This 2008 presidential campaign has been unique in many ways, but one aspect in particular that I have been fascinated with is how social media has become an influential part of this race for the White House.  I never would have thought that when Facebook and MySpace first were established that they would have experienced the tremendous growth that we have seen in the last few years.  Today companies, organizations, groups and even presidential candidates have profiles on social networking sites.  

These sites have been particularly valuable among the younger population and have played a significant role in engaging young voters during this election season.

Through online networks, candidates are communicating with younger supporters and are reaching out to voters in a way that hasn’t been available in the past.  Essentially, through social networks, presidential candidates are able to become part of voters’ social groups, their “friends”, in efforts to gain support.  A shift away from preaching and more toward conversing with supporters has become apparent.  This shows the power of social media.  It allows for a more intimate and personal connection, a relationship that can hopefully build trust.

The legitimacy of the presidential candidates and their message is also reinforced through social media.  If a candidate slips and is inconsistent with something that they say or their perceived message, it will likely be known in real time.  That is the good, and sometimes bad thing about social media, blogs and perhaps the Internet in general.  Information can spread very quickly and with active bloggers everywhere, this is inevitable. 

Not only do these sites open another channel for communicating with voters, candidates can also utilize them to observe their campaigns. Through blogs, the way in which voters are receiving a candidate’s message can be monitored. Demographic information about supporters such as where they live, their age, and other interests are all available. This can be leveraged and help the candidates to better understand who and where their key supporters are.

Today, it has almost become a necessity for candidates, and anyone trying to gain supporters for that matter, to have a presence within multiple social media networks.  They are able make use of these communities as yet another tool to build their campaign and individual “brands”. It is interesting; some people say that they would not vote for a candidate who didn’t have profiles in social media networks and other online communities, as it would indicate that they are not current with the times.  Would you?

Kid friendly search is an important feature for many parents of young children who want to let their children use the internet to research their school projects and basically, expand their horizons via the internet. However, turning on the safe search feature in your browser may not always help keep them in the good neighborhoods. Don’t get me wrong. Google, MSN and Yahoo do a marvelous job of filtering out those sites, but kids are smart and there are lots of ways around those safe search options.

Recently, Ask.com released a search engine just for kids and based on input from one of our younger search marketing researchers, it’s a hit! The new search engine features a customizable homepage with stickers and a pen, pencil and highlighter. Pre-selected categories include Schoolhouse, Movies, Games, Video and Images.
 

To decide what sites should be included, the seed list for Askkids.com was hand-selected by reviewers as either a good kid-friendly site or a good learning site. Then, they used an algorithm to identify web communities that were also linked to these basic sites. Of course, there could still be kid-unfriendly sites in this group, so they added a filter to remove any adult content. It seems to have worked pretty well because our young researcher was able to have a good safe time and our own research failed to turn up any sites that we wouldn’t want our kids to visit. In fact, where AskKids.com may fall down is on inclusion, as we note that there are other kid-friendly sites that they might have included which are not there.

Will Askkids.com become the new go-to search engine for kids? Well, it’s still early to say, but comparing it to other kid-friendly search engines in Alexa shows promising early results, since their late August announcement with a sharp rise in traffic as compared to a couple of their competitors. This site should be monitored going forward to see if they will become a force among the under-age search crowd.
 

So, how do you get included in askkids.com? Well, of course, you can advertise if your product fits their guidelines. They restrict advertising to products that are appropriate for kids under 13. To appear in the organic listings, make sure your site is appropriate for kids under 13 and then do a little research on Askkids.com to see what other sites related to the theme of your site are listed. Try to find networks of websites appropriate to your category and make sure you are linked in that network, so when Teoma, Askkids.com’s spider, comes around, your website can be found and included.

Geo-Targeting or localized online advertising in the world of SEO is a way to target the specific user of a website for local search. In other words, local businesses can promote themselves to potential customers that live in their area and utilize city/state specific search terms in their marketing. For it to work effectively and to maximize your organic ranking potential, you have to apply several techniques.

The initial question a webmaster will ask themselves is what kind of locality am I targeting? Would it be city-centric, county-centric or even country-centric? The next step would be to get yourself submitted to the directories. Obviously, you would go with the local directories first and then go with the regional sections of the more traditional directories such as Yahoo and DMOZ. Also, if you are going for a country specific site, you may have to consider the design of the website being indicative of the country’s people and its culture. Additionally, if you are say a UK site targeting a UK audience, Google advises that you should assign a specific country using Webmaster Tools. This is a good idea considering that search engines use the hosting location and the top level domain (.co.uk/.br) as a reference point for determining the location of your website. For a website that is merely targeting a city, the webmaster need to focus on keywords, and keyword targeting for the locality they are trying to target. There are some free tools out there for generating city-centric key word phrases for localized search optimization. One has to keep in mind their particular demographics as well. An owner of a club or bar, for instance, could submit to something like citysearch.com which is a search tool for tourists and the younger crowd.

So, whether you are targeting people in your city or entire country, it is always beneficial to think about the best strategy for getting the word out to the locals. Geo-targeting is a great way for local businesses to compete with the big national chains. A small “mom and pop” eatery now has a fighting chance of competing with the big boys. Big businesses can benefit too. A large clothing company may want to run ads in the winter for snow shoes while at the same time target Florida consumers for beach wear. A webmaster will always need to keep the needs of their consumers in mind and do the necessary research or their geo-targeting strategy may have no impact whatsoever.