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Seven Inexpensive Ways to Generate Traffic to Make Money Online

March 11th, 2010 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Marketing

There are multiple ways to get traffic to your website for very little cost that can make you money online.

If you just got a small proportion of those visitors to convert to leads or sales, that has cost you nothing but your time.

There are two hard facts of any internet business that you cannot escape.

To make money online, you need to generate traffic to your website and second, you need to convert that traffic into buyers.

You might try to do this directly by sending them to a sales page or you may do it indirectly by sending them to an opt-in page to capture their details or to your information site or blog.

First, you should focus on identifying your killer keywords – the ones that attract the right kind of people into you business.

With a good match between what people are searching for and what you are offering, the actual traffic you generate will be more highly targeted and predisposed to your offer and so more likely to convert into buyers.

If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income.

BUT, it doesn’t take thousands to generate website traffic to your site.

While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, the holy grail is knowing how to generate low cost website traffic without having to run up a huge daily advertising bill.

Here I present to you my top 7 strategies to generate low cost website traffic that could help make money online for you.

1. Link exchanges

This is a well known and proven strategy. It’s rare these days to see a website without a link to another site.

Many business owners are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more visibility for their sites.

The more you create back links to your website from other pages, the more the traffic you’ll see coming as you’ll start to rank higher.

If you’re exchanging links with other sites, it’s important that the link is relevant. This usually means it is in the same niche or a relate niche as your own site.

This strategy pleases humans as much as it keeps the search engines happy.

Exchanging links with authority sites or sites with high page ranks will also increase your traffic even more significantly, as it will boost your rankings in search engine listings.

This is known as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

2. Article Marketing

There are many electronic magazines (called ezines) and online newsletters around on the internet which provide free space for you to submit articles.

If you want to keep your costs low, you can write the articles yourself. But you can save time, by using the many freelance writers who are willing to create articles on your best converting keywords or keyword phrases. The fees are much smaller than you might think.

Write articles that complement your website, product, business or other offer. Write on topics that you have expertise on so you develop your knowledge researching around the subject and can come across as an authority.

Write articles that produce tips and guidance on the subject or your niche. Looking at existing content on your chosen niche will help you find gaps so less competition and your article will rank more highly for those keywords.

At the end of the article submission process, you can insert a “resource box”. It’s here that can say something about yourself or your business and provide your visitors with a link to your site if they want to find out more.

If they do go there, they are already impressed and predisposed to your offer, wouldn’t you say?

Once you have your article accepted in your primary article directory, you can also send variations to other article directories.

There is a lot of free article submission software available to automate the process and if you are doing a lot of article marketing, a great paid service I personally use is SubmitYourArticles.

3. Video marketing

Video marketing can send literally thousands Of visitors to your primary business. It really is the social medium of the moment. Just look at the popularity of YouTube! 5-10 minutes is all you need to get your point across.

You can either use a camcorder to video your own talking head or create a footage around your product or offer and add the audio later.

If you’re not yet confident on camera, you can also create a series of photos and powerpoint slides and record an audio commentary around that.

Don’t forget to add your website URL as a running title along the top.

Once you have a few videos made, you then need to drive traffic to them. The best way is to submit them to video sites. The most popular are youtube.com, metacafe.com and dailymotion.com.

To really maximise exposure and get the most traffic back to you website, you can use video submission tools. There’s a free video submission service, TubeMogul. An even better tool is a paid service I use is Traffic Geyser.

Once you’re registered on the main video sites, this submitter tool will automatically submit your video to a whole host of video sites for you, resulting in tonnes of free traffic to your website.

4. Forum marketing

This is completely free – it only requires an input of your time. Do some initial sculking around to identify the kinds of problems people have in this niche.

Once you feel you understand the community, you can start to feedback a comment, start a post, here and there, using your knowledge and expertise.

You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

With every post, you can add a link to your site. But remember first to give value, not just blatantly advertise your site.

As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

5. Twitter marketing

Twitter and blogging go hand in hand. They help you build your authority and social networks within your niche.

Twitter has totally transformed the way that people communicate online and since it’s free, it really should be an indispensable part of your overall marketing strategy and link to your blog.

Twitter is free to join and you can get set up with an account in a matter of just a few minutes.

Twitter has proven itself to be incredibly addictive and, for business owners, very valuable too.

Technology such as Twitter has the potential to give us more than just an opportunity to tell others what happened in our day. We can use it to reach more people in a meaningful way.

Imagine if you had cost-efficient and fast marketing tools that met existing customers where they are and that also helped you acquire new customers.

Imagine if you had the power to build a network of like-minded peers, a community of shared ideas and creativity.

6. Blog marketing

You blog should therefore be one of the main hubs for your business. It’s all about YOU Inc.

As your name gets passed around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list and RSS subscribe feed for people who regularly visit your site.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. A blog is like dating – you wouldn’t propose on the first date so why shove your sales pitch down a new visitors throat.

You can point your articles, videos, forum posts and social media activities all through your blog.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a blog but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many many sources of ideas and inspiration for your blog, which come from your day to day activities and your own personal development.

7. Facebook marketing

Social networking has always been a main part of many internet marketers strategy. But most don’t use it effectively at all. They flood the likes of Facebook and Myspace with offers and promotions. This won’t work.

If you want to use social tools like Facebook to generate traffic to your website, you first have to identify the right groups and then invest something of yourself.

You need to be prepared to make a personal connection with other folks in the community. This kind of media thrives on authentic networking.

Posting up useful content on social networks will get you some awesome rankings on Google. The search engines seem to put a premium on sites like Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Squidoo and Hubpages.

In all these free or low cost traffic generation methods, it’s all about giving value to your niche community.

Leads generated in this way will be far more valuable as leads back to you – interested, highly targeted, committed and profitable.

Jay Allyson Get Rich Lifestyle Pro Marketing Consultant http://www.JayAllyson.com

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Seven Inexpensive Ways to Generate Traffic to Make Money Online

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Social Networking for Business Guide

October 21st, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Social Networking

It seems like there’s an over-abundance of social sites nowadays. For a newbie, it can be quite intimidating when first joining a network or two and building a community. A handful of questions may run through your head:

  • Which networks to join?
  • How to participate?
  • What’s enough, or too much?
  • How will it help my business?

So, to answer some of these, I’d like to present my “Social Media For Dummies” overview. First, a quick recap of my favorite networks and what they’re about.

Facebook
The ultimate platform for keeping up with (stalking) friends. I joined Facebook way back in 2005, you know, when it was just for college students and before you could even share photos (gasp!). I’ve witnessed the evolution of this mega-network over the years, and it has become, not only the 4th largest website in the world, but the best place to find people, keep up with them, and inform them. It is the son of Classmates.com on every possible steroid ever ingested by humans. The ability to share and communicate with friends and colleagues is seamless. Overall, Facebook is a great place to start your social networking endeavors.

LinkedIn
A must-have in every business person’s arsenal of tools. If you are (or hoping to be) in business of any sort, LinkedIn is a great place to set up shop. Very similar to Facebook, minus the annoying applications, plus job postings and resumes. This is where you network with those in your industry, join groups, research companies, and prospect clients. Build your credentials by asking colleagues for recommendations or head to the “Q&A” section to offer advice.

Twitter – Share, Learn, Meet
 I wouldn’t be surprised if Webster adds a new definition for “tweet” this year. Within the first half of 2009, Twitter has gone from nearly 5 million users to over 23 million. It is the social media platform of choice at Fortune 100 companies. Easily share links, pictures, videos, articles… Oh, and personal updates… with followers. Twitter is kind of like the cocktail party of social networks. Here, you can easily reach out to strangers by tuning in to their tweets or quickly replying to them. A limited amount of customization keeps annoying advertisements and outlandish profiles at bay, unlike the outdated MySpace.

Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, reddit, etc.
Social Bookmarking to share and store your favorite links. You just read an article over at NYT.com that you loved. Use one or more of these bookmarking sites to share it with the world. Looking for information or articles on a certain subject? Head to one of these sites and search your topic, you’ll be able to peruse a list of articles or sites that others have found useful or interesting. Not only are these great for sharing, but storing sites for later use as well. Say you have a home desktop, a netbook for travel, and a work computer… customize your bookmarks and easily access them on each computer without updating each machine.

FriendFeed
All of your networks in one place. FriendFeed lets you put all of your networks in one big stream. Users can see your Facebook status, latest Tweet, pictures posted on Flickr, blog post, bookmarked article and much more when they follow your feed. Much like Twitter, but a whole lot more.

These are the networks that I tend to spend most of my time on and are probably some of the key ingredients that should be in the pot. Every person and business is different and may need to change their recipe accordingly, but the key to all of these is to contribute and become a part of the conversation.

Now What?

So, now that we’ve covered some of the major players in the social networking field, it’s time to discover how we can use them. As a person in business, especially an industry with a significant amount of its target market online (which is really all of them now), you’ve got to understand that these networks are an integral part of their lives. Just like in previous decades where television commercials were considered a major part of any advertising/marketing plan because everyone watched TV… now, as many are leaving cable in the dust and turning to the Internet for their information and entertainment, it’s more crucial than ever to join the ranks of the digital pioneers.

However, the people using these networks are smart. They don’t fall for blatant advertising traps like they used to. They want to know that there’s something in it for them. If your product isn’t it and that’s all you’re talking about on Twitter, then they’ll ignore you. Social networks aren’t about advertising – they’re about building relationships.

Say you run a small business, maybe you own a restaurant, a clothing boutique, a PR firm or a chiropractic firm… What is in it for you?

  • Take a look at your customers or clients when they’re in your office or store. Are they on their iPhone or Blackberry checking email? Did they mention finding you online? Did they hear about you from a friend? If you can answer “yes” to any of those questions, then you’re missing out on connecting with your customers and should probably put on a pot of coffee, cause you’re going to be here for a while.
  • Social media is a chance to be at your market’s finger tips when they look at their phone or get online in a friendly and non-obtrusive way.
  • You can quickly address customer service issues by communicating directly with the customer.
  • Prospect new clients.
  • Learn about trends in your industry, stay up-to-date with competition and network with power players in your industry.
  • Offer existing customers incentives, coupons or interesting information to keep them tuned in to your brand.

Many people will pay thousands of dollars trying to get these things with traditional techniques. Social media is free… despite, of course, any operating costs like time and possibly design fees to add a professional touch. You need to be on here… Do a Google News search for “small business social media”. BusinessWeek, LA Times, NY Times will be some of the publications insisting you buck up and make it happen.

How to Participate Effectively:

  • Do not start a social media campaign if your intention is free advertising. No one will listen and you will waste your time. Period.
  • Take a minute and figure out what you want to get out of being involved in social networks. Research how other businesses have been successful. Make a plan. Mashable is a great place to learn about social media.
  • Twitter is a great place to find people in your area, geographically or by industry, and interact with them. Start a conversation, always give if you ever want to receive and don’t constantly advertise. No one likes spam… so don’t spam your followers with pleas to go to your website or go into business with you. Offer your followers a coupon or discount if you’re hoping for business from them… Keep them up-to-date on any changes to your menu or services… Share fun pictures from happy customers… Follow-up with an unhappy customer or use your competition’s bad customer service as a great way to introduce you into their lives. Just remember to keep it real, be you, because everyone wants to know that there’s a human behind your username.
  • Facebook is generally most successful for companies with a large following or customer base. But that doesn’t mean you should skip it… create a personal profile so you can network with friends and family. By being there, you can instantly share things about your business with people who already like you and will probably listen more than the average stranger. By keeping your brand in their mind, they’ll be more likely to spread the word and pass you along to their friends, and so on. Word of mouth, my friends…
  • LinkedIn is a must for anyone in business. Very straightforward here, like a virtual resume on steroids. It’s always good to network with past and present colleagues and continue to build relationships, because you never know when you may need them or vice versa.

Last Words:
Keep your brand consistent among all of the networks you decide to join. Monitor your brand using tracking tools. And remember to Collaborate, Communicate, and Participate.

Erica Erwin works with online marketing, social media and public relations for a small-business improvement firm. http://www.webplus5.com http://www.businessways.com/

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

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Social Networking for Business Guide

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3 Tried-n-True Ways to Decide Which Social Media Tools to Use

September 25th, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Social Media

At a recent Social Media-themed breakfast event for New Hampshire’s Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, one speaker (Leslie Poston, co-author of Twitter for Dummies) told the assembled audience there were 537 different social networking sites online. 537! And that doesn’t even count all the networks on Ning and other services like it, which allow you to build your own social network using their templates, or custom-made communities like “Greenopolis,” or “Equestrian Life.”

So when it comes to deciding which social media platforms make the most sense to use, the options can be overwhelming – if you let them. However, with a little focus, guidance, and strategic thinking, you can just as easily simplify your choices.

What follows draws from our 6-week “Social Media Kick Start” Virtual Boot Camp, which expands on these topics with self-paced learning modules.

Let’s start by keeping these two very important questions in mind: Where is your audience now? And where are they going to be?

Even if your target audience isn’t on a particular social network right now, consider the fact that involvement is social networks is growing exponentially. (Heck, if Facebook were a country, it would have the 4th largest population in the world!) Not everyone was on the Web 5-10 years ago, but you could see where the trend was going. Same thing with social networks. Here’s how to dive in confidently.

1. Start with the Big Three.

That’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The odds that your audience is on one or more of these platforms right now is very high. And if they’re not on there, they will be by the time you finish reading this. Now, of the three, LinkedIn is the only one that doesn’t get tarred with the “It’s just for kids goofing off” brush. But consider this: The measurement company ComScore reported in April that the majority of Twitter users are 35+, and the 18-34 age group is growing as fast as the 55-64 age group. As for Facebook, InsideFacebook.com reports the largest group of users is between 26 and 44 years old, and the fastest growing demo is women 55 and over.

2. Budget your time and money.

These are your resources, and if you’re a small business owner, you’re using them with care these days. A platform like Twitter is about as simple as it gets – 5-minute sign up, a few communication conventions to learn as you go, then the Twitterverse is your oyster. Facebook, on the other hand, goes about as deep as they get in terms of customization opportunities. Consider learning and growing in this platform as a work in progress, and add, edit, expand and refresh as you go. Even LinkedIn has a lot of detail possibilities, too, but they also have a very helpful tool that tells you how complete your profile is, which can guide you through what options you need to finish to take maximum advantage of its features.

3. Follow the FUN!

It may sound frivolous at first, but there’s sound business sense behind it. First of all, as you play with each of the Big Three platforms, you’ll learn more about your own communication style, and how you like to experience your friends, contacts, and colleagues. Twitter presents quick snippets of insight, links, conversations, and opportunities to brainstorm on the fly. LinkedIn is more professional, following traditional and formal conventions. Facebook is all over the map, with nooks and crannies that’ll surprise you even after months of frequent use. In other words, if control is what you want, Facebook may be your nemesis, but if you dig spontaneity and possibilities from any direction, then hop on board.

The bottom line: if you pick a social network that you dread going to, you’ll find a way to put it off. If you’re not participating in the social network, then you won’t get much value out of it! What’s more, if you hate doing it, that’ll come through in your interactions. No one wants to connect with an unpleasant person. It’s just not good for business.

On the other hand, when you “follow the FUN,” you’ll make time for your social networking. You’ll laugh at the countless pathways – and diversions – available, and you’ll be able to get focused on the results you’re after with confidence and nimble clarity.

Then, as you expand beyond the Big Three, you’ll have a better sense of how to play in the social arena, and what features support your goals and style. Love taking photos? Love talking? Want to try out video? PowerPoint wiz? There are networks that support all media channels.

Some say at least 537, and counting.

Lani & Allen Voivod, The Content Lovers of Epiphanies, Inc., help imperfect-preneurs, global brands, and mission-driven organizations use social marketing & success strategies to ramp up visibility, competitive edge, and profits. Get their free Special Report, “37 Easy Ways to Boost Visibility, $$, and Results w/ Twitter” at http://www.EpiphaniesInc.com/twitter. Then grab “I Had an ‘Aha Moment – Now What?’ at http://www.AhaSuccessKit.com!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

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3 Tried-n-True Ways to Decide Which Social Media Tools to Use

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5 Ways To Import and Promote Your Blog On Facebook

April 28th, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Social Networking, facebook

With the Facebook public timeline functioning more like Twitter everyday, it’s a great way to get your blog noticed. I’m sure most of you probably already know about importing “stories” directly into your Facebook wall via the wall settings. If you’re looking for more options and ways to display your blog, here are five methods that might help. There are, of course, more ways to import your blog into Facebook but, these are the methods I found to be most reliable and actually do work.

Create A Page

Creating a page for your blog is a great way to showcase and gain readers and fans. There are a lot of customization options and you can even add compatible applications to your pages. To get started you will need to click here to create a new page. After you get your page the way you like it, you can start sharing it with your friends and inviting them to become fans. One thing about Facebook pages is that it will not show you as an admin of the page; you will be listed as a fan of the page along with everyone else.

The first application you may want to add is some type of RSS feed importing application but, in my opinion, it’s better to import your posts through the Notes application. Importing your blog posts through notes (which I’ll explain in more detail below) will display published blog posts on the page wall as opposed to the boxes tab or some other small area of the page.

NetworkedBlogs

This is a great application found here, that works on both personal profiles and Facebook pages. If you add it to one of your pages, it can be added as a separate tab that will then display snippets of your latest blog posts. You can also allow the NetworkedBlogs application to update your personal or page status (depending on which you add it to) everyone time a new post is published. This application is kind of like creating a page for your blog but does different in a few ways. For starters, with NetworkedBlogs you will be shown as the author of the blog. Once you have your NetworkedBlog page setup, you can then invite people to follow your blog in which they’ll be able to rate your blog and leave comments.

Import Notes

Notes is an application that allows you to create notes, which are almost like blog posts, for your friends to see. Every time you post a new note it shows in the public timeline for all to see but, many do not know that you can import a blog into your Facebook notes. From the Notes application you will see an option in the right hand column under “Notes Settings” to import a blog. Setting it up is pretty easy, you’ll just need to enter either your blog or RSS feed URL. After going over the preview of an imported blog post and confirming the import you’ll be all set. Facebook will then check your blog every couple hours for new posts. As I mentioned above, this is also great to set up with your Facebook page.

Blog Box

This application is nice because once added, you can add a blog box tab to your profile, making it more easy accessible to those who visit your page. The Blog Box application can be found here. Once again you will need to import your blog into the application after which it will check every 6 hours for new posts. There are not many customization options for Blog Box. The great thing about Blog Box is that it allows you to edit your posts right from within Facebook. Doing this allows you to edit your title, text and tags plus you can even add your mood, what music you’re listening too, and a location.

Simparis Blogcast

Last but not least you can import your blog with the Simparis Blogcast application. Once again you’ll need your RSS feed and then you can choose to have Simplaris handle the updating, manually update yourself or setup your blog to ping Simparis. This application can be added to your info tab, profile column or box tab. Whenever a blogcast is posted it will show under your recent activity section on your wall as well as in the box on your profile if you are using it. There are a few option such as changing the update mode, showing pictures and links versus plain text and even specifying the post length. You can also choose how many post to show on the profile box.

How do you import and promote your blog on Facebook?

Do you use one these methods or is there another way you like better?

Feel free to share.

Written by Charnita Fance from Social Web Tools

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

5 Ways To Import and Promote Your Blog On Facebook

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How to Tell If Facebook Is Worthwhile For Your Business or a Waste of Time

March 18th, 2009 by lucianmih | 1 Comment | Filed in Marketing, People, facebook

Social media is here to stay. There. I said it. It will be around in some form for years to come. Do you really see Facebook, Twitter and Web videos going somewhere?

Or do you just see them evolving and becoming part of a larger system the same way business blogs did? Great. Then we can start figuring out how to use social media to our benefit.

Now that we’re past this issue of whether we are in love with MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, etc., and we realize that we’re focusing on whether these tools are useful or not, (not on whether or not they give us the warm fuzzies), there’s still a fundamental question. This goes for whether you’re using Facebook pages, Facebook ads, or a regular Facebook profile.

How do you know if sites like Facebook are for YOU? How can you tell if a social networking site can help YOUR company?

It boils down to three things.

1- Are There Enough People on the Site in Your Interest Area for it to Be Worth Your While?

You have to think about business connections too, not just clients.

You can connect with people who send you business. Think about what the value of a new client is too, whether you think can get one out of 100, and how long it takes. When people come to your profile, are they visiting your site? If not, is your profile set up correctly?

Experiment. There are several very subtle things you can do that maximize your exposure, not just daily clicks through to your site.

To find out if there are enough people on Facebook who need your plumbing services, search for home improvement groups. Check your regional network and look on the Marketplace page. See if you can find people in your local area to befriend who would need your services – but for heaven’s sake, don’t be aggressive in your promotion.

Instead, create a Facebook page, run an ad, or have the type of networking conversations where “so, what do you do?” will naturally come up. And you can take it from there.

Networking at Facebook can be like hanging out at a neighborhood mixer. Yeah, you might want to mention that you’re a handyman, or that you work at the bank, and give someone your card, but you don’t want to turn those first few getting-to-know-you conversations into a sales pitch.

Let them know who you are, what you do, and after a few conversations, send them a no-strings coupon for them or a friend “just in case you ever need it buddy” and go on being friends.

They’ll remember you if you keep in touch, and are a nice enough guy.

2- Does your company have an RSS-capable site that updates frequently?

If it does, a profile on Facebook gives you another place to share your RSS link. You can import your blog posts going forward, or summaries. There are also applications like NetworkedBlogs that will help your blog posts get exposure from interested readers.

3- Do you already have clients, friends, associates, whose signal you can isolate, or whose noise you can penetrate, using Facebook?

This has to be the most underestimated use of Facebook. My first month at Facebook I had direct interactions with ten influential people I admire. Some of them I look up to for personal reasons, others are greats in some aspect of search, the internet or technology. One actually sent me a client.

Instead of installing hundreds of applications and super-poking someone or posting spam to their Super Wall, you can be the smart person who sends a letter and gets a response, the one who sends a private message and is sent a gift in return, or just get the wonderful feeling of having a world famous personality you admire not only acknowledge you, but contact you directly.

One of the greatest things about Facebook is how it can help cement relationships between you and people you know but didn’t think you had much in common with. You know how sometimes, you want to write to say hello to someone, but at the same time, you don’t want to waste their time?

Or when you think about some great author or celebrity you admire, and what you’d say to them if you could meet them? Maybe you just want to compliment a more famous colleague and not sound like a dork.

Facebook can help with this when it functions as an automatic ice-breaker, facilitating an intial contact between you and someone you wish you had more reason to interact with, then another, and another, until you become friends who call each other on the phone and plan to visit or meet at conferences.

Those are the reasons. It’s not a matter of time because you can block all the nuisance requests and there are ways around the irritating app requests.

It’s not a matter of just traffic because first, you can set up a profile in 15 minutes to automatically send you traffic and never mess with it again if you like. Or you can go in and meet people every day and it can be a major traffic source.

And it’s not a matter of whether you can get anything out of it – it’s more a matter of whether you’re willing and whether the available traffic is targeted to your topic. It’s not for everyone, because let’s face it, not everyone wants to do the work, or even use Facebook that’s way.

And that’s okay! For some people, it’s a nice little escape, like a mental, online Starbucks. For some it’s a bother, and the pain of learning a new way to do things isn’t worth the time. I don’t mean that sarcastically – if you’re functioning as a CEO, you may not want to focus on Facebook.

With a little research, you can find out what kind of role it will play in your life.

Tinu AbayomiPaul – Confused about how to get clients, joint venture partners or more blog traffic from Facebook without violating their terms with traditional online marketing techniques? Go to http://freetraffictip.com/1-facebook to learn the advanced secrets of Facebook Marketing.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Tell If Facebook Is Worthwhile For Your Business or a Waste of Time

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Social Aggregation: The Next Logical Step In Social Networking

January 9th, 2009 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Marketing

Social media is already an obsolete term – on the web you are either social or dust. No one pays attention to the “me, me, me” tune. The “you, you, you” is losing ground too. What matters today is “us” and how we “share data”, communicate and interact.

The first steps towards a more social Web were made by bookmarking services like reddit, digg, and http://del.icio.us and by social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and others. The problem with so many bookmarking and networking sites is that the users lose track of their data sooner or later. Today more and more people are looking for solutions for the storm clouds of data and services cluttering their minds.

Social aggregators and social media aggregation services have been designed to organize this chaos. They’ll pull content from different bookmarking and networking sites and organize this data into a single location, creating a “meta profile” page for each user.

Because the systems are somewhat complex, the users are often unable to understand what social aggregators are all about. Some use them as “traffic boosters” believing that being part of such a community and submitting content will somehow boost the Alexa traffic ranks. Other users exploit the linking functionality of the social aggregators believing that the strategy will benefit their search engine positioning or even boost the Google PageRanks of their sites. While these advantages are obviously there, social aggregation has a more in-depth meaning and functionality, but there’s still a long way to go for an aggregation service to truly become a complete platform.

The biggest problem with some of the social sites is that they too are full of “stuff”. Facebook is not an aggregator, as there is no real way to store data – only integrate or communicate with services.

Social aggregation sites like FriendFeed and Profilactic offer still more Twitter like utility that allows us to share our “stuff” with other people, but the stuff we share is not really data so much as snippets of a lifestream. Here we sit, stuffed with meaningless pieces of stuff in most cases, and wondering what or where to put our upcoming stuff.

There is perhaps only one true social aggregation library out there: Secondbrain (http://secondbrain.com/ – currently running in beta 2.0). This service has both lifestreaming and content management tools. The social networking aspect is still incomplete, but as the service develops further we can expect more improvement every day.

What many web users still need to understand is that social aggregation is not just a “trend” but a logical step towards Web 3.0. This is the time to join such services and start building authority within the community. Authority will eventually lead to a broader reach and higher social media equity. As to how to build authority… well, that’s another story, but for now just remember: join a social aggregator (my recommendation is Secondbrain, which even has a contest where you could win a MacBook Air), connect with other users and start contributing with quality content.

About the Author: Mihaela Lica, public relations and SEO expert, is the managing partner at Pamil Visions PR. She writes for several popular blogs and represents a number of Silicon Valley and other international startup companies. You can read Mihaela’s personal blog.

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Social Aggregation: The Next Logical Step In Social Networking

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Best Internet Marketing Tips-How to Use the Social Marketing Giant Facebook To Attract Pioneer Doers

December 31st, 2008 by lucianmih | No Comments | Filed in Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking

So you want to know one of the best internet marketing tips available to man? Join social marketing giant Facebook while it’s still hot. Facebook has become the new “party zone” for some of the most elite entrepreneurs in the world which includes network marketers, small business owners, work from home junkies, etc. Unlike former social media giant, Myspace, Facebook continues to be the cornerstone for slick marketing tactics with features that makes life simple being an online marketer. However, there are some tips you will need to know to maximize your exposure, and attract pioneer doers into your business.

1. Start a Group

Starting a group is a slick strategy at Facebook, because it allows you to build an additional list tied to the one you are currently building for your business. The ideal concept here is to invite other users to join your group once you create one, and slowly but surely you will see high potential prospects join your group. Once you attain a good number into your group you can send out to the entire list with one click.

2. Build the Relationship

I see numerous network marketers and other business owners go wrong in this area. Social and networking go hand in hand. If you are not trying to create conversations in order to build relationships, then you will not succeed on Facebook. Rest assured, others will notice if you are out only for yourself and not for the interest of others. Write on someones’ wall, make a valid comment, or just send someone a message to spark conversation. Don’t go around trying to convince others to join your deal. This will cause you to lose all credibility that you have gained thus far.

3. Exhaust the Media

Facebook has so many features to get the word out as quick as possible about your business, and who you are as an entrepreneur. You can also tie in your Twitter account to making it so simple for your friends to see your updates. Using video marketing will be a blast on this social marketing giant. Each time you upload a video, you get the option of tagging some of your friends. When this happen, your video will show up on their profile giving you extra traffic to your website(s).

If you haven’t set up a profile at Facebook yet, now is the time. These social marketing strategies are sure to help you get a good jump start in gaining more exposure and credibility for your business. Taking all 3 of the tips above into consideration will help you succeed in your internet marketing efforts.

Ontarian is an elite Facebook Social Marketing Expert and Generic MLM Trainer interested in teaching others the tips and tricks of marketing psychology. Do you want to know how he does it? He invites you to join his Free Marketing Newsletter for more tips, tricks, and training resources.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Best Internet Marketing Tips-How to Use the Social Marketing Giant Facebook To Attract Pioneer Doers

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