Internet and Technology

o you know what the main purpose of a social networking website is? If you are an avid internet user, you likely do. Social networking websites are online communities that make it easier for internet users to meet and communicate with each other. If you are an internet user who enjoys using the internet to meet new people, there is a good chance that you already belong to a social networking website. What about an online blog? Do you have one of them? If you do, do you know that you could use your social networking website to promote your blog?
Promote your blog? Why would you want to do that? Honestly, if you have to ask yourself that question you probably should not even have one. The whole purpose of a blog is to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on a particular topic, issue, or subject. What good will your blog do if no one reads it. In addition to sharing your thoughts with the rest of the world, did you know that you could also make money from your blog? You can signup for affiliate programs or other programs like Google Adsense. If you are using your blog to make money then you will defiantly want to promote it.
When it comes to promoting blogs, there are many blog owners who decide to let the search engine do the work for them. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use special techniques that reads the content on your website. That content is then used to rank your website with particular keywords. This means that you run a blog on graduating from high school in New York, there is a good chance that your blog will appear in searches done on New York high schools. Although many blogs are successfully ranked in search engines, not all are. That is why you are advised against relying solely on search engines, when it comes to promoting your blog.
As previously mentioned, if you love meeting with or talking to people online, there is a good chance that you belong to a social networking website or community. The individuals that you talk to and that are in your community are likely the individuals that you wish to target. Since most social networking websites work to connect internet users who have the same goals and common interests, there is a good chance that your online friends will enjoy reading your blog. But, before they can read your blog, you have to let them know that it exists.
When it comes to promoting your blog on social networking websites, you have a number of different options. Your first option is to include a link to your blog in your community profile or profile page. This will allow other community members to checkout your blog, only if they wish to do so. The other way is to inform your online friends of your blog through private messages. Once you join a social networking website and create or join a network of friends, you should easily be able to communicate with those friends. Sending each of your friends a private message with information and a link to your blog tends to be more effective than just placing a link in your profile or on your profile page.
Although there is a good chance that you are already a member of a popular social networking website, you may not be. If you are not already a member, but would like to become one, you will need to find a social networking website to join. This can easily be done with a standard internet search. In your search, you will likely find a number of popular network sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, and Orkut. Before becoming a community member at one of these networking sites, you may want to first examine the website to ensure that it is everything that you want it to be.
As you can easily see, there are a number of different ways that you can go about promoting your blog on online social networking websites. You never known, but, in addition to promoting your blog, you may also make new friends along the way.

In case you haven’t heard of social networking sites, where in the heck have you been? They are super hot these days, and if you aren’t a member of one, then you need to join one right now. After all, you don’t want to miss out on the latest and greatest marketing tool created, a tool that will allow you to meet all kinds of people for business or personal reasons. In fact, social networking websites are rapidly becoming the most accepted way of communicating with others on the virtual space.

You might be wondering how social networking websites are different from other virtual communities or chat rooms where you can also stay in touch with other people. The primary difference is that with social networking websites you get to pick and choose who you communicate with and you aren’t flooded with messages from people you have no desire in chatting with or meeting.

You see, with social networking websites, you have a group of individuals who are the members of a network. They share a commonality of interest. They communicate with one another via an online platform and their community grows. Plus, some social networking sites are quite picky. You can only become a member if you are invited to join. So, in essence, someone has to vouch for you in order for you to become a member.

Today there are over 200 social networking websites that are available. However, there are only a few which are popular with a significant portion of the surfers. I will list a few for you to try.

Orkut, developed and launched in 2004, is Google’s offering to the growing domain of social networking websites. Although a pretty late entrant, Orkut has really caught the imagination of those who have joined the site. The good thing about Orkut is its simple design and ease of use. The website is being updated regularly with extra features being included. Of course, entry is restricted and you must get an invite to join the community. Once you are there, you can upload your profile, have photos in your album, and join communities you are interested in.

Next, let’s discuss another popular social networking site called MySpace. In fact, it is so popular that it registered more hits than Google for a month in 2005. Unlike Orkut, you don’t need an invitation to join. You simply visit MySpace.com, register, input your information and bam you’re a member. As a MySpace member, you can upload a profile, pictures, write blogs and even include video and music clips. And to top it all off, this site is completely free.

Classmates is another popular social networking site. It is actually the forerunner of all social networking websites and was started in 1995. The primary focus of the website is to reunite classmates who had lost touch over time. The basic membership comes free, but many of its services are restricted only to paid members. For example, you cannot search for an old classmate or read their profiles if you don’t pay. Because of these restrictions, it has not been able to grow as other networks are growing. But if you agree to pay the fee, you may really get value for your money.

In conclusion, if you are truly interested in becoming a part of the fastest growing trend which is social networking, you should give it a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised and might just meet some great friends and acquaintances in the process.

As you know, blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic flow to your new online business website (“Um, what’s blogging?” – if you don’t know much about writing blogs, please read this article first.) Once you write your first entry, you start wondering, what is the best place to post a blog? What are the top blog sites that could aid the marketing of your online business?

Here is a list of the best free blog web-sites that I use myself and recommend to my team members:

“Oh no!” – you say. – “So many sites to sign up for! I hate that!” No worries – I recommend you use the free version of the software called Roboform (http://www.roboform.com/) for all of your Internet sign-ups. Roboform fills out your forms automatically with a push of a button, which reduces your sign-up time to a few seconds per website.

Generally, it’s good not to make your blog sound too promotional, with no more then 2 links to any one web-site per entry, but Wordpress and Hubpages are especially strict when it comes to blog content. Make sure you don’t put anything that sounds like a “direct sell” onto those websites – otherwise your entries will get deleted and your account could get suspended.

If you like to write your entries in Word Document and then post them to the blog web-sites, make sure you preview your blogs before posting them. Blogs imported from Word tend to show up with a bunch of gibberish HTML codes, visible on top of the page. You would have to go to the blog edit window, and remove those manually. Once you post your entry on one of the websites I would recommend to copy and paste it from that site for when you start putting your blog on others. That way, you will be rid of the Word HTML codes forever.

Posting your blog manually to all of the above web-sites will take anywhere from an hour to 3 hours, depending on how fast you can work. My team and I have cut our posting time to 30-45 minutes, using a great free blog disseminator (a service which auto-posts blogs to various web-sites for you). I strongly recommend blog disseminators to anyone who values their time.

A quick note about the disseminators: they don’t auto-post blog tags – only the body of the blog – so make sure you put your tags underneath every entry. I advise my team against using simple one or two-word tags, the reason being, that they act as keywords for search engines and if they are too general, your posting will not get nearly as much traffic. For example, try googling the keywords “blogging”, “blog” or “online business”. There are millions of search engine results for each of them. What is the chance that YOUR blog will show up on the first page?

Instead, try using longer tags. Think of something an actual person would search for in Yahoo! or Google. For example, good keywords/tags for this particular blog are:

Where to post a blog, best websites to post a blog, top blog sites, top blog web-sites, the best place to post a blog, marketing a new online business, online business marketing, blogging for a new business, writing a blog for a new business, how to post a blog, new online business marketing tips, best free blog sites, best free blog websites

If you haven’t yet joined an online business opportunity, make sure you ask your team leaders for help with blogs, as they are extremely important to your development as a marketer. For example, I provide my team with links to various blog directories and with detailed tips on how to avoid common blogging mistakes. Remember that the more blogs you write, the more people will go to your website. I would recommend writing a blog every other day for the first month after your start/join an opportunity.

I hope this was helpful to you! I wish you best of luck in your blogging endeavors.

Brad Smith

blueoctopus@cox.net

Brad Smith is a marketing expert with a revolutionary cash gifting system that has helped thousands of people create wealth on the Internet. There is no product involved and one doesn’t have to be a computer wiz to be successful at it. On Brad’s web-site http://ToGiveAndToReceive.com, you can learn about how cash gifting can aid your financial situation without considerable money and time investments.

There is an excellent reason why social networking websites are so popular right now. If you have a business opportunity that you’re promoting online, and you want more traffic, social networking should be important to you. Let’s take a closer look at why I say that.

Social networking allows you to meet people with common interests and make new friends. Unlike forum marketing where you are posting back and forth social networking starts with an article posted in the social directory.

Some of the most popular social networking websites include the Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape, which is now called Propeller, and hundreds of others.

What you miss with blogging, if you are not doing it, is many of the benefits your competitors have that come from social networking. Many blogging platforms such as WordPress offer plugins where you can bookmark your article directly to your favorite social networking directory. This is as easy as clicking a link and typing in tag keywords and a description.

Once that is done you have the opportunity for your article to be seen and read. Maybe even more important than that is search engines love social directories. They are constantly being scanned for new content.

The article that you post in your blog becomes search engine bait leading the search engines back to your blog and driving potential traffic to you also.

Another part of social networking is Web 2.0. For years successful salespeople knew that people like to deal with people. It was not always the person with the best price for the best product that got the sale. Relationship building was important.

Building solid relationships is becoming more important online too. That is really what social networking and Web 2.0 is. It isan opportunity for you to build relationships that can lead to future business partners and sales.

Besides being easy to do social networking does not cost you anything. One of the hardest things for an average Internet marketer to do is to compete for traffic. If you do not have a budget allowing you to buy your traffic through paid advertising methods you have to get in other ways.

Social networking can be one of those ways you are willing to work at it and be consistent with it. It is a matter of joining the right social networking websites to relate to the theme of your business. And then get busy establishing relationships and people you can work with.

The goal of most business owners is to make money. This often results with the selling of a particular product or service. However, to sell that product or service business owners need to alert the general public. Customer cannot buy a product or a service if they do not know that it exists. That is why, as a business owner, you need to advertise your business.
When it comes to advertising there are many business owners who literally cringe. Are you doing this now? There is a good chance that you are because many advertising methods cost money. As a business owner you want to make money not spend it, right? Unfortunately, if you believe that all forms of advertising take money, you are sadly mistaken. Although you may have to spend money to make your business what you want it to be, there are ways to promote your business and the products or services that you sell without having to spend any money at all.
Is your curiosity peaked yet? There is a good chance that it is, rightfully so. One of the ways that you can promote your online business, without having to spend a dime, is by using something that is readily available online. That thing is an online social networking website. A large number of internet users, in fact millions of them, belong to at least one social networking website.
When it comes to social networking, there are many individuals who think of online friendships or online relationships. While these types of relationships are the most common, did you know that social networking is also used for businesses? In fact, that was originally how social networking got started. If you are a small business owner, especially one that operates an online business, there is a way that you can use social networking sites to your advantage.
Although social networking websites are traditionally focused on those that would like to make online friends or develop online relationships, there are networking sites that are designed for business owners. These websites will not only allow you to share your business information with other business owners, but it will also allow you to develop close relationships with those that share an interest that is similar to yours. Essentially, this means that you could not only learn valuable business information, but you could also walk away with a new business partner or a new friend.
As previously mentioned, social networking websites with a focus on businesses, are a great way to promote your business. However, this does not mean that you should completely forget about the other online social networking websites, the ones that are designed to make online friendships. Although you may not learn any valuable business tips by joining Yahoo! 360 or MySpace, you may be able to get new customers and new customers is exactly what your business should want and need.
If you are looking to join an online community, you will need to create your own profile or profile page. If you are planning on joining a traditional social networking website, to gain access to millions of potential new customers, you are urged to be careful when making your online webpage or profile. One thing that internet users hate is being solicited for business. This does not mean that you cannot use social networking to your advantage; it just means that you need to be careful with how you do it. Instead of creating a MySpace page or a Yahoo! 360 page for your business, you are advised to make one for yourself, but, of course, you will want to include information on your business.
By joining a social networking website, especially one that is popular and has a large number of members, you should be able to generate interest in your business, including the products or services that you sell. Who knows, but that interest generated could turn into sales; thus making your social networking experience more than worth it.

It is estimated that each day, a fairly large number of individuals make the decision to join a social networking website. Social networking websites are websites that allow internet users to easily connect with other internet users, often from all around the world.
While social networking websites are a great way to make online friends or start an online relationship, there are many internet users who are misinformed when it comes to social networking websites. That misinformation is largely centered on who can see their personal information.
Since a social networking website is often compared to a community, you would assume that only other community members would be able to read your personal information, right? In the real world, an unknown individual cannot just decide that they want to move into your neighborhood and live in your front yard, spying on your every move, so why should it happen online?
If that is your way of thinking, you are wrong, in most cases. Unfortunately, many internet users are largely unaware of the fact that just about anyone can view their social networking profiles, including non-community members.
As previously mentioned, there are a large number of social networking websites that allow anyone one with internet access to view the profiles or profile pages of their members. In fact, the number is higher than you may have ever imagined.
At the current time, just a few popular of the social networking websites that allow any internet user to view your profile include Yahoo! 360, FriendFinder, FriendWise, and MySpace. With a simple click of the mouse, information that you thought was private is no longer. That is why it is important that you examine what is actually posted in your profile or on your personal profile page before publishing it.
Although being cautious may take away from the fun of joining a social networking program, you are advised to be cautious. This cautiousness may help keep you safe. When building your social networking profile or profile page, especially on a website that anyone can view, you are advised to carefully select the pictures that you post.
If you post a personal picture of your self, you are advised against posting your full name and, especially, your address. With a picture, your full name, and your address, an internet user with devious thoughts could spell trouble.
If you are one of the many social network users who wants to display your information, you are encouraged to learn more about private profile settings. Private profile settings will limit the number of individuals who can view your website.
Although your profile’s private setting may prevent other network members from seeing your profile, it will also prevent anyone else from seeing it. The only catch with doing this is that since other community members cannot see your profile, you will have to be the one to contact with any new friends that you would like to invite to your network.
In addition to joining a social networking website that allows you to set your profile as private, you can join a network that automatically has profiles set as private. These social networking websites include, but are not limited to, Orkut and Facebook. With Orkut and Facebook, your profile will only be seen by other members.
In fact, Facebook also limits the members that can see your profile. This is done to help ensure your safety online. However, as with all other social networking websites, it is fairly easy for you to make online connections and friends, but, in away, these private profile networking sites are a safer way to make those connections.
Now that you know exactly how social networking websites work and who can gain access to your personal information, you should know what you should and should not put in your profile or on your profile page. Although you are not required to change your information, you should at least think about it. As the old saying goes, you never know who is watching you.

You know when people ask me what is blogging my one sentence answer to them is that blogging is actually the quickest and simplest way to get your online message noticed or in front of the audience of your choice. I mean if you are going to be totally honest with yourself the reason why you have got a website is because you either want to be heard (or more specifically you want your message to be read) or you are trying to sell something.

However whether your online web space is just an online platform to voice your opinions or a stage for venting and ranting or on the other hand a commercial endeavor the fact remains that you need an online audience to give your efforts any kind of meaning. Because no matter the nature of your online activity one thing is a constant:

We All Need Web Traffic Online!

Okay now that we agree on the issue of web traffic let me tell you why blogs always beat normal websites (otherwise known as static websites) hands down!

Blogs vs. Normal Websites

Getting Indexed

1. Blogs Get Indexed Quickly By Search Engines Normal Websites Don’t!

Before your spanking brand new web presence (blog or website) will ever get any web traffic it will need to be indexed by the search engines. Okay admittedly there is a bit of a caveat here (an exception) in that by using Web 2.0 or Social Media resources you can actually get online traffic in next to no time for your brand new blog. However that notwithstanding the fact remains that your ultimate goal is to get web traffic from the search engines (also known as organic traffic) because it is the best kind of traffic there is with respect to topic relevance of your blog or website.

Problem is organic traffic is also the hardest to attain but when you do eventually start getting web traffic from the search engines you will realize that it was well worth the effort you put in. How come? Because such traffic is self perpetuating and also free; self perpetuating in this context means that once you attain Google Page One for your most desired keyword, barring total negligence on your part, your blog listing will stay there and continue to attract free highly qualified traffic to your blog!

Now blogs have an immense advantage over normal websites because due to their dynamic nature (dynamic nature in this context relates to a homepage that regularly changes) they get favored attention from the search engines. Such favored attention means that the search engine spiders (those creepy-crawly scripts responsible for traversing the entire internet and indexing web pages) keep returning to crawl your blog more than they would a static/normal website.

2. New Content Added To A Blog Is Instantly Viewable And Picked Up Superfast By Search Engines!

This issue of adding new content to your web space plays out like a double home run for a blog. In fact one could say that perhaps the single most defining feature of a blog is the way in which new content is always added to its homepage (also referred to as the index page). It is because of this particular defining feature that blogs can easily blast their way past older, better established websites that even have many more links.

Here’s how it works:

Picture a search engine spider creepy-crawling along its merry way from homepage to homepage of one website to the next. Now those search engine spiders typically crawl a website starting from their homepage and gradually making their way towards deeper pages. Now the only way in which that search engine spider (or search engine bot) is going to find those deeper pages is if there is a link from the homepage to those inner pages. Problems arise however when you have a normal website that hosts hundreds or even thousands of web pages.

It is totally impractical to have thousands of links from your website’s homepage leading off to its inner pages. But if you don’t have any links from the homepage the search engine bot is going to have an extremely difficult time locating any new deeper level pages. Besides in most cases static websites that have hundreds-to-thousands of pages tend to have them many layers deep, which is to say that those inner-inner pages are linked to the homepage through links found not directly on the homepage itself but rather on another inner page itself.

Generally speaking search engine spiders will only crawl at best three levels deep (if you are lucky) and any pages that are deeper linked will be ignore. Such a scenario would probably explain the dilemma of a webmaster whose static site had more than 200 pages but only had 23 indexed by Google!

Okay let’s look at a typical search engine spider crawl case scenario of a blog. As already pointed, out new content on a blog is by default added to the homepage of the blog and better yet is added to the topmost region of the blog. So the very first aspect a search engine spider encounters on a blog is the newly added content, which if you are not aware, is like honey to a bee.

When the spider bumps into that new content it let’s off a sigh of contentment and says to itself “Yummy, something new to digest. I better keep an eye on this spot!” The more regularly the blog is updated the more frequent the search engine spider will return to crawl that blog. Some blogs are crawled multiple times per day whereas some normal websites are lucky if they are crawled twice a year!

But the same scenario doesn’t play out for normal websites even if you are adding new content regularly because every time the spider returns to crawl that static site it only goes those two or three levels deep and thus never finds that newly added content. Since it cannot find the new content the spider gets the impression that there is little point crawling such a website frequently because as far as it is concerned that website hosts the same old stale content.

Remember I mentioned that the aspect of adding new content is akin to a double homerun for a blog? Well here’s what I meant by that. When visitors come to your site if they like what they find they’ll bookmark it and probably make a point of returning to see what’s new. Now if that site of yours is a normal website and you are busy adding new content pages several levels deep, just like the frustrated search engine spider, your human visitors won’t be able to find that new content and will soon leave making a mental note never to bother returning. I mean let’s face it who wants to return to stale content over and over again?

Oh and on a final note, easily located interesting new content added to your blog will keep your visitors on the pages of your blog for longer, an event that will register favorably with the search engines ultimately enhancing your blog’s ascent up the search engine index pages.

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