Out of experience? Well, I don’t know, but looked like everyone is so interested in talking about getting successful on Twitter. Well, I followed many of them and, guess what? They enlightened me on the below points. With due courtesy to all of them….

1. Please follow your followers
   Or guess what happens? Your followers would be responding to your tweet and they never hear back from you. Okay, you are a pro - master - guru, blah blah…fine..but that doesn’t mean that you won’t talk or reply. Does it ?
2. Please don’t even dare say “Good Morning” or “Good Evening” or even “Good night”
   Cos, the 300ish guys subscribed to your tweet is not from your neighborhood, they’re most likely from the other end of the world. They may think you’re nuts!
3. Please try to respond, or be a bot
   I can’t think of a good reason why one wouldn’t respond. Unless it’s a bot using your profile. I’ve seen Digg bots (some of them even have the profile pic of that of a robot), but twitter bots? Come on…that’s disgusting!
4. Twitter is not a place to yawn..come’on now for God sake!
   Thou shall not yawn, or do any of those organic sounds. Remember, though you’re on your bed, the world’s watching you..err…listening to you.
5. Be logical
   This is tough to explain. Example? Here goes…

   Mr. X : I’m going out for a movie - Dark Knight.
   Mr. Y : @Mr.X - Man, that’s a cool movie. Yaay!

   (After 30 mins….)

   Mr. X : Just woke up..had coffee, off to Gym !
   Mr. Y : @Mr.X huh??

Makes sense?

There is no doubt that one of the differences in a power user on any social media (Digg, SU or delicious) and a normal wannabe user is his access to exclusive tools. Now, tools are available for everyone but not all uses all of them, or we are selectively comfortable with a few that we ignore the rest.
Experts say that they use the power tools wisely, beyond the ordinary use and that’s the reason why they are able to perform better than the normal user.
So now you know why a top Digg user has more number of Diggs than you?

1 - Shareaholic plugin for Firefox

Requires - Firefox browser and some quick fingers
One of the most powerful plugins available for free today, Shareaholic adds a small button to the browser that you can use the page you are on currently to submit to a variety of social media sites. you can customize the number of sites from the list of available ones, but the most interesting and useful feature is - when you roll over the button, it will show you the current status of the page on the social media. Ex: If the page has been already submitted to Digg, then while rolling over it shows the number of diggs, or if it’s delicious, it shows the number of saves! So you save time in actually visiting the site and finding out the numbers yourself.

2 - Delicious Bookmarks

Requires - Firefox plugin and some quick fingers
This tool adds a col sidebar that displays your delicious bookmarks with their stats, so that you can use it for reference. A must have for all delicious fans.

3 - Twitterbar
Requires - Firefox browser
TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A
small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar;
clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over
it to see how many characters you have left.

4 - Digg Sidebar

Requires - Firefox browser and a Digg account

TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A
small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar;
clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over
it to see how many characters you have left.

5 - Friendfeed Groups - Greasemonky script

Requires - Greasemonkey and lot of friends
This is a Greasemonkey script, that lets you sort your feeds by creating groups in your friendfeed. Very useful if you have lot of friends to sort and follow.

6 - Dgg Washer script

Requires - Greasemonkey and verocious appetite for diggs
This is a Greasemonkey script, that lets you avoid stories based on a keyword on Digg.

7 - Bookmarker

Requires - Accounts with all social bookmarking sites

Compare and enjoy the power of social bookmarking, save and manage all
your bookmarks online. (Supported services: del.icio.us, digg.com,
diigo.com, ma.gnolia.com, google.com, mister-wong.de, netvouz.com,
linkarena.com, alltagz.de, bobrdobr.ru). Now that’s quite a list.

8 - Dugg it Greasemonkey script

Requires - Greasemonkey and verocious appetite for diggs

This is a Greasemonkey script, that lets you avoid already read stories on Digg.com

9 - Delicious Tags Everywhere

Requires a voracious appetite for tagging and Firefox
This is a Firefox plugins that shows you Delicious tags on every story on every site. Not an ideal plugin for people who are not comfy with tagging. But power users have admitted that tagging is a great thing to do as it helps improve your rankings on social media sites. So if you want to do more tagging, this is the damn plugin for you.

10 - Ultimate Facebook plugin

Requires - Firefox and Facebook

UltimateFacebook makes Facebook easier and more fun to use. It
simplifies the way you (as a user) can move through Facebook’s core
features, removing as many as 2-3 clicks from simple things like
sending messages, writing on walls, viewing friends, etc.

11 - Digg Comment wader plugin

Requires - Firefox
Digg Comment Spotlight does exactly what its name hints, it spots
comments that other readers have taken the time to Digg, allowing you
to easily wade through 100’s of comments in an article.

12 - Socialphile Firefox plugin

Requires Firefox
Socialphile assists users with comfortable searching
(Google, Yahoo, MSN, Google News) based on ranking of each search
result at social news websites like Digg.com

13 - Digg Thumbs

Requires - Extensive Digg usage and Firefox
This firefox plugin shows a thumbnail of the website adjacent to the story over at Digg.
This is very useful especially when I want to check if the site I’m digging is authentic or not. Sometimes the title of the story may be very yummy, but the site looks crappy on visiting. Saves quite a lot of time here.

14 - Propeller Friends activity

Requires - Firefox and Propeller account
The Friends’ Activity Sidebar (FAS) extension helps you keep tabs on
what stories your Propeller.com friends are submitting, commenting, and
voting on. This is interesting because not many people like to spend time on Propeller like Digg, so a notifier does the right job, of alerting you of interesting stories and avoiding the rest.

15 - Bookmark every Digg

Requires - Digg and other social media accounts + Greasemonkey
This Greasemonkey script shows up all the (customizable) other social media sites submission links next to every Digg story. Very useful if you want to submit the Digg story to another social media site on a regular basis, extensively.

16 - Dashblog

Requires - Firefox and Twitter
This is a personal favorite of mine. Dashblog is a FF extension where you can clip images/text or any data from any webpage to your blog(WP,Blogspot) or Twitter using this neat plugin.

17 - Long Text on Twitter

Requires - Twitter account and Firefox
If you want to publish status on Twitter which are beyond the 130 character limit, then you better install this extension. Enough said.

So there you have it, a total of 17 plugins and tool that will help increase your productivity on the traffic generating social media channels like Digg, SU and Twitter. Some of them may look dumb and staring at your face, but believe me it’s how you use them that matters. For an expert even the stupidest tool is a weapon !

Man we SEOs are kinda obsessed with getting backlinks isn’t it? I would not mind if someone called me up in the midnight to let know of a way to source incoming links from “unexplored, valuable” sources - Like Facebook.

And now we have an option to source incoming links from facebook. Yep! Crawlable, links from facebook pages that are indexed by search engines. Here’s how.

Create a new page under a suitable category, and add your sites RSS feeds to the content. It’s as simple as it, but for the ones who need guidance, here’s the details.

1. Log on to facebook, Go to Pagemanager.
2. Create a new page
3. Make sure you have content filled in to all the required fields (optional)
4. Goto Add applications link
5. Select a good RSS application that displays your content with necessary tweakable options.

The pages would have URL something similar to http://www.facebook.com/pages/yourpagename/16353671142

Something to note here while creating the page.
Use the page options properly and fill in with relevant content that will support the links and any targeted keywords if at all any.
Choose the category into which the page will be placed with care, you might want to select a topic relevant category.
Choose the page name properly, rather than a fancy name use it cleverly.

The links displayed on the page are crawlable by search engines, and links indexed, this has been tested and confirmed. But it is critical that you do it carefully and not create a page just for the sake of getting some backlinks.

If you are on Stumbleupon, there’s no chance that you missed Babychen Mathew a.k.a Dancewithshadows. He is the only Indian to reach the top stumblers list yet. He’s from Delhi, and lives a life completely online. Dancewithshadows.com is his website.

I managed to catch up with him on chat to interview finding out his experience with stumbleupon, tips and tricks he’d like to share with us and help in ensuring a better stumbling experience.

We discussed everything from starting off, building your community on SU, finding good friends, sharing and reviewing, the goods and bads of stumbling, the do’s and dont’s, and some SU secrets from Babychen’s experience. Hope you will like it.

Mani Karthik: So you are the only top stumbler from India as of now. How do you feel?
Babychen Mathew: Hmm, good, of course. I never thought about it that way till I got your message!
Babychen Mathew: I keep trying to find other Indians and make friends with them though all the time!

Mani Karthik: So how did you start with stumbleupon and other social media?
Babychen Mathew: I started with digg, and while trying to learn about digg, heard about SU for the first time. Generally i hate all toolbars, so stayed away for a while. When I finally tried it out, I was interested in the promise of SU that it will throw up sites which you like. Seemed to work better as I used it more, so kept using it and trying to learn a bit every day. I liked the fact that SU is not obsessed about politics, and not as negative as Digg is!

Mani Karthik: I agree. So where do you like better now. SU or Digg?
Mani Karthik: And when did you start with SU?
Babychen Mathew: for breaking news, I prefer digg anyday. Or for top ten lists. Digg seems to be obsessed with top tens, and I dont mind much. And of course, a front page on digg can send you an amazing amount of traffic - so I have to keep a foot there for the future for my own site. And for networking with those who are active in social media, digg is good as everyone is there.

Babychen Mathew: started with SU long time back…
Babychen Mathew: forgot all about it (the general negativity towards all toolbars!)
Babychen Mathew: and then came back to it
Babychen Mathew: I think I started SU almost 2 years back, though I have really been active only in the last one year

Mani Karthik: I must agree. Tell me how does your daily routine look like online? Many people have the idea that power users are geeks who sit rooted in front of their PCs, hours together, and fail to get a life. What’s your thoughts?
Babychen Mathew: Hmm. I am afraid I belong to that category too! But most of my time is spent on my own site, and social media stuff keeps happening in other Firefox tabs! Yes, I spent most of my waking hours in front of the PC, but I spent a lot of time reading news (past journalist background!), reading books and watching TV and going out for something or the other once daily for a break.
Babychen Mathew: as i work from home, I have to invent reasons to go out though

Mani Karthik: Do you use any tweaks for SU? Greasemoneky / Scripts anything?
Babychen Mathew: For SU, none at all. I am happy with stumbling, thumbing up, reviewing and adding tags.

Mani Karthik: Great. So, what do you think are the type of articles that are adored by the SU crowd?
Babychen Mathew: from what I have seen, serious articles don’t do well in SU as far as popularity is concerned. The SU users seem to love pictures (even when they are dupes!) and funnys stuff as long as it has pics. My feelign so far is that almost any topic will do much better if it has interesting pics on it, and the visitors can get a grip on the story at one look. So I guess big fonts and pics should do it for any topic. There is a lot of interest in Bizarre, Science, Gadgets and humor from what I see, but I have seen Su stories going popular from every topic. Pics are critical, I think - more chances of people photoblogging your stuff then.

Mani Karthik: I agree and SU gives a lot of cool pics if you are bored.
Babychen Mathew: yea.

Mani Karthik: Do you agree to the idea of using SU to leverage traffic to websites?
Babychen Mathew: Why not. Every available venue on the Net (or in the real world) will always be used commercially, there is nothing wrong with that. But you would get SU traffic only if your content is good - and appeals to the sensibilities of the SU user. I have come across several sites which I think are using SU for traffic - no harm in that!

Mani Karthik: I agree. So what are the best practices for a newbie to get popular on SU? Or shall I say what will make him powerful to thumbs up a site and give thousands of traffic to it?
Babychen Mathew: hmm.. one important thing about SU is - you don’t need to be a top stumbler to send a lot of traffic to a website. That depends to a large extent on your network of friends. the top stumblers page shows who contributes more to SU (through discoveries, activity, tags, reviews) and usually top stumblers have big networks of friends too - but you really don’t need that. There are stumblers who have been around for long and never made it to the top stumblers page I think.
Babychen Mathew: Traffic is more a function of your network and the topic you are stumbling upon…
Babychen Mathew: For newbies though
Babychen Mathew: the immediate thing I would suggest is to get active. Stumble a lot, search for people who are likely to share your interests, add them and message them. Do not beg for thumbs and traffic the moment you join!
Babychen Mathew: Most newbies have no patience, and want to do it all in a week!
Mani Karthik: I agree.
Babychen Mathew: If you give it time and you are loyal to your stumbling, friends and networks are not a problem at all.

Mani Karthik: I Agree. So your network matters more than anything. so would I be doing the right thing if I keep on adding anyone I see on SU?
Babychen Mathew: of course not. Add only active stumblers who seem to like topics you are interested in too. Adding someone as a mutual friend - what I do is to add someone, watch their activity for a while, and if they are not active or are here only for marketing their own websites, remove them. However, If I find that someone contributes a lot to SU, and is meanwhile trying to get some traffic to his own site, I don’t mind that at all.
Mani Karthik: I get it and completely agree.
Babychen Mathew: I would strongly advice - if anyone doesn’t look like stumbling actively, remove him immediately!
Babychen Mathew: Like all social media, in th end, you have to give it more than you get.

Mani Karthik: Yes, makes sense. It works more like MLM isn’t it? Inactive members are like cancer. Right?
Babychen Mathew: Well, comparing MLM to SU … I wouldn’t do that! But inactive memebers - why add them as friends anyway? There is no point to it. The same way, adding top stumblers only as your friends - there is not much point to it either - they often can’t add you back as they have reached their 200 mutual friends limit!
Mani Karthik: That’s right.

Babychen Mathew: I would yes, you really cant MLM to SU - as MLM is purely about marketing, but in SU, it can never work unless you give it more than you take.
Mani Karthik: You are right.

Mani Karthik: How are the groups in SU doing? I’ve seen that many are not really active. Are they any good joining them?
Babychen Mathew: Some SU groups seem to be very active. And probably it is a good place to find new friends. However, I have never been active in any groups at all.

Mani Karthik: What do you think is the best way to find similar minded folks on SU?
Babychen Mathew: When SU shows you a page and you really like the story or topic, click on the reviews icon on the toolbar and take a look at those who have reviewed it and given it a thumbs up. You will find a lot of like-minded folks there. You can also click directly on the tags you like on the Buzz page, check out the people who are actively stumbling your topics, visit their profiles and thumb up their fav stories.
Babychen Mathew: I sometimes keep checking the friends of my friends too - you find likeminded people there often!
Mani Karthik: That’s indeed a cool tip there.
Babychen Mathew: also, people are curious. Visit the page of someone you like and thumb up a few of theirs, and they are quite likely to come visit your page - and then if you want them to like you, make sure your own blog has quality stuff.

Mani Karthik: Correct.Are there any do’s and dont’s on SU, apart from the official ones. Anything from your experience that you want to share?
Babychen Mathew: Do’s - get active. Discover, review as much as possible. When you can’t thumb it up and tag it. When you can’t tag, at least thumb it up! Visit other stumblers profiles, send messages when you want to tell them something, add only like-minded people and very active stumblers.

Mani Karthik: How about the don’ts?
Babychen Mathew: Don’ts — please try not to stumble your own site. It is a dead giveaway that you are here for marketing, as oftne your name and site name are the same! I did that too. Do not vote up the same sites too often - regular stumbling of the same site seems to reduce your power to send traffic re: that site.

Mani Karthik: I agree. But what if you found many cool pics on flickr? They are all the same site. Any probs in this scenario?
Babychen Mathew: I don’t SU has a problem with that. See, they have an option already called Stumble Thru this site. So it wont matter much. Same for Youtube.
Babychen Mathew: However, Flickr is not dependant on the traffic you send them, so it doesnt matter. When yo continuously stumble the same small sites everyday, your vote keeps geting discounted more and more. But this is purely my observation, and I haven’t seen any strong data on this.

Mani Karthik: Right.

Mani Karthik: What are the SU secrets if at all you have any? (Apart from what you’ve said eaerlier)
Babychen Mathew: I am sure there are SU secrets! But I don’t know many, frankly. I became one of the top stumblers without trying, in fact. I was on a mission to get very active and see what would happen, and a friend told me I was listed there!
Mani Karthik: Shall we say white hat SU?
Babychen Mathew: lol
Babychen Mathew: yes! I mean, white hat SU as you call it is not difficult at all, so why bother with black hat stuff!
Babychen Mathew: The general environment in SU is positive, and its not like everyone has to destroy another site to get your site in front of more people - unlike in, say, Google!

Mani Karthik: True. I’m all for white hat methods.

Mani Karthik: Babychen if I were to ask you to put things into a formula, finally. how would you formulate it?
Babychen Mathew: Very difficult for me Mani. I am all for active stumbling and a bit of patience, and you will see results. I do not have a brain that can really do things systematically!
Babychen Mathew: I can tell you one thing though.
Babychen Mathew: When I get very active in SU for a few days, my Su top stumblers ranking goes up. I move up a few positions as I discover, review and tag more. When I slacken, I go down. The number of people who stumble sites I discovered go up when I am higher up (probaly more people visit my profile then) and when I am lower down in the listings, less people visit me and less people naturally thumb up what I discover.
Babychen Mathew: The take-away from that is, more activity in SU seems to directly affect your strength in SU.
Mani Karthik: Wicked stuff !
Babychen Mathew:

Mani Karthik: Some personal Qs. Which are the websites you run and what are they about?
Babychen Mathew: My main website is www.dancewithshadows.com It is a 4 year old site which now gets a substantial amount of traffic. It is a general news and features website with content from a varied number of topics. I have other experimental sites too but nothing as big as this
Babychen Mathew: The main traffic source for it though is not SU - it is google
Babychen Mathew: Su probably makes up 1-2 % of the traffic it gets.

Mani Karthik: Great. So you live a life completely ON
Babychen Mathew: guess so, but on the Net, you are always lagging behind someone, in something. For example, I have been an abject failure in Digg!
Mani Karthik: There is a piece of cake for everyone. You have yours.
Babychen Mathew: Agree completely! And choose the social media site that is appropriate for your personality - and be happy with it!

That’s it. Hope you got something to take home from it.

Some people call it Reputation Management, some call it Social Media Profiling, but essentially it is about how visible you are online.

Do a simple google search on your name and see how you look. With the social media it’s pretty much possible for one to create an online “resume” sorts, where each site listed in your name will give you a separate idea about you. Linkedin will give your professional details while Twitter will give your personal and more up close picture. Stumble upon and Digg may show how addicted you are to the internet.

So next time when someone asks for your resume, ask them to google your name.

So, now the Twitter hype is almost over…what are the SEO benefits of Twitter you discovered, if at all any?
One, two months earlier almost everyone including the probloggers and the pro-SEOs flocked to Twitter and almost trashed it with tweets. And just like you, I was one too.

Didn’t someone tell you that getting more followers on twitter was so cool? Yeah, I heard the same thing too. We added friends as much as we can and started…tweeting. Only to find that twitter is nothing but a waste of time.

So what are the benefits of using Twitter?

- More popularity
- More viral stories
- More fun
- More socialization
- Blah blah..BS

To be honest, I’ve not found luck with Twitter from day one and always wondered why everyone flocked to it. And to tell you the least, I found it’s s***t considering the SEO benefits. This is what i found.

- If you want to have a good user name like “Dating Tips”, which might be your primary keyword, it helps in some ways. but the following conditions apply.
-> You must have at least 1000 followers
-> They must all be one sided, that is…you shouldn’t be following them
-> They should be all active guys on Twitter, preferably
-> They should interact with you

Now, that’s an utopian concept isn’t it? How the hell would you be a super star with a username as “Dating Tips” or “Great wraps” ?

- Since all of the links on Twitter are “no followed” there’s basically nothing you get from it as link juice. So forget it!

- Now, it does help in social media. The viral thingy? How and by what scale - is the question.

Assuming I have thousand plus, very active subscribers - I release a viral video on Twitter, or a controversial story, and it becomes a super hit on Twitter!

Wow - that’s great. But hey, I would still stand a chance to make a viral video viral or a controversial article controversial, minus twitter - wouldn’t I ?

So bottom line is - There is no SEO benefits what so ever using Twitter, and if you are trying to get popular on it for the “viral” benefits, then I’d suggest you spent the same time on Digg/SU or Deli, and you’ll get four fold “popularity” of what you would get on Twitter.

Simple stuff.

Looking for a reason to join another social network? Here’s Plurk for you. Plurk is a “Twitter on steroids” kinda tool, which will do a twitter graphically linked with other tweets. Pretty much appealing I’d say.

Interesting thing about Plurk is the “Karma points”. You get karma points for each activity like adding friends and posting a tweet..well a “Plurk”.
You can see the plurks in a timeline..your friends plurks as well. Nice concept…if you like twitter, you should probably enjoy this too.
There’s a whole lot of interesting stuff on Plurk, check out their FAQ page and you’ll all those terminology.

I always thought that making the most of friends is the last word in getting popular on SU, back when I started using it. Over the time, there were even more myths like this one that I found were time wasters, and needed immediate attention. Infact, many of the things that I thought were “normal” was actually harming me in making the best of SU.

Let me share a few with you.

1. Clean up your friends list , remove all with no or less activity.
   I was under the impression that the more friends you have the better. Wrong.
   Be very careful when selecting friends. The basic idea is that the stumbles you do are passed on to your friends as well, which is how the traffic is generated. Now, what if out of the allowed 200 friends, 199 are accounts that haven’t even logged in the past weeks together? The stumbles you make doesn’t travel and the traffic is null.
   So go to your friends list today and remove all of them who doesn’t have any activity or less activity listed.
   Check out their number of stumbles and reviews received.
   Set a number for minimum stumbles required to be your friend, anyone who goes below should be avoided. This may sound harsh but if you don’t it defeats the purpose. As an alternative, you can add those “idle” profiles to your other social media like facebook. They probably will fit better there.
   Ex:- I was surprised to see Amit Agarwal’s profile (a top blogger in India) to be an inactive one. Removed him from the list, and added him on facebook.
2. Join the groups that suits your profile better.
   Unlike Digg, there are lot of groups (yep, active ones) on SU that you can join in and start making friends. There are weird topics available to throw in your opinion on starting from Windows hacks to IPL Cheerleaders. Get involved in them, there are lot of active people out there who’d love to meet new people.
3. Talk to top stumblers who are online now.
   Earlier, I used to send messages to other members I befriended on SU, but would not get a reply. The problem was that they never were online. So if you want to make conversation with that top stumbler (may not be a right choice), you better talk to the ones that are online. SU shows an updated page for live stumblers. Make use of it.
4. Add relevant tags to your already stumbled stories and delete wrong ones.
   Man, in the hurry to stumble stories, I should admit that I had even used wrong tags on some stories. Big big mistake. Abhijeet told me the other day, importance of tagging stories rightly on SU. And he was right. If I would tag a story wrongly, it wouldn’t be accepted by other stumblers and would be considered as close to spam. So stumble the stories properly, so that your friends can have a better SU experience and least not screw the whole system.
5. Don’t be a fan of someone who refuses to befriend you
   You knew that popular blogger, so you’d add him as a friend, and until he accepts it you remain a fan of his. Not good. It only makes sense if you are mutual friends. He may or may not see the stories you are stumbling but, if he has not accepted you as his friend then the story will not go viral (chances are minimum). Had it been his friend, you could have got a few stumbles extra, now that the fan is “inactive”, you miss it. So what’s the point in being a fan? Drop him and get a new friend.
6. Don’t change your avatar often, make it universal
   The avatar is your identity. So make it as exclusive as possible. I’m not sure how you should go about it, it depends a lot on creativity and one’s taste, so there are no limits to what you can do and there are no thumb rules as well. The point is to make a unique avatar so that people recognize you quickly. Least said, please don’t use the default ghost image. That sucks! And there are a million others who look like you.
7. Add all those 200 friends
   Just in case you have not added all of them, do it today. Pick the best, those who are active, who are open to friendship and those who share similar tastes as you. Find them and befriend them, when you have 200 slots why not make use of them?
8. In the about section, add your URL. Yep just one.
   In the about you section ( Top near your name in the default layout) if you add your blog URL, people can easily make out what you are. Give the most important link there, if you have an active blog, list it, or you can also give other social media profiles here. The idea is that, while interested people visit your profile they should check your URL and decide quickly as to whether to befriend you or not
9. Use the “Send to” option to let your friend know of a new story
   So when you wanted to share that wicked story you found the other day, what would you do. No no… please don’t tell me you’d send a mass mail or IM them, use the bloody “send to” button it’s been there for a while and you’ve not been using it. The beauty about it is that, while you send the message not only do you make sure that the guys is visiting the site but replying to you with a thumbs up/down. You get him engaged which is the best thing.

Today, we have with us an interesting personality - Neil Patel, co-founder of ACS.
Neil is a respected authority in the social media arena. He’s a man the industry looks upto for his experience with the social media and seo, which explains why he’s a much sought after Marketing Consultant today.

Thanks Neil for this interview, next time we’ll have an audio one, people always love to listen to you.

1. How did you start with Social Media, when did you recognize the potential and how did you get involved with it?

I got started with social media once I noticed that people were getting thousands of links from sites like Digg.com. The way I got started was by first networking with the top users who were successful on these sites. By interacting with these users they taught me how to leverage the social web so that I could be successful.

2. Which is your personal favorite and which works best for business/clients?

Not sure exactly what the question means, but if you are referring to social sites… then my favorite is Facebook. If you have a successful application on Facebook you can consistently get over 20 million pageviews a month.

Although Facebook is my favorite site, it doesn’t work well with all clients. Due to this, I would have to say that Digg is best for business/clients. It is much easier to leverage Digg than it is to leverage Facebook.

3. Everyone is talking about getting on the front page of Digg and being popular on SU, Is that all to it, or do you think efficiency is measured in any other way on these tools?

It may sound easy, but there is a lot to leveraging Digg and StumbleUpon. Success can be measured by getting on the front page of these sites, but ideally it should be measured by the amount of traffic/links you get.

4. I’ve read that you’ve done something on YouTube as an experiment that taught you the potential of social media (especially with videos), could you explain us what was it and how did it happen?

I have no clue what you are talking about.

Overall YouTube is a great site to leverage. Because of universal search you can create videos and get them ranked for competitive terms on Google.

The only experiments I can recall were faking views to see how many days in a row I could get a video to be number 1 on YouTube. Or how few links you can point to a YouTube video so that it would rank for competitive terms. And lastly, how many users I could force to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

5. Now, big brands like Virgin and Coke are opting for social media marketing, recognizing the potential of online space. Could you please tell me your thoughts on it?

I think it is great that companies want to embrace the social web. Once more large brands start leveraging it, social media marketing will become more mainstream.

One thing I think many companies don’t realize is that you can’t control what people think of you; especially on social web. Due to this some companies may end up with a sour taste in their mouth.

6. What according to you is a good strategy (generally) for offline retail brands to adopt when they get to the online space? (Like Nike)

I think it is good for companies to adopt it when they get into the online marketing space. But before they try and jump in, they need to try and understand how it works.

7. Personally I believe Social Media Optimization is dead. Agree/ Disagree - what are your thoughts on it Neil?

I don’t think it is dead. I think it has just really started to become mainstream. More people are leveraging the social web and more companies and getting budgets for social marketing.

8. Digg, SU, Sphinn, Mixx now there are lot of them and each has a typical character to it considering the user behavior - If I were to ask you to match these sites with a particular crowd, how would it be? Ex: - Digg = Geeks?

I wish it was as easy as Digg = Geeks, but as these sites keep on evolving more people are starting to leverage them. Due to this it is hard to say that one persona type uses each site. For example on Digg people who are into politics also love the site and in many cases these users are not geeks.

9. Are there any “loop holes” available in the Digg system still? We’ve heard you knew a couple of them earlier.

Not really anymore. There are still things you can do like build powerful accounts or network with other members, but the best loop hole is to write great content. Sadly, writing good content isn’t much of a loop hole.

10. Suppose “Mani Karthik of DailySEOblog” is a new entry to the online space, what would you recommend as a strategy to me to get popular on the social media.

Best advice I could give is writing really detailed content such as how to guides. Things that are timeless usually do well and build the most links