Posted by admin on Jun 22, 2010 in Articles | 0 comments
If you’re looking for a way to get rich from home and you want to run or already run your own Internet business, one of the best tools you can make use of is social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a method of social networking to increase your flow of targeted traffic to your website(s). It has been made possible by the Internet.
Social networking is nothing new. It is a method of finding more qualified prospects for your business. In the business world before and outside of the Internet, networking involves joining groups such as a local racquetball club or anything that revolves around something that interests you, and then making friends and making yourself and your services known within those groups over time. By interacting in a friendly way with people with mutually shared interests, you build trust and a reputation for expertise in your professional area. As people within the groups become convinced that they might need or want your services, they come to you willingly for help; these same people are also far more likely to give you referrals, which along with repeat sales are the lifeblood of all business owners.
With social bookmarking, you blog or you or write articles and get these articles published at online content sites; then you bookmark your blog entries, articles you write for your website(s), and articles you publish at content sites at bookmarking websites. There is quite an abundance of these and their number continues to grow as their value becomes better known and they come more and more into demand.
The bookmarking websites are places where you share content that you find useful, well-written, or informative. These sites facilitate linking back to the original content and most of them also facilitate commentary. These sites are designed to give people all over the Net access to quality information in a targeted, organized way; consequently they virtually all have categories under which you index your content. You can bookmark any content that you like, but in this case it goes without saying that the content you are bookmarking is your own.
The idea is to create social “buzz” about yourself through your content at these networking bookmark sites and get people to access the links to your content, blogs, and website(s). By indexing your content using placement under appropriate site categories and adding keyword tags, you begin to draw the attention of people who might be interested in your offerings. You can greatly enhance your visibility by taking part in the socializing aspects of these bookmarking sites, by which you make online friends and add and get subscribers to your bookmarks and content. These people don’t buy a subscription, but they do become automatic regular followers of your posts, getting them “hooked” on you and greatly upping the chances that they will eventually become a customer.
Targeted traffic is vastly more valuable than traffic you get from the “shotgun approach”. It is a great waste of time to offer your services to just anybody when you could instead find people who already probably have some degree of interest in what you offer. In business, time is money, and when you waste time you lose money. But by constantly writing on a topic such as “how to get rich working from home” and socially bookmarking and networking with your content online, you become known, trusted, and seen as relevant to a certain group of people.
One of the most effective social bookmarking and networking websites is StumbleUpon. This is both a networking site and a web browser plug-in where you download the StumbleUpon toolbar to your desktop and it becomes part of your web browser. You find different websites when you click the “Stumble!” button on the toolbar. The website chooses which new page to show based on your ratings of previous pages, ratings by your online site friends, and by the ratings of other Internet users who have similar interests using a “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” display system. It also has one-click blogging built into it. The ramifications for your business should be obvious.
Another great site is Yahoo! Answers. Here you create a profile and then answer people’s questions on specific topics. (You can also ask them.) Eventually you can become a Trusted Reporter for frequently sharing valuable answers, which greatly increases your profile at the site. You can post links to your website(s) in your answers and your profile, and post parts from your articles as answers. Yahoo! Answers is more frequently used all the time because people feel they are getting “friendly” and “earthy” advice from people with real experiences, making it a perfect fit for a social networker.
For targeting youthful prospects (teens and adults under 25), the fast-rising BEBO is perfect. BEBO is modeled on and similar to Facebook and early in 2008 was named the top performing Website of its kind in a report published in ‘Computing Which?’. The editor commented, “No matter what age you are or what interests you have, there is a social networking site out there for you.”
Yes, in fact, there is–and you as an Internet marketer want to take advantage of all the opportunities made possible with social bookmarking and networking.
CW Teo, an experienced marketer for years currently owns 
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Posted by admin on Jun 16, 2010 in Articles | 0 comments
Social bookmarking has been around for as long as the Internet has existed. If you found a website or resource that you really liked and wanted others to know about it, you told your friends. The quickest way to tell them was to send them an email or post a message on a forum containing the link to that website so they could look at it and add it to their browser favorites list.
This marked it so it could be found again in the future. That was the old way to spread the word about the things that were new or exciting on the Internet. Now, there are some easier and much more effective social bookmarking tools you can use to get the word out about new things.
Social networking involves “tagging” a website of particular interest so that it can be easily accessed. The tag shows up in two places; one being the user’s profile or website, the second being the original homepage of the tagging bookmark. The tag can appear on a list of favorite websites posted on a blog or website, or it can be a special website designed specifically for these tags, called a bookmarking network. Examples of popular bookmarking networks are twitter, facebook, squidoo, flikr, and wetpaint.
Visitors to those sites can then rate the URL value according to how often a search occurs or that link is clicked on. Popular bookmarks remain at the top while less favorable links and spam are lost to new searches. Social bookmarking can be monitored for trends in the market and is used to introduce new and better products and ideas.
Many consumers, whether they realize it or not, use social bookmarking everyday to decide what products are worth investing in, where to shop, where to eat and other consumer decisions. This is because when they do a search online, the most popular searchable things that have had multiple tags come up first in the list. Tags can be a good way for consumers to gauge whether or not a product or company is legit by who manages the feeds and how often the website is tagged.
Here is a list of some great social bookmarking tools you can use today to boost your website visits and get the word out about new items of interest:
Twitter. Do you twitter? This seems like the most asked question recently by social networking people. This free social networking site works by people who become members and post short updates as they wish on anything in general. It’s advertised as a “service for family, friends and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick , frequent answers to the questions; What are you doing” (Twitter.com) The update feeds can then be posted on the person’s blogs, websites or anyplace else where they want people to know about what they’re doing and talking about. People often post their articles or other tidbits about their businesses with links included to get others to visit their website.
Facebook. This is an international social networking site whereby members sign up free and can post messages and updates whenever they wish. If they include links to their websites or other online items, members can go there to read more about them. Feeds are then available for adding to blogs or websites for real time updates. Facebook is growing in popularity among people who were typically participating in other social networking sites like MySpace, but its attracting more career- and business-oriented people.
Squidoo. This neat little social bookmarking site has nothing to do with sealife. In fact, not only is it a great way for people to interact and post updates, but it allows users to create simple websites called “lenses” for others to read about their special interests or topics. So if you are promoting a certain niche interest, an idea or something related to your business, you can create a page to promote this idea and include links back to your sites. Squidoo offers its members additional tools like forums to come up with ideas to promote their pages and highlights popular lenses all over the Internet.
Flikr. If you’re into sharing more than words and like to include images as part of your networking efforts, then you may like Flikr. This social bookmarking site allows users to post images for others to review. Users can also talk about their experiences by joining either private or public groups. So families can use Flikr to share personal photos, or public groups can share images and talk about things of interest. Each photo is assigned a tag which can be placed on user’s websites and blogs. Flikr rates images according to how many times they’ve been viewed and this list is posted on the community section for all to see.
Wetpaint. This is a Wiki format social bookmarking site that allows members to create a website about anything they are interested in or want to promote. It’s a similar concept to Squidoo, except that it is expanded to include the ability to integrate popular feeds into both your Wetpaint site and your blogs or other websites seamlessly. Wetpaint is supported by not only all the major search engines, but also by all primary news feeds and searches conducted by Internet users. This opens up the possibility that someone who may just be doing a general search will land on your Wetpaint site.
There are so many great tools out there that you can use to get the word out about your ideas and share your blogs and websites more effectively. In just a few minutes, you can be signed up and hooked into the best of what the Internet has to offer. Be sure to check out the above social bookmarking sites to get the most out of these services and increase your website’s searchability.
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Posted by admin on Jun 12, 2010 in Articles | 0 comments
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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Posted by admin on May 12, 2010 in Articles | 0 comments
A bookmark is an item that you place into a paper book to mark the place where you stopped reading. This bookmark allows you to easily return to the exact spot you were before, without having to memorize the page number.
An online bookmark serves the same purpose. When you find an internet site you want to mark for later viewing, or that you’ll want to find again, you tell your browser to set a bookmark. These are also called favorites. This bookmark allows you to return exactly to the same site again and again, without ever having to memorize the link.
What Is Social Bookmarking
You’ve been using social bookmarking, even if you didn’t know it! When you forward a funny e-mail joke or picture to a friend, that’s a form of social bookmarking. You are socially sharing a bookmark to a website with a friend. That gives your friends exposure to websites they might never find on their own. They do the same for you when they send these informal social bookmarks to you.
Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites began as a way for web surfers to upload and save their personal browser bookmarks online. That way, web visitors are not limited to their own computers. By saving their personal social bookmarks online, they can access them from any computer.
The social aspect of social bookmarking is that everyone else saving their personal social bookmarks to these online sites can see and use everyone else’s bookmarks! The social bookmarking site essentially becomes a giant collection of bookmarks contributed by many users.
Social Bookmarking Tags
Social bookmarking sites are built and organized by humans. However, there needs to be some kind of organization. Humans provide that too. Each social bookmark is submitted with one or more tags. A tag is nothing more than a keyword that describes the site being submitted.
If you visit a social bookmarking website looking for information on cars, you might search for the words “car,” “cars,” or “automobiles.” The bookmarks with those tags will be shown in the search results. If you are looking for a specific type of car such as a Ferrari, bookmarks tagged with the word “Ferrari” will be shown. It’s that easy!
Making Money With Social Bookmarking
If you have a website that sells a product or service, why not submit that site to the major social bookmarking sites? When you submit your internet marketing site to social bookmarking sites, along with appropriate bookmarking tags, you are tapping into a huge, extremely targeted group of people looking for information – your information!
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Posted by admin on May 6, 2010 in Articles | 0 comments
Social bookmarking is the best way to boost traffic for a site. Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website. The ideas that social bookmarking is built on are working their way into other applications; the practice of tagging information is being extended to other types of resources, such as multimedia files and e-mail. Social bookmarking is saving us a lot of time and energy that we’d usually spend scanning our RSS feeds or (the shock and horror of it all) actually visiting sites daily to find out what’s hot in the industry we work in along with our other interests. Not learning about social bookmarking is nothing short of surrendering to a changing online world.
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. Bookmarking is good for two things: Building more inbound links to your blog and driving traffic to your blog. Social bookmarking has become so competitive that people are asking for votes for every single thing that they put up on the Internet, which entirely defeats the purpose of the entire social bookmarking industry.
Yes, put up all of the content that you want on your blog or your website, but don’t clog up the social bookmarking system by voting for everything that comes your way, or asking for votes on every single thing that you write. People who are trying to become popular on all of these different websites are just compounding the problem by once again “clogging up” the social bookmarking system, not to mention annoying their social bookmarking friends by asking for votes on so many different websites all the time. If you really want to try out more than just 3 or 4 social bookmarking sites, then simply build up your presence in one community, and then move on to other communities later. Get involved in social bookmarking groups where all members agree to give due diligence to each other’s vote requests, and then manage the entire process via email. Adding friends on social bookmarking sites is nothing more than a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” arrangement, and often that leads to seriously one-sided efforts.
Social bookmarking is a free and easy way to get loads of traffic to your website. Millions of people are abandoning traditional search engines and directories in favor of social bookmarking services. Digg is the most heavily-trafficked social bookmarking site (at the moment), followed closely by Stumbeupon. With regard to creating a high-quality search engine, a social bookmarking system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders. And, making matters even sweeter for those in the know is the fact that successful mastery of the social bookmarking scene has Google advantages, too.
One thing is for sure: Social bookmarking is a technology whose time has come, and once corporate America discovers it, advertising will surely follow. Combination of article writing,blogging,RSS and social bookmarking is essential if you want targeted traffic to your site. Another valuable use of social bookmarking is to gain insight into how your brand is perceived by the users saving and tagging your (or your competitors) website or content. If your goal is traffic then blogging combined with social bookmarking is a guaranteed formula for success.
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