Here is the begin­ning of the chap­ter review series I will post over the next few months from my book, A Sur­vival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Opti­miza­tion. The book is doing very well, and I even have a cou­ple of 5-star reviews. A big “Thank you” to the con­trib­u­tors and read­ers of Socialmedia.biz for your support!

This book is meant to be a guide to build­ing an opti­mized foun­da­tion in the Social Web for begin­ners and advanced users alike. So, while some of the chap­ters may seem basic to many of you, they are essen­tial for those who are just start­ing out.

Chap­ter 1 of the book is about map­ping a social media and Web 2.0 opti­miza­tion strat­egy right out of the gate. A strong mes­sage through­out the entire book is to method­i­cally build a solid and opti­mized pres­ence in the Social Web that you can rea­son­ably man­age. Once that foun­da­tion is in place, adding and inte­grat­ing new tools will be almost painless.

The fol­low­ing excerpts are from A Sur­vival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Opti­miza­tion.

Chap­ter 1: Cre­at­ing your social media strategy

There are three gen­eral areas to keep in mind when plan­ning a strat­egy for opti­miz­ing your pres­ence in the Social Web: inter­ac­tiv­ity, shar­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Inter­ac­tiv­ity can come in the form of writ­ing blog posts, com­ment­ing on oth­ers’ posts, tweets, or par­tic­i­pat­ing in social net­work­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Shar­ing can be as easy as upload­ing images and video clips onto media com­mu­ni­ties. Col­lab­o­ra­tion can be achieved by con­tribut­ing to social book­mark­ing sites or wikis…

It is easy to get over­whelmed with all of the new social media and Web 2.0 tools and tech­nolo­gies that pop up on the Inter­net on an almost daily basis. But a care­fully planned and exe­cuted strat­egy can alle­vi­ate your stress and ensure your suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion into the new Social Web. …

The one bit of tech­nol­ogy essen­tial to your Social Web suc­cess is an RSS feed, dis­cussed in more detail in Chap­ter 3, “RSS Feeds & Blogs,” but, in short, you have two choices:

• Start a blog which has built-in RSS feed tech­nol­ogy, or
• Cre­ate your own RSS feed using an XML file…

The next step in a suc­cess­ful strat­egy is to decide which tools make sense for you or your busi­ness to implement.

Here are some gen­eral areas to consider:

Social Net­work­ing (Face­book, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.)
It is a good idea to have a healthy pro­file on one if not two of these social net­work­ing sites.

Micro Blog­ging (Twit­ter, Jaiku, etc.)
These sites have become as pop­u­lar as blog­ging. We rec­om­mend a healthy pres­ence in at least one of them.

Other Social Plat­forms (Tum­blr, Squidoo, etc.)
If you have a lot of con­tent, these plat­forms are a good addi­tion to your strate­gic tool kit.

Social Book­mark­ing and Crowd-Sourcing (Stum­ble­Upon, Digg, etc.)
Build­ing a pres­ence in sev­eral of these sites and con­tribut­ing reg­u­larly is highly rec­om­mended for any strategy.

Blog Com­ment­ing
Becom­ing part of the con­ver­sa­tion is a very impor­tant part in any social media strat­egy. As you are surf­ing the Web and/or search­ing for sites and blogs to share on social net­work­ing and crowd-sourcing sites, take the time to com­ment on oth­ers’ blog entries.

Media Com­mu­ni­ties (Flickr, YouTube, etc.)
Shar­ing your mul­ti­me­dia con­tent is an impor­tant part of any strat­egy, even if you only have a few images.

Social Cal­en­dars
Con­sider these if you host or attend a lot of events.

Pod­cast­ing
Pod­casts are not dif­fi­cult to cre­ate. They can be par­tic­u­larly effec­tive if you have plenty of instruc­tional mate­r­ial or you con­duct interviews.

Vid­cast­ing or Web­cast­ing
These can be pow­er­ful viral tools for peo­ple or com­pa­nies who have the resources to cre­ate and main­tain them.

Wid­gets and Badges
Plac­ing wid­gets and badges from other social sites on your Web­site or blog can help make your site more interactive.

Vir­tual Worlds
This is one tech­nol­ogy that should be given con­sid­er­able fore­thought. The learn­ing curve is steep and con­sul­tants are expen­sive. How­ever, for the right prod­uct, it could serve as a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tool.

Social Media News­rooms
This tool is ideal for authors, pub­lish­ers, or other com­pa­nies who gar­ner a good amount of media cov­er­age or pro­duce reg­u­lar news releases.

Cus­tom Wid­gets or Appli­ca­tions
These are your own custom-built wid­gets or appli­ca­tions that can virally carry your brand into the Social Web.

Host­ing your own Blogs, Social Net­work, Wiki, etc.
These tools are best suited for com­pa­nies with a large cus­tomer base or who have many active advo­cates for their brand or service…

Copy­right 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

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This chap­ter also fea­tures 5 real-world social media strate­gies for you to use as a basis for your own. The resource CD offers fur­ther read­ing, link­able resources, and a fil­l­able PDF form called “Social Web Strat­egy Work­sheet” that you can use to map your strategy.

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As a spe­cial bonus to Socialmedia.biz read­ers, I have made the Social Web Strat­egy Work­sheet (a fil­l­able PDF form) avail­able for down­load. You are wel­come to use this for your­self or your clients — all I ask is that you do not remove the copy­right information.

And, as always, Socialmedia.biz read­ers also get a spe­cial, ship­ping included price of $16 (retail $24.95) for this book — just click the buy now button.

Deltina Hay is the prin­ci­pal of Dal­ton Pub­lish­ing and Social Media Power and founder of the new social media Web­site ser­vice Plumb Social. Ms. Hay’s grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion in com­puter sci­ence, applied math­e­mat­ics and psy­chol­ogy led her nat­u­rally to social media con­sult­ing. Her crit­i­cally acclaimed book A Sur­vival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Opti­miza­tion can be found or requested any­where books are sold. Con­tact her or leave a com­ment below.

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