Social Networking Your Home Business
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If you are looking for new ways to market your work at home business,
then it is time to start
socializing online by getting active on social media web sites
like MySpace and
Digg.
These sites are extremely popular web sites with high Google
Page Rank numbers -- and if you can get links on these, it will
help your web site generate more traffic and improve your search
engine rankings.
Before I tell you how to use these sites for improved
search engine placement and traffic generation, let me explain
more about social media web sites. Social media sites make up 5 of the top 10 fastest growing
web brands on the Internet, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
They are simply online gathering places where
people share online information with each other. This information
can take many different forms, but the following
are the best ways to help your home business:
- Information in the form of blogs;
- Useful articles about anything and everything; and
- Collections of bookmarks to favorite online articles or
web sites that people can check out for themselves.
Members of these communities can comment on the information,
engage in discussions, and find other people who
are interested in similar things.
Participating on these sites can be a great way
to make new online friends or business contacts.
It is also an effective strategy you can use to drive more
traffic to your home business site -- not only from the social media
sites themselves, but also from the improved search engine
placement you'll get from having high Page Rank links
pointing to your web site.
Social media sites can be organized into several main categories,
but for the purpose of promoting your home business you should
concentrate on the following 3 categories:
1) Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites are basically online communities that
connect people through networks of friends.
MySpace is the most
popular social networking community on the Internet. On their profile
pages, MySpace users can describe their interests, upload
pictures, post blog-style entries, participate in forums and list the other
MySpace users who have become their friends.
People in pretty much any field can gain
more exposure by creating a MySpace page. And the great
thing is, it is free!
To participate, just set up a free account, start
networking and adding other people in your industry to
your "friends" list, and make your name and web site
visible on these popular sites. Make sure you link to
your home business site in your profile!
Some other popular social networking sites include:
Friendster, Facebook, and Linkedin.
2) Social Bookmarking Sites
At social bookmarking sites,
people save links to their favorite web sites or
articles -- just like you do with the "Favorites" or
"Bookmarks" function in your own personal web browser
(e.g., Internet Explorer or Firefox).
When you save your favorite links at a bookmarking site
like del.icio.us, they become
public and can be viewed by other members of the site.
You should also "tag" your links with descriptive home based business keywords,
so people have a better idea of what kind of content
your links are pointing to. This will be more clear once you set up an account and add a site....there will be a Tags field where you simple enter the
keywords or keyphrases associated with your web site.
Tagging your bookmarks is useful in another important
way: When people use the site's internal search engine to
look for bookmarks on a particular topic, any links that
are tagged with keywords related to that topic will
appear in the search results.
The more an article or a web site gets bookmarked by
members of these sites, the higher it ranks in the search
results.
So if you include an appropriately tagged link to your
own site (or to an article you've written) in your
bookmarks list, and a lot of other members add it to
their bookmarks as well, your link will be seen by a lot
more people searching for your keywords.
If your link becomes really popular, it might even
end up on the bookmark site's homepage -- which will
generate a TON of traffic and incoming links to your
web site!
Even if your site does not get bookmarked enough to end up on page 1,
just ONE link from a top bookmarking site will boost your site ranking in the eyes
of major search engines.
Below are the most popular, highest ranked social bookmarketing sites:
After you set up an
account, list a few of your favorite
sites as bookmarks, making sure to also include links to
YOUR web site or articles. Be sure to make them
public, so others can view your favorites as well.
3.) Encyclopedia (wiki) Sites
A wiki is a type of web site that lets ALL
its users update the site's content. Every visitor to a wiki web site
can add, delete, or
edit the site's content, creating a living web
page full of fresh content and current
information from multiple users.
Wikipedia.org is the Web's biggest and best-known wiki.
It's an online encyclopedia
that allows users to update its database of entries on
almost every subject you can think of.
After you set up a free Wikipedia account, you can start
making changes to existing articles, or add completely
new articles related to your industry or area of
expertise and grow your reputation as an expert in your
field.
Plus, you can look for suitable opportunities to include
links to your own web site or articles in the entries
you edit.
For example, at the end of every Wikipedia article is a
section called "External links." If you write an entry on
a term related to your website theme, and your web
site can help people learn more about this topic, you can
include a link back to your site.
Getting the Most Traffic using Social Media Sites
There are thousands of ways to create good
content for social media sites -- if you use your imagination.
Here are some examples and ideas to get you started:
- Compile an informative list related to
your working at home expertise: Some of the most popular stories
on are list articles.
- Take existing content from your business opportunity web site and
rewrite it for social media sites: You probably already
have valuable content on hand that is already written for
your site.
Simply tweak this existing content to make it shorter, and re-use it on the social media sites.
Spend some time thinking up a catchy headline, because
that is one of the biggest factors in getting people to click on
your article. Make sure you tag it with popular and
appropriate home business related keywords.
Here is a very important thing to keep in mind when
using social media sites to get improved search engine placement
for your site. These are social sites, so people do not
visit them expecting to be hit with a bunch of marketing
messages.
So make sure that you're participating honestly and being
low-key about your business. Be sure you share other relevant
and entertaining links with the community, in addition to your
own products and articles.
Below is a summary of how to get started using social media sites:
-
- Create a profile with a link back to your web site
- Tag your articles with relevant keywords
- Participate in the discussions to build your
credibility
- Contribute to the growth and value of these sites by
creating and submitting content that is informative and
solves problems
- Invite your friends to go online and vote for your
links
- Give your articles catchy headlines that will get
people to read further
- Do not spam sites with links only to your own articles, or
bookmarks pointing only to your site
- Do not go overboard when encouraging friends to vote for
your links.
- Do not just promote yourself -- nobody wants
to be friends with people who are only out for themselves.
By following these steps, you'll become part of the online
community, and people will begin to value your opinion and see
you as a credible source of information. This will allow
your links and articles to carry more weight than the
anonymous contributions of a new member.
By spending time at these sites, you'll discover what type of
information is popular, get tons of ideas for new articles, and
find out what other users are interested in.
By participating honestly and sharing some interesting links and
articles -- as well as providing links to your own
web site -- you might find that a lot of other people will start
linking to your articles and your business site.
If you do things right, play by the rules, and create some informative
and interesting content, you'll be able to grow the number of
relevant links pointing to your site -- and that should lead
to your ultimate goal of improved search engine placement.
So, start posting some links and articles on social media sites as a way
to increase your traffic or get improved search engine ranking today.
Disclaimer: The information presented and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent the views of Work-at-Home-Business.com and/or its partners.
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