Online Social Networking

I’m taking a couple of days off from work, and I’m leaving you with the following thought:

A website is not necessarily an Internet presence.

Some websites are no more than online business cards. They display the owner’s contact information along with some eye catching graphics, but provide little or no information about the business or organization.

I admit that such a site is not very common, but they do exist.

Here’s one that actually belongs to a web designer who is selling “Engine Optimized Web Solutions”:

http://marriedtotheweb.com

Pretty amazing isn’t it?

Seeing is believing!

If there is information, but it’s contained in a flash presentation, then from a search engine’s point of view the site is devoid of content. Search engines are unable to decipher flash or pictures.

When pictures are part of a website, it’s important to tell the search engine what the picture is by using an “alt” description atrribute in the HTML “img” tag. Then the picture adds search value to the site. Also, if for some reason the picture doesn’t load, the description will appear instead.

If there is a lot of good information on the site, but there’s no way to capture a visitor’s contact details, or there isn’t an effective search engine optimization strategy, then the website is merely an Internet-based brochure.

Mosts websites are online brochures and no more. They lack an effective lead capture mechanism, or they lack an effective keyword strategy, or all too often they lack both.

Blogs are naturally full of rich content. Add to the mix a choice of subscription methods for lead capture and good keyword research, and you have the makings of a blog marketing strategy.

In my Blog Marketing and SEO Training series, I hope to provide you with lots of creative input as you develop your online presence.

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Surging Ahead in the Search Engines

Extensive keyword research and long-term persistence are starting to pay off in a very big way.

Last month, in Blogging and Search Engine Marketing, I patted myself on the back for my SEO progress during my first six months publishing this blog.

I didn’t at all expect that in May I would receive more visitors from search engines than in all previous months since my introduction to the world of blogs.

These visits were above and beyond the 2,000+ visits that I received from my subscriber lists and from online social networking at Entrecard, MyBlogLog and social networking sites.

Furthermore, slightly more than 30% of those search engine visitors stayed on my site long enough to read something.

Of the 787 search engine visits to my blog in May, 239 “stuck”.

Why so much growth in one month?

My keyword research helped me choose search terms that were ambitious yet realistic. And my persistence helped me to establish PageRank and credibility with Google and the other search engines.

I continue to add lots of content to my blog and bookmark all my content on major social media sites.

Do you think I might top 1,000 visitors from SEO in June?

SEO Training

The good news is that what I’m doing here with search engine optimization is duplicable, and I hope to empower you through our Blog Marketing and SEO Training series to develop a massive web presence and achieve great success in your particular niche.

Whether you’re starting a small business, growing an established business, or building a network marketing business, I can’t think of a better way to increase website traffic.

Are you ready to receive thousands of search engine visitors to your site?

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Our blog marketing and search engine optimization series is under way.

In this ongoing series we are looking at blogs and blogging in connection with several online marketing channels:

• social networking sites
• social media sites
• search engine optimization

Quite obviously blogs are not laid out sequentially like a book. Even if you write in sequence, your material will be presented to the blog’s reader in reverse sequence. Therefore, I created this post to organize my blogging articles into a handy table of contents.

This is a good place to mention that I’m not writing a textbook or an all-encompassing reference on blogging and blog marketing. Rather, I’m raising issues that could be critical to your success and sharing my thoughts and opinions about them.

There are many books and blogs that deal extensively with the details of blogging, business networking and search engine marketing. I love reading such books, and as we progress, I’ll tell you about many of them.

Disclaimer

I am not giving you business direction or assuming any measure of responsibility for your business decisions. While I believe that my ideas are sound, it is you nevertheless who will determine your path and assume full responsibility for your business results.

Blog Marketing Articles

Top Reasons Why I Blog
Don’t Make This Mistake
Narrowing Blog Focus
Blogging and Search Engine Marketing
Blogs and Blogging for Fun and Profit
Blog Marketing
Before You Begin Blogging
Creating a Home for Your Blog
Web Hosting for Your Blog
To Blog, or not to Blog, that is the Question

SEO Training Articles

Keyword Research Paying Off Big
Website or Online Presence?

Blog Monetization

Blogs and Blogging for Fun and Profit

This page will be updated frequently. To return here again, bookmark the page in your browser or on your desktop —  or look for the Blog Marketing SEO Training link on the blog’s sidebar.

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Your web presence is an asset not unlike real estate.

You’ve probably heard about the three most important factors in real estate.

They are:

1. Location
2. Location
3. Location

A little exaggerated, perhaps, but not much. Properties can always be fixed up, but they can never be moved. If you buy a lovely house in a bad location, you’re stuck in that location.

What are the three most important factors in a web presence?

1. Content
2. Content
3. Content

Or are they?

Location is an important factor in the value of an Internet property too.

When you set up your blog in a blogging community such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, you benefit in several ways:

• You get free rent; you don’t have to pay for hosting
• You’re up and running very quickly; no WordPress.org set up and no upgrades to struggle with
• You might get indexed right away — no big deal — but you might also get page ranked quickly, and in the short run perhaps that helps you
• Your community might work a like a social networking site and give you extra exposure

The main thing you give up is control.

If you accidentally — or intentionally — violate the community’s terms of service, they may very well terminate your blog. It happens, and it’s painful.

After all your hard work, you discover that you built your house on a mushy landfill.

Certain widgets or other site customizations may not be as straightforward either compared to marking up a Wordpress.org blog.

Look at it this way. You’re building a site for long term use. Do you really want to be under the thumb of a capricious landlord who can put you and your belongings out into the street on a cold winter night?

Having said all this, it’s still your personal call. The advantages of a Blogger.com site may outweigh the disadvantages as far as you are concerned, especially if you’re funds are tight right now.

And that’s fine. As long as you’re making a well though out determination for yourself.

My personal choice was and still isWordPress.org. I use a variety of Wordpress plug-ins which I will list and discuss seperately.

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The decisions you make and the actions you take before you set up your marketing blog are at least as important as the steps you take once your blog is up and running.

Proper planning can help you avoid many false starts and much backtracking.

Start by asking yourself basic marketing questions such as these:

• How will you monetize your blog? For ideas refer to Blogs and Blogging for Fun and Profit.
• What will you sell?
• Which are your target markets?
• Can you reach them through advertising? Offline business networking?
• Can you connect with them at social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Direct Matches, Yuwie or Ryze? While you’re building credibility with the search engines, you can use online social networking and forums to enlist subscribers and readers for your blog.
• What can you write about in your blog or what other content can you offer that will attract them?
• Which keywords are they searching for that are relevant to your project?
• Which keyword searches can you realistically compete for?
• How will you position your products and brand yourself?

Asking these questions up front will make it possible to develop a coherent plan of action, and we will consider them in coming weeks.

You will need to choose a home for your blog, and that raises another key question.

Will you join a blogging community such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com — or will you host your blog independently? I explain in Creating a Home for Your Blog why serious bloggers usually prefer to host their sites independently, and later we’ll look at what that entails.

And you will also need to evaluate your marketing and technical skills. Where are you on the learning curve? What will it take to get up to speed? Will you require some amount of personal guidance to get off to the right start?

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Blogging and Personal Branding

Personal blogs and business blogs often factor into the marketing mix of both large and small businesses.

Blogging is interactive and enables direct communication with the customer or end user, a subtle form of business networking.

Blogging as a form of networking is not as direct as attending a meeting of a chamber of commerce or a small business association — nor does it replace online social networking at social networking sites. However, it builds credibility while refining and reinforcing the blogger’s personal or corporate brand image.

Search Engine Optimization

As I stated in Top Reasons Why I Blog, “Blogging endears me to the search engines.”

Search engines love to deliver fresh content to their clientele, and that’s what blogs are all about. Each blog post creates new content for search engines such as Google to sink their teeth into.

Search engines send visitors. Some of those visitors become readers and bond with the blogger and his or her company or cause.

Make Money Blogging

This bond presents opportunities.

For example, when bloggers are looking directly to monetize their blogs, as is very often the case in the world of blogs, their readers are often redirected to another site or to a sales page to purchase an endorsed product or service.

This transition is easy once a trusting relationship has been created between blogger and reader.

To learn how to make money blogging, my previous post, Blogs and Blogging for Fun and Profit, is a good place to start.

We’ll continue to explore the relationship between blogging and search engine marketing.

Be sure to visit the Blog Marketing and SEO Training page.

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At social networking sites we communicate and build relationships. We can also share websites and other content with each other.

At social bookmarking sites we primarily share websites and other content with each other and with search engines. However, we can also communicate and build relationships.

What is the difference between a social bookmarking site and a social networking site?

Our priorities. Online social bookmarking emphasizes content, while online social networking emphasizes relationships.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking Sites

If you publish a blog or own some other website, you probably want visitors, and backlinks too. Social bookmarking sites will help you in these ways.

• You share your site with the community. They visit it and rate it. You can form relationships that lead to quality backlinks for your site.
• Search engines take note that your site is bookmarked. Bookmarking is a form of recommendation. Search engines react favorably to your site’s presence in the community.

My Favorite Social Bookmarking Sites

The social bookmarking sites I use most often are StumbleUpon, Technorati, propeller, del.icio.us, Spicy Page and Digg. See the list on my sidebar and at Social Marker, a tool that streamlines the bookmark submission process.

I also use blog traffic sites, notably Entrecard and Link Referral. The latter can also be used to promote a static website. I’ve made valuable connections at Entrecard and have learned much from the blogs I visited there.

Regular participation at social networking sites will do wonders for your popularity. Reqular posting and participation at social bookmarking sites will do the same for your blogs and other websites.

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Last November I examined the popularity of social networking sites.

In a series of four posts I examined the reasons I believed that online social networking was very relevant:

• “High Tech/High Touch” - As sterile technology increasingly impacts our lives, we crave greater and greater intimacy to offset it.
• Digital Age - Our technical capablity permits, even inspires us, to share multi-media digital files with our friends, family and colleagues that contain valuable information, memorable experiences and enjoyable entertainment.
• Communication - Online social networking sites are capable of providing us with the functionality that e-mail did in the past plus a big additional benefit, file sharing.
• Search Engine Optimization - More and more marketers are turning to social networking both to connect with users and to get free traffic. Traffic comes from within the community and, thanks to the search engines, from without as well.

On March 24th I looked at Social Networking vs. Advertising and how people tend to approach social networking with an advertising mindset. If you haven’t seen that post, I highly recommend it.

My good friend Ivo Jackson, a very gifted writer, wrote a blog post April 8, the 7 Reasons Why You Should Do More Networking Than Selling that looked at networking from another angle.

Ivo provides an excellent rationale for social networking that applies to offline as well as online social networking. These are the points she makes:

• People don’t like to be sold.
• Selling only works when people are ready to buy, and most of your network is not ready.
• People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
• Selling yourself or your brand is easier than selling your product or service.
• The law of averages is real - long term success is relative to the size of your network.
• If you help people get what they want, you will eventually get what you want.
• If you expect a great harvest, you must first plant some seeds.

Visit Ivo’s blog and read the complete article.

I wish to add just one point that I made in my March 24th post. Networking allows you to determine what people really want so that you can customize your offer to them.

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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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After much consideration and discussion with my friend Janice Weinberg, I have decided to limit the scope of this blog to online social networking, social media, and personal development.

There are other places to promote her site and her book. Keeping a narrow focus will better serve my readers and help the search engines.

I appreciate your readership and support. I encourage your participation. Sincere comments will be rewarded with a follow-link back to your website.

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Since I submitted my last post listing the Top Reasons Why I Blog I had an important exchange with a gentleman who I will help with his blogging.

He said that he wanted to write a blog for self-branding, and that he didn’t really care much about keywords.

I told him that he’d be better off to define his keyword niche and build on it, so that he could earn his rightful place in the search engines. Why shouldn’t he grow his personal brand and his search equity at the same time?

When I set up this blog last November my goals were fuzzy. I made frequent title and meta tag changes. This hurt my credibility with the search engines and delayed my progress. I believe that had I not done so, my page rank would now be 2 or 3 instead of 1, and I would be further along in my marketing.

Keyword research is very important. I’m acquiring a keyword tool that will help me make more informed and decisive keyword decisions.

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Search engines love content. Pages that update their content often tend to be more popular with the search engines and more frequently visited than those that do not.

Social Networking Sites are filled with rich ever-changing content. That attracts search engines, which in turn attracts marketers. More and more marketers are turning to social networking both to connect with users and to get free traffic. Traffic comes from within the community and, thanks to the search engines, from without as well.

Search engines are another factor that’s driving the social networking industry.

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