Here is part 2 of the series I will post over the next few months based on chapters from my book, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization.

This book is meant to be a guide to building an optimized foundation in the Social Web for beginners and advanced users alike.

Chapter 2 of the book is about preparing the content you will need to implement your Social Web strategy. It will assist you in preparing and gathering content as well as optimizing it for maximum exposure and mileage in the Social Web.

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

Chapter 2: Preparation

Once your strategy is in place, use it to prepare the content you will need for implementation. Try to resist the urge to just “wing it.” Proper preparation of your descriptions, biographies, and other blurbs will greatly increase your exposure in the Social Web. …

Before proceeding, you need to decide two things:

1. What “entity” will you be representing in the Social Web? If you are an author, this will be your book; if you are a business owner, this will be your business. If you are a publisher or an author who intends on writing more than one book, you may want to think this through. For instance, if you are a publisher, you may decide to create a presence for your press as well as for each of your titles. If you are an author with several books, you may want to make your name/pseudonym or the name of your book series your entity as opposed to just the name of one of your books.

2. Which person within your organization will be representing you in the Social Web? You cannot always use your business or book name as the account holder of social sites. You will need to populate many of the profiles for an actual person. If you are an author, this is a given; but if you are a business, you will want to choose someone within your organization who has the time to contribute to these sites on occasion. This person should also feel comfortable disclosing a certain amount of personal information about themselves.

Once you have decided on your entity and your representative, gather the following information. Be sure to use one or more of your best tags in every description and biography.

Information for Entity:

• Name of entity
• Tag line
• Short description
  • 50 to 60 words
  • Use at least two of your best tags

• Long description
  • 175 to 200 words
  • Use at least three of your best tags

• Website URL
• Year entity was founded
• Mission statement
• Product list (if applicable)
• Gender and birth date (These fields are required to register in some social sites, and since the age of your book or business would not make sense, use something else that has meaning for you.)
• Logo or book cover art

Information for Representative:

• Name of representative
• Brief biography
  • 100 words
  • Use two of your best tags
• Gender
• Birth date (This does not need to be public.)
• The following information is optional in most sites, however, it will make your representative more likely to find contacts in social networking sites:
  • Hometown
  • Activities
  • Interests
    • Music
    • TV
    • Movies
    • Books
  • Favorite Quotes
  • Favorite people/heroes
  • Education
    • College/university
    • Class year
    • Concentration
  • Work
    • Employer
    • Position
    • Description
    • City/town
• Photo for social networking profiles

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

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This chapter also features preparation tips for tags/keywords, social calendars, multimedia items, as well as optimizing file names and preparing content for blog posts. The resource CD offers linkable resources and a fillable PDF form called “Preparation Worksheet” that you can use to prepare your content.

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

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 author of The Bootstrapper’s Guide to the Mobile Web and The Social Media Survival Guide. She is a veteran developer and programmer with over 25 years experience. She also blogs at Social Media Power and at Mobile Web Slinger. Deltina offers consulting for search, social, semantic, and mobile optimization at PLUMB Web Solutions, and teaches the graduate level social media certificate course for Drury University. You may also enjoy her video tutorials on YouTube. Contact her or leave a comment below.