Using Social Networks To Build Your Blog

Best And Worse Social Media Sites

1. Stay away from Yahoo Answers. I used to answer questions on the site. However, their system is terrible. A lot of automated spam bots post questions on the site. The commercial intent is virtually non existant. And worse of all, they will delete all of your answers and links if you promote your own blog or website in the link section. What kind of motivation will people have? You'll just get a bunch of time wasters if any people it all, using the site. I predict answers.yahoo.com will be out of business in the very near future. The system just expects to use peoples' time without any motivation or reciprocation.

2. Hub Pages rocks when you first start out optimizing your blog. The search engine crawl Hubs super fast. Not only do you get access to additional visitors through the hub network, it really helps build quality backlinks to your blog. Just remember to achieve over 75 on your hub score so your links are followed. Otherwise, they will be marked with no follow tags.

3. Sphinn is showing a ton of potential because of the hot topic feature. Their home page is marked with the hot topics and carries super page rank strength. Also, the search engines will pick up your blog when you post new sphinns. I also love reading the latest internet marketing news.

4. Ezinearticles - This is the monster site of article marketing. I used to subscribe to article submission services but dropped them. I find Ezinearticles.com offers enough value alone. They are also slowly transforming their website into a more web 2.0. friendly site. They offer a twitter plugin where your articles are tweeted the minute they are published live. I love it. I don't want to be a slave to Twitter. I want Twitter to work with me. Automation!

5. I am still working on Twitter. Its taking some time. I see a lot of people using as a spam board. I don't want to follow that. I am working on ways to setup contests and make it more valuable for my followers. My hunch is there is a viable marketing future with Twitter, they just need to stick to tranforming the network as they go along, which they have been. More tools also need to come out which help with automation. You'll never make money writing tweets 24 hours a day. There has to be a way to leverage the system while offering value, not through spamming with some bot, and not by sending one custom message after another to another follower.

6. Other Social Media - Every website caters to a different audience. There's more than a 1000 social media networks on the web. Find a handful of networks that target your audience, and get connected to that network.

Forced Marketing Versus Voluntary Marketing

When I started one of my first e-commerce sites, I tried to force people into reading my newsletter. It didn't go over so well. The conversion rates were virtually non existant. I realized I was making a huge mistake. So I reformed my thinking. I now allow people to opt in or out of emails they receive. I became aware of my mistake and became a better marketer. Often we unaware of the habits we carry out. We adopt them from people around us or other organizations. A lot of corporate companies try and strong arm the consumer.

Automate Twitter

This guy gives great tips on using Twitter. I even went so far as to link my ezinearticles.com account to twitter. Whenever one of my articles is published live, it automatically updates Twitter. I am even working on tools to help automate contests on Twitter. I am receiving a lot of great responses and interests in the contests.
How To Leverage Social Media By Repurposing Content

Picture your content caught up in the web of a network. You won't go far if you yourself get stuck in that web. In order to thrive, you need to use that web of social media networks to your advantage. So first, create 100% original unique content. Add your spin to the content. Then disitribute it across the web through various social media networks. You can rewrite versions of the content so each social media network receives a tailored piece. Your audience will read your content over and over even if there is just a few new tid bits or angles added. Just as long as its world class.

Create a Network Around Your Blog Content

Your blog content needs to be world class. Once you start turning out high quality though provoking material, you can start creating a network to distribute it. The blog will serve as the central hub for your posts. Then you can start adding tools like twitter, rss feeds, syndication networks, article submission etc

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