SEM Truth

There are very fundamental differences between social bookmarking and social networking sites. Depending on the stage of your businesses development and marketing focus it can be extremely important to understand these differences and perhaps, delegate your time accordingly.

Social Bookmarking

This social media avenue is based on the concept of information sharing through unique rating systems that allow users to suggest articles which then can continue to be ranked according to the number of other users of a social bookmarking site whom also share or suggest the article. The idea is simple and works so eliquiently becuase users have an influence on the way information is shared, commented and have a voice within the social bookmarking community. Social bookmarking sites quickly become the center of information networking.

Social bookmarking can be best suited for sharing information and building links back to an information source as you continue to post and allow users to spread the word throughout social bookmarking sites. It allows you to interact with users understand popular topics and build a voice for your business.

Social Networking

Social networks on the other hand rely more solely on the connections and sharing people do within the social networking community. although many have begun implementing the function ofsyndicating RSS feeds and posting information within your profile, social networking sites are more person oriented. Social networking sites concentrate more so networking and following people rather then topics. As apposed to centralizing on a vatgory of information and articles posted within that category users network amongst eachother and share information once linked together within the social site.

Social Networks are best suited for obtaining loyal followers whom want to stay up to date with the happenings of your social networking profile. This connection can sometimes be much harder to make although you form a more direct relationship with users because you are now connected to their profile through the networking connection.

It has been some time since I have had the opportunity to post. But after some delay I wanted to share the idea of overcomming the mundane tactics of social media. If any business stops and takes a look into social media you will notice that so much is out there to be learned about your target market. a market that is ever evolving and in order to cater to the masses, you have to listed to the topics they are taking the time to talk about and share.

Anything online worth posting, is worth making unique. Todays marketing strategies concentrate solely on the most cost effective manner. Usually always resulting in regurgitated topics spread across your whole social media campaign. What is twitter without a unique tweet, but more importantly to the business tweeter, what is going to spark the interest of twitter users and followers? It is not important what people inform other of, but rather what social media is paying attention to or seeking.

A voice within social media is only worth the number of visitors that take the time to listen. Through social media you are peeking interest through an informational based medium that is not so much focused on the ROI of sales but the ROI of user loyalty, reach and return visitor. The freshness and credibility of a social media campaign can far outweigh the reach of that through conventional marketing. Important articles are shared, re-tweeted, copied, discussed and voted upon in a manner that soon will replace or be incorperated into the conventions of current search algorithms. Twitter may be a fad because of its current user limitations, however social media on a whole is shaping human / internet interaction.

With the implementation of information into your business, social media, or social bookmarking sites allow you the opportunity to share.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing can simply be broken down to word of mouth marketing online. Allowing others to share, and promote your business. And although the information on your blog should not be utilized to directly sell, you know have the opportunity to be in front of a much larger audience now that you offer information related to your market as well.

You don’t necessarily just want to add information and wait for it to gain importance and help promote your business. Social bookmarking sites allow blogs, for example, to share information. It is that simple. So your reviews, comparisons, articles etc. have the opportunity to build your blogs link popularity and be shared on huge existing networks. Build link popularity through the social media sites and capture readers attention with great articles all while increasing the importance and exposure of your business. Certainly seems like a solid foundation for success.

If you have decided that information is important for your business and you want to utilize that information to help market your website, the most crucial factor in this method of online marketings success is going to be the setup. First you have to decide if the blog is going to be setup internally, on your main sites domain or if it is going to be utilized to create a network and build your businesses link popularity.

Just like a website, there are going to be key factors that you want to make sure are implemented. Your blog should have search engine friendly page names, title tags etc. so as you are building your businesses information source you are doing so in a beneficial way.

The Concept is Simple

If there is relevant information related to your business, you should offer that information on your business blog. Categorize your information, continue to post on a regular basis and link from your articles utilizing pertinent / relevant keywords. One major reason for utilizing a blog to build link popularity is that you are able to obtain inbound links with specific keyword phrases related to your business. So not only do your control the information source, you are also able to link exact keywords that you want to help promote for your business from relevant information.

You have now accomplished creating an information source, where even people just performing research may now be able to find your business as well. Obvious the information you offer is going to directly relate to how successful your blog is but smart business owners will understand that continuing to build the blog as an information source is going to create a reason for the search engines to continue to index their blog, which links to their website, and more and more information and links are being built related to their business.

First you have to figure out what you are trying to accomplish and make sure that the setup caters to your marketing goals. A successful marketing campaign has so much to do with a sites setup. If you are wanting to market your website and accomplish natural listings within the search engines, you are going to want to stay competitive, and are going to want to continually increase the importance of your site.

More importantly business owners continually overlook the fact that so many online users are looking for information. And information related to their business, industry, or market. In order to gain constant importance you are going to want your site to continue to expand with information and other sites linking to yours. Why not use all of this potential information to help promote your business? Depending on your market there is an unlimited information for you to share with your customers and build credibility, or establish your business through information including reviews, comparisons, news, history, how-to’s etc.  In fact, if you have an online business that does not offer this information, another site, another source is taking your visitors and seeing more exposure.

In my opinion, there is not more effective way of marketing then by combining content and link popularity. In any market you are going to want to establish a network of information. You can decide what information is contained on your businesses main website and what information to post to your business blog. In building a business blog as a source of information you are accomplishing consistent importance through content, and constant link popularity.

Meta tags have importance, but think of them more so as a foundation then overall way to help market a site. Any professionally setup site is going to have a solid foundation including meta tags. In marketing an online business it solely comes down to two things, knowledge and time. You as a business owner should find out what is beneficial in marketing a site, and what will help your business obtain those beneficial aspects. Meta tags are simply help in creating relevance / reaffirmation of what you offer. From my experience yahoo can certainly show more results from the simple setup of meta tags.

More important in so many ways is content. What you offer literally has to be placed within the content on a site. Content can be much more expansive and descriptive reaffirming or communicating what you offer. The main assumption in the idea of content is that by adding product names and descriptions your site has ‘content’. Content should actually be something that is unique. Your and every other site online potentially has the same product names / descriptions in your market.

With proper setup including categorization, page names, meta tags and content you will simply have a solid foundation creating relevance for your site and merely the proper implementation of a competitive e-commence website. At this point you are ready for avenues of online marketing.

Let me first explain the concept of the general link exchange between websites:

Contact Established, Relevant websites, and request to exchange links.

This is a pretty straight forward explanation on how a link exchange happens. You contact the business or website owner, most likely sites that have good placement themselves within the search engines. These sites should be relevant so the information etc. relates / ties to your website. Through this contact you request to exchange links.

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Creating and starting informational sites are a great way to create inbound links and you are creating them from relevant information and potentially a huge information source. I recommend this method over all forms of marketing.

You may not want to incorporate loads of information on a product website but adding information to a business blog with a solid structure and proper setup can certainly create a lot of inbound links.

Benefits
I recommend this method over any other link building strategy for the following reasons.

• You have control over the information
• You are seeing visibility infront of readers just looking for information that your website would have not otherwise captured
• You have multiple sites / avenues to capture traffic

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There are many ways to build link popularity for a business so I want to focus on the key areas of how they work. I try to keep any topics informational so you as a business owner can decide whether or not it is going to be beneficial or is right for your business. You can do many things online from building a website that may hinder your overall ability to be successful so doing things effectively and correct is important.

Unless I have otherwise forgot a specific way of creating links most will fall under a one of the following methods:

• Link Exchange
  • Exchanging links means having to contact website owners and getting them to willingly add your site to their ‘recommended sites’ / links page and is mainly a waste of time.
• Directories /Shopping Malls
  • How do you justify weeding through the endless lists of other sites? But is it worth the link.
• Networking – Blogging
  • A great way to become a voice in the world of readers / potential customers interested in information related to your business, credibility anyone?
• Article submissions
  • I lump this together with many forms of submitting articles to be distributed including press releases and directory articles but what is the exposure of this for of promoting?
• Informational Sites
  • Creating an interlinking ‘network’ of sites related and controlled all by the business owner. Can you say recipe for success? With web 2.0 being talked about so much, don’t you think it is time for your business to upgrade how and who you are reaching?

Meta tags are a simple process to complete for your website. The main focus behind meta tags is relevance. The three main meta tags that you will want to focus on for all of your pages are the title, keywords and description tags. There are many other tags, and some have their uses but for marketing purposes lets focus on these main tags.

First you will want to research keywords related to your products if necessary. These will be the basis of your meta tags because what people are searching for related to your products you will want to reaffirm to help promote your websites relevance for those phrases. Simply put if it relates to your products, you will want to include it on the most relevant pages set of meta tags. (more…)