Social search is all the rage. This makes social media optimization an important part of many web marketing strategies. If you use the social media sites the way they are supposed to be used, you generate popularity and trust and the search engines will reward you.

At Search Engine Strategies New York 2007, three of the grand mages in this magic art shared their secrets.

Be mindful of the community

Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz presented the number one rule of thumb for search engine optimizers starting out in social media optimization: Be mindful of the community.

The community is one of the most important motivating factors for people who contribute to social media. Being united by common interests and common objectives, these communities are wary of search engine optimizers (SEOs). They perceive SEOs as spammers and are afraid that they will undermine the community.

Search engine optimizers are web savvy early adopters. If they help out the community by adding valuable content they could be valuable members, according to Fishkin.

To succeed, you need to create a successful profile. Contribute to the community by commenting, sharing and make friends. Build a robust profile by adding plenty of information to your profile page, most importantly a bio that explains your interest in the purpose or theme of the site.

But there is an element of stealth here. Be careful of not acting as a search engine optimizer – don’t do anything that can be perceived as spamming. And if you do, use another profile, one that can’t be tracked back to you or your business.

Leveraging Digg and Stumbleupon

Neil Patel explained that the people who rule Digg and Stumbleupon are kids or they like to behave like kids. They will joke around they will slam you. So be warned.

To get real traffic from these services, 100 votes in 100 days are useless. You need 100 votes in no time to make it to the popular page.

On Digg the popularity and credibility of the person who submitted the story is an important factor. Also, it is helpful if popular diggers give their vote to your story. So make a lot of friends.

Here are Neil Patel’s quick tips for leveraging Digg and Stumbleupon:

What not to do

• Self promote
• Add biased information
• Pay for votes
• Break community rules
• Spam – you will get caught

What to do

• Add lots of friends
• Use great titles and descriptions (different, funny, even juvenile)
• Become a top user by participating and providing value and you will gain friends
• Submit at the right time (11 AM PST seems to work best)

How it works

Andy Hagans is a full time social media marketer. The prime objective of his campaign is to get trusted links.

He used one of his clients, Network Security Journal to explain how it works. Network security is a pretty dry topic to most people. On the upside, it’s tech oriented. The Digg crowd loves that.

For a story to be popular on Digg, the title is the most important thing. The rule of thumb is: Can you imagine it on a magazine cover?

Hagans settled on the title “The Fight Against Phishing: 44 Ways to Protect Yourself�. Phishing will be interesting to the tech savvy Digg crowd. A number in the title is often a good idea.

The article itself needs to be focused. Hagans also recommends making it “Lifehacker good�: It is all-important to offer help, tips or advice. Make sure it’s pretty: Add photos, lists and bolded words, so they don’t have to read the entire article to get the point.

Another tip is to link out generously. Bloggers are addicted to checking the referrals and they will digg you or link back.

He submitted to these sites:

1. Digg, Netscaspe, Stubmleupon, Reddit, Delicious
2. Second tier: Yahoo MyWeb, Furl
3. Top industry sites: Sent a tip email to Slashdot, Lifehacker, etc. Links from these sites will get you a lot of visitors and many of them have dig account

Don’t be too proud to beg. Link begging was part of the campaign. An easy way to do it yourself is to make a spreadsheet of relevant blogs containing first names and blog names. Send personalized e-mails asking for links.

The campaign generated 40 000 nearly useless visitors and, more importantly 3244 backlinks, including trusted links from industry web sites.

See also: SEOmoz How to Leverage Web 2.0 & Social Media Sites to Market Your Brand & Control Your Message.

More of Pandia’s Search Engine Strategies coverage.