Hello and welcome to Blogging 101, part 3, Social Media Marketing. So just what is social media marketing? Social media marketing revolves around marketing online media such as blogs, podcasts or videos through social interaction in various online communities such as news, content voting like digg.com, file sharing like BitTorrent, video sharing like YouTube and site or blog voting communities like Technorati. Let's take a quick look at some of the most popular social marketing communities.
First we have Digg. Now, this site is primarily focused on news related stories. Digg is by far the most popular social bookmarking community online. News, stories and websites are submitted by users and then promoted to the front page through user based ranking system. Now, if an article against dug enough to appear on the front page of digg.com, it's bound to experience a dramatic increase in traffic.
For our next site, let's look at del.icio.us. Acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, del.icio.us provides its users with an online repository of websites they find interesting enough to bookmark. When a user wants to create a bookmark, they are asked to add related keywords, a practice which has been termed folksonomy to the bookmark so that it can be properly found within del.icio.us by every users. del.icio.us is second only to digg in the social bookmarking community.
Next, we will look at Technorati. Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google and Yahoo. As of April 2007, Technorati has been indexing over 75 million web blogs. Now to achieve maximum benefit from Technorati, you need to claim your blog which will allow you to see additional statistics about your blog's popularity according to Technorati.
Finally we will look at StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a web browser plug-in that allows its users to discover and rate web pages, photos, videos and articles. These web pages are typically presented when the user known in the community as a stumbler clicks the Stumble button on the browser's toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new web page to display based on the users ratings of previous pages, ratings by his or her friends and by the ratings of users with similar interests. Personally, I am a huge fan of StumbleUpon and I recommend it everywhere. It's easy to use, it has a great name and I have seen measurable impact on traffic from a single stumble.
Social media marketing and blogs. Blogs are perfect social marketing vehicles because great content which is the number one requirement for a blog to be successful tends to be well-written, educational, news worthy or all of the above. Quality content naturally increases the likelihood that readers will want to bookmark or share the content they find with friends or online communities. You as the blog publisher need to make certain that your readers will have all of the tools they require to easily share your content.
Blog social marketing strategies. Here are some marketing strategies designed to both enable your readers to find and then share your content easily. Add some social bookmarking shortcuts. Make it simple for visitors to socially bookmark any blog posting they find particularly interesting. There are simple tools available online that will allow you or your web master to add a line of quick links to major bookmarking community such as Digg and del.icio.us.
Now, even those these tools will need to be added by someone familiar with basic coding, the benefits are well worth it. One option is to go to addtobookmarks.com this offers a script that will provide a row or column of social bookmarking links or icons to your blog posting.
Share your blog feed. There are countless websites that want your blog content you just need to provide it. The trick is to find them and add your blog feed to their system.
if you search for phrases like submit feed or RSS submission, Submit Blog or Blog Directory, you will find numerous avenues to promote your blog. Some good places to start promoting your blog are the top 55 blog directories and submission sites located at this link or blogupper.com which offers a huge list of blog directories. Another great way to get your name on blog out there is to participate in online forums, or to leave thoughtful comments on related industry articles.
Here is how this works. Forums, now in order to participate in a forum you will need to create a profile which will include the ability to provide a personalized signature. Within the signature provide your blog URL along with the slogan or description designed to peak the interest of anyone reading your forum post.
Of course that leaves one issue on the table, you need to ensure your forum posts are thoughtful and intelligent enough for people to read them and take interest in you. Also, you can visit other blogs. In most cases, blogs offer the ability for readers to comment on a posting. In order to do so you usually have the option to attach a web address to your comment. This links your point directly to your blog homepage. So anyone interested in reading more about you can visit your blog directly.
Again, make certain the comment is intelligence. So readers have a reason to click on your link. Pretty much anything can be socially bookmarked, but it can't hurt to provide reminders here and there for your readers. If you publish articles, news releases or even how-tos, it's important to add social bookmarking buttons to each page.
Well, like most marketing objectives, you could spend months learning and honing your social media marketing campaign and still have work left to do. That said this video will put in the right direction and will help you create a world of fans for your new blog.
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