Promoting Your Site in a Web 2.0 World
Published January 20, 2009
Web 2.0 has revolutionized marketing, and savvy webmasters and businesses are leveraging the “viral” element of social networking to increase their traffic and profits. In fact, social media has taken the power of “word of mouth” advertising and multiplied its effects exponentially.
Social media sites are websites and online technologies where people can share opinions and experiences with each other. They are designed to be driven mainly by user generated content, such as shared videos, recommendations, and favorite websites.
With a little effort, you can access potential new markets, gain new customers, and build your business using social media technology.
What is Social Media?
Social media is quite distinct from traditional media, such as newspapers, magazines, and television. With the growth of social media, marketing is no longer a “one way” street, where businesses hope that their barrage of stale ads capture the attention of potential customers.
Instead, social media leverages the power of the internet to connect people with others. Users build the content with their views, recommended links, or other generated action, exemplified on sites such as yelp.com, digg.com, and stumbleupon.com.
Using this public technology, it is possible for an individual or business to reach thousands or even millions of visitors or customers with little or no money involved. Imagine the powerful phenomenon of traditional “word of mouth” advertising and expand its ripple effect by thousands. Instead of your customers sharing your business with their 10 family members and neighbors, they can expose your business to the millions of users who are part of social networks!
Another aspect of social media is the benefit of recency, or the short time lag between communications. While television or print ads can take weeks or months between updates, social media allows users to update content or information as frequently as they wish – which can be helpful for responding to customer requests.
However, along with the good comes the bad. Social media can be accessed by anyone and updated any time, and therefore, there stands the chance of little accountability for the content. Information could be false or questionable, and the quality may be poor. Additionally, social media allows anyone to post anonymous opinions. A disgruntled customer or anyone who wishes to cause trouble or chaos can post negative comments about a business or website.
Nonetheless, social media is a very powerful way for you to enhance the presence of your website and business. But it’s not as simple as posting a link or a review yourself. You must leverage individuals and groups to talk to each other and create the ‘viral’ aspect of network marketing.
What are the best options for promoting your business or website online using social media?
Blogs and Podcasts
A regularly updated blog or live podcast recording on a website provides great publicity for two reasons. First, it provides great fodder for search engines. Major search engines appreciate websites that have frequent updates. The more frequently you publish to your website, the more regularly the spiders will come to visit and index you. While daily blog posts are fantastic, even posting once or twice a week is excellent for search engine purposes.
Of course, blog posts can be written with the search engines in mind, including keywords and phrases within each post. The more frequently you update your blog with keyword rich posts, the more chances your website will be seen by search engines for the topics on which you compose.
Secondly, your blog gives you the opportunity to provide frequent updates to your visitors. Well written blogs with regularly updated posts and great content tend to attract new visitors and keep a steady traffic stream to your website. You can blog about new features, industry news, upcoming projects, and helpful advice for your readers and customers.
Not only does having a blog provide great content for your visitors, but it also gives them a chance to speak up and voice their opinions through comments. Conversations between a business and its audience, as well as among the users themselves, can go a long way in creating loyalty and good word of mouth recommendations.
YouTube
YouTube promotion strategies have taken on the form very similar to blogs. Many smaller companies have made the effort to produce short videos and post them on a regular basis. YouTube posts can look professional with good lighting and great cameras, but the main element of importance is quality content. Your videos can offer instructions on how to use your product or even interviews, including clips from satisfied customers.
Facebook and MySpace
These member websites are utilized by millions of people who wish to make and maintain contact with others. These sites are great for creating a “member” account with your business and promoting it among your gathered “friends.” You can also purchase display ads, which are seen by millions of users when they access their accounts.
Review Sites
Another way to get good publicity from social media is by review sites such as those found on CitySearch.com or Yelp.com. These sites create business listings in local metropolitan areas, but each listing also allows users to post comments and reviews of a business. Your business can take advantage of this type of free publicity by encouraging your customers to post a review of your business on these sites.
Digg.com / reddit.com / StumbleUpon.com / Del.icio.us
These social networking sites, among others, offer web users an ability to create backlinks to their favorite websites. The main focus of the sites is to accumulate members who practice recommending and sharing websites and listing their favorites. Websites with fans who “reddit,” “share,” “stumble,” or “digg” their content will often show up on main pages – resulting in additional free promotion and a large increase in web traffic.
Social media can be a great business promotion tool. With the availability, accessibility, and ability to create instant content, your website can gain more visitors and customers cheaply. You can do-it-yourself or hire a social media or SEO expert to help in your business promotion. While this process and technology is still red hot, you should take advantage of the benefits it offers.
Resources:
To gain access to the most up-to-date SEO strategies, fill out the form below to sign up for our newsletter. This newsletter will help you know what Google's up to as well as how you can get your website ranking higher without raising any red flags.
{"http://www.seositecheckup.com/articles/14":{"data":[]}}
Read Related Articles About Online Marketing Tips
- How to Solve a High Bounce Rate Problem? Writing for Three Types of People
A high bounce rate is detrimental to any website. If you're suffering from a high bounce rate, read on to learn how to reduce the bounce rate and convert more visitors into buyers. - Build Relationships with Influencers in your Market, Build Influence in your Market
Good business is a combination of a few factors. You need to have the right mindset, determination, creativity?ability to think outside the box?and great marketing abilities to name just a few. But there?s one aspect of good business that?s rarely talked about. In fact, this aspect of business is so important, if you?re only going to get good at one skill, this should definitely be the one. - How to Put your Local Business at the Top of Page #1
When most people think of SEO, they think of online based businesses. But what happens when you do a search for a local business in your area? If you were looking for dog food in your area, you'd probably search "dog food (location)" into Google. When you do this, your search changes. - Looking for Passive Income? SEO Can Help
Passive income ? it's what virtually every aspiring online business owner dreams of. It?s the ability to go on vacation and still get a monthly paycheck. It?s the ability to come down with a disease and not have to worry about where your money?s going to come from. - Review Building 101
Thanks to how connected the internet is now, getting reviews is absolutely crucial to the success of your business. - Creating Your Marketing Funnel: The Master Key to Monetizing Any Website
Finally! A simple, free step by step strategy for you to market your products, monetize your site and build your list....on autopilot! - How to Boost SEO By Making Your Site More Engaging
When the internet was first created, most websites were static pages with written content and a few graphics. However, this quickly changes as interactive features become more available, and now these features are all over the internet. Instead of having to be spectators, web users can now enjoy an interactive online experience, and that?s exactly what users are looking for. - 5 Reverse Engineering Strategies Which Can Help You Benefit from Your Competition's Successes
No matter what your niche is, there are certainly a few competitors' websites which are already producing favorable results in your niche. So as you're designing and optimizing your website, why not analyze what these competitors are doing in order to achieve their results so that you can use a similar approach to insure YOUR success in the online marketplace? You've probably heard the saying: "There's no reason to reinvent the wheel," and this saying certainly applies when it comes to developing your strategy for marketing your company website. - Three Strategies for Running a More Effective Online Business
Most online marketers try to increase their profits only by increasing their website traffic or by increasing their conversion rates. However, there are other factors which can help you to increase your profits without having to attract more traffic or increase conversions. - Five Easy Ways to Monetize Your Website Traffic
As you are reading this article, you might have a wealth of untapped opportunities to monetize your website, without even increasing the amount of traffic which you already have going to it. Many online business owners are looking for ways to bring more traffic to their site so that they can increase your earnings. - How to Harvest Visitor Feedback for Optimizing Your Website
Updates in the Google algorithm continue to confirm the importance of user behaviors in determining the value of websites. Google has reported on several occasions that they?ll be using human review processes to determine the value of websites and they?ve already been doing so for determining quality scores in PPC marketing. - What is the Most Important Factor in Making Conversions Online?
Learn the key principles to building a marketing strategy for your site and how you can use them to boost profits for your business - Building an Effective Squeeze Page for Your Site
Find out what the most successful information marketers are saying about building an effective opt in page and building a list to promote your online business - Creating an Unforgettable Brand: Favicons and Other Tools
No matter what niche you’re in, there are hundreds or even thousands of other sites in cyberspace which you’re competing with. What’s going to make your site stand out? - Using Glocalization to Expand the Influence of Your Business
The term “glocalization” is a term which comes from the combination of the words "globalization" and "localization.” Glocalization is when a company adapts the marketing of a product or service which is distributed on a global basis to fit a local consumer market. For example, - Why You Need a Dedicated Landing Page
Learn why effective landing pages are important, and how you can create one that is compelling, credible, and conversion-friendly. - 5 Fatal Errors of Online Marketing
Discover the most common errors that online marketers face and how you can avoid falling prey to them.
All Categories:
- Basic SEO (19 articles)
- On Page SEO (22 articles)
- Off Page SEO (13 articles)
- Social Media Marketing (12 articles)
- Seo Product Reviews (4 articles)
- SEO News (6 articles)
- SEO Content Creation (14 articles)
- SEO Programming Topics (14 articles)
- How to Avoid SEO Pitfalls (9 articles)
- SEO Outsourcing (6 articles)
- How to Get More Traffic (10 articles)
- Advanced SEO Strategies (2 articles)
