Web 2.0 is a buzz word like no other – many people aren't sure what it means, and a lot of people are struggling to work out how it can be used by more ‘normal’ businesses. But as a publishing company, there is one particular aspect of Web 2.0 which offers RBI great opportunities, and that is the sites that come under the broad heading of social media.

Websites such as digg, del.icio.us, reddit, & Newsvine allow users to bookmark websites or pages that they find of interest, or submit stories that they think are cool/useful/amusing/whatever... Whilst they often tend to attract a quite young, tech savvy market, they still have plenty to offer to RBI’s many sectors. 

1. Social media allow you to communicate with an entirely new audience – if the core audience of the print publication is the yolk of the egg, social media allows you to interact with the white of the egg.
2. By targeting a story at or slightly amending the headline and summary for the audience of social media sites, we can drive huge amounts of traffic.
3. A single New Scientist story which was submitted to digg received 13,000 visits from that single link alone.
4. And stories that do well on such sites are more likely to be picked up by blogs and other forms of online media, driving further traffic.
5. If a story is picked up by a blog, then the link to our original story will help with that site’s rankings in the search engines.
6. If a journalist submits stories from their own site and a variety of other sites on a particular subject, they may come to be recognised as an expert on that subject.
7. If that happens, then in essence the journalist’s profile page on digg or del.icio.us may be a reader’s first port of call. They become that person’s human search engine.
8. To really understand this world, you should register with digg and submit a story that you’ve written, look at what sort of stuff is popular, and vote for a story submitted by another user that you like.
9. Or register to start a flickr photogallery (don’t forget to add tags, or no one will be able to find your photos): I doubt that there is a single RBI magazine which could not make use of flickr to drive traffic, links, or branding in some way.
10. Or register here to use del.icio.us. Once you have done this you can add a button to your internet browser, which will allow you to save stories you like at the click of a button as well as viewing all of the stories that you have saved. And del.icio.us also makes a great internal filing system, to allow the sharing of information amongst staff.

Note: This article was originally written as part of a training programme for the journalists at UK B2B publisher Reed Business Information. It is not aimed at an audience with a knowledge level of the average SEOmoz reader, but instead is intended to act as a potential guide for anyone working with journalists learning about what Web 2.0 offers.

Ciarán Norris is now the SEO Director at UK search marketing agency eyefall.