Success Online.IN Success Secrets For Your Online Venture

Social Media Marketing involves online marketing using the power of Web2.0 sites – which are basically websites that have content that is submitted and shared by its community of users. The users decide what is popular, of quality and worth sharing. They become “prosumers” … that is producers and consumers. Unless you have been living under a rock, you already know of Social Media sites like Youtube, Myspace, Flickr, Delicious, Digg etc. Before the advent of Web2.0 sites, the concept of “User Generated Content” was not very prevalent. It did exist in the form of Geocities Homepages etc, but it was not really mainstream… until some clever early moviers realized that there was a lot of potential in letting users create content by giving them the “tool” or website.

This led to a whole bunch of websites having tons of traffic and people and media “pointing” and “linking” to them – thus boosting their PageRank and SEO almost overnight.

Now, the obvious next step for any good marketer would be to get their website or specific URLs on these highly popular and high PageRank sites. And, guess what? It isn’t hard at all – because thats exactly what these Social Media websites want you to do… Yes! They want you to upload and share content. This is just like in the Web1.0 days of Static Directories and search engines… except now you will not submit boring one paragraph description and a title of your website – this time around you can engage the readers and entertain them – by saying or showing entertaining stuff … be it a text post, an image, a video or any such “User Generated Content” that you have rights over or have created. The trick (its not really a trick actually) – is that now you can include a link to your website or specific post or whatever URL anywhere within this shared content… think watermark in a Youtube Video, a link inside the body of an article, a link to the full story right after the introduction paragraph, a comment on someone elses blog post with your name linking to your blog, etc.

This is ability to share content in the new medium of Social Media tied in together with the way Google’s PageRank Search Algorithm works (basically which rewards your site for inbound links) – is what makes this system of Social Media Marketing so powerful.

Going forward … there are basically 2 reasons why one must submit their website or blog posts to Social Media websites. The first is to get direct traffic from visitors to those sites, who read your post or summary and then click through to come to your website or blog post. The second reason is to increase ones Search Engine ranking through effective backlinking. By submitting your content and linking to your original site or post, you are effectively building backlinks to your website – and thus increasing its “popularity” in the eyes of Google – which leads to better PageRank and better (higher) search results listings. Just make sure that you use the keywords for which you want higher listings as the “anchor text” in the links.

There are various free and paid Software tools that you can use to automate parts of your social media marketing plan. I would recommend that you start by trying to cover the larger websites listed below and also other topic specific Social Media commuity sites that are in your niche (example, sphinn.com for the online marketing niche).
Make sure that you initially cover about 10 websites on a daily basis to begin with. If you can do more, thats only going to be better. You need to submit relevant and specific individual stories, articles and content – not just your homepage or main website link. Thats not what this is about… its about first writing great content and then telling the world about it. If you can write one great article every 3 days or so, and then spend time to publicize each article – then you will make good progress.

Watch your stats closely and see which strategies (site submissions) are working well for you – then increase your submissions to those, and give them more weightage by spending more time on them. Then, move on to other new sites.

Remeber – the goal is two fold here – (1) better search engine ranking through increase in backlinks and thus popularity, and (2) possible inflow of visitors from the various submissions that you make on these website. So, even if (2) is not happening and you dont see any visitors coming in when you look at your web log statistics, atleast you are building backlinks and gaining “Google love”. Try and spend around 25% of your daily time that you allocate for your site on promotion techniques, such as this one… its as essential as creating content, building monetization strategies and networking or visiting other similar community sites.

Tools You Can Get to Speed up the Submission Process

Here are some tools that you can use to make your submission task easier and automate parts of it. Some of these are free and some are paid, and I recommend these if you have the money.

• Wordtracker – free trial available. Good for the occasional keyword researcher.
• Keyword Analyzer – The best and most comprehensive keyword research tool, if you are going to be doing a lot of keyword research over and over again.
• Submit Equalizer – Submits to various engines and directories
• RSS Submit – submitts article RSS feedsto blogs and directories
• Web2Submitter – mass social bookmark submitter and article site submitter
• Press Equalizer – mass press release site submitter
• Comment Hut – facilitates blog commenting by giving you a easy interface to find and add comments to relevant blogs.

Some Prominent Social Media Sites

Below are websites you should be using. In addition to these websites, make sure that you identify your industry / niche / topic specific Social Media websites and submit to those too, as those will give you maximum targeted stream of traffic, and better Google love and ranking.

• Submit your best articles or blog posts to the following story submission and viting sites -
  • http://digg.com

    http://mixx.com

    http://propeller.com

    http://stumbleupon.com

    http://reddit.com

    http://delicious.com

    http://newsVine.com

    http://blinklist.com

    http://shoutwire.com
    

• Submit your website to the AboutUs wiki.
• Submit to Onlywire with the Web2Submitter software if possible. Onlwire will mass submit to all social bookmarking type of websites.
• You may / may not submit to these sites, as they are low priority and only submit to them if you have the spare time.
  • http://www.30daytags.com

    http://blogmarks.net

    http://www.blinkbits.com

    http://www.bmaccess.net

    http://www.clipclip.org

    http://www.clipmarks.com

    http://www.connectedy.com

    http://www.connotea.org

    http://www.contentpop.com

    http://fark.com

    http://www.feedmarker.com

    http://feedmelinks.com

    http://www.gibeo.net

    http://www.google.com/bookmarks

    http://www.gravee.com

    http://www.hypediss.com

    http://www.iliketotallyloveit.com

    http://www.kaboodle.com

    http://www.linkagogo.com

    http://linkfilter.net

    http://myweb.yahoo.com

    http://www.netvouz.com

    http://www.prefound.com

    http://www.rojo.com

    http://scuttle.org

    http://www.sitetagger.com

    http://www.slashdot.org

    http://www.smarking.com

    http://www.spicypage.com

    http://www.tailrank.com/share

    http://www.thisnext.com

    http://thoof.com

    http://www.unalog.com

    http://www.wists.com

    http://yoorl.com

• Consider submitting to the following video websites, should you have video. You can use mass video submission services found at TubeMogul, Vidmetrix or HeySpread to mass submit and track views and comments of your submitted videos.
  • http://www.youtube.com

    http://video.google.com

    http://video.yahoo.com

    http://uncutvideo.aol.com

    http://eyespot.com

    http://grouper.com

    http://jumpcut.com

    http://revver.com

    http://videoegg.com

    http://vimeo.com

    http://vsocial.com

    http;//www.blip.tv

    http://www.dailymotion.com

    http://www.ourmedia.org

    http://vids.myspace.com

    http://soapbox.msn.com

    http://www.metacafe.com

    http://www.ifilm.com

    http://www.motionbox.com

    http://www.veoh.com

    http://www.castpost.com

    http://www.viddler.com

    http://www.break.com

    http://www.flixya.com

    http://www.vume.com

    http://www.panjea.com

    http://www.thevideosense.com

    http://www.nelsok.com

    http://www.filmaka.com

    http://www.freeiq.com

• Visit the following sites and help others with questions they may have ot problem areas and give your 2 cents of advice. Don’t just randomly write stuff and make sure what you write is relevant and helpfull. Leave your URL as your signature for all readers to click through to, if desired. Again: search for your niche specific content / help wanted areas – and address them. Give the readers value. Write intelligent stuff that puts you out in front as someone who may have “other” niche specific interesting stuff to say on their website or blog.
  • http://answers.yahoo.com

    http://yedda.com

    http://www.askeet.com

    http://wiki.answers.com

    http://fluther.com

    http://www.wikihow.com

    http://www.wikipedia.com

    http://en.citizendium.org

    http://www.wondir.com

    http://www.listible.com

    http://whatali.st

    http://www.wetpaint.com

    http://www.wikia.com

    http://www.ehow.com

    http://www.productwiki.com

• Then, hit the following Classfied Ads websites
  • http://craigslist.org

    http://www.usfreeads.com

    http://www.edgeio.com

    http://www.oodle.com

    http://classifieds.yahoo.com

    http://epage.com

• I have spoken about Article marketing in the past. Here are some Article websites that you need to submit your content to -
  • http://goarticles.com/

    http://ezinearticles.com/

    http://www.articlecity.com/

    http://www.scribd.com/

    http://www.squidoo.com

    http://www.hubpages.com

    http://blogsearch.google.com

• Post the same content on multiple blog sites and link back to your main article or website…
  • http://www.blogspot.com

    http://www.xanga.com

    http://spaces.live.com

    http://www.wordpress.com

    http://360.yahoo.com

    http://www.vox.com

    http://www.livejournal.com

• Create your RSS Widgets with the following…
  • http://www.widgetbox.com/

    http://www.springwidgets.com/

• Use the power of Social Networking websites to meet new people and expose your site and get additional targeted traffic
  • http://myspace.com

    http://facebook.com

    http://orkut.com

    http://linkedin.com

    http://xing.com

    http://ryze.com

    http://twitter.com

    http://hi5.com

    http://tagworld.com

    http://ning.com

These sites are a good place to start and all have a high Google Page Rank which will help you, in addition to the traffic and exposure they give your site. Remember to search for similar Social Media sites that are specific to your industry. Since there are now plenty of free and low cost scripts available in the market, plenty of people have cashed in by creating niche and industry specific social media sites, be it in bookmarking, story sumission and voting, social networking etc.

You might want to visit this comprehensive list of Web2.0 sites that are categorized based on their social media model (not their niche). Every niche has its own plethora of social media websites that are springing up on a daily basis, and you should definitely search the net and subscribe to any blog or website that regularly tracks new sites in your niche.

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