Social Bookmarking

Sites

When a site named “del.icio.us” has its own Wiki page, you may understand how important Social Bookmarking has become. Some of the sites are “do follow” and some (including Digg) are “no follow”. That has generated a lot of discussion on which sites to use for bookmarking.

Does it matter whether a Social Bookmarking site is “do” or “no” follow? A backlink may be affected but your site’s url and title is still displayed on the bookmark sites. There are thousands of websites built for bookmarking. You go to a site and sign up for an account. You are asked to verify your email address and then you can set up a profile.

Favorite

There is a form where you will add your “favorite” sites by url, and can pull an image from the site to add there if you want. You supply the title of the site (containing targeted keywords) and a short description of the site you are bookmarking (again with keywords in the description). Lastly, you can add “tags” which are keywords and keyword phrases that you target to the site you are bookmarking.

Social BookmarkingOnce the form is completed you save it and that bookmark shows on your profile where anyone can see it….including those important search engines.

Caution: Don’t create bookmark accounts and only add a bunch of your own urls to all of the sites. Mix in some other websites you like and slowly add your own url’s into the mix. If you create new accounts and just slam in all of your sites you will devalue your own recommendations.

Bookmarks

Once you have several bookmarks showing when you view your profile page you can increase exposure by sending “friend” requests to others. Find profiles that have some interest for you and click on the friends link. Your new friend can comment on the url’s you added and you can make comments on url’s in his profile.

Social bookmarking adds backlinks that search engine spiders love to follow and can help your new site or blog move up in ranking. This is where the debate about “no follow” versus “do follow” links has exploded. When Digg recently converted links to “no follow” many marketers abandoned use of Digg for bookmarking. Though it’s true that search engine spiders may not count a backlink from a “no follow” bookmarking site, the link still exists and can still pull interested visitors to your site.

By Hand?

If you are bookmarking by hand it might make sense to abandon use of the sites with “no follow”. However, most who routinely bookmark their sites and the sites of other marketers use programs to speed up the process. SocialMarker is one and there are others available as both free and paid versions. If you are the type who must fully understand every method of promotion you use by all means do a Google search and find the discussions raging about bookmarking sites. It may change your tactics or may leave you totally confused. In the end, it may not matter all that much.

Learning online marketing with you,

~ Julie

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Basic Tips on Advertising With Social Media

Keeping up with the Times

As social media continues to emerge as a main medium for online advertising, business owners have had to keep up with the times and educate themselves on the ways in which social media advertising can significantly benefit their business.

Advertising Social MediaNow that it is possible for business owners to easily create a visible profile and grow a network of contacts, the logical next step is advertising with social media. If you are trying to break into the social media venue to market your online business, here are a few basic tips to get you started on your way.

Become Familiar with Social Media Site Clientele

There are lots of social media sites popping up on the Internet and the numbers are growing. Different social media sites attract different types of users, so before you invest the time to spread the word about your online business, it is a good idea to obtain a good understanding of the different types of clientele on each social media site. This knowledge will help you to choose which social media sites are appropriate for your type of business.

A Word about Advertising

Although social media sites were created for the purpose of socialization, advertisements are gradually becoming more accepted on some of these sites. For example, Facebook now offers a pay per click advertising program along with a few of the other social media sites.

These advertisements are designed to target social media users so if you use this form of advertising be sure you target your niche audience. Additionally, make sure that the advertisements complement the existing content on the site and target specific pages, otherwise it will come across as irrelevant and “spammy.”

Establishing a Presence

Establishing a presence on a social media site as an online business can change your reputation with the users of the site. Instead of seeing the company as a separate entity from the social community, users will embrace the fact that the company is a member of the community, interested in people and their needs, and concerned about offering solutions to people’s problems.

Integrate

Remember to treat your social media activity as a member of your other marketing strategies. Make your social media profile part of your email signature, newsletter, blog, and your ads. Make sure that your educational content related to your business is visible on your profile page.

Be Linkable

In order to get social media users to link to you, the content you offer has to be high quality, useful, and worthy of linking to. The next step is to set up your content so that it is easily accessible by the social media community. You can do this by allowing tags and adding widgets or chicklets from Technorati and Digg, or sites like del.icio.us. By making your content easily accessible you are encouraging other social media users to submit your content for you. This strategy helps you to build your list of readers and makes a significant contribution to the website community.

Social media advertising is still a fairly new marketing medium. If you get in on the action now, you will be able to catch the wave as social media takes off with Web 3.0.

Learning online marketing with you,

~ Julie

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What is a Ping?

Pinging Blogs after Updates

Way back in the olden days of computer networking (like 5 years ago?), a ping was a signal sent from one computer to another to test the connection and see if the computer on the other end was alive.

Not very many years later, a “ping” in internet marketing terminology is a message sent to websites that informs those sites an update has been made on your blog. Rather than waiting for search engines to visit and notice new info added to your blog, the ping announces “hey, look, new stuff”.

The procedure of pinging blogs after updates utilizes “ping sites” with appropriate names such as pingler, pingomatic and pingoat. Is it just me or are internet names getting sillier these days?

What is a pingYou can still use pinging to test a computer connection. A ping is nothing more than a pack of test data with a response that can be timed. The term “ping” originated from sonar used by submarines. Sonar sends out a pulse of sound and if there is a nearby ship or the sub is close to the floor of the ocean, the sound echoes back with a “ping”. A video screen displays the direction and the distance of the object that pinged the signal.

For blogs, pinging a new entry is often automatic and it’s a message to blog directories of new content added to your blog. It’s an invitation to their spiders to come and visit and update their information about your blog. With a new blog it’s wise to post frequently and regularly for the first few weeks as the pings indicate an active blog and blog directories and search engines are alerted to send spiders to visit often to find new content.

Until recently, each time you added a significant update you would go to pingoat or pingomatic, enter the url of your blog and instruct it to ping. For Wordpress there are plugins such as MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer that will ping your updates automatically and ignore edits. It takes over the chore of pinging and is a useful addition to WP blogs. Even better, in Wordpress releases of 2.7 and above all you must do is add a list of ping sites in your Wordpress control panel and WP will automatically ping those sites when you add a new blog entry. How easy is that?

For a time it was recommend that blog owners add multiple ping sites to the WP panel but that strategy resulted in some sites being alerted more than once when an update was made. This was frowned upon by the sites and the latest recommendations are to use only one or two ping services for your blog. That sends out notice of your updates to pingomatic (most often recommended) or pingoat and is broadcast from there – but avoids being viewed as a site that is too pushy about its updates.

Learning online marketing with you,

~ Julie

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Blog Marketing for Newbies

Newbie Blogging Tip

Posting comments on blogs and participating in forums is a free and pleasant way to promote your business online.

Newbie blog tipIdeally, you want to comment on blogs that are “do follow” as that provides a live link for your own blog or site. You can use google to find lists of blogs that allow “do follow”. Identifying this characteristic is becoming a bit more difficult as the latest Wordpress blog release is reported as being set to “no follow” by default. Some bloggers have disputed this but it does seem to be the trend for new blog releases.

There’s really no downside to commenting even on blogs that do not follow your link. By using your name (or the pen name used in that niche) you are someone who speaks from experience and you are gaining name recognition. That’s not a bad thing at all.

Forum marketing is a little trickier. There are some long running, excellent marketing forums that are free to join and some of them can provide you with a fresh source of customers. This is true only if you approach forum marketing in the right way.

On a forum, your name recognition is of utmost importance. You may well be totally unknown when you join but by posting useful and helpful comments you can build a reputation as a trusted marketer.

If you are experienced in using Wordpress you can answer questions about customizing, plugins and themes and become the “go to” person for questions on the subject. It only makes sense that should you decide to develop your own themes to sell, you have a ready market on that forum.

If you are a brand new marketer with no experience and little knowledge you can still build a reputation on a marketing forum. Ask questions that clearly show you have tried to find an answer. Don’t post rudely or make useless comments that add nothing to a discussion thread. Above all, don’t post about not being able to earn any money – while displaying a link in your signature that says “I earn $500 a day doing this and so can you”.

The trick to success in forum marketing is planning your answers, showing patience and respect and posting over a period of time (often months) to build name recognition.

Don’t confine forum marketing or blog commenting only to sites aimed at marketers or making money online. If you have a dog site, find and join a few dog forums and participate in them. Start slowly by asking a question or providing a solution or telling about a personal experience with dogs. Ease your way into the membership and you will be accepted as part of the group. Always read the terms and conditions of any forum you join – you don’t want to break the rules or be labeled a forum spammer or troll.

By the same token, search out blogs that focus on the craft, hobby or game you have selected for your niche and comment in a helpful way. Don’t be argumentative, critical or rude and follow a plan of becoming part of the group rather than trying to get fast attention for yourself. These are long term marketing strategies that can pay off well for marketers in any niche.

Learning online marketing with you,

~ Julie

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Marketing Newbie Checklist

There is something to looking into the future and planning backwards. Once you see the future things change. Take a look at these planning tips that I learned in Alex Jeffreys coaching program to produce results.

The first thing I needed to know was what I wanted to get out of this online business. I asked myself the “why?” and how much I wanted to make. Next, when I wanted to make set amounts.

I used a blueprint starting with 12 months. Not an easy task because I am learning the business tasks along the way! I managed to identify several main goals to complete by July of 2010. I then worked backwards and split the plan into quarters. I kept going, 1 month plan, weekly plan and finally the daily plan!

Here are my completed results so far:

Step 1: Get a Domain (address)

Step 2: Get Hosting (Internet Real Estate)

Step 3: Setup WordPress (Foundation for my internet home)

Step 4: Upload my Favorite Theme (My design)

Step 5: Add Plug-ins (Necessary internet living features)

Step 6: Post 1st Blog < Hello > Heads-up or Duck!

Step 7: Is anyone out there? (Install Ultimate Google Analytics)

Let me know what you think! I know my little analogies attached to the steps are corny, but it works for me!

Learning Online Marketing with You

~ Julie

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UBD Money Theme – Newbie Friendly

Time for action, my learning just got easier. Unique Blog Designs released a new free Wordpress Theme called UBD Money Theme. This should make learning online marketing easier. I can now focus on learning and taking action.

I have entered into the trap of information overload. At least this new Money Theme will take some stress out of integrating Twitter and Facebook. I have been sidetracked trying to create the perfect blog site. Is there such at thing? Maybe you can share your thoughts.

I’m going for a functional site to learn the fundamentals! Oh, and my PayPal newbie story! It is embarrassing to some extent. So, here it goes…

You can see I like Affiliate Theme. When I went to become an affiliate it asked for my PayPal account. No problem right! I have had an account for years, but I only use it for a bridge between my conventional bank account and online purchases. I’m sure everyone can see where this is going. I went to PayPal to get my account number. It was nowhere to be found. I looked within my account profile and FAQ for help. Then I called PayPal and bumped into a Newbie at PayPal and was given a long account number. It bothered me so I looked at my old email confirmations and didn’t see this number anywhere. I called PayPal back and voila it is my email :–)

This is one of the reasons Alex Jeffreys has come into my life. What a waste of time on something so simple. Mentors offline are a great source so why not online?

Learning Online Marketing with You

~ Julie

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