Social media and social networking are the backbone of content 2.0. Socially driven site is a Web 2.0 main feature.

It is mass driven and a great way to direct free traffic to your site. It’s one of the main focuses of this book because it can be very profitable if applied correctly to your business.

This is how it works…

• You submit articles to your social media site. The more familiar, interesting, or controversial (good or bad) the more it will catch people’s attention. The more interested people become the more clicks the originated site will get and the more traffic you get to your site.
• This traffic cannot be viewed as leads because such visitors are there purely to contribute to a certain article. The fact that you have tons of traffic does not generally mean people are interested in what you do.
• This traffic will create both positive and negative buzz (word-of-mouth) for the people involved in the article – specifically based on their beliefs on the topic. The more people interested in your article, the faster your site will reach the front page.
• Your success using socially driven (social media) sites will depend on how valuable your product or marketing appears to people – that is perceived value.
• Some people are more liberal, open to suggestions and willing to try new things while some only came to contribute their opinions, create some momentum to the events, add more news, ideas and or give feedback. In other words, they are there purely to voice their opinion and purely to critique others.
• Some people are willing to weigh both sides of the story and give more constructive criticism, but most people may just jump to a conclusion.

It used to be the big corporations taking a hit from the media. Well, Web 2.0 is changing the world of communication because ordinary people like you and me who may think we really don’t have much at stake or that nobody would care about who can get burnt through the social media – the scariest part is, you really don’t even have to participate in the social media for someone to mention your name!

All people need to do is put your name or business name on the search engine and spill all your life history for the whole world to see. This can be good or bad depending on the value you provide.

One of the main things to remember is how passionate you are about the product you’re presenting or representing. You need to keep it at the back of your mind that it is not about you personally. People just need to like what you do – your aim is to create an audience who will speak about what you do with respect and admiration.

I am not going to claim a thousand percent return on investment (ROI) when you use social media. What you’re here to discover is the value and benefit of using a socially driven site at best.

You will get a lot of traffic volume using social media marketing if your article is of value and interest, which by the way is giving you exposure and not costing you a dime, but the conversion of this traffic into leads or sales may not really worth that much in proportion.

While you may not get an instant monetary gratification from a passionate reader or someone who is interested in what you do in the short run, the long run could be rewarding when you get referrals from those readers.

It is only natural for your readers to find themselves gravitating towards your article if you give them what they need, want, what they think they want or something to satisfy their immediate needs.

For your article or product to worth buzzing or evangelizing, you must meet/solve people’s problems.

Think like your readers and listen to your visitors to be able to give them exactly what they need – these are critical ways to get to your visitor’s heart. Pay more attention to the way your audience reacts to your articles, pages, newsletter, blogs etc.

Putting yourself in your readers’ shoes is very important because it will help you adjust your services toward what is really needed when you know the following:

• What do your readers want?
• What do they need?
• What problems do they need a solution to?
• Which of your articles gets the most clicks?
• What is significant about it?
• Can you improve upon it?
• Can you monetize it?
• Do you have enough resource pointing to their favorite article?

The best way to know what your readers want is to seek your reader’s opinion through a survey to know what they think about the product or if there is any comment they would like to add to help enhance your product or service.

The most important thing is to be able to track your traffic source with the ability to mine the data and know which of your sources is actually converting better. Once you are able to identify the better conversion source, you can then put more effort into the source that is doing better.

Some hosting companies provide tracking information as part of their service, but if your hosting company doesn’t have such package you can check out the following great tracking software:

• adminder.com
• hypertracker.com

It will not hurt to have your name, product and/or business information out there on the web even if all you can generate is more exposure from people that are enjoying the FREE services you have to offer. Take it as your own contribution to the general public or community – the internet community that is.

You may be able to build your brand, get people to know about you which may lead to future referral.

It all depends on how you intend to measure your success…

Important Social Media Caveat

You do not want to create a friend list purely for the fun of list building with no targeted group in mind.

If you do not target your members very carefully, you will have tons of people that will generate traffic to your site with little or no conversion whatsoever.

They will not BUY your product because they are not interested in what you do.

On the other hand, if you carefully target members, people you share the same interest in a particular topic or niche, you can be sure that the traffic they are generating to your site will yield a better conversion.

Don’t just create a list, create a targeted list.

Always remember commercial activities are discouraged on some social media (like MySpace). It may get you banned or fired. Refer to their terms-of-use to be sure of what is allowed, what is unethical, or you may simply call their rep for help.

For you to make the most of the social media sites, you need to figure out the strategy to make money using the social network of your choice. Followings are your guidelines:

• How to find and make friends
• What type of profile to create?
• How to sell your product/services
• How to create a new product to meet the needs and people’s concerns – base this on your research or findings.

Take action! Get your hands dirty; get started by creating an action plan NOW!

I don’t want to make your head spin; I will show you later what to do and how to get around these questions – I just want you to start thinking about your action plan.

Back to social media caveat…

Different social media sites have various rules that govern using their sites, I will suggest you take some time to read through the rules and regulations and anytime you’re in doubt, you can always call their representative to find out.

It will save you a whole lot of headache when you know what is expected of you.

There are other tactics, guerilla campaign and strategies you may use to build your business, believe me, manipulating the social media should not be one of them if you want to continue keeping your good name online.

Social Media Success Tips

Information! information!! information!!! is key and major ingredient to internet marketing; just like location! Location!! Location!!! Is the key to the real estate business.

Main difference for internet marketing is that your information has to be of great valuable, undiluted, unadulterated, and unbiased. These will be the fuel that will help to put you above your peers within your chosen niche.

The best way to evaluate how internet users think is for you to put yourself in their shoes and surf the web, once you’re there, ask yourself, why do you search the web and what kind of information makes you happy – If you’ve ever bought something online, think about what you buy and why?

Is it that you like it, need it, want it or was it the way it was presented that made you bring out your credit card?

Pick and choose, rate your answers, and then use your own response to present your business to your customer online.

Do not use the internet to mislead your audience and keep your business online clean.

People get paid to give stories on the web using certain keyword. Some of this group may include people who are curious about emerging technology and people purely using it for marketing research. If you do not have time to do your research yourself, hiring a research company to help you will be a smart idea.

• Write about something people would care about.
• You will get an indirect, grass root movement with a life of its own buzz if you put a good article on your site.
• Give your readers room to participate in your blog/forum.
• Create value-packed content which will attract more links. Make your articles, report, or news coverage worth linking to
• You can also increase inbound links by submitting to directories and participating in social media.
• Having enthusiastic readers is just as powerful as making the sales. Be grateful for your visitors, if they like what you have on your site, they will rave about your site and your content, vote for you, and may even recommend you.
• Web 2.0 applications are different and different people use the site differently also different people have different reasons for using it.
• Try to look for a social marketing in your niche to better improve interest and generate more targeted traffic. An example would be a car part seller investing their effort in socializing with a social network site on cars and racing – would be a good investment of time – unless, of course, you’re socializing for fun.

Many people still don’t know how powerful social media is, you’re one of the lucky few, make sure you use it to your advantage.

Social Bookmarking Sites Are Traffic Golden Mine

Social bookmarking sites are one of the symbols of Web 2.0. Social bookmarking sites that give users the chance to gather in one place all their favorite bookmarks and share them with other users. It gives a unique chance to post links to your site and get thousands of visitors from social bookmarking sites.

Users vote for the links they like and if your link becomes popular you will get tons of natural traffic.

Social bookmarking sites can do miracles for you. For instance, if your link manages to get to the home page of digg, technorati, del.is.ous, and other popular social bookmarking sites, this can drive you more traffic than search engines!

Most social bookmarking sites allow links to spend only 24 hours on the front page, so this high traffic will be only for a day or two and then you will most likely experience a sharp decrease. But since your link stays there, you will be receiving organic traffic from it months and years after you have posted it.

There are so many social bookmarking sites, that it could take you years to post your links on all of them. However, even if you can do it, there is no need to. You can post to 10-15 of the best social bookmarking sites and usually this is enough.

Additionally, you can also choose 5-10 specialized (topical) social bookmarking sites that target your niche because it is great for niche sites.

So, if your blog is about computers, post your links to computer-related bookmarking sites and chances are you will get a lot of targeted traffic from there.

 

Steps to Social Bookmarking Site

Social bookmarking sites are easy to use and here are some basic steps, which describe what you need to do to bookmark the pages of your site:

• Go to the social bookmarking site(s) of your choice and sign up for a free account.
• If the site offers a bookmarking toolbar, download, and install it.
• Add the URL of the page you want to bookmark or click the Tag button on the special bookmarking toolbar to tag it.
• Add a description of the Page.
• Add the tags which describe your page best. Writing meaningful tags is very important because when you have thousands of bookmarked pages, tags are the way to find what you are looking for.
• Save your changes.
• Share your bookmarks with the world.
• Repeat steps 3-7 for all the pages you want to bookmark.

Social Networking Sites

Social bookmarking sites are great for driving short-time organic traffic to your site but if you need a more permanent solution, you should try social networking sites.

Social networking sites are also one of the symbols of Web 2.0 and you should by no means skip them from your strategy to build natural traffic.

There are many social networking sites, the most popular of which are MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Squidoo.

The advantage of social networking sites is that they allow you to build a community of friends and associates. While some of the sites frown at (or openly ban) any promotional and commercial activities, there are many social networking sites, which allow such activities and if you know how to take advantage of this opportunity, you can achieve incredible results.

Most social networking sites require that you make a profile. If the site allows this, include in your profile a link to your blog. This way all your friends to become your readers!

The steps for using different social networking sites vary but generally the sequence is as follows:

• Sign up for a free account and create a profile on Facebook, Digg, My Space, You Tune or Friendster.
• Starts looking for people you know and/or e-mail your friends and let them know you now have an account so that they can join if they want. If you would like to be my friend on Facebook – Click Here to Join
• When someone joins you, it is not automatic, in some cases; they will send you an e-mail to confirm that you want that person to be your friend. So, I will suggest you use an e-mail that is active when filling your profile.
• When you find somebody you know, you ad him or her as friend. So, this person becomes a connection for you, and you become a connection of him/her.
• Browse through your connections’ connections and see who your friends know.
• When you find somebody interesting, ask your connection to introduce you to this interesting person.
• Browse the next level of connections (the connections of your connections’ connections) and again search for interesting people and ask to be introduced to them. This way you will soon build a network of hundreds or thousands of connections.

One of the sites, which not only allows but encourages advertisement and promotion, is Squidoo. Many online marketers have discovered that creating a lens at Squidoo is one of the best ways to drive natural traffic to your site.

Social Networking Advice

‘People don’t care how much you know, until they actually know how much you care.’ This adage actually defines social network about how you relate to the friends you are trying to make and convert into prospect.

You can easily become public enemy number-one if you try to influence or manipulate others using socially driven sites like Digg, My Space, Facebook, You Tune or Friendster purely for your advantage.

Obviously, you are a marketer and the reason you go is really to see if people will be able to like you, like what you do and eventually visit your site and opt-in on your list with the intention of buying something now or in the future.

Traditional online marketing is different from social media in the area of ‘Marketing Reach’, no one really care about what you do when it comes to social media, they ranked what you do very low on their agenda, what they rank high or highly valued is your relationship, your eagerness to help and your ability to provide a solution to their problem without making it sound like selling.

The truth is that you need to spend time giving people real advice and show them that you care about them and their issues and then let them know that you have a solution to their problem. This is how you will gain access to their heart and have the opportunity to expand your realm of influence and build credibility.

Human nature is designed to trust the people who are perceived to be a friend a person of authority.

When you give your best advice, article, report, or e-book freely and acknowledge other experts work and bring them along with you, you are not only making friends in your niche area, but you are also positioning yourself as an expert in the field and some people will see you as a person of authority.

The exposure you get from social marketing sites can help to drive traffic to your site, as well as bring you down if the users realize you’re trying to take advantage of them.

You can monitor your stories manually or use the algorithmic moderation or any latest technology to monitor activities about you on the web.

As you know, too much of everything is bad; if people are trying to promote you or your site by submitting articles which you may or may not have control over. It may be doing you more harm than good. I have a case study that will help to elaborate on that point.

If you must know and I think you should know that socially driven sites actually reward natural behavior and severely punish manipulation or any activities that looks like it.

One of the facts of life is that you cannot please everybody, and different people read different meanings into a message. A message that one reader will give you a thump-up for is likely to get a frown face from another while someone else might even find it offensive.

This is not to scare you or make you wonder if socially driven sites are too sensitive or complicated or if this can easily ruin your reputation and hard work.

All this is trying to let you know is that whatever you do on the web, you should practice ‘Honesty’ – honesty is the best policy.

Be open in your dealings, respect people’s ideas, opinions, and the reason why they are on the web in the first place.

If there is an urgency to advertise your product, then I will suggest you do pay-per-click (PPC) or any other paid advertisement method and treat socially driven site as they are… pure content generic information to educate people – Period!