Online Social Networking

In Creating a Home for Your Blog I discussed blogging platforms and stated my preference for starting a WordPress.org free-standing blog for greatest control and flexibility. Review that post to decide what’s best for you at the present time.

Blogging communities such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, and social networking sites such as MySpace and Yuwie will host a blog for you.

However, if you decide on WordPress.org or another free-standing blogging platform, you must set up an account with a web hosting company.

Make sure to select Linux shared web hosting and not Microsoft hosting.

Here is a partial list of web hosting companies to consider for your blog:

Each web hosting company has its own features and pricing structure. All these hosting companies are mainstream. They’re listed in alphabetical order. Choose the one that best fits your plans.

If you choose a WordPress.org blog, and you have never used WordPress before, ask a freind or colleague to help. You can also contact me, and I will provide you with personal help for a very modest fee.

One side note: If you’re looking to buy domain names, 1&1 Internet offers .com domains with private registration for $6.99 per year.

Don’t miss any posts. Register, it’s easy, or subscribe to my RSS feed! You can also subscribe by e-mail using the form at the top of the home page sidebar.

Online social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook have become considerably heterogeneous over time. They support diverse agendas and activities.

One the other hand, social networking sites such as myYearbook or Linked In have retained their strictly social or business networking character.

Social Sites for Every Business

Business is embracing social networking, and most new social networking websites seem to lean more towards doing business than towards socializing.

I came across an excellent list of business networking sites and social media sites that will help you create a strong web presence for yourself or for your organization.

Inside CRM published a collection of 50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence On. The entries are listed in five categories:

1. Social Bookmarking Sites – such as reddit and Digg
2. Business Networking Sites — like Ryze
3. Niche Social Media Sites – including Sphinn and Tweako
4. General Social Media Sites — such as Wikipedia
5. Job Sites – like Yahoo! Hot Jobs

I don’t know whether their list will be updated periodically, but it is certainly an excellent jumping off point.

You can also consult Mashable’s Catalog of 350+ Social Networking Sites and Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List for additional ideas.

You Need a Strong Web Presence

Are you an established entrepreneur or manager?

Are you opening a small business, a network marketing business or a consulting practice?

Even if you’re an employee in a corporation, you need a solid web presence to comptete in today’s Internet-based world.

When somebody Google’s YOU or your niche, what will the search engine return?

More on search engines and search engine optimization coming in future articles. So don’t miss any posts. Register, it’s easy, or subscribe to my RSS feed!

My First Effort

I launched my Online Social Networking blog on November 6, 2007 with my first post, Here We Are.

I was a blogging and search engine optimization newbie.

You might remember my earlier post, “You don’t have to get it right. You just have to get it going!” I made a plan and got started.

My strategy was to attract readers at social networking sites such as MySpace and Yuwie, and at the same time build a strong presence in the search engines.

I chose to write about social networking because of the large amount of experience I had with online social networking and social networking sites, and I selected the name of this blog and its principal keywords accordingly.

My blog took form over a period of several months with a few false starts and reversals. I kept writing week after week and networking and strategizing while waiting for my search engine marketing to kick in.

I joined MyBloglog and Entrecard to connect with other bloggers and entice them to visit my site. At Entrecard I made new friends.

One, a gentleman named Marcus Hochstadt, has helped me enormously. Not only has Marcus given me lots of encouragement, but through a contest he organized and ran on his Internet Business Guide blog, he also helped me gain more than fifty good inbound links to my blog. This helped my Google Page Rank.

Moving Up in Google

Page rank is Google’s measure of a site’s authority. It’s a major factor in Google’s determination of a site’s position in search results.

Having your site shown by Google and other search engines on page one of the results when people search for your targeted keywords is highly desirable and is the primary goal of search engine optimization.

As my credibility increased, and my page rank went from zero to one and from one to two I moved up in the search engine results and saw large increments in the number of visitors Google was sending my way each day.

I started tracking my blog’s traffic late January using Google Analytics. At that time Google was already providing me with a couple of visitors per day. The following chart shows how my results improved over time. Click on the chart to view a larger much larger version.

On a good day now I receive about 30 visitors. This will continue to grow over time, and I’ll keep you posted.

You Can Do It Too

I’m teaching a free course on blogging, search engine optimization and social media marketing. You’ll learn all the techniques I’ve discovered and how you can apply them yourself.

A wide range of social media marketing training courses is available at My Private Classroom for Marketers.

Subscribe to my newsletter at my free social media training site.

If you’re interesed in harnessing the synergy of blogging, social networking sites and search engine optimization, visit my Blog Marketing and SEO Training.

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My tongue in cheek April Fools post Alphabet Wars was right on. Owners of social networking sites are increasingly facing tough naming choices that strain the 26-letter alphabet.

One of the newest players on the online social networking scene is Wowzza. The name tells us little more than that perhaps somebody’s keyboard tends to stick on the letter z. Why another social networking site? What’s different about this site?

Wowzza is an exclusive members-only site, not a free social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or Yuwie. All members are premium members.

Founder Jim Vigilante’s aim is to attract serious marketers and entrepreneurs. Jim is also playing up the referral income potential of Wowzza’s 3×9 forced matrix payout.

In an upcoming post I’ll explain why I am not networking at Wowzza.

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My Private Classroom for Marketers

For the past two years I have been showing people how to use social networking sites to make new friends and build their permission based marketing lists. Some of my conference calls are recorded and archived on my social media marketing training site.

I have helped many marketers to get started in online social networking and have received positive feedback from them.

In November I started blogging.

As I was optimizing my blog for the search engines, not only did I become interested in seo, I developed equal interest in social bookmarking and social media marketing. There are many hundreds of social media sites. Some of my favorites that include Digg, Qassia, StumbleUpon and Twitter are listed on my blog’s sidebar.

I mentioned one morning to my friend Tom Long that I was looking to learn more about social media sites. He suggested that I look into My Private Classroom for Marketers. I followed his advice and became part of My Private Classroom that very day.

My Private Classroom has scores of webinars every month on many different aspects of social media marketing. While most training is for member only, they also offer free social media training.

What attracted me most to MPC however was their expertise and classes in video marketing. They teach members how to create and edit videos, as well as how to distribute and promote them through YouTube and other video sites.

I made my first video a couple of weeks ago which you can find in my post, Social Networking vs. Advertising. It’s a “quickie” video. There’s no actual video in the video.

In order to become a member of My Private Classroom, I needed to join Leaders Club. Leaders Club sells leads, but I don’t use leads. Purchased leads don’t work very well. I only wanted access to the classes that are free to My Private Classroom’s Leaders Club Team. I joined Leaders Club as a training only member, and that was my entrée into MPC.

I attended about ten webinars since joining and enjoyed them all. The best ones for me were the ones about video. Another favorite was a live demonstration of MySpace networking.

I look forward to conducting webinars for My Private Classroom, perhaps as soon as May. I would like to teach about keywords and keyword research. Perhaps I will also teach about blogging and how to network online with other bloggers.

Several people have joined My Private Classroom through me, and I am personally mentoring them to help accelerate their learning.

New technology is changing the way we market every day, and I believe that leaders at My Private Classroom are acutely aware of this. They are doing an excellent job keeping abreast of the latest developments in the Web 2.0 social media platform and in mobile technology.

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List building today isn’t the exclusive domain of autoresponders.

Sure, a reliable autoresponder is still a vital tool if you’re marketing on the Internet. However, online social networking and friend lists ought to weigh more heavily in your permission based marketing strategy.

I started realizing this in 2006 when I first joined MySpace. I noticed how much richer and more effective the two-way communication of social networking sites was than the ongoing monologue associated with e-mail marketing.

I always encourage my e-mail contacts to write me back, but few actually do. And I never learn enough about them, unless of course they choose to join me on MySpace, Facebook, Yuwie or one of the other online networking venues I frequent.

There is another big reason to incorporate online social networking in your online marketing repertoire.

Consider the ease with which you can add thousands of friends on MySpace compared to the cost and difficulty of building your autoresponder list. Whether you use one of the “friend adders” and risk suspension of your profile by the networking site owner, or whether you add friends manually, it’s still much more straightforward to build a permission based marketing list through social networking than it is using more conventional opt-in list building techniques.

I myself do both. I add new subscribers to my autoresponders on a regular basis and simultaneously add new contacts to my friend lists on LinkedIn, MySpace and Yuwie. I have a good reason for doing so.

Not withstanding my previous remarks, it’s easier for me to broadcast a message on demand to my opt-in list than it is to my social networking friends.

Most people check their e-mail at least once a day. If they want to hear from me, they will.

If I post a bulletin on MySpace they can easily miss it. I have to post it several times each day to keep it “on top”. And if they don’t log in, or even worse, if they’ve abandoned their profile, they won’t see the message at all.

So why should you put all your eggs in one basket? Diversify. E-mail people and contact them through multiple sites and through multiple channels on each site to maximize your message delivery and response rate.

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