Now, I’m going to assume that you have a blog. If not, go out and buy a good domain, get some hosting and install WordPress. While you’re at it, I would recommend investing in Chris Pearson’s stellar Thesis theme. Once you’ve got your blog up and running, start working on content. And by content, I mean stuff that you think your market would be interested in. By all means, resist the urge to publish self-promotional fluff and try to write with the interests of your market in mind.

If you haven’t already done so, go get a Twitter account. Try to secure an account that either a) reflects your brand name, or b) reflects your target keywords. Theme your account along the lines of your website (logo, colours, background, etc) and link back to your main site from your profile. At this stage, you should also sign up for accounts at Bit.ly and TwitterFeed. Bit.ly will let you track clicks on links dropped in your tweets, and TwitterFeed will auto post your new blog posts to Twitter.

Then go build a Facebook page for your website / product / service. Again, try to be consistent with your use of colour, logo, catchphrases, etc. and be sure to cross-link your Facebook page with your blog and your Twitter account. Add one of the RSS apps that allow you to publish blog posts to your page, and submit your blog feed. You can also sync your Twitter account with Facebook, in one of two ways. Firstly, you can add the “Notes” application and import your blog posts or tweets via RSS. Alternately, I discovered another app by a company called Involver that allows you to add a dedicated Twitter tab to your Page. Note: the “official” Twitter Facebook app will *not* allow you to publish to a page; only to a personal account as far as I know.

It may seem like a lot of work, but once this system is up-and-running your blog content will be syndicated to both Twitter and Facebook automagically. While there is no direct SEO benefit to be had by using this strategy (aside from indexing and some minor link juice flow), it would be foolish to think that Google is not looking at social traffic patterns and other such metrics to determine trust factors; especially in light of Larry Page’s quote in the first paragraph.

While the example above is limited to Twitter and Facebook, it could easily be extended to social networks beyond those mentioned.  Friendfeed, for example, allows you to sync your account with your Twitter account for cross population.  For those willing to invest some time and effort, there are loads of opportunities for creative content syndication within social media.

Last Minute Update: As of August 20, 2009, Facebook Syndicates Updates From Pages To Twitter, Still Holds User Updates Hostage.

In the video linked to from his tweet, Matt states that he would support the removal of rel=”nofollow” for users that have earned a certain level of trust within the community. Fast forward 1:28 into the video, where he says “If a particular site does have trust in the person who is making a link, then there’s plenty of good reasons to make that link flow pagerank and take the nofollow off.”

Which brings us back to Twitter. A few months ago, Twitter implemented the use of rel=”nofollow” on profile pages. Rae Hoffman sums up the situation much better than I could, and she hits the nail on the head when she suggests that “it is time they realize that THEY are responsible for determining which of those individual pages is authoritative, trusted and legitimate enough to pass link popularity.” THEY = Google.

This is where things get rather confusing. Based on the comments Matt made in the video above, the onus is apparently on webmasters to determine which of their community members are trusted enough to create clean links that flow Pagerank. In real life however, we have numerous examples of Google pressuring companies to implement “nofollow” or face the prospect of being penalized. It would appear that we have two conflicting positions being forwarded by our friends at Google. What does this mean for webmasters and publishers? What are your thoughts?

@jeffbentley @kevinleehansen @jabide @mode23 @Brydon @Wayder @studawg @modsuperstar @therealjaypo

I’m feeling a little bit mischievous today, and just thought of a pretty funny idea. You see, there’s a lot of people on Twitter that are obsessed with their follower numbers. It’s an unhealthy obsession, in my opinion. Twitter is not a numbers game; it’s a platform designed to facilitate conversation. I’m not saying Twitter should be used this way or that, but when people lose sight of the real value (conversation, connections, comraderie) of the platform, it’s time for a reality check. On that note, allow me to introduce you to The #UnfollowFriday Project.

I’ll need *your* help to make it happen, but the goal is to identify Twitter users that have thousands of followers and are seemingly obsessed with their numbers. Somebody like Robert Scoble is an obvious target, but he got laid off today or something so let’s cut @Scobleizer some slack. Once we’ve identified our target, if they lose over %50 of their followers I am going to give away a prize to a random #unfollower. This is antisocial media at it’s finest! Let’s get some suggestions in the comments below to get things moving. Once we’ve settled on a user, simply unfollow the target and tweet “I unfollowed @username for a chance to win #UnfollowFriday”. This could be very amusing…