Blogging News

Facebook and Bebo were the social networking sites of 2007. However micro-blogging is what is in store for the year 2008. You may be asking yourself “what is micro-blogging?” And the answer to your question is that micro-blogging is a form of blogging using short texts.

Micro-blogging is the same as sending text messages on your cell phone. However, rather than sending a text message to one person, micro-blogging is used to publish your thoughts and activities to your social network.

A dozen micro-blogging sites have been added as communication tools to the Web 2.0 repertoire over the past few years. As well as texts, you can now use audio and video. This article introduces you to a few of the popular ones.

The leader is Twitter. Once an account has been created, you publish your micro-contents using your web browser, cell phone, or the email client. Interesting people such as artists, athletes, bands, and politicians can be followed whereby you can check out their insights on a regular basis.

The creator of the popular news ranking site digg launched Pownce last year. As well as micro-blogging, Pownce provides functionality for file sharing, events, and links.

The site by the name of Tumblr is very simple to use, whereby photos and videos can be published from your cell phone. Your love and **** will be able to be shared with others, even if you are not wordy.

If talking is what you prefer rather than writing, then use MySay. All you need to do is call the MySay service and leave a message. The people that are in your contact list will then be able to listen to your thoughts using their, computers, emails, or phones.

If you do not like text or audio, then you can use Hictu for the purposes of video micro-blogging. All you need to do is use your webcam to video your actions and publish it in Hictu. It simply takes a click of the mouse.

One interesting angle to micro-blogging is IRateMyDay. Rather than publishing mundane activities of your daily life, you can rate your day on a scale of worst to great. Explanations of your rating can also be given.

Maybe you are emotionally upset. If so, then use EMotionr rather than IRateMyDay. If you are experiencing a happy day in your life, then rate it at the highest possible rating, which is 10.

Once you have rated your day or emotion, then you should head towards Moodmill. This is a site for managing your mood. Share your mood with your friends and contacts by using the mouse to slide the mood indicator.

If you happen to be more comfortable with the French or German language, then you can use Frazr. This has all of the features and functionality of Twitter.

Because of micro blogging’s simplicity, it is sure to explode this year. Twitter will lead the field. Though it can be used effectively on numerous occasions, it can be a great waste of time if you are not careful.

Social media marketing is the very effective tool for marketing your products. There is no other alternative marketing strategy for social media marketing. Hence social media marketing is indispensable for any online business. Social media marketing needs a different approach when compared to the other online marketing strategies. For a social media marketing campaign to be successful, it is very much important to understand the tactics that work better. This article is all about the effective social media marketing tips.

1. Creating unique profiles in Social Networks

Social networking sites like myspace and facebook have great importance in business promotion. This part of social media marketing can get lots of traffic to your website along with building credibility among people worldwide. The social networks are now crowded with the online marketers and hence it is important to highlight your profile in the crowd. Though there are lots of customization options available in the social networking sites itself, it is always good to get some professional help for advanced customization. These social media marketing professionals will be able to provide you will very unique profiles which will get noticed by the social media crowd immediately.

2. Don’t try to sell anything in the Social Networks

Many social media marketers just advertise their products through their social media profiles. This is a wrong move. Social networks are for connecting to people and not for advertising the products, Hence your main motive in the social networks should be to connect to as many people as possible. The traffic to your website and the credibility to your services/ products will eventually increase as your networks grow.

3. Don’t leave any social media profiles unattended

Active participation is a basic necessity of any social media marketing campaign. Just creating some profiles in a handful of social media sites doesn’t do any good. You should post some content to the social media profiles frequently and make them look lively. Always remember the fact that Google crawls the profiles that are frequently updated. Moreover, the visitors of your profile will love to see many updates. You should also involve in activities like participating in polls, posting in forums, making comments and connecting with the people of similar interest.

Social Media marketing is a time consuming process and for the moment of truth it is really worth the time you spend. If you don’t have enough time for social media marketing in your tight schedule, there are professional social media marketers who are ready to help you. To the added advantage, these professional social media marketers can analyze your website and create the best marketing strategy. By paying them a nominal fee, you can just sit back and relax, watching your network grow along with the web traffic and business.

When it comes to increasing your blog reader base and driving more traffic to your posts, there are few platforms more effective than Twitter. Twitter is an excellent tool for connecting with your readers and building a rapport. All businesses should use Twitter as a part of their marketing and branding strategy. For bloggers, knowing how to use Twitter effectively can lead to unbeatable exposure. Here are 5 steps any blogger can take to get his posts to go viral on Twitter.

1. Increase Your Followers

Obviously it’s going to be challenging to get your tweeted posts seen by a lot of people if there are only 20 people following you. Your first strategy should be to increase the number of people that are following you. The easiest way to do this is to follow lots of new people. Newbies tend to follow you right back. You can also look up the target keywords in your niche and follow the people who are talking about those keywords on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to find the users who have a big following in your niche and then try to get them to follow you because they are the ones that will help your content go viral. Avoid following too many people who don’t follow you back because this can make your account look spammy and give you a bad image. Make sure the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow are about the same or at least not drastically different.

2. Become an Expert in Your Niche

Be consistent with your tweets. Regularly link to interesting articles that you think would be of interest to your followers and provide them with value every time. By regularly linking to informative articles in your niche, your followers will begin to look to you as a great source of information. This is an effective way to build your brand and it will pave the way for you to tweet your own posts. Your followers will be expecting valuable content since you have already positioned yourself as an expert in your niche.

3. Promote Your Blog

Don’t expect people to find your Twitter page and click on your link. Make the most of Twitter by tweeting your own posts! Treat your tweets as if they were your headline. Make them attention-grabbing and interesting so more people click through. Try posting the same tweet twice at different times of day to make sure you reach all your readers who didn’t see your first tweet. When you post a tweet multiple times, make sure to delete the first tweet so you don’t look like a spammer.

4. Write Interesting Articles for Your Blog

This might sound obvious but sometimes the more obsessed people get with promoting their blog and social networking, the less they pay attention to writing posts of good quality on a consistent basis. When you are just writing to fill up your blog, it shows. Make sure your posts are very informative, well-written, and that they provide unique information your readers won’t be able to find elsewhere.

5. Make It Easy for Your Followers to Re-Tweet Your Articles

After you’ve done all of the above, you have to leave it to your followers to do the rest. To make it easier for your followers to repost your tweets, add a “tweet this” link at the bottom of your tweets. How do you do it? Simply go to http://addthis.com/ and place the bookmarking plugin in your html.

If you aren’t already using Twitter, you’re missing an immense opportunity to give your website/blog good exposure. If you’re looking for a strategy to increase subscribers, traffic to your site, and a loyal reader base, Twitter is an indispensable tool that should play a prominent role in your master plan.

I have had a profile on LinkedIn for a while now, but as with my MySpace account, I let it languish for a long time. I wasn’t seeing LinkedIn as a place to make connections and find others in my niche. It also seemed heavily corporate, with people looking for jobs more so than small business services or products.

Originally, serving that more corporate-type population was why LinkedIn was established. However, I have recently noticed more activity among small business owners, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. While Facebook offers a more personal snapshot of a person, LinkedIn has really become a good place to create beneficial professional relationships as well as be found by potential clients and customers.

If you are interested in finding out how to use LinkedIn to help grow your business and boost your visibility, here are a few ways to use this social network to do so:

Do a search for people in targeted fields and positions. Send them a request to join your network and be sure to personalize your message.

Create a thorough profile with your photo, websites and title. It is a good idea to include past experience, positions and education as well–the more information you supply, the more ways you allow others to find and connect to you.

Answer questions posed by other members in your community that fall into your area of expertise. “LinkedIn Answers” provides a place for you to view open questions that you may respond to. This is a wonderful way to promote your specific knowledge.

Ask for recommendations of your work and offer to provide them for others. The glowing recommendations you receive will be posted right to your profile.

Develop a targeted group of contacts in your niche and start connecting each other. Try to help others expand their own networks.

Look through your contacts’ networks. Select a few people each month you think would be good to know and request that your contacts introduce them to you.

As with Facebook, LinkedIn offers a way to feed your blog posts right into your profile. Add an application called BlogLink–this supports blogging platforms such as TypePad, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org, Blogger and more.

Invite people in your network to ask others in their networks to a discussion group or an on-line networking event.

A great tip for increasing your search engine ranking with your website listing: when you go to type in your web address for your profile, you will have several choices in the drop down menu. If you choose “other” you have the option to type in any text you’d like which will then link to your site. Choose the keywords that you think would best get you found when someone searches in the search engines and voila, instant search engine optimization! (LinkedIn is ranked very highly in Google.)

Get some publicity. Many members of the media as well as some of the top bloggers have profiles on LinkedIn. Why not reach out to them and connect? You never know where the relationship will lead. Of course, don’t spam them. Send a polite and personalized message and you will have a spot on their radar.

Finally, don’t forget to add a link to your profile in your email signature. The great thing is that LinkedIn allows you to customize the link to your public profile to include your name. You should always include your social networking profiles in your signature so that every time you send an email, others have a way to connect.

As you know by now, connection is what it’s all about!