The idea of creating content to target social media is nothing new. Terms like “Made for Digg” have been coined, and many people have created a basis for a successful site by focusing on attracting social media. When discussing the term Social Media Optimization (SMO) I consider it to be the optimizing of content on your site, this doesn’t cover your actions in social media environments away from your site, which are also important. Take a look at some existing information on this topic:

Rohit Bhargava’s 5 rules for social media optimization:
1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

   Web Strategist adds:

6. Be a user resource, even if it doesn’t help you
7. Reward helpful and valuable users

   Cameron Olthuis adds:

8. Know how to target your audience

   What I would like to add:

9. Make your content attractive in appearance – people are shallow, especially when browsing social media, if it looks rubbish, it has much less chance of getting read.
10. Make sure your site is optimized for a fast loading time – if it takes too long to load, people won’t bother. If your site is poorly optimized, large spurts of traffic will crash it.
11. In your face ads, placed where your content should be will hurt your success. It will help your earnings placing ads in key spots, but social media visitors will hate it, and none of them are going to click ads anyway.

Is it really worth it?

Visitors from social media have a short attention span. They drop in, look at what they came to see, if it is attractive they scan over it, if something catches their eye, they may even read it. They will hardly ever click on other content on your site, they won’t click your ads, and very few will subscribe to your feed. So why bother?

Good content for social media is good content for anyone. If you can catch the attention of visitors that are sent your way from social media sites, you can catch the attention of anyone.

Rand Fishkin from SEOMOZ also discusses the value of Social media traffic for gaining incoming links, a very important SEO factor for increasing overall traffic of your site.

This is the main reason why you see so many top 10 type  list posts and other viral content when browsing social media. These types of posts tend to attract people to link to them (linkbait). This should be a key goal in your aim for success on social media sites.

_{Images used in this article are copyrighted by their original websites.}

Machine-based interaction is a common feature of Web 2.0 sites like Digg, Facebook and Dilicious, and these days it goes well beyond simple web feeds. An application programming interface (API) is what allows programmers to write applications and widgets that interact with services on these sites. The API gives them web-based access to data and functions from such sites. For example using the GoogleMaps API one could pull data and mapping information from Google that enables users of a site to view an embedded map of the location of a business.

Although typically using an API does require some expertise in programming, many of the APIs which are being released by sites are well documented with good examples on how to implement them, WebAPI. This article also details many of the user created scripts which have been generated using the various API’s which will give end users something to play with too.

15 – MediaWiki API

With over 2 million articles Wikipedia is a valuable resource, the Mediawiki API allows access to this content. Sites based on the MediaWiki API include Wikitravel, Wiktionary, and WikiNews.

14 – Upcoming

The Upcoming API allows you to take data from the Yahoo site upcoming.org. It’s useful if you want current events information on your site.

13 – Audio Scrobbler API

Last FM uses the Audio Scrobbler API to gather information about music you listen to. It is also the source of many various “is currently listening to” plug-ins for various applications.

12 – Ebay API

Ebay’s API is very comprehensive, and supports almost all major web scripting options, including flash and Ajax. It has a sandbox for testing scripts, and offers you sample script blocks which it calls widgets to help you getting started. Visit Widget Blog Ebay for some examples.

11 – Facebook API

Everyone knows about Facebook, it’s a hugely successful social networking site, that my girl friend assures me is very addictive. The site has loads of code samples, application creation guides and libraries for developers to play with. As Facebook is completely driven by user generated content it has a huge market of users just waiting to get their hands on fresh content, so for those that have the skill the Facebook API is a goldmine. Visit Mashable to read 10 awesome things built on the Facebook API.

10 – Feedburner API

As you may already know Feedburner is an RSS feed creation tool. The API gives developers a few toys to play with, the best of which is the Feedflare API which allows you to add new functionality onto Feedburner feeds.

9 – Google Search API

The Google Search API Is a AJAX Search API that lets you put Google Search in your web pages with JavaScript. Google gives you some very useful examples of sample code to use.

8 – Yahoo Search API

You may not believe it , but the Yahoo search API is actually more popular than the Google alternative. You can use it to create a simple spell checking tool or site wide search widget… useful stuff

7 – Windows Live API

The API for Microsoft’s portal contains a whole heap of different APIs for different MS services. Here is some of the applications that have been created using the API,  Windows Live API list, which includes content ranging from Halo 3 user guides to major league baseball videos. 

6 – Google Ajax Feed API

With the AJAX Feed API, you can download any public Atom or RSS feed using only JavaScript, and easily mash up feeds with your content, and each other. It is super fast and is the quickest way to display real time RSS content on your site. Dynamic Drive’s gAjax RSS Feeds Displayer is a great example of a script created from this API.

5 – Digg API

Using the Digg API you can access individual stories, comments, or data on particular user activities. For some examples of the Digg API is action check out: 7 awesome things built on the digg API, Who’s digging You and Digg Comment Spy.

4 – Delicious API

Although the Delicious API is not as complex or comprehensive as most of the other APIs featured, it is so simple, you can see results just by typing a URL into your browser. You can also write data to Delicious such as adding bookmarks or renaming tags. for example:

http://del.icio.us/api/posts/add?description=Pingable&url=www.pingable.org 

..would add Pingable as a bookmark in to your delicious account after a username and password challenge. More detail at: Quick Online Tips.

3 – Google Maps

The Google Maps API is probably the most implemented API on the net. It is used in applications such as Google flight simulator, dating sites, and for finding local auctions.

2 – Flickr API

The Flickr API gives two way access to the site and some of its features and photos. Tasks that can be completed using the API include creating new sets, editing comments, changing photo notes, as well as pulling existing data from the site. Here is some examples of the Flickr API in action.

1 – href="http://www.youtube.com/dev">YouTube API

A very popular Number 1, because the YouTube API is both simple, and purely limited only by your imagination. Data which can be pulled from YouTube includes: Video titles, rating, length, tags, url, your favorites, your friend list and the thumbnail location. For an example of the YouTube API in action check out : CoverPop, and you may also want to check out: A YouTube and Google Map Mashup.

Other API resources: GotAPI , API finder, Mashery and a full list of Google APIs.

_{Digg and flickr icons from: ilemoned.com Web 2.0 Services Icons}

_{Some of the content in this article was inspired by “The Top 20 APIs for your site” article in issue 167 of .net magazine.}

This article is a summary of some of the best articles and content I have read recently.

Taking a look at the subscriber count of “I love Typography” I am one of many people who are loving this fresh new blog. Great stuff:  15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography.

Tara from Graphic Design Blog also posts about Typographic Inspiration.

Blog Strom discusses Why “Real” People think Digg Sucks. This article is interesting stuff. How often do you find dead links on the homepage of Digg. Lately digg’s success seems to be it’s worst enemy.

Dosh Dosh gives advice on How to get repeat visitors to your website. Some useful points taken from the article:

• Is your site populated enough to encourage participation?
• How does your site feel to 10 random people who have never visited it?
• Are you providing information that is coherent with your search keywords?
• Does your website project a unique, familiar and identifiable voice?

Sarah from Bluejar.com gives a nuts and bolts CSS image positioning tutorial. Sarah’s blog is a good read, she recently ran a very good “How To” group writing contest which I took part in.

Han from Eruanna guest posts for Rhys from The Gospel According To Rhys about How to make your blog design Web 2.0. My sincere condolences go out to Rhys, Wales were knocked out of the Rugby World Cup on the weekend, and I know Rhys is a fan.

I am still loving StumbleUpon, although I find it a terrible procrastination tool. Here is a useful resource page: Stumble Add-ons.

Heading into the festive part of the year consider checking out some gifts from this cool site.

On a personal note I am celebrating passing 100 RSS subscribers on Pingable, so I have decided to add a feed burner counter. Cheers to all those who have subscribed.