As mentioned in an earlier post, Jason Calacanis criticizes social media optimization (SMO) while working Digg at the same time.
A few days ago I noticed that he again criticized SEO/SMO in his blog:
People are coming up to ask questions and the guy keeps saying “well you have to do social work on digg and reddit, but it’s complicated and we need to talk about it.” During the panel he said “it’s complicated, we should talk about it after the panel.” I’m sure folks will come to his office and he’ll say “it’s complicated, sign this contract and we can start working on it.”
I also noticed that Mahalo is doing heavy social media optimization on Twitter.com. Here are a couple of screenshots:
Mahalo.com has created many twitter.com user accounts:
Each account seems to automatically update when new content is added to Mahalo:
Jason Calacanis wrote:
I’ve seen a half dozen SEO-related panels over the year and it’s always the same thing… like some infomercial where they will tell you their five secrets… IF you give them $199.95.
For a company like Mahalo.com I’m sure the technique of hammering sites like Twitter with automated updates would be worth $199.95. I’m sure Jason would charge much more than that for his expertise.
Like I mentioned before, it’s easy for Calacanis to criticize SMO because he has the knowledge to do it inhouse.
5 Comments
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Hi Jason,
I don’t have a problem with using a social media site like Twitter to give people another way to subscribe to content — but what Mahalo.com is doing on Twitter, Digg, Propeller, etc. is “social media optimization”.
You keep hammering on people that do SMO, but you are working that same angle.
I only mention this because it’s the second time I’ve seen you attack SEO or SMO in your blog recently.
The average Web site owner or Web development team does not understand how to do those things. That is why they hire SMO or SEO consultants.
Would you sit down with for-profit companies that don’t know much about Internet marketing and offer your expertise for free?
A lot of the information about SEO/SMO can be found online for free, but it would take a long time for someone to understand how to do it effectively. You can also find free information online about how to repair your car, but most people don’t want to do it themselves.
There are shady SEOs out there. But there are also a lot of shady car mechanics out there, and few people claim that anyone who hires a car mechanic is an idiot…
Ummm… we are not working any angle. We are sharing quality content with our users and friends. There are hundreds of folks working Mahalo and they’ve built of 19,000 pages. They like to share them just like the you do on Twitter, digg, and Sphinn.
If you want to consider folks sharing their work with their friends SMO/SEO that’s in your mind… out intent is to share our content with like minded folks.
There is nothing nefarious about it.
Now, if our simple act of sharing is SEO/SMO then the SEO/SMO industry is SCREWED because it’s so simple and obvious that anyone who would page for this information is a fool.
best j
Jason,
It’s simple and obvious to you because you have been in the industry for a long time. Many companies do not have anyone on staff who knows anything about how social media works and who can actually get things done.
All social media optimizers like to share quality content. You mentioned that you want to share content with like-minded folks, but I don’t think that there is anyone on Digg that would be interested in this Mahalo stub about a Britney Spears video.
I don’t know if someone from Mahalo posted that to Digg while on the clock, but that is social media optimization. Now, if you wanted to re-train that person so that the submitted content actually would be relevant and go viral you might have to provide some extra training—either internally, or outsourced—which would cost money. You are paying for SMO either way.
Those submissions are also giving you some nice backlinks (SEO).
It’s true that the basic concepts of SEO or SMO are quite simple. But actually analyzing a complex Web site and getting it to rank higher, or getting to the front page of Digg is much more difficult.
An SEO example: the New York Times only ranks #47 in Google for world news and they look like they are paying a lot of money for Adwords. It is not a simple task to push nytimes.com from #47 to the front page for a competitive keyword like that. (Even stuff.co.nz ranks higher in US Google.) It requires a lot of experience, skill and creativity to fix a problem like that. Some random person on the Web dev or marketing team is not going to be able to read a few tutorials online and then know how to fix it.
An SMO example: This page of submitted content is not submitted in a way that is going to make it to the front page of Digg. The simple act of submitting is not a complex thing. Submitting content that goes popular and that doesn’t look like link-building spam is more difficult.
I’m not calling any of your acts “nefarious”; only that they are “social media optimization”. You are lucky that you can do that SMO inhouse—at least to some extent. Others who don’t have that knowledge/experience often have to hire someone else.
That is why SEO and SMO are not screwed.
I don’t think anyone is bashing the use of SMO. I think the big complaint here is that you’re using it while bashing it at the same time.
SMO. It works. There’s nothing wrong with using it. Senator Craig bashed homosexuals through his votes, but…