Interesting. What exactly do they do under "SMO" umbrella?
For our blog review sites they are the source of the reviews we create. For our product news sites they do product write ups. For our e-book sites they write the e-books. For clients who need whitepapers, they write them.
We do not post on any sites other than our own or on client SMO accounts. We never post anonymously, we never post on a site that is not registered to a paying client.
We do not spam. Spam is for folks who can't originate good content. Over half our content gets re-tweeted, or link backs, so we are doing this the right way.
There is a lot more but the basic principle is that if we are being paid by a client to post on their properties, its legitimate. If they don't own the property, we don't work with them.
That's the kind of stuff we have to spend hours and hours banning. sigh
This is not the kind of stuff you spend one second banning since none of it is posted to your sites. It is strictly created by and for and posted on the sites owned by the clients.
When you step out of the box and think, you can find plenty of legitimate ways to leverage low cost content providers, for profit.
You can stop wincing now...
Are we talking about them writing quality copy for your website that hit on specific keywords? That would be SEO territory but I know people using Mechanical Turk and other services to get decent-quality copy written for cheap.
Think about it. Someone who clicks through to your page from Twitter/Facebook/Linked In is a known quantity. What do you know about someone that clicks on a paid link in google. Nothing. What does it cost for that click? Only your monthly publishing cost per account divided by total clicks per month.
And when someone walks through the door from SMO, you got a @name, you can look up their bio, you got their thoughts in their tweets, and you know where they are from.
And it cost a fraction of the price you pay Google for an unqualified, anonymous click. And with Twitter you have zero click fraud.
I have cracked the code on CPA using Twitter and it begins with killer content. And I use staffing in the Philippines which cost 1/15th American dollars for same person, no taxation, no flooring cost, no legal issues.
If I were Google, I would definitely figure out how to buy Twitter before it eats their PPC lunch. There are a whole lot of us X-PPC guys who no longer pay ridiculous fees to the search engines.
As for the Turk, the cost is a little more than the PI and with your own staffing, you get the added bonus of continuity. You also get the benefits of knowing your staff, weekly quality review meetings, standardization of process, and a consistent quality that I found missing with Mechanical Turk.
I would still recommend MT though for anyone running a few sites who needs less than full time commitment for projects.
Do you have bunch of niche twitter accounts with a lot of followers that you built up which directs people to your content sites that bring in the dough? I'm trying to understand the general twitter flow.
I have friends that make a killing from SEO and they have blogs on Tumblr and cough Posterous that they tactically use for SEO. They also spend hours writing the content.