The Social Web for the Anti-Social

You decided to get into e-commerce because the last thing you wanted was to have to deal with people. The woman upstairs won’t shut up about her hemorrhoids, the mailman smells and your brother owes you $10.00. And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, you’ve been told traditional SEO is dead. You will now have to enter the realm of social search. It’s a bad day to be a misanthrope, you think to yourself. But I have some suggestions for you.

First off, what is the social web? I am using the term to encompass both Social News and Bookmarking Sites. Social search replicates offline networking. It is really a means of building community in order to filter through the vast amount of content on the web. Under traditional SEO, webmasters gave other sites an editorial "vote" by linking them on their web pages. The social web usurps this by having web users cast votes via the social bookmarking and news sites. How does this play out? Say you have a blog and you write an article like "The rise of Paris Hilton is definitive proof against Charles Darwin’s Evolutionary Theories." You were in a bad mood. Someone comes along and they like your article so they submit it to Digg.com. The readers of Digg than cast actual votes on your article or they can vote to "bury it". With enough votes, it can make the front page. You will see a lot of traffic to your site if this happens. Also, you can potentially add new readers to your blog.

The good news for you is that you don’t actually have to deal with real people if you don’t want to. You can create a blog and turn the comments off. Many really good blogs do this, and then you don’t have to interact with those new readers you just attracted. Also, you can submit your articles to all of your favorite social news sites without having to talk to anyone. It is done with a good old fashioned web interface.

What if you want to be more actively misanthropic? That can work for you too. Flamewars are a great way to get digged. Leaving insults in the comments can be fun too. Just by being who you are you can throw down the gauntlet and watch your rise to the top. You will soon realize that there is a place for you in the social web. Besides, once you see what stories actually make it to the front page of Digg.com, your lack of faith in humanity will be completely reaffirmed.

About the author:
Mary Lewis-Pierce is a Search Engine Optimization Consultant specialzing in social search and organic search results. To find out more visit her at www.seo-boston.com