I put the following social media poll together to see how much time individuals and businesses spends per day on Search Engine Optimization and Social Media. Would love everyone’s feedback! Simply fill out the poll below:

Here are some social media stats from Jake Hird

• Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.*
• 80% of companies use, (or are planning to use), LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching its 45-millionth membership.
• Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.
• Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopaedia.
• The most recent figure of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million. The same report into the Blogosphere also revealed that on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a single 24-hour period.
• It’s been suggested that YouTube is likely to serve over 75 billion video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during this year.
• The top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.*
• According to Socialnomics, if you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.
• The online bookmarking service, Delicious, has more than five million users and over 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.
• Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.
• Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.
• Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.

Stats found at 20+ more mind-blowing social media statistics

Post from: Social Media Vision

How Much Time Do You Spend A Day On Social Media?

Last month and the last few weeks their has been some what of a social search launched the social uprising! First off Microsoft’s Bing announced search deals with Twitter and Facebook and, at the Web 2.0 Summit, launched its Twitter integration. Almost immediately though, Google fired back, completing its own deal with Twitter and, perhaps more importantly, announcing a new feature: Social Search.

Google announced this new feature in their recent blog post called Introducing Google Social Search: I finally found my friend’s New York blog!

Now we all knew this was coming it was just a matter of time. Here is what Google themselves had to say about it:

“Your friends and contacts are a key part of your life online. Most people on the web today make social connections and publish web content in many different ways, including blogs, status updates and tweets. This translates to a public social web of content that has special relevance to each person. Unfortunately, that information isn’t always very easy to find in one simple place. That’s why today we’re rolling out a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search that helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle.”

I am writing this blog post because I would like to get your thoughts on Google Social Search. Of course, how can I ask for your feedback, unless I give you my own.

I think the announcement if very interesting although I think they are late to the game, meaning I don’t think they are working fast enough (that is my impatient side talking). I still think it has a ways to go, but i don’t believe it can be ignored. I am currently a Google Wave beta tester and I think for sure they are going to integrate it into the new Google Social Search.

So essentially those are my initial thoughts. I wanted to get your thoughts on the subject! So please comment below and tell the world what you think of the new Google Social Search.

Here’s a video demo below of social search from Google:

UPDATE: Google says social search will be down until early next week. No reason has been given.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Google Social Search – Your Thoughts?

A new content discovery platform where bloggers can monetize on their talent (http://www.bloggersbase.com)

I just recently discovered this website early this month in which subsequently I just found out that the website just started in December 2008.

The website is called BloggersBase.com and is a new Blogging community where you can share your content, enter in weekly cash prizes, actively view/engage the best posts of your favorite niche and gain exposure for yourself as a blogger.

I really like this website because it’s still in Beta and I got a chance to explore the community and provide some of my posts on my website that may of not got much exposure with other avenues.   So I got a chance to test a new audience and a new source of results.

I also noticed one of our Favorite Social Media Marketers is Blonde 2.0 is an active contributor and advocate on the site.

The Blog Competition

The website has it’s standard categories to post your content to; Entertainment, Lifestyle, Technology, World Affairs, Special Events and Partnerships.  Each parent category has it’s own sub-categories.

I am a Tech & Social Media blogger so I found Technology->Internet to post to.  What’s unique about BloggersBase is that you can re-publish your content that you already written and does not have to be an exclusive article.  This is great especially if you are time constraint and wishing to just get more exposure with an article you have written before.

Nuggets

When you first start out you are assigned a newbie rank as a blogger and a reader.  You can promote in ranks for both “Blogger” and “Reader” rank with the more you participate in.  With the higher ranks you achieve, you will gain “Influence” or Authority.

For Example:  A lowbie “Reader” rank who comments and votes.  Your votes are counted very little.  When you gain more higher ranks, your votes will have more value.

A lowbie “Blogger” when posting new posts will not be displayed in the voting competition right away.  The newbie blogger will instead be put in a “Nuggets” category where you have to gain certain votes to get out of.  Once out of the “Nuggets” stage you can then post your posts to the voting competition.

Weekly Prizes

Since Bloggersbase is fairly new, you have less competition and more of a chance to win the weekly cash prizes every week.  Like I said, I just started and already won $50 in 2 weeks time.

$40 for first prize and $10 for second prize.

Payment is sent to Paypal which is great because its fast and secure.

The winners will receive also status points for the “Blogger” rank system, promotional prizes (one week was a BloggersBase Ipod), Cash prizes and the title of Author to keep posting posts to the main blog instead of writing new “Nuggets” for that week.

Conclusion

The last reason why you should join BloggersBase is because most posts have already hit the front page results for Google.  This is another great SEO technique similar to posting to EZine Articles and other posting platforms.

So join now, its Free and less competition right now.  I will see you around Bloggersbase.

Post from: Social Media Vision

New Blog Platform Competition Community To Gain Exposure & Money – BloggersBase

Twitter Forums (http://www.thetwitterforums.com)

Twitter forums is a new online forum community created by Twitter user Hobsdv  

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where its powered by user-generated content.  It’s a place where online users share ideas, give suggestions and ask for help on specifically niched topics.

Most notable Social Media forums out there now is SitePoint and DigitalPoint forums where it has a large online community of active users.

The Benefit of forums

There is are quite a few benefits in being active in forum communities.  First of all Forums are unlike Twitter in which microblogs are continuously broad casted or tweeted.

Forums are like message boards where threads/topics are created in order to comment on.  Forums are very organized content where you can easily find the topic and interest of your choice to research information on or give advice in the community.

• Driving Traffic – Forums are excellent resources in gaining exposure and driving more traffic to your website.  Other forum users can see your signature which usually promotes your website and is no pressure way to drive more traffic to your website.
• SEO – Forums are very big on SEO content not only are the threads/topics are indexed fast and effective but the DOFOLLOW links on your signatures help develop backlinks to your website which in turn helps out with your Google Page Rank.
• Good Source of information – Forums are the best way to stay tuned in new and upcoming information.  For example at the time of this Post DigitalPoint forums are discussing when the next page rank update will be for Google.

Post from: Social Media Vision

The Twitter Forums & The Benefit Of Joining One

10 Basic Newbie Must Have WordPress Plug-Ins

There are many websites out there and blogs that point out the “Top” or “Most Wanted” Plugins out there for WordPress users but the problem is most of the Top Lists out there only showcase Advanced Plugins for the WordPress users.

Most WordPress users run into the problem of what plugins to start out with and haven’t event started blogging yet to fully take advantage of the more complicated plugins. 

Simple is better and below are the layman basic package for WordPress users Must Have Plugin Package.

The 10 List

1.  Akismet –  This is probably your most important plugin to use and most WordPress versions already have this plugin installed when you first download WordPress.  This is your basic spam fighter preventing spammers leaving spam comments selling you something.

2.  Broken Link Checker - Checking broken links can be a tedious chore and this plugin makes this task simple by checking images and links if they are broken will be notified on your dashboard.

3.  All in One Seo Pack - The grandaddy of popular plugins to use.  The reason why this plugin is so popular because its so simple to use in helping you with your SEO by making it easy to change titles,prevent duplicate content and other optimization options.  A must have.

4.  Contact Form - A simple and must have plugin.  This your everyday “Contact Form” that is used to notify the blogmaster or webmaster of users wishing to contact them.  This is a popular plugin because of the ease of use and privacy if the Author does not wish to disclose their real e-mail address.

5.  RSS Footer - This plugin allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.  This is very useful to prevent sploggers of not linking back to the original article.

6.  Google XML Sitemap - This plugin generates XML enabled sitemaps to help with indexing by search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and more.

7.  Popular Posts –  (WordPress 2.7 has added this) WordPress Mobile Edition – This must have Plugin automically configures your Blog to show an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device.  No configuration is needed, so its a great plug and play!

8.  Post-Plugin Library - Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

 9.  Related /Similar Posts - A cool plugin that returns a list of the related entries based on a unique algorithm using titles, post bodies, tags, and categories.

10. WordPress Automatic Upgrade (WordPress 2.7 has this now) Sharethis – Is a great plugin to put a social bookmarking content in every post or page you want.  This is definitely a good starter and advanced Plugin must have.

Post from: Social Media Vision

10 Basic Newbie Must Have WordPress PlugIns

What is Mahalo: Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Search results only include great links currently in Beta Stage. Mahalo is Hawaiian for Thank you.

What sets Mahalo from Google: Mahalo is a hybrid of Digg.com and Wikipedia.com.  Most of you know Digg is heavily derived from user submitted and controlled content that showcases links based on user participation.

Wiki is like the new encyclopedia online.  Again is user edited but the boys over Wiki does control the fake submitted content.  Wiki is the best source for information regarding a certain topic.

So in essence when searching Mahalo, spam content is so called taken away and the pages are more “Topic” focused and “Page” focused meaning the users create pages/topics with a who list of 411 information.

For example: See the Topic Hurricane Ike here http://www.mahalo.com/Hurricane_Ike_Projected_Path

This Topic Page includes content of

• Top 7 user controlled related articles
• Guide Note
• Fast Facts
• Discussion Page
• Background

As you can see this is a slew of all sorts of information.

SEO QUICK TIP

Now your up to speed on Mahalo, how does Mahalo help SEO you ask?

Since Mahalo is user contributed content and is still in beta stage.  Theres a huge window of opportunity taking advantage of a certain TOPIC or PAGE of information.  Want to submit your website under the TOPIC of Houses for Sale in State?

Want to see how having your site listed in Mahalo’s Topic of best computer speakers?

Click here http://www.google.com/search?q=best+computer+speakers

You will notice that the #2 ranked search term is Mahalo’s links and just imagine if you added your site to that topic.  See my point now?

So get the cracking and sign up for Mahalo and start adding some content.  Ahead of the game is always better than being left behind.

Post from: Social Media Vision

Thank you Mahalo SEO