Blogs offer countless opportunities for launching your
business into the social media networks, and they can be
designed as an extension of an existing website, or simply
stand alone. Blogging is moving far beyond the casual
journal style of the initial growth stages, allowing
businesses and large companies to develop a fresh identity.
Blogging culture allows you to take part in a
conversational style of marketing, reaching hundreds and
thousands of visitors on a daily basis, and even creating a
following. Providing high quality content is an important
component of your blog; without good articles and content,
your readers will simply move elsewhere.
A blog can be used as a platform for your social
bookmarking efforts since each and every link to an article
can be shared independently. This is why you need to
implement a social bookmarking badge or link on your site,
since the times that you are not independently marketing
yourself, another visitor may go ahead and do it for you!
Blogs are an easy way to break apart your website into
different subjects and categories. Even a well-organized
website can be limited when it does not offer comments or
space for feedback. While many websites are being designed
in this way, the benefits of launching a blog along with
your site are a valuable opportunity to generate higher
readership.
Blogs also give you an option to implement an RSS
subscription service. Since many people simply do not have
the time to visit multiple sites in a given day, an RSS
feed can deliver new content to their e-mail box or other
RSS reader. This gives you a chance to share the link with
each and every subscriber, and every time you publish, you
increase the chances of someone simply submitting your
content to a social bookmarking site or network.
SETTING UP YOUR BLOG TO BE SOCIAL MEDIA FRIENDLY
Your blog may be setup through a variety of services
including Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad. Whichever format
you choose, it's a good idea to look for widgets and code
that can add social bookmarking buttons to the site
immediately. Remember that this makes it very easy and
efficient for your readers to start submitting something
they read to multiple social bookmarking networks and
search engines; all you have to do during these stages is
provide quality content on a regular basis, and work on
generating a large amount of traffic. Traffic will build
on itself, and the more-established your blog becomes, the
higher the chances that it will be discovered.
As your content starts to join the networks such as
StumbleUpon and Digg, you'll notice immediate surges in
traffic. Traffic is driven largely by the number of
interested visitors who rate and vote on your site, and how
valuable the content is to a variety of readers. Not only
do you need to focus on creating evergreen and valuable
content on a regular basis, but it's important to make it
easy for search engine rankings with the appropriate amount
of keywords.
INCREASING YOUR BLOG'S POPULARITY WITH SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
The only way to effectively increase your blog's popularity
with social bookmarking is to spread out your endeavors
across multiple social media sites. This may include
Technorati, Google Links, Del.ici.ous, and Yahoo! Links
where your individual articles and submissions are
mentioned either within another blog, or standing alone in
a particular category.
Tools such as SocialMeter can help you keep track of how
well your blog or webstie is doing in the social
bookmarking networks at any given time. SocialMeter scans
the largest social websites and ranks them against each
other based on how many times your link or website is
indexed in each one. You just type in your URL and the
results will run a search on each site to give you a final
tally.
Badges and 'chiclets', the tools that you can add to your
blog or website are very effective ways to develop your
social bookmarking activity. Your blog's popularity will
instantly increase because you are:
1. Providing users increased interaction. You'll be
surprised how many static sites that make this shift can
start building traffic with very little direct marketing.
Once the news spreads that you are offering this added
value to your website, you can look forward to increased
traffic on a regular basis.
2. Making it easy to reach Digg and other social
bookmarking networks hat allow users to vote. Voting and
rating articles is becoming a very popular activity on the
web, and if you write something particularly compelling you
can start to create a traffic boost overnight.
3. Increasing your exposure naturally in the social
networking hemisphere. Social networking and bookmarking
gives you a chance to increase your exposure tenfold;
visitors who find an article worth sharing will help you
reach a much more targeted and refined audience than simply
publishing a website and hoping to get readers. You will
be delivering your news and information with a much
stronger reach.
In addition to promoting yourself on social bookmarking
sites, there are some effective ways to market the blog
itself. Again, this will encourage your visitors to share
the 'news' from your blog on their own. Some effective
strategies for blog promotion may include:
1. Join an RSS submission network. These will help you
submit to an even larger listing of sites, all from the RSS
feeds that you create. Syndication allows you to reach a
much larger audience, and building a steady list of
subscribers can increase traffic flow instantly.
2. Post announcements about your blog and website on
forums, bulletins, and community boards. When you have
identified your specific channels, start promoting yourself
with news announcements, new articles, or simply an
introduction to community members. Include your link and
you'll easily start to drive traffic.
3. Join discussion groups and forums about your industry or
topic, and leave a link to your blog or website in your
profile every time you post.
Be consistent with these efforts and they will pay off big
time.
----------------------------------------------------
Sean S. Sampson provides valuable resources, and
information to help the home business owner, and online
business owner prosper with their business. For more
information about Social Bookmarketing, please go to
http://www.makinglotsofmoneyonline.com
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