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Use Social Marketing Sites To Give Your Internet Marketing Start-Up A Helping Hand

06 2008 Thursday

By David Hurley in Featured

While every Internet marketing start-up could benefit from social marketing sites, many newbie Internet marketers are still not sure how to utilize them.

Sure, social sites give you a lot of interactivity and allow users to personalize their sites, compile a list of favorite links, videos, music, photos, documents and share it all with friends and visitors, but how exactly does that help you develop your Internet marketing start-up business?

The first thing to understand is that there are two basic types of social networking sites, so you will need to be clear in your own mind about what it is you want to do - bookmark or network?

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites allow you to build and organize your favourite links (i.e. bookmarks) AND you can choose to restrict them to selected friends or make them public and share them with everybody on the Internet.

The big advantage of social bookmarking is that your favourite links are no longer tied to one specific browser accessible from just one computer in one location.

Social bookmarking services enable users to save bookmarks on a remote web server which can be accessed anywhere where there is an online connection.

Social bookmarking sites usually categorize links with a “tagging” system which allows users to choose keywords with which to “tag” their bookmarks. Sites can then be retrieved via the tags.

You can encourage others to bookmark your articles, blogs or webpages by adding a Digg, Stumbleupon, TwitThis or other button on your page.

However, there are so many social bookmarking services, that if you added all their buttons you’d end up with more buttons than content on your page! Instead, use a service like addthis.com, which places one button on your site for a wide range of social bookmarking sites.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites offer a convenient method of connecting with people who share similar interests to you.

Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to post your advertisements and promote your products, as long as you do not simply (and stupidly) send out spam. A good site with regularly updated original content will attract traffic.

MySpace or Facebook?

It has recently been noised abroad that MySpace is no good for Internet marketing, but that is not so. It was simply a case of too many Internet marketers not knowing who their audience was.

The point is that MySpace tends to attract a younger age bracket with less money to spend than does Facebook. Get to know the sites and adapt your content to each one, don’t simply post the same stuff to both.

Another reason why some people don’t think social networking sites are good for business is that they do no more than set up a profile. Then they get stuck, don’t know what to do, do nothing. Merely being there is not enough! Find ways to communicate with the people who are there on their terms, not yours.

Go careful, though, that you don’t go overboard with the crazy applications and the “late night partying confessions” stuff if it is not the sort of thing you want your clients to see!

Whereas social bookmarking sites are simply sites for you to collect and organize your favorite links, social networking sites, being more sociable, require more time and regular fresh content updates. With social networking sites you have to work on your image!

Search Engines Love Web 2:0!

Another reason why Internet marketers should build a presence on both social bookmarking and social networking sites is because search engines LOVE them!

Search engine spiders regularly follow links posted on these sites. So, by building up your links on these sites, your website backlinks will grow, and so will your search engine rankings, which is what you need if your Internet marketing start-up is to survive, grow and thrive.

If you found this article helpful you might like to visit http://grasp-the-nettle.com for more free articles on Internet marketing to help you master the net. You might also like to sign up to my FREE Internet Marketing Start-Up newsletter, which comes complete with a library of Internet marketing ebooks (worth a total of $136.75) for you to download free of charge. David Hurley lives in Japan, where he works as an English language consultant, editor, and Internet marketer.

Summer time slow down?

06 2008 Thursday

By Jennifer Horowitz in Featured

A lot of people think summer is slow and not the time to focus on their websites.

So many people are out of town, some businesses slow down. Not to mention we all have concerns about the economy right now.

I want to propose a different perspective.

1. People are sticking closer to home because of high gas prices. You’ve all heard the term “Staycation” thrown around by the media. If you watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart you heard John Hodgeman (the PC guy from the commercials) create his own new word for the “stick closer to home because gas is way too expensive” phenomenon: “Holistays”.

No matter what you call it, people are sticking closer to home. People are shopping online even more.

It’s a great time to offer a shipping special. With the cost of shipping going up, again due to the cost of gas, a shipping special is much appreciated right now.

You can tap into this situation by playing it up. Just as The Daily Show created a segment that was funny and garnered a lot of attention; you can find a way to make the current situation work in your favor.

2. If things are a little slow, it is actually the perfect time to devote some of your time to your website.

It is suggested that you review your website and refresh it at least once a year. Just a handful of suggestions for you:

Now is a good time to check the links and pages within your site and make sure everything is in working order. Get rid of those pesky 404 errors from broken links.
You could also come up with a summer special.
Jazz up the site.
Add some testimonials.
Look at your web stats and see if you can increase conversions.

3. Now is when you absolutely must start focusing on your upcoming holiday campaigns.

No one wants to think about the fall and then winter and the holiday season, while enjoying the sun and probably some time off. However as we all know, time passes quickly and I hate to be the one to say it, but holiday season will be upon us before we even know it.

Start planning your campaigns
Write your ad copy
Design your graphics

4. Top rankings don’t happen over night. It takes time for the engines to rank your site for your top keywords. It is not too soon to start your optimization in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season.

On the flip side; if summer is your busy time, you don’t want to ignore optimization now. When the busy time settles down a bit, you want optimization in place to help bring in traffic to boost what would normally be a slower time for you in the fall.

No matter which way you look at it, and no matter when your busy time is, the truth is putting off optimization is never a good idea. If you don’t need free targeted traffic from the search engines, then this won’t apply to you. I don’t really know of any website that isn’t looking to increase traffic and get more sales though.

So take a look at getting your site optimized and prepare for the upcoming change in seasons. You aren’t going to be happy if the holiday season approaches and you aren’t positioned to benefit from it.

For those reasons and more now is actually the perfect time to focus on your website’s growth and improvement.

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings: Busting The Myth

06 2008 Thursday

By Bill Platt in Featured

There are many companies on the Internet, who are promising that if you give them lots of money, they will guarantee you top rankings in the search engines. Buyer Beware!!!

Let Me Cut To The Chase

We all want to be on page one of Google’s search engine results (SERPs). After all, the higher our websites rank in Google, the more money we will make. Every single one of us who have built commercial websites are looking to make money and perhaps even to get rich doing whatever it is we do at our websites.