Web 2.0, the ability of the user to contribute content and share information with other users, is adding new methods and strategies to effective internet marketing. Effective internet marketing in this environment is dependent upon having the users get excited about your product or content and want to share it with others. The fastest way this is done is something called social bookmarking.
You know how to add a site to your favorites list, right? You see a site that you like or that you plan to return to so you add it to your favorites list. There is one big drawback to this “old” system of listing your favorite sites. Your favorites list is locked onto your computer. There is no easy way to share your favorites list with your friends and associates.
What if, when you found a site you wanted to add to your favorites, instead of adding them to your favorites on your computer, you could add them to a list of your favorites that is on the internet. Then you could find your favorites no matter what computer you were using and you could direct your friends to your favorites list by sharing the web address with them.
This is in essence what social bookmarking is. Social bookmarking is creating a personalized list of your favorites on an internet site built specifically for this purpose. The site is constructed so that everyone who visits can see your favorites list and can visit the sites that you think are important.
Visitors to your social bookmark list not only can visit your favorite sites, they can add the sites that they like to their own social bookmark list. Then others can view their list and so on and so forth. A really interesting site could start to spread virally on these social bookmarking sites. That would be a tremendous benefit to anyone’s web traffic.
Another function of social bookmarking sites is to keep track of how many times a site is listed on someone’s favorites list. This number is used to rank the sites popularity. Of course the highest ranking sites are featured by the social bookmarking sites and of course that brings even more traffic to those sites.
How do you start getting listed on these social bookmarking sites? First you have to be listed at least once, so logically you set up your own list and put your sites on it. Some sites have buttons you can add to your site to allow readers the option of listing it on their social bookmark list. There are plugins for some blogs that can do this. Obviously the better and more useful your content the more likely your site is going to end up on readers lists.
The object is to get your site listed on as many social bookmark sites and lists as you can. A few popular sites are: del.ico-us, backflip, netvouz, Digg and stumbleupon.
Getting involved in social bookmarking is good internet marketing, taking advantage of the interactivity of Web 2.0. Social bookmarking is one more tool to use to boost your sites popularity and increase traffic.
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If you are new to Internet marketing you might not be aware of how much social marketing sites can do to boost the traffic coming to your Internet marketing start-up business. You may not even be aware of what social networking and social bookmarking sites are, or how to utilize them.
Sure, social sites give you a lot of interactivity and allow users to personalize their sites, compile a list of favourite 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?
Above all, you should be aware that social media marketing sites fall into two basic categories, bookmarking sites and networking sites, so you need to be clear about what you want to do?
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 may invite visitors to bookmark your posts. You can do this by adding a button to your page that links through to Stumbleupon, or Digg, or TwitThis and so on.
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. Traffic will build on any site that has original, good quality, regularly updated content.
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.
One other reason why social networking sites are sometimes dismissed as not being any good for business is that some people do little 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 favourite 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!
Links posted on such sites are regularly followed by search engine spiders. 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.
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