hirohurl@hotmail.com.
Best regards
David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com
Use Social Marketing Sites To Give Your Internet Marketing Start-Up A Helping Hand
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
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?
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 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!
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, pop over to
http://grasp-the-nettle.com for more articles to help you
master the net. While you're there, grab my FREE Internet
Home Business Tips newsletter, complete with a library of
Internet marketing ebooks (worth a total of $136.75) for
you to download free of charge.
==
Author: David Hurley works as an English language
consultant, editor, and Internet marketer in Hiroshima,
Japan.
