Social Media Optimization for TypePad

When we built the All New TypePad, one area we focused was helping you build an audience. When it comes to finding an audience for your blog, the best places are:

1. People you know
2. People who are interested in what you are saying.

We’ve built the new TypePad to help you reach both of these groups. As the saying goes, the best place to fish is where the fish are.

Hey friends, look over here!

Social networks like Facebook, Friendster, and Twitter have helped millions of people get online. And your social network is a great place to connect your blog with a new audience.

As a blogger, you are a leader in the online community, sharing your thoughts, ideas, and creations. Many of you also have friend and follow networks on Twitter and Facebook. With the TypePad integration with Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed, you can now update your readers as soon as you post, encouraging your friends and followers to visit your blog. 

If you have 100 followers on Twitter and 100 friends on Facebook, you can instantly reach a potential audience of 200 visitors to your blog.

We’ve noticed a significant increase in visitors to TypePad blogs that have integrated Twitter and Facebook cross-posting, so give it a try and see what happens.

Short, Sweet, and Full of Insight
We have also partnered with bit.ly. Bit.ly automatically shortens your URLs to a Twitter friendly length. We automatically shorten your URL when you use the sharing feature on TypePad.

Our integration also provides you with one-click access to real time stats about how many people are visiting your site from the posts you have shared to Twitter and Facebook. The benefit to you: a short, shareable URL that can provide extra insight about your visitors.

Social Media Opti…What?

You’ll notice the Bit.ly stats are included right on your blog Overview under “Social Media Optimization.” Social media optimization is what we refer to as all of the social web services that help you reach and connect with your audience: social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), social bookmarks (Digg, Delicio.us, Reddit), social search (Technorati), and social publishing like TypePad.

The concept of social media optimization (SMO) was created and evangelized by author, PR, media superstar, and TypePad member Rohit Bhargava way back in 2006 in his post, 5 Rules of Social Media.

Inspired by Rohit’s ideas and the evolution of the social web, we built in the most valuable SMO tools in TypePad. Now you can focus on the other half of social media -- commenting on blogs, sharing pictures, discussing new ideas, blogging, and building relationships with people who share your passion.

Now, more than ever, your blog is the hub of your social media activity and an anchor for your online reputation.

Follow Your Favorites, Traffic Follows

TypePad Follow feature is not another social network; it is a new way to find and follow the best bloggers and conversations on the web. We call it an In-The-Know network, the place where you can follow your passion -- whether it is sports, food, business, politics, fiction, family, religion, animals or anything else -- and connects you with people that share your passion.

The first step for you to take advantage of this network is the TypePad Profile module, launched last week, so your blog readers and TypePad members can find and follow you. Anyone who follows you will automatically be notified when you update your blog, encouraging new visitors to stop by and see your post.

But there is another benefit, a social media optimization concept that extends beyond the circle of friends that follow you. When a reader who is following you comments on your blog, her comment will now extend out to her TypePad network, driving additional readers to your blog. By allowing other people – your TypePad readers – to spread the word about your blog, you are taking advantage of your TypePad network and optimizing your site for the social web.

Now it’s your turn: you can turn your readers into members of your blog by encouraging to Follow your TypePad profile.

Putting it all together
Stay tuned over the next few days as we discuss how you can get the most out of your social media optimization (SMO).  And don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about search engine optimization (SEO). We’ll also give you some SEO tips for the new Typepad.

Questions? Opinions? Social media optimization suggestions for other TypePad bloggers? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

[Susan Abbott]

It took me a while to find the bitly stats. They aren't on the dashboard tab as stated above -- they are immediately underneath the traffic graph on the blog landing page (Overview tab).

I also note that my own Twitter post (with the blog) is included in the stats.

[Kristi S (sweetsauer)]

How do you start following a Typepad member if they do not yet have a Typepad profile badge on their blog? I know there are many blogs I read that this applies to......

[*Staci *]

I read this post twice but saw nothing about "memberships" in our profile. When I was looking at who was following me I saw I have 0 memberships and was just curious what they were. :)

[Mark Simmons]

Thanks, Susan. I updated the post to say "Overview" versus dashboard.

[Mark Simmons]

Good question. We're working on some ways to make it easier to search, find, and discover TypePad members. We will be adding these features over the next few months. In the interim, here are few ways to get started:

+ Look at comments on your favorite blogs. If they have avatars enabled you can hover over the image and follow them directly. If they do not have avatars, you can often visit their profiles by clicking on the page.

+ Follow some of the recommended "people you can follow" on the TypePad dashboard. It's just a few recommendations, but it's a good start to discover some popular bloggers.

+ Look at who is following other members. Look at your favorite bloggers and see who they are following. For example, Ginevra (http://profile.typepad.com/miz_ginevra) and I (http://profile.typepad.com/markthink) have been using the following feature for a few months so we are following a lot of our favorite bloggers.

+ Encourage your favorite bloggers to add their profile module or ask them in the comments for their profile address. Some people just need a little encouragement.

+ And finally, I think we'll do a post next week with some more people you can follow recommendations. That should help connect some more people.

Thanks for the question. We'll definitely make this easier in the coming weeks.

[Account Deleted]

What you HAVE done so far is great, but I'll tell you something that's keeping me from moving over. Each blog inside my account needs to have a complete social media profile, distinct from the other blogs in my account. So far, you allow multiple twitter accounts but require that the entire account and all its blogs share one ID for everything else. It's especially annoying for something like Amazon -- they on their end let you create multiple tracking IDs so you can determine where the purchase came from but it looks like all my TP blogs would be tied to a single Amazon ID, Facebook account, etc.

Even if it's multiple blogs belonging to the same person, there are good reasons to segment your social media audiences. In my case, I am apt to be writing about 2-3 completely unrelated topics at a given time. Others may want to keep personal and professional identities apart for many good reasons.

[NET MEDIA MIX]

Thanks for the suggestions, and tips about segmenting your social media audiences. Laurie Klaue
http://www.netmediamix.typepad.com

[Account Deleted]

Love the features! Is there any way you can customize the message for the Twitter integration to make it a wee bit friendlier? Right now it's "Title: http://bit.ly/blahblah"

It would be good if you could add something in front of it, like "New blog post on Blahblog: Title http://bit.ly..."

[Mark Simmons]

Thanks for the suggestion, Shauna.

We'll continue to improve the feature based on feedback and how we see people using it.