The Risks of Social Media

These social media has taken its place in all of us, though there are also risks we face whenever we use these tools. Some of the risks that we can encounter in joining these social media sites are that, there can be negative comments on your account, unauthorized people can comment about anything in your account, they can grab your pictures and use it in another site, claiming it as their own and so on.

• Negative Comments. People will definitely leave comments on your account or in your business online. Chances are people who are in your network can see those negative comments; they may take it something negative and may put you or your business at risk. To those who are selling products online, illicit comments on your products may affect you and your business. Some may even have a negative connotation on that, they may say that your business is a scam and so on.
• Unauthorized Comments. If you’re profile is not restricted which there are some sites where everybody can see your account and can comment, expect that there are some will just comment on your profile and hope that all of the comments are pleasant, nice and all that.
• Grabbing of Pictures. When you put pictures on the internet and most likely the chances of being grabbed by other users on the internet is high. And some would put it on the other sites and will claim it as their own. There are some social media sites where you can set your account settings to people that you only wish to see your pictures and even your profile.

In using the social media sites, one is also responsible in what to do, what to posts and what to comment because after all we are accountable for each of our accounts, profiles and many others.

People talks a lot on social media. A lot of them talk and talks and advocate that this is great! This is awesome. Does anyone out there talks on the other side of it? Why are you people talks about it always anyway? Is it for traffic? For better ranking on search engine results? Everyday some blogs up there and here wrote about social media. Social media is good for you as they say. But hey, I’d like to throw a question for you. Did someone read those articles? Do check your stats

Anyway, I’d like to say something about the other side of it. For me traffic and search engine results is essential to all businesses out there! Yes it is true that Social Media is the means of getting notice. But on the other side will hurt you and your business if you aren’t ready for any results out of this new hype.

Example Case #1: The Digg Effect.

When someone diggs a page of yours and somehow you landed on the front page of digg, the first reaction would a big grin in the face. “Yeah, I made it!”. But what this means? Yes of course it will generate great traffic to your site the time you will be on the front page. On the other hand, it will surely SLOW DOWN your web server. You will sometimes ran out of bandwidth. And this is a big disappointment to your potential customers and buyers. The amount of traffic you will have from Digg users will not guarantee for a year. It will not increase your pagerank and search engine results. All you get is just ego that you made it to the front page but miss the opportunity to have a new customer signups and sales during this period of time.

Example Case #2: Youtube’s most voted video

Every day hundreds of videos were uploaded and watched by users online around the world. And then you and your business enters youtube world because someone said so. I don’t think there will be a 100% success on this kind of social media. Maybe some would do and some others will not.  Even if you will be the most voted or watched video on Youtube, the message that you put behind the video will still be ignored. It would just be a waste of  your business time and money in doing your video. Do you know why? Youtube users only share, bookmark or email videos that are weird and funny ones.  What would you do? Do something weird like catching knives and balls of fire to get noticed? I don’t think so.

Social Media has gone so far. A lot of people claimed success of their businesses with social media. Do not get tempted by this. Social Media is merely a tool for one big success and it doesn’t mean that it always apply to anyone to succeed.

to be continued…

A lot of companies panic and now in search for a better SEO solutions upon seeing the decrease of pagerank recently. But my question is this, Does pagerank really counts? Does it increase your sales in a month? What is really important SEO for page rank or SMO for better search engine search results?

For the past few months dealing with social media optimization, I can surely say that page rank is no important with regards to sales. Not unless for those who have paid posts on their blogs since these bunch of guys who buys a link from paid links and pay per post communities require at least a page rank of 2. There are a lot of websites that you can see on the top 10 ranking result on major search engines that has a lower page rank or even has a page rank of 0. I think brother Google is just misleading the web site owners and webmasters for them not to figure out the real score on their Search Algorithm. Common perception if one site has a page rank of 0 is that may be that site is just a start up website or has been penalized or hasn’t been applied with SEO. But hey, check their search rankings with their target keyword. This is what confused me. I’ve been wondering why brother Google gives a lower page rank of one site but then serve that site to the top 10 rank in search results.

Many e-commerce websites struggles to gain more sales. Does pagerank can help in getting bigger sales? I would take a big “NO” for an answer. Brother Google’s Pagerank doesn’t help in getting sales because it not a measurement of how you rank on search engine results and definitely not a measurement of how much traffic you get. We must always remember that sales is equals to the total amount of traffic you get on search results. Better have a low page rank with much number of visits per day than having a high page rank with an ample amount of visitors per day.

What’s more important, SEO for page rank or SMO for better search engine search results? Before pagerank is highly appreciated. But since the birth of the web 2.0, a lot of companies embrace it because Social media shift from web 1.0 which was only good for publishing information to web 2.0 which focuses on interacting to the information thus giving it a high valued relevant and keyword rich content than the page rank itself. As a result Blogs, RSS and wikis palyed a big rule for interacting and circulating fresh contents which gave a superb results in search engines result rankings.

Social media doesn’t take seriously on page rank. As long as you keep your social network active, you will stay on top. Connect to other communities especially those niche’ player-communities to make friends, generate traffic and somehow slowly build links. Don’t mind your page rank. It will get higher sooner or later.

Unfortunately, the said site has been smashed away. Yahoo! Mash creators were going to shut it down at the end of this month. Yahoo! Mash failed to attract global social presence even if they already have prospect users which would come from Yahoo! 360 network which existed while Facebook is in it’s birth. This is the second time that Yahoo! discontinued their social network attempt.

What really happen why they are shutting it down? My guess is that the creators failed to become social with their social network. Word of the mouth isn’t enough? To all those Facebook and Myspace wannabes out there, you better take this as a lesson. A social media site is not just merely a network of users but a socially designed network for targeted audience. Facebook were  exclusively for high school and college students before. Myspace targets on teenagers with glitter texts and flashing emo pictures. And this is what made them became popular. Marketers and Spammers joined in to do their marketing tactics. Some products have succeed and others did not.

• Have a good avatar. You should stand out on the social crowd. Avatars could help you to have a social identity. Pictures are more easily remembered within the network you are connected with. It could be a picture of yourself, a logo of your company, or just a caricature that could tell more about you.

• Have a consistent profile. Being social could simply mean that you are on some social networking sites. Be consistent on your profile to avoid misconceptions of you and what you do. You could have the same usernames on your profiles so that your friends can easily find and connect to you.

• Join social networks where your friends are. Don’t just be everywhere. Yes, there are a lot of social media sites growing fast each day but you don’t have to be on it. Just pick a few sites that interest you, and where you could find most of your friends and then establish yourself.

• Participate. You are on the social media sites where your friends are and the next thing you do is to participate. Just vote, rate and comment on your friend’s articles, videos, etc. Share something to let them know your social presence!

Google tips for bloggers suggests that “Write well and often. A frequently updated site encourages people to return – as long as your content remains relevant and engaging. A useful post once a week is better than low-quality content published daily. A great idea is to search Google for subjects of interest in your field. If you can’t find a good answer, create a blog post about the subject – chances are that other people are searching for the same thing.”

Haven’t you got it yet? Don’t just post about anything just to have some updates and fresh content daily. Stop and think again. Do you think you are writing just to get noticed? Do you blog for the search engines or for your readers? Does it make sense having all those nice articles you got there that are way not so relevant to your sites theme?

Short articles such as this you are reading right now is perfectly good enough than those a hundred more words article that talks about something your readers might not be interested. Just think of your readers before your blog.

SkypeFind works like a search engine for the users for finding and/or reviewing local businesses. You can also add or edit listings or even post comment to a particular business listed. This is becoming more exciting because the community can increase the listing by adding their business names or sharing  businesses and services they’ve tried. They can have their reviews, let others read it and even add reviews to existing businesses posted.

SkypeFind is only available in the latest released of Skype. You can download here and try it out.