Viral marketing has matured a bit over the years. There seems to have been a shift to the web not just being seen by agencies and brands as another tick box for any ad campaign, which is significant enough, but now being seen as a medium where a campaign can be launched to create a nearly INSTANT buzz before it hits TV and print.  Even before a movie is released, previews and trailers are now being uploaded to YouTube and other video sharing sites -  and movie moguls now see this as standard pre-launch buzz-generation activity. 

As far as the Web's power for going viral and generating a pre-launch BUZZ, Big business "gets it".

Buzz works! It can work for small and start-up businesses, too. The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out objectives and develop the viral theme for a buzz. There are three core components to any viral campaign, and businesses of any size can use them. They are:

1. The creative material: the viral agent that embodies the message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video, text, etc). The trick is to put together material that people will be eager to share with their family and friends and people are much more eager to share "advertainment" and advertisement.

2. Seeding: distributing and placing the agent online in places that provide the greatest potential spread. Direct viral material downloads or links on special viral third-party web sites in order to create awareness and spread before users get to the campaign destination site.   Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Del.iciou.us, and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are a few excellent examples of Web 2.0 sites to 'seed' your viral agent to be shared by the masses.

3. Tracking: Measuring the spread of the campaign to provide accountability and prove success. It is absolutely vital that you know what is or is not working. The only way to get that information is to track the results of your seeding.

Lessons have been learned, trends have been developed and there is definitely some science involved in creating a buzz successfully. The buzz technique is here to stay and, if used strategically, it can make a difference to the success of your e-business.

Article by Web 2.0 Media Marketing - Offering a collection of social marketing guides to using the top social sites for marketing and traffic generation.

Tags: StumbleUpon traffic generation, traffic generation with MyBlogLog, promoting on social networks, marketing on social network sites

More often that not, we do not have a choice about what and when marketing information is available to us. In most cases we cannot choose to ignore the huge billboard on the road or the side of the bus unless you decide to drive with your eyes closed – but that is not something that is generally encouraged.  You could change the channel when adverts show up on your favorite TV or radio show – but it is more than likely you will hear or see it again.

With marketing on the internet, the dynamics are a somewhat different. The internet is vast and intricate. It is an intense web of information that needs some skill to navigate, but if you do so, you can rest assured that your needs will be met.

But the internet gives you more choice. You can choose which website to click on or ignore.  And there is a certain 'class' of people that purposely research and shop online BECAUSE of this.  This demographic of internet user is generally college educated, often with additional education beyond college.  This means that the average internet user or anyone looking to do business on the web tends to be a little smarter than someone who does not use the internet for business.  To market to a more intelligent set of buyers, the online seller (affiliate marketer, webmaster, internet marketer) also has to elevate his or her game accordingly, and become a smarter marketer.

You need to have an extra edge to make your business or website stand out among the millions out there. Building trust and authority to be considered an expert in your field will serve marketers well in the new Web 2.0 age.

How do you do this?

It is said that word-of-mouth is the strongest marketing tool. For example, friends starting a new shop, café or blog will most probably tell you to ‘spread the good word.’ We are more likely to believe our friends and peers than a stranger on the television or radio. This is because we know our friends/peers well and we often share the same concerns, needs and tastes as the people around us. If something is good enough for them, it is good enough for you.

What we need to remember when marketing on the internet is that internet users are a community. Internet users will therefore trust, and have faith and confidence in their fellow internet users. If, for example, a fellow blogger recommends an interesting blog to you, then you are more likely to visit the blog. For this reason, Social networks are becoming more and more important in the internet marketing world. Networks of like minded people create an easy target market for savvy internet marketers.  Communications within these rapidly growing target market groups about a certain product or website are even more crucial to internet marketing.

Marketing on social community sites - Social Marketing -  is the ‘word of mouth’ of the new interractive World Wide Web.

Article provided by Web 2.0 Media Marketing - Check our Guides to marketing on the top social sites.  And our newest guide to marketing on Twitter. 

Tags: web 2.0 sites, Facebook guide, social marketing, marketing on social sites

Tags: StumbleUpon traffic generation, marketing on social network sites, promoting on social networks, traffic generation with MyBlogLog

I want to talk about a really underused traffic source called Hubpages.

I joined this site a couple of months ago but only actually started using it over the past weekend. Why I'm excited about it is that its already generated traffic and, more importantly, sales!

Hub Pages is, by my definition, a higher class of article directory.  Although it does have many elements of social networking included too. The GUI is fairly straightforward and seems to make it really easy to post and publish articles without waiting for human reviewers. 

Hubpages uses a scoring system thats based on a number of criteria for articles and yourself, and appears to be consistent. Hubpages reacts quickly to spammy posts and articles though, so dont abuse it! 

Your Hubs will be monetized via revenue sharing with Adsense, Ebay and Amazon.  Ive made less than a dollar since starting last weekend, LOL, so lunch is on me. MY goal for using Hub Pages is NOT direct monetization, but it doesn't hurt to pick up a few more bucks a month as a result.

The members are called Hubbers and it doesnt appear as if their internal forum is very active. That has some real potential for you to start posting in. They do have what are called Fan Clubs, so for example, if you become my fan, its like becoming a MySpace friend.

After you create your account, you can begin creating Hubs. A Hub is a single web page, which really is just a good quality article, with pictures and video (both optional), along with anything else related to what youre writing about. If your article is already written, it takes about 5 minutes to create a hub and publish it.

This is a MUST for your daily schedule folks.  Publish one or two articles a day and creatively link them back to your sites!   Don't over-do it though -  too much, too fast and you might be considered a spammer.  Be sure to read the rules about the Hubpages service before going crazy!

Heres a link to my first Hub:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Blogs-Are-Websites-Too

If you do not already have a Hub account, I'd encourage you to sign up and experiment with it. Hubpages show huge potential for SEO benefit and traffic, if you use your Hub properly and diligently

One note:  I've seen WSOs (Warrior forum offers) and web design sites where people offer to build Hubs for you at ridiculously high prices.  Avoid these, as Hub pages are so easy to use you'd be wasting your hard-earned money to hire someone to do it for you!   Literally, if you can write a sentence and click your mouse, you can have your first HUB up within a few minutes once you've decided on your topic.

By the way, if you do join Hubpages or already have an account, please join my fan club - and of course, I'll join yours

Ok then… Start Hubbing for a an increase in your traffic - AND lasting backlinks from those high-PR Hubpages.

Tags: web 2.0 social marketing, create hub, Hubpages, web 2.0 sites

Tags: FaceBook marketing, StumbleUpon traffic generation, marketing on social network sites, social networking sites

Squidoo is a relatively new web 2.0 website that was launched in March of 2006. Squidoo allows people to build web pages, or lenses, that offer unique information to visitors. Squidoo lenses come with built in income programs like Adsense and affiliate programs like Amazon and Ebay.

What many people don’t know about Squidoo is that lenses have a tendency to earn top Google rankings in the search engines. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that top Google rankings mean lots of traffic. Many webmasters pay a small fortune to get pages indexed within the top Google rankings.

Before you go crazy and start building hundreds of Squidoo lenses, it’s a good idea to have a look at some of the more popular lenses. Whenever you are entering some kind of new market it’s usually a good idea to take a look at the competition. Look at many of the top ranked lenses and see what the owners are doing with their lenses.

Here's an example of a Squidoo lens on Golf I just created a couple weeks ago.  You can see it's already in the top 400 lenses in its category.  AND its achieved a 5-star rating.  Pretty good for a 14-day-old Squidoo lens, wouldn't you say?

After all, lenses that are top ranked have to be doing something right. You should next take the time to write out a plan of what exactly your lens is going to look like. Take into considering the layout of your lens - the placement of your selected modules - as the layout affects its effectiveness in getting lens readers to do what you want them to do.  Then, decide who your lens will target and what kind of content you will provide on your lens.

The next step is to do some keyword research for your chosen niche and uncover some low competition keywords that you can use for your Squidoo lens. The low competition keywords you uncover will serve as the headline for your lens. Having Squidoo lens with the keyword you are targeting in the title will give you a huge head start in battle for search engine rankings.

The best keyword research tools available on the market right currently are nichebot.com and Keywords Analyzer. I personally use them both for utmost power and convenience.  Nichebot is a web-based service that you log into to use.  Keywords Anaylzer is a software tool that runs from your local hard drive.  Keywords Analyzer is constantly running in the background on my desktop PC - a research tool I use each and every day - it's my secret weapon to ramping up traffic and getting PR quickly.  Both research tools are absolutely top notch, or I wouldn't use them myself.

Now that you've done good keyword research for your topic - For your Squidoo lens to do really well you need to add as much high quality content to your lens as possible. And this content will be targeted to the best keywords you've found (low competition, high profitability). 

You can actually use articles you may have written in the past to use on your lens if you are not up to the task of creating new content. Fresh private label rights content is a great way to get content as well, but make sure that you purchase the freshest content possible. If not, then be certain to partially rewrite your PLR articles before adding them to your lens.  Adding some professional graphics can go a long way in making your lens look more professional. Consider hiring a graphic designer to create a few unique graphics for your lens.

The best way to use Squidoo to send traffic to your website is to use the RSS feed module. The RSS feed module is an option offered to you when you are first building your lens. All you really need to do to make the RSS feed work for you is to load the RSS feed from your website or blog and the Squidoo lens will then update automatically as you update your website. After you have started a few lenses you should start to notice a substantial improvement to your websites traffic.

Article by Web 2.0 Media Marketing

Tags: using Squidoo, squidoo lens, social marketing, start a squidoo lens

Tags: StumbleUpon traffic generation, promoting on social networks, how to use social networking sites for marketing, FaceBook marketing

Still a fairly new consumer phenomenon and internet user trend is an online activity called "tagging" or "folksonomies" (short for folks and taxonomy).  Tagging is powerful because it allows internet users to create an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file their preferred content under tags, but even better, share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.

Here's how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us - a bookmark sharing site – and Flickr - a photo sharing site - consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.

For instance, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag "iPod." These images are now not only visible under the individual user's iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled "iPod."

Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search. Type the word "blogs" into Google and it can't tell if you are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already getting on to the folksonomy train. They are rolling out tag-like structures to help users more easily locate content that's relevant to them.

Although tags are far from perfect, marketers should be using them to keep a finger on the pulse of the public at large, and especially pulse of consumer trend. Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, company or website. These are living, human focus groups that are available for free, 24/7.

Folksonomy sites can be also be CAREFULLY used to unleash viral marketing campaigns - but with a caveat.  Marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting links/photos/videos, and absolutely NEVER spam the services.

Article Source:  Web 2.0 Media Marketing  - Check out our Social Marketing Guides for Facebook, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, and Yahoo Answers.  Learn how to utilize social marketing the right way - with powerful marketing strategies and techniques expressly for use on social networking sites.

Tags: social networking sites, how to use social networking sites for marketing, FaceBook marketing, guides to social network marketing

Networking is a vital part of internet marketing, but one that is often overlooked. Working online, it is easy to forget that there are real live people out there who are interested in the same things you are and who are also struggling to get into internet marketing for their own businesses. By hooking up with these other business people, you can form a valuable networking community that is beneficial to all involved.

The best way to start networking is to join internet marketing forums. There you will find like minded webmasters who will be interested in forming liaisons. Also, those who are not appropriate for joint ventures or link sharing will probably have some excellent advice for you. Internet marketing forums are wonderful places to have your questions answered whether you are new to the game or not.

When networking with other internet marketing pros, don't forget about joint venture partnerships. This is when two or more internet marketing webmasters get together to form a temporary partnership that is mutually beneficial. This might be teaming up to create an information product giveaway event, where everyone chips in a product and their opt in list, or it could simply be writing an e-book together. The choices are endless, really, but this is a form of internet marketing that should never be ignored.

Another vital part of internet marketing is forming a network of affiliates. If you have a product that lends itself to an affiliate program you should certainly consider it! Imagine an entire army of vendors selling your products! They can reach places that would take you months or even years to get into. This is internet marketing at its finest. And setting up an affiliate program doesn't need to be a hassle if you go through a reputable website like Clickbank or ShareASale. These programs will help you get your networking with affiliates off the ground for a modest fee.

You can also start networking by looking at websites that are similar to yours, but not necessarily in direct competition. Write the owner and ask if they would be interested in doing a link share or even mutual reviews of each other's website. This can be a great way to expand your internet marketing network as well as make new friends and get some reciprocal links, which allows you to tap into the other site's visitors.

Just taking the time to get to know other internet marketing specialists is a form of internet marketing in itself. You are not only learning, but answering questions and forming business bonds that could be extremely useful to you in the future. Plus, by speaking with other webmasters, you increase interest in your website and if you have high quality content, someone from your new network might even link to you without being asked to! A mention on their website is even better and a full-on recommendation will send you loads of potential customers.

Internet marketing can be a bit tricky when you are first getting into it, but with a bit of networking skill, you can quickly learn what you're doing and turn your website into a success.

Tags: social networking, affiliate network, network marketing, social marketing

Tags: guides to social network marketing, how to use social networking sites for marketing, StumbleUpon traffic generation, FaceBook marketing

Social bookmarking is the latest trend in website marketing and promotion. Many internet marketers have become swept up in the social bookmarking craze in the hopes of producing more traffic for their websites. At present, there is a great deal of misconception regarding social bookmarking and many are not sure what exactly social bookmarking is and how it can help their business. For those new to the fast paced world of internet marketing, understanding what social bookmarking is and how it can improve their online marketing is essential.

Social bookmarking emerged a few years ago as a way for internet surfers to find, save, organize, and share their bookmarks of different web pages. Social bookmarking is an alternative to simple browser bookmarking because with social bookmarking you can share your bookmarks with other people who can in turn share their bookmarks with you.

Because you are constantly updating and sharing your bookmarks with other people you are in effect being social with others, hence the name social bookmarking. Bookmarks saved to a social bookmarking site can shared within a network of others or can even be kept private (which is more like anti-social bookmarking).

Compared to other automated resource classification software, social bookmarking actually has many advantages. The big difference between resource classification systems and social bookmarking sites is that social bookmarking sites are arranged by humans based upon how they understand and interact with the sites content. In contrast, resource allocation systems are arranged by computerized algorithms.

Therefore, the tags that are achieved with social bookmarking are much more semantic and systematic. Additionally, because humans are responsible for the bookmarking of sites, sites with more bookmarks are perceived as having more value than their highly ranked search engine counterparts.

As an internet marketer, social bookmarking allows your websites to get noticed without the need for costly search engine optimization. The more people who bookmark your website, the more perceived value your website will have and this ultimately translates into visitors to your website.

Perhaps the easiest way to start getting traffic from social bookmarking is by submitting your website to stumbleupon.com. Stumbleuppon allows users who have downloaded their software into their browser to randomly explore websites based on their interests. By submitting your site to stumbleupon you can actually start to receive traffic within just a few days.

The world of internet marketing is fiercely competitive and to truly succeed you need to have a competitive advantage over the other guy. Social bookmarking as a form of website promotion is free and can easily deliver avalanches of traffic to your websites. In other words, social bookmarking is quite possibly the competitive advantage you have been looking for.

Tags: social marketing, traffic generation, web 2.0, social bookmarking

Tags: social networking sites, FaceBook marketing, how to use social networking sites for marketing, promoting on social networks

First published on Qassia

The Information Super Highway has proven to be a powerful medium for any business owner to get the word out about their product or service. However, internet users have become more sophisticated in just WHAT they will respond to.

Banner ads and blantant sales copy - what once drove online business profits into the stratosphere - no longer produces the sales and high 'return on investment' it used to. Instead, internet users have become banner blind and have developed an aversion to being 'sold to'.

Instead, what works today to generate a buzz about a new product or service is word of mouth, Web 2.0 style.

Web 2.0 describes today's new genre of websites - Sites that not only encourage, but actually exist on the input submitted by their users. Sites like MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon and the like are a meeting ground for millions of internet users to share their favorite stories, links, websites, and more.

The free sharing of information at popular Web 2.0 sites can give savvy internet marketers instant, viral, and massive exposure for their products and services. But only if they know how to use Web 2.0 sites the right way.

The used-car-salesman technique is out. Even the 'soft sell' doesn't work here. Instead, Web 2.0 sites require giving and sharing - Offering real, interesting, useful information to these users builds trust. Do that, and they will be compelled to visit your website to find out more about you AND your product. If they like what they see, they'll share it with their friends and a viral traffic surge to your website begins.

Let's face it - we're ALL tired of junk mail, spam, and pop-up ads.  Instead, a recommendation from someone we know and trust gets our attention.  Knowing how to use this philosophy with Web 2.0 sites is a requisite for any internet marketer and webmaster who wants to succeed online today and into the future.

Article by Deborah Casey  (who also happens to be the Admin at Web 2.0 Media Marketing).

Tags: Qassia, invitation to qassia, quassia.com, web marketing

Tags: FaceBook marketing, social networking sites, guides to social network marketing, marketing on social network sites

The concept of Social Bookmarking developed from the idea that regular Internet users would automatically bookmark their favorite websites on their own PC as a way of making sure that they kept all their favorites in the same place.

But, what could they do when they were not at their own PC? How were they to find or access their favorite websites then?

So, according to Wikipedia:

"Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public……"

So, the first important thing to note is that these bookmarks are 'usually public', so that if you do decide that a website is a favorite of yours, then other people can see that, and they can check it out too.

Furthermore, when the first social bookmarking sites became popular, they did so by coming up with a different way of classifying the site that people were listing, according to a relatively informal system of tags, rather than the more traditional 'folders' system that most people were using on their home or office computers.

So, a user could (and still can) add a favorite to their social bookmarking site list of favorites, and then choose their own tags for that site.

This tagging system allows sites to be found by social bookmarking site members by searching on a chosen tag, and the sites often include information about how popular a particular site is as judged by the number of people who have already bookmarked it

Some sites even provide web feeds (RSS) for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags, so that subscribers can automatically become aware of how many new viewers a site has, or how many sites have been added to the tagged group in question.

Some of these social bookmarking sites have become very popular indeed, with the more established sites like Del.icio.us and even relative newcomers to the 'game' like StumbleUpon having achieved Google Page Rank of 8.

Now, there are many sites already out there on the web where you can access fairly exhaustive lists of Social Bookmarking sites so there is no point in wasting time with a similar list here.  The important thing is not a long list of site URL's. The important thing is to really grasp and understand what these sites can do for you and your blog.

The first thing that you must do is to register for an account with each social bookmarking site. Then, every time that you make a new posting to your blog, you simply submit the post to the site in question.

Your posting and site address will generally appear on the home page of the site in question immediately after you submit it.
 
How long it then stays there is entirely dependent on the popularity of the bookmarking site itself, and to at least some extent, also on the time that he posting was submitted.

Will this drive masses of traffic to your site?

Well, it is certainly possible.

It is certainly feasible that someone might see your post and add it to their favorites, and the more people that do that, the longer your posting is likely to remain visible.

This is a particularly important factor on Digg, for example (remember that we added the Digg plug-in to your blog?).
 
If enough people 'digg' your story to keep it on the top pages, then it is almost impossible to imagine just how many visitors that this can drive to your site or blog!

I have literally seen websites use their whole allocated monthly bandwidth in one day as a result of a story really making it big on Digg!

But, in the vast majority of cases, the truth is, no, using social bookmarking sites is not likely to generate masses of traffic for your site.  But you should still do it for the simple reason that what it will do is create incoming links for your blog, and these links, as I have mentioned many times before are one of the two most important factors that help you achieve good search ranking.

These bookmarking sites are also very popular with the search engines themselves, and the spiders tend to visit them many times a day, so by making sure that your site is featured, you are making sure that your blog is going to achieve maximum levels of what is sometimes called 'search engine love'.

The downside is that, at the time of writing, there are no sites or software programs freely available that can 'mass submit' to all of the social bookmarking sites that you might want to have your blog appear in.

Thus, it can be a fairly tedious job making the submissions. A couple of tools that, whilst far from perfect, may nevertheless help you in your task, are OnlyWire, which claims to be able to submit your site to 22 social bookmark sites, and Socializer, which is supposed to work with over 40 similar sites.

Social Networking Sites

Social Networking sites are basically communities that you join and then search for people within the community with similar interests as you.

Now, some social networking sites are very small and focused, so by definition the people who join such sites are already members of a tightly focused interest group.

Such a group might be brought together by their political or religious beliefs, or it could be something such as their hobbies (they love Ford Mustangs or making cheesecake) sports or basically anything else that mankind has found it possible to be interested in!

So, in such a tightly focused group, almost all members without exception will be interested in the one common thing.

However, there are many other community sites where the only real common interest that most of the members could possibly ever have with one another is that they are all, in fact, members of the same site!

This is simply a function of the size and therefore the diversity of the sites in question, with websites like MySpace and FaceBook having literally millions of members all over the globe. (107 and 73 million members respectively)

 Such sites generally have a totally open membership,  meaning that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are.

Thus, there is no general community wide commonality of beliefs or interests either.

It is therefore only natural that once you are a member, inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends, those that do have similar interest and/or beliefs to those of your own.

And this is where it gets interesting for you as an Internet marketer or online business person.

Firstly, if we use MySpace as our example (simply because whatever works on MySpace also works on almost every other social networking sit, albeit sometimes after a degree of 'finessing'), then you are looking at one of the ten biggest websites in the world.

Whatever your interests, given so many millions of members, then there will inevitably be others that have similar interests, people that you could potentially 'bond' with immediately.

For example, a MySpace search using the phrase 'traffic generation' returned 5,650 results. So that is over five and a half thousand people who might be interested in your traffic blog site from a direct 'match' of my search term to the specific subject topic of my blog site.

However, run a search for a more generic (and broader) term like Internet marketing, and you get 45,400 results.

Now, it is a very reasonable assumption that anyone who is interested in Internet marketing is trying to sell something on the net, and that they therefore need traffic to their website.

So, of course, these people would be legitimate 'target prospects' for what I am trying to promote also.

Take it one stage further and use single word search 'marketing' and it returns 549,000 results.

Again, it is reasonable to assume that all of these people are at least interested in bringing their products or services to the marketplace, so, once again, traffic generation could be of immense interest to them.

So, all I need to do is to tell them about the great resource that I have available, and that will be the 'deal done' right?

Err, no, not really, unless the 'deal' that you are talking about is having your MySpace 'space' and account closed down immediately!

The thing is that the folks who run MySpace really do not want their 'community site' turning into a commercial free-for-all, a sort of online bazaar, and they will go to any lengths to protect their site.

So, you cannot just open your account one day and start bombarding people with your commercial messages the next.

In the same way that, when you join any quality forum site, you have to establish yourself as a valid contributing member before you can start promoting your products or even adding a signature file with a redirect to a sales site, you must establish yourself on community websites too.  So, the first thing that you must do is to take some time and make an effort to create a proper profile, something that shows that there is a real person behind the newly opened account.

Then, you must start looking for 'friends' in the MySpace community, but you must do so gradually, as you are limited to so many friend invitations a day and, even if you weren't, inviting a thousand new friends a day hardly looks natural or normal, does it?

Put it this way – if you saw that someone was inviting 1000 new friends a day, would you perhaps thinks that there was something a little bit strange or artificial about it?

Correct – of course you would.

So, start to become a real member of the community before you start promoting, is the bottom line.

Sure, by all means begin to invite people to be your friends, but do try to spend a little time getting to know them and building up a relationship before trying to interest them in your business.

Now, the great thing about a blog site is that it is pretty natural that, after you have been someone's 'friend' for a while, that you might invite them to take a look at your blog.

That is far less threatening and direct than asking them to look at a 'full-on' sales page, for example.

Nevertheless, it doesn't matter what community site you are a member of, the secret is go gently and slowly, build relationships and try to nurture something at least vaguely like a 'real' friendship before trying to get people to visit your business themed blog site.

And, just in case MySpace and FaceBook, with a combined membership of 200 million members are not enough to keep you busy, we'll be listing many more such sites in upcoming articles!

Article by Web 2.0 Media Marketing

Tags: Myspace, bookmark, web 2.0 communities, FaceBook

Tags: traffic generation with MyBlogLog, social networking sites, guides to social network marketing, FaceBook marketing

Why Is Blogging So Effective?

If there is one single phenomena that could best be said to represent the idea behind Web 2.0, it is blogging.

A blog is simply a website that will usually 'provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.' according to Wikipedia.

Whilst blogs first came into being as online personal diaries, the ones that we are going to concentrate on in this book are those that are used for business of the type that are in fact now the vast majority.

Blogs have many attractions, the main one being their simplicity. Anyone who has the basic ability to use two fingers on a keyboard can begin to create their own blog, and, if you don't believe me, would the fact that my seven year old daughter has just started her first blog help prove it?

They can also be updated as often as you like, and many people do update their blogs two or three times a day.

This means that there is a constant stream of fresh new content available on blog sites, which is the reason that blogs are fast becoming the favorite sites of the major search engines, especially Google, itself the #1 search engine.

There is no need to know anything whatsoever about website creation or scripting language to create a blog.

No matter which blogging 'platform' (system) you use, it is always a simple question of following a very small handful of simple instructions, and you are good to go.

And, as the Wikipedia definitions suggest, a core function of blog sites is that they invite reader input and feedback in the form of comments.

What a good blog site therefore does is start a 'conversation' between the blog site owner and his/her readership.

It has an inherent ability to begin building a relationship centered around a common area of interest, as expressed in the subject matter of the blog itself.

So, in simple terms, if for example you are an avid mountain climber, and start a blog about your hobby, then the chances are very good that most of the people who visit your pages will be interested in climbing mountains too.

So, all you need to do is create articles that are interesting or controversial enough to prompt your readers to comment and you have generated a discussion or debate about a subject that is close to your heart.

And, the point is that you can create your own blog about any topic under the sun, and publish it for the whole world to read literally within minutes of sitting down in front of your PC.

So, let's extend the idea of creating a blog about mountain climbing to creating one about your business.

It really does not matter what your business, the same 'rules' apply – you create your blog, and begin to make 'postings', which is a very grandiose way of describing the ability that a blog gives you to basically write whatever you want to.

Let's imagine a couple of different scenarios.

Situation one is that you own a 'real world' business that sells widgets. You have a customer list of people who have bought your widgets before, so you can use your blog as a regular newsletter to which you publish all of your latest special offers, discount deals, news and so on.

It is a fantastic way of keeping in touch with your existing customers and, by publishing regular news bulletins through the company blog site, it offers a way to invite potential new customers to have a look inside your organization too, before they decide whether or not they want to work with you.

Of course, the limitation of using a blog for a real world business selling tangible physical products is that no blog or website can actually deliver the product for you.

However, in situation two, where you are using a blog to promote an online or Internet marketing business, even that can be achieved through your blog site to a certain extent.

Let's imagine that your business is selling a website traffic generation service to other businesses on the net who want to increase the people that see their own sites.

You can write about all of the latest traffic ideas that you have and promote your services through the blog.

You would also most probably have a 'buy now' button featured somewhere very prominently on the front page.

You might also review traffic generation products from other companies, and carry links on your blog that would take the reader directly to the sales page for the product in question, if they have an interest in finding out more.

Although (as Wikipedia points out) blogging was initially a text based publishing medium, it is now increasingly becoming linked to other media, such as video, as well.

So, not only can you write reviews but you can even create short movies to do the same as well, and publish them to your blog (and other places, as we shall see later).

You can create video presentations about your business, your products or basically whatever else you want, and have it out there in front of a potential audience of over 1 billion people in a matter of minutes.

It has been said that there are 'three cornerstones' to online success and that they are visitor traffic, visibility and perceived credibility.

This is a critical concept to grasp, and one to which I will return time and again.

A blog site is such a powerful marketing tool because it allows you to address all three of these requirements through the one simple site, as you are just about to discover.

Choosing Your Platform

For the sake of this article, we are focusing on online entrepreneurs and internet marketers who are selling, or planning to sell, digital products on the net - although most of what you will read can be applied to those selling tangible, real world products and services too.

So, here are some basic 'ground rules' for setting up as an internet marketer that you absolutely must follow if you want to be taken seriously and therefore be successful.

The first thing that you really must do is invest in your own domain name, that is, the name that appears at the top of the page like ABC.com.

Without a domain name to represent your own company or business, who is going to take you seriously?

And, given that such a domain name costs less than $10 per year, there is absolutely no excuse for not having one.

If possible, choose a domain name that represents what your business does or what your product is.

For example, if you sell pink widgets, then try to register a domain name like ThePinkWidgetCo.com or BigPinkWidgets.com.

The second thing that you really must have is a web hosting account, a place where you can build and then host your website.

This should cost no more than $10 per month for a basic account, and is again an integral part of starting of your business off with the correct professional image.

Free Will Cost You Money

As the web matures, free websites are seen to have less and less credibility as serious business tools, and, let's be fair, when a website is a free one, it is always very obvious.

As pointed out above, perceived credibility is one of our three cornerstones of online success, so it really will not help you if you decide to launch or expand your online business with a free website that is filled with what is obviously third party advertising.

Now, if you really have no choice but to use a free medium, then a free blog site may just be okay, but is certainly not great and it will definitely not help your credibility.

If you must use a free blog site, then the simplest and still most effective choice is probably Google's Blogger.

There are some advantages of using this platform, the main one being that it is, of course, free. It can be used to build quite an attractive (but nevertheless somewhat lifeless) blog site, as seen below:

And, as it is owned by Google, it is very easy to add AdSense advertising to your blog site too, if you want to use this method of generating a little extra cash flow from your blog.

But there are also disadvantages which would, in my opinion, far outweigh the upsides of using the Blogger platform.

Here's a few of the major downsides:

· By definition, a Blogger blog is hosted by Google. So, they effectively control it and can dictate what you can and cannot do with your blog site.

· For example, Google can (and Googld does) cancel or remove Blogger blogs seemingly without reason, and so your blog can literally disappear overnight.

· Blogger is relatively inflexible.

· It is one of the best known blogging platforms in the world. Thus, most people recognize a Blogger blog, and know that it is free. What kind of message does that send about your business? (think credibility again)

Blogger is the best of your free options, but it will still cost you money that might otherwise have come from people who will not deal with someone that does not take their own business seriously, so do not use it unless you have to.

Wordpress – The Choice Of Champions

There is no doubt whatsoever that a Wordpress blog, hosted on your own domain and web hosting account should be the way that you go when you create your business blog.

As you will read throughout this book, the interactive element of Web 2.0 does present a massive range of new and exciting opportunities for promoting your site or blog.

But, that being so, you must have a blog site that can take full advantage of those opportunities.

In other words, if you are generating traffic from what we might call Web 2.0 activities, then you must send that traffic to a site that the visitors will feel comfortable with, and will hopefully like enough to add to their bookmarks folder.

If people find your content through a Web 2.0 related resource, and then end up on a dull and somewhat lifeless hosted blog (at blogger.com, for example) then your credibility and their stay on your site are both going to be extremely short lived!

See, you must appreciate that you want MORE than people coming to visit your blog or site.

You want them to visit and then STICK AROUND - you need them to interact with your site in some way, and hopefully you want them to come back time after time.  That's because you know that it takes more than ONE contact before your visitor will buy and become your customer.

Eventually, of course, you want them to become your customer too, but they will not do any of these things if they land on a boring, lifeless blog or website the very first time that they visit.

Using Wordpress on your own hosted domain is the simplest and quickest way of getting a superbly interactive blog set up that is fully in tune with the requirements of all the traffic (both Web 2.0 and 1.0 'styles') that we teach you to generate.

Okay, so the first thing you need to do is set up your Wordpress blog (termed WP from here on in!), and to do this, first, check your web hosting account. Does it have a 'cpanel'?

If so, then installing a WP blog is stunningly simple.

Just open cpanel and look for an icon marked Fantastico:

This is a built-in suite of software tools that comes pre-packaged in most cpanels. You simply click through Fantastico to arrive at a list of software programs that are ready to install with a few clicks of the mouse and right near the top, under 'Blogs', you should see Wordpress.

Follow the links step by step and install the software!

Now, maybe you do not use a web host who offers a cpanel or Fantastico, but no matter.

You can simply go to Wordpress.org to download the latest version of the software and install it on your site manually, following the detailed instructions available in the same place.

So, what is it about WP that makes it such an effective content management system?

Basically, it is the fact that the whole of the WP system has been built and developed through interactivity between the people who initially created and designed WP and the worldwide user community.

What I mean by this is that the basic, plain, 'vanilla' WP that you have just installed on your domain name is a superbly flexible system, but it is not perfect.

There are a 1001 things that WP cannot or does not do 'straight out of the box', but what WP does have is immense flexibility and malleability.

So, WP users all over the world have created hundreds of plug-ins and widgets for WP that you can install into the admin area of your blog (usually free) to add a huge amount of additional usability to your blog.

WP has plugged itself into the open source communities' ability to create any number of widgets or plug-ins that can massively enhance all of your marketing and conversion efforts, and there is simply no other system around with this level of increased functionality.

In other words, everything that you could ever want to change, alter or enhance about your blog site can be done by installing the correct plug-in or widget or with a little theme/template editing.

Now, let me just warn you that not everything about this is necessarily good, although it may sound crazy to say that after just praising WP to high-heaven!

But, the point about plug-ins for WP is that there are just too many of them around, with more arriving each and every day, and you simply do not need (and definitely could not use) every one of them.

So, here is a list of the plug-ins that I would recommend that you should add to your WP blog site, in order to take maximum advantage of the traffic generation tactics that we are going to investigate.

· What Would Seth Godin Do? - This adds a note at the top or bottom of your blog post reminding the reader to subscribe to your RSS feed.

· AdSense Deluxe  -  Makes it easy to add AdSense as to your posts and blog site in general.

· aLinks - Automatically links keywords in your blog post, so you can link to affiliate products, your own sales pages or basically anywhere you want your reader to go.

· Subscribe To Comments - Allows you to tell your post readers when new comments are posted to an entry. If your posts get some really great conversations going, you want to try to make sure that your readers stay involved.

· diggIT – Automatically enables a dynamic Digg button to show up in each post. If your post gets dugg, having a button showing the number of diggs encourages more people to click too, and the more visitors you have already had, then the more you will get as well!

· Sociable - Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. Crucial to add this.

· Head META Description – You don't need to waste too much time knowing how or why, but this can be a big help in convincing search engines that each page of your blog is unique.

· Tagalize It – Enhances your tagging ability and works very well in conjunction with

· Ultimate Tag Warrior – Adds tags to your posts in pretty much any way you want, and is an especially attractive plug-ins for the major search engines by all accounts.

· WP Cache – As the name suggests, it caches WP files, and can reduce the load on your database server significantly as well as improving the site load speed.

So, these are just ten of the plug-ins that I would recommend that you should install in order to try to maximize the sites attractiveness in traffic terms.

However, these are very much the plug-ins that I personally favor, and given that there are hundreds available (many of which do the same job as one another), only you can decide which plug-ins will work best for your site. 

The key thing here, however, is not really about the exact plug-ins that you should or should not install.

The main thing that you need to appreciate is that, whatever you could ever want to do with WP, someone, somewhere has probably already created a plug-in to do the job, and thus, in WP, you have a site that can be adapted for almost any purpose.

Now, if you want to skip all the 'downloading and adding' plugins, widgets, and manual theme and template editing necessary with basic Wordpress… an EASIER, but more Powerful solution is to grab the Semiologic Pro CMS for Wordpress.  I personally use Semiologic Pro exclusively for ALL my own blogs, and the custom blog installations I do for my clients.

Why?  Well, it saves me a LOT of time AND it's far more powerful.  Semiologic Pro has everything you need rolled up into one, nice, neat package.  It's a stand-alone content management system that's easy to use, even EASIER to customize, and has some very POWERFUL SEO features and convenient built-in functionality for internet marketers and business owners that's just NOT available with the plain, standard Wordpress.   Just a VERY few examples are…

• Advertising management system
• Easily add subscribe form (widget) that's stupid simple to use
• Easy, fast theme 'css' and layout switcher
• Easy to customize, incorporate 3rd party scripts, etc…
• Add video and audio with one-click

And so much more.  Definitely check out Semiologic Pro.  

And once you get your blog online and start posting to it, be sure that you are utilizing the viral promotional power of the premier Web 2.0 site for blogging bloggers - My Blog Log.  My Blog Log is a powerfully viral, yet passive way to get many more eyeballs looking at all of your websites and blogs.  AND it gives the search engines yet another pathway to your sites.  We offer a complete guide to My Blog Log to help you use it to get VIRAL and increase traffic and profits with all your websites.  

Article by Web 2.0 Media Marketing - Offering a suite of Web 2.0 Guides to the Top Social Sites.

Tags: guide to My Blog Log, My Blog Log Guide, web 2.0 marketing guides, My Blog Log

Tags: social networking sites, guides to social network marketing, how to use social networking sites for marketing, StumbleUpon traffic generation

The phrase Web 2.0 was originally coined three or so years ago and you've no doubt heard it many times, unless you have been living on a far off planet or in a cave.

Perhaps you might have wondered what it is all about, or indeed, whether Web 2.0 actually exists at all?

It may seem a little strange to be asking whether something that people have been talking about for three years exists or not, but the reason is that there is no easy-to-pin-down definition of what Web 2.0 actually is.

Indeed, a measure of  just how difficult it is to define Web 2.0 is that it is far easier to tie down what it is not!

For example, it is not a particular type of website, although some sites (especially internet marketing product sales pages produced over the last six months or so) are becoming recognizable as Web 2.0 'style' sites.

More and more of these sites are moving away from strong, garish colors in sales page backgrounds and reverting to plain white or grey backgrounds.

Whilst these are not Web 2.0 sites – there is no such thing – nevertheless, simplicity and plainness in site design is making a big comeback!

The fact is that, if there is only one factor that can be said to represent Web 2.0, it can be summed up as interactivity.

Web 2.0 is all about the idea that people should have some kind of input to the sites that they are viewing, again perhaps best described by comparison with the 'old' style of websites back when we had what might be called Web 1.0.

Those old style sites tended to be static - you read them and then moved on. There was no requirement for you to do anything other than read and accept the information that the site gave you.

The essence of Web 2.0 is that sites that you are viewing will invite you to do something.

So, maybe when you go to a commercial website for a big international company, the site asks you to leave comments of perhaps take a quick survey?

They are asking you for feedback of some kind, whether it is on the story that you have just read, or about the site itself.

They are asking you to interact with them.

Alternatively, Web 2.0 sites can be community sites where users join and then have the ability to create their own individuals pages or 'spaces' within the community. Then they have the opportunity of inviting their friends to join too.

It can also be of sites that allow viewers to post pictures, videos, sound bites, comments and questions.

Web 2.0 is also about blogs where info and feedback can be added to the sites.

So, does Web 2.0 actually exist?

Who the heck knows or cares?

What clearly does exist is a movement to greater interactivity between sites and their viewers on the web. If that is Web 2.0 or nor is really pretty irrelevant as far as I can see!

However, the problem that I see with Web 2.0 is that a lot of folks far wiser and more knowledgeable than me are telling us that it is an Internet 'revolution'.

And, like all 'revolutions' the tendency has been to throw away everything from the old pre-revolution days, whether good or bad.

So it is that many of the things that worked well but that unfortunately represented Web 1.0 have been forgotten or swept under the carpet in the seemingly headlong rush to unquestioningly adopt everything that is Web 2.0.

Maybe this makes me sound like a Luddite or something, but one of my objectives is to show that alongside all the modern Web 2.0 'stuff', it is still an idea to turn the clock back a little, to show how some aspects of what I am calling the Web 1.0 era still work, and work well.

In particular, I believe that a lot of very valid traffic generations techniques that worked back before Web 2.0 came along can still work pretty well today, especially when combined with some techniques and ideas that are usually categorized as representing Web 2.0.

So, in a nutshell, I recommend combining the best of the old and the new - taking what worked before and what is working now in terms of driving traffic to your site, and putting them together into one cohesive plan.

I also recommend you look into the future too - where the market is going -,because some pointers to the future development of online business and site traffic are already becoming fairly clear.

So, does Web 2.0 actually exist, or is it just a trendy phrase that was invented by a superb marketing specialist?

In my opinion, I would say that the true answer to that is, a bit of both!

I think that the reason that the phrase caught on is that it captures the imagination, and sounds fresh and exciting.

I also think it undeniable that interactivity is a feature of the net in a way that it certainly wasn't three years ago.

But, just because something is fresh and new does not automatically mean that everything that came before is dull and stale, as this Web 2.0 Traffic Guide will clearly demonstrate!

At any rate, the interactivity that Web 2.0 promotes is not going away.  So you are going to eventually have to get on board IF you want to compete in today's web market, or get out of the way of progress.

Article by Web 2.0 Media Marketing - Offering a series of Marketing Guides for the Top Web 2.0 Sites.

Tags: website interactivity, guide to web 2.0, web 2.0 marketing guide, social networking sites

Tags: guides to social network marketing, social networking sites, how to use social networking sites for marketing, traffic generation with MyBlogLog

Social networking websites, over the past few years, have rapidly increased in popularity, so much that many are wondering why.

If you have used a social networking website before, it is likely that you are already fully aware of their popularity and the reason for popularity. There is just something about these websites that draw in millions of Internet users. With a wide variety of different social networking websites available, there are a wide variety of different reasons for their popularity. One those reasons being the ease of use.

Social networking websites are, for the most part, easy to use. Most sites are easy to navigate. In fact, many require little knowledge of the Internet. In addition to being easy to navigate, social networking websites also make it easier to meet new people online. There are many Internet users who would love to make new friends online; however, that can sometimes be difficult do.

Without social networking websites, you would have to connect with Internet users, often in chat rooms, and learn about their interests before deciding if you would like to consider them your "buddy". Social networking sites allow you to learn information about another Internet user before ever having to make contact with them.

Another one of the many reasons why social networking sites are popular is because many are free to use. In fact, the majority of social networking sites, such as MySpace and Yahoo! 360, are free to use.

Despite being free to use, many websites require that you register with them. This registration will not only allow you to create your own profile or online webpage, but it will also allow you to contact other networking members.

Although most social networking websites are free to use, there are some that are not. Classmates is one of those websites. Many of these websites give you a free trial period or a free membership. That membership can be used to help you determine whether or not the website is worth paying for.

What is nice about paid online social networking websites is that many can be considered exclusive. Since most Internet users would not want to pay for something that they can get for free, most paid social networking sites are limited on the number of members they have. This may work out to your advantage because it tends to eliminate those who create fake accounts or aim to cause controversy online.

Social networking websites are also popular because they come in a wide variety of different formats. Websites like Yahoo! 360 and MySpace focus on a wide variety of different topics. This means that just about anyone can join. However, there are other social networking sites out there that have a particular focus. These focuses may be on a particular religion, political following, or hobby. Most specialty social networking sites restrict the individuals that can participate in their network.  And that makes their members' experience more enjoyable.

Finally, social networking websites focus on meeting new people, especially online.  But over recent months, many have started including additional features only available to their online members. Many social networking members can receive their own free webpage, get free access to popular music videos, a free blog, and much more.

Although social networking websites are popular enough to bring in members on their own, these additional features are, in a way, providing Internet users with an incentive to join.

Mentioned above were a few of the most popular social networks that could be found online. Those networks included MySpace, Yahoo! 360, and Classmates. If you are looking for additional social networking websites, and the Web 2.0 communities that are top website traffic generators and marketing platforms, check out our Web 2.0 Social Networking Site Guides.

Article by Web 2.0 Media Marketing

Tags: Kaboodle, Yahoo 360, FaceBook, Yahoo Answers

Tags: how to use social networking sites for marketing, FaceBook marketing, StumbleUpon traffic generation, promoting on social networks