and how some brands push their Facebook page over their own website. And I just don't get it! Maybe I'm not "thinking outside the box" here... but why in the world from an SEO, branding, whatever, perspective would you want to send traffic, links, etc. to Facebook rather than to your own site? Seriously though... can someone explain this to me? I mean I understand that you want people to engage there, and it's a way to build community, yada yada yada, but to surrender your brand completely to Facebook? *sigh* ok... rant over.
Love the post Pete. :)
Hi Jen,
Great point!
I have been wondering about the same thing for a while now.
The advertisers at European soccer games are no longer advertising fortheir own website. On the banners they promote facebook.com/adidas instead of adidas.com or twitter.com/chelseafc instead of chealseafc.com.
They might just have some very poor websites?
Thomas
I do agree that for most businesses or organisations driving traffic to the social networks instead of the main website is a bad idea, but I think it's also worth remembering that some companies don't need to worry about that. Chelsea fans know how to find the Chelsea website and Addidas is such a global brand the same thing goes. These two examples have relatively little to gain from promoting the main website.
Bobs Pottery Shop on the other hand...
Absolutely, that's just what I was thinking. It does depend where you do your selling and what kind of business you're in. It's hard to make some businesses "interesting" (solicitors, accountants and others). Facebook does give you a platform from which to appear a little more interesting, promote a brand and provide customer service.
But for the sake of the internet, declare independence!
Absolutely, that's just what I was thinking. It does depend where you do your selling and what kind of business you're in. It's hard to make some businesses "interesting" (solicitors, accountants and others). Facebook does give you a platform from which to appear a little more interesting, promote a brand and provide customer service.
But for the sake of the internet, declare independence!
There does seem to be a natural pressure to spend more time "abroad", because that's where the audience seems to be these days. I think it's a balancing act, and if your primary goal is branding, it gets a bit odder. Adidas probably doesn't actually sell many shoes on their own site - it's all through their retailers. So, they may not care where they build brand. The danger, to me, is that Facebook could change the rules tomorrow, and their link may go dead, etc. Still, I kind of understand why big brands are suffering that identity crisis.
Of course, these days, saying "My goal is branding" seems to too often translate into "I have no idea what I'm doing."
You know what is crazy but, I have encountered a few brands recently who want to make their "embassy" or Facebook page their main portal on the web. Which is crazy becuase you do not own that property. That is why 100% of the time you need to make your home your website then link out to all your "embassies".
In regards to my embassies I own a few websites in various niches, and have a decent social presence on many various social sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, tumblr and other social sites ect but my problem is running all this stuff when you work full time and manage several people. It is just a process of keeping the spam out of my "embassies" I find on Facebook my pages get soo many annoying affiliate links and fake accounts each day on the pages which have around 10k fans, on the pages with more fans i.e 100k it is even worse the level of spam.
I love the Embassy analogy, and I will use it when talking about the relation that must exists between Social Media presence and their own site.
Just few things:
Agreed on (3). I sometimes balk at the "be real" advice - your persona on social media is never quite "real" (we don't IRL like we do on Twitter, and we shouldn't). Even if your online persona is a little different, though, people have to see authenticity in it. You can't be 5 different people on 5 different social networks - it's just way too easy to track.
I'm amazed, actually, at what people think they can get away with online. What possesses a married Congressman to send half-naked pictures to his girlfriend on Facebook? Either people are really naive or they want to get caught. That's a whole different subject, though :)
You all might enjoy David Armano's slides on Digital Embassies. These are from last fall - he gave this talk for SMC Seattle at some point recently.
https://edelmandigital.com/2010/09/30/digital-embassies-a-blueprint-for-community-engagement/
My top list of social networds would go something like this:
LOL!! OMG! #greatpost (oops, sorry...wrong embassy)
I think that this was a really informative post, and I agree with you completely.
I think that often companies and (personal professional profiles) don’t take enough care or time to "clean house' and keep a tidy profile on their social media sites. They focus so much on the condition of the physical store front and forget that their social media profiles are being seen by customers and buyers too...and that a lacking profile is just as big a no-no as a dirty, unkempt store.
This post actually made me think of the Family Guy episode where he claimed his home as the independent country of "Petoria". He was mean to the locals, made the wrong kind of alliances and subsequently got booted for it. :)
Thnaks a lot randfish for such a big list.
Yes, social media is quite challenging now a days. If you practice best methods, will achieve high results.
One should Make balance between social media and own website as you dont have control over these embaisses.
Most people don't seem to get past declaring independence. Social media is all about interaction and relationships. Some people just don't want to spend the time.
Great points, agree with you on the importance of the social media presence.
Thanks for sharing
Thx for the great post. Definitely working on building our brands via Social Media sites. There are just so many we are working on a top 10 list for updates a few times a week and out top 5 which will have daily posts.
So I've been going through reading your posts. I really enjoy your writing style and the topics always seem relevant. Thanks!
Can you elaborate on the most effective methods to increase your Facebook fan base and # of Twitter followers, without spending TOO much? I'm curious to hear other people's ideas.
If you are just looking to increase the # and not actual sales, then use a mechanical turk. But if you are interested in actually growing your sales and conversions - invest in your brand. In my honest opinion, its about creating a brand and focusing on bringing value to the table.
double posted by mistake.
I should be driving my hard earned traffic from facebook and linkedin to my website and not the other way. I should be creating contents for my own website and not for others. Facebook and linkedin are good platforms for promoting a business as long as I use them as a seconday marketing channels.
I really liked the point you made about declaring independence. I think a lot of people make the mistake of resting on their laurels thinking that the gains they've made on a particular platform will last forever. There's simply no guarantee of that.
Business, and SEO, is all about reinventing yourself. Constantly.
If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were a hardcore gamer like me. Your analogy hammered it home for me, lately I've been thinking of those embassies being the outposts of a kingdom (you). It's essentially the same thing, props for writing this post.
I'm mainly thinking of socials effect on Ranking factors here (I'm an SEO Monkey, after all.).
I've got some clients in industries that, just by nature of who and what they are, can never have a positive dialogue on an open forum. (For example, one client is a debt collection agency. The second they open a facebook group they're setting themselves up for a deludge of negative dialogue that is too emotional to be 'managed'.)
Now, given the ever-increasing stock put in social as a ranking factor, especailly twitter, I wonder if this negative attention would do more good than harm? Would the most effective strategy not be to troll the hell out of people in that case?
I wonder if anyone with more experience in social has noted if Google is analysing the 'tone' of the dialogue when determining its value?
I doubt they're doing a lot of sentiment analysis yet on social media (at least for ranking purposes), but it's bound to happen. The argument I hear most ORM people make (and I'm not one, by any stretch) is that, whether or not you have these conversations, people are having them about you. You can be out there, managing the conversation, or you can cover your ears. Either way, people are talking, most likely.
I agree to some extent, but at the end of the day someone complaining on a random forum (on a site which will carry less weight and a post that will be buried quite quickly) is generally not going to carry as much weight as an official Twitter/Facebook page with negative comments all over it.
I think 'trolling the hell' out of places and basically not caring about the sentiment of discussions (regardless of what search engines think/do), is a very risky strategy because you're a big step closer to prioritising search engines over customers. Customers are getting ever more savvy and reliant on reviews, which is really annoying when you're in an industry where competitors post fake reviews constantly. - Jenni
No argument there. There are some industries where you definitely don't want to set up 20 profiles and then check in a month later. Still, I don't think not engaging at all is the solution. A strong, proactive profile can act as a magnet and draw in people that might be broadcasting everywhere else. That's a good thing to a point. You can moderate and, frankly, you can listen. The best ORM is trying to figure out if there's any truth to the complaints and fixing it. Even if it's just competitors mouthing off, at least you can manage that in your own "embassy". Better to have the fight on your own turf, even if it's a little plot of sovereign land on Facebook.
Great post sir!
I love the idea of using embassy as an example… agreed with every bit of it. Rankfish also shared a long list of embassies which is great but my concern is…
What is the use of joining so many platforms that you cannot handle (Thumbs up if you are good at handling)… like for me I am on limited platforms may be 4 or 5 at max from the list presented by sir Rand! But active and participate on regular basis.
I think one should be on limited platforms but must be active and participative because your embassy is your county’s representation which is most important.
'Your social media embassies aren't just a place to broadcast your opinions and hurl links at people' brilliantly put - how too many use twitter!! Thanks for this post- reminds people to be real, not constantly sharing for the sake of it!
Yeah... way too many people try to be Mashable on twitter... brief, relevant tweets are better for companies.
This article reminds me of a post on webpronews.com titled 'Is it becoming less critical for businesses to have websites' published last year when social media sites were becoming more and more popular day by day.
My views or rather a small discussion with Chris was as follows :
https://www.webpronews.com/is-it-becoming-less-critical-for-businesses-to-have-websites-2010-02#comment-53243
The presence on social media is an online extention of your real world personality.
Yes, it is all about managing the digital life as efficiently as possible as we are spending more time online and that is something that is going to increase more with the way things are going and if we accept it positively and manage it efficiently rather than shying away, it will help us in bringing the much needed harmony on the WWW as the virtual presence of a person according to me is the reflection of the real world persona a person has and sooner or later that gets reflected in the way you interact and project yourself or your company online.
All the rules of real life interaction, communication, courtesy, integrity, etc apply to your online presence too.
At the end of the day either on your site or on social media the credibility has to be established Hence it can be said that your optimized site says what you want to say about yourself and company but social media is what the people say about you. When both the versions are in sync, the credibility is established.
LOL, loved the picture, loved the analogies. I can't say that I have embraced SM, but I participate and have a presence on FB and Twitter. Again, kudos on the post.
Most effective metaphor on this topic yet.
& I can admit that I was one the people in 2006-2007 to set up social media profiles, place links to my sites on them, and never return. If we look at it the way you have put it in this post, we can see the do's and don't's of interating with a community of people. And as you said, each of them are different in their own way but in the end it's still people talking to people.
Brilliant analogy! You're completely right; a social media profile is an extension of your website. Everything you do on social networking sites reflects back on that parent site, and your brand overall. Your embassies have to play by the rules of that particular social networking site, without losing your brand and messaging in the process.
Hey Pete. I have to say this was a really useful post. I've never looked at social in this kind of way either. Well discovered and put across. I really liked how well that analogy worked on so many different levels. A good read. Keep them coming :)
Awesome analogy! I've had this discussion twice in the past week about how/what building social media profiles do for the overall marketing strategy, and I've struggled to come up with a good way to translate the value. I've said things like social media is...
But this idea of embassies in otherlands just hits the nail on the head. It makes my previous attempts kinda lame. :) So thanks!
If it makes you feel better, I stole the idea and ran with it. So, feel free to do the same.
I’m just searching for some resourceful article to collect information about this topics.
And after reading your post it has become a little easier to me , thanks
Nice post Pete. I love the analogy of social profiles becoming your embassies.
I personally think that for most businesses being active on such a wide range of social sites is impractical. Most smaller businesses do not have the time available to commit to such efforts without some kind of outside help.
I think it is more beneficial to use just those that are more likely to provide you with the long term benefit. So if you can create videos use YouTube, if you are able to create regular presentations, use slideshare. So if the shoe fits, wear it!
wasn't my cup of tea. Come on guys more cool algorithm discoveries.!