We all know about article marketing. Yes, it’s an effective way of generating traffic to your website over time.
However, a much more direct way of getting your website in front of your target market is by doing something a bit more targeted than traditional article marketing.
Basically, we’re taking out the middle-man and going directly to the sites we want to have our articles published on. But, with a twist.
Now, I’m not knocking EzineArticles.com or Isnare.com. They are both fantastic. However, they are also BEASTS of websites. How do you get noticed in such a crowd?
• Yes, you can write excellent articles. • Yes, you can work on writing the best headlines possible. • Yes, you can play with long-tail keywords.
But, there is an easier way. In addition to writing and submitting articles to the big sites, hook up with a website that is in your niche and become a columnist for that site.
I’ve got to tell you that I have several columnists for my niche websites and it’s actually quite difficult to find people that are willing to do this. It’s insane that I have to look so far and wide to find writers who are willing to stick with a schedule and give me articles on time.
What do they get out of it?
• Exposure to their target market forever. (As my site grows, their exposure grows.) • Guaranteed publishing on a targeted website for each article. (Assuming it’s a good article, of course.) • Exposure on a high traffic website that has some great Search Engine rankings. • Exposure in my ezine and possibly autoresponder as new articles are added. • Exposure on my blog.
What do I get?
• Fresh, unique, quality content. (This is much better to me than using PLR articles or hiring a ghostwriter, because I’m finding experts who know the topics inside and out.)
Of course, the writers may also write and submit other articles to the big directories, but they know that the ones they submit to me are for my sites only.
7 Ways To Get Completely Free Traffic
© 2007 Nicole Dean - All Rights Reserved. SalesArmySecrets.com Page 8
So, if you’re looking to get some serious exposure in front of the exact people who buy your products or services, then I’d say to start searching google for people who are reaching those people already. Once you find a great content site, offer to provide them with regular articles.
If they say “no” then keep looking.
Things to discuss in advance before agreeing to be a Columnist:
1. Where your articles will be published. 2. If you can have a graphic by your articles. (Many newspaper columnists have their photo by their byline.) 3. How often you’ll be writing (weekly, monthly, etc). 4. Length of articles. 5. Your deadlines. 6. How many links you can include in the bio. (Your advertising.) 7. Advertising that will be on the page (other than yours). 8. Copyright. You retain copyright to your own article, even as it’s published on the other site, just as you would with an article directory. 9. If you may use the content in ebooks or reports, but not published as an article on other sites. 10. If you’ll have exposure on other areas of the site, in the ezine, or linked from a related blog as an expert. 11. And you’ll want to make sure that your articles are NOT coded with a “nofollow” tag. (Many website owners use “nofollow” tags. You do not want this on your links.)
Remember, when negotiating with the website owner be easy to work with. When coming to an agreement, remember that most article directories (like ezinearticles.com) do have advertising in and around your articles, too. So, work with the publisher and be flexible. I’m sure you can come up with a win-win for both of you.
Hot Tip! You may be able to also turn the articles into a pdf report that you can then offer as a tool for your affiliates in your affiliate center.
Imagine being a talk show host for a weekly podcast. What’s the one thing you need every single week? Guests. Lots and lots of expert guests.
You think finding content for your website is hard? Trying pinning down guests each week for interviews. My good friend, Kelly McCausey, has been recording an online show since 2003 – every single week at WAHMTalkRadio.com That’s a lot of guests.
I recently interviewed Kelly to ask the question “What makes a good guest and what makes you want to invite someone back?”
Here are some pointers to increase your odds of getting on a show and being asked back:
1. Actually listen to the show a few times before even thinking of contacting the host as a potential guest. Make sure your concept fits into the market that the show reaches. If the show is about Health, then don’t pitch your candy-making cookbook on there.
2. Do something newsworthy or interesting. Are you having a special event for charity? Have you recently won an award? If your idea is timely, you’ll stand out and the host may contact you sooner rather than later.
3. Have something interesting to say. If you just plan to talk about your products, then don’t ask to be a guest. Buy an ad instead.
4. If you have sample interviews or media exposure, tell the host about it in your inquiry letter. Direct her to your media page where you link to past interviews, if you have them.
One Good Turn Deserves Another
With the Host or Hostess giving so much to you, what are you expected to do in return?
• Provide a list of questions in advance. • Send a sample of your product to the host before you appear on the show. • Tell your newsletter list about the interview and where to find it. Your host will be more likely to have you back if you are willing to publicize your interviews. • Blog about your interview. • Be a gracious guest and be sure to say “Thank you” when the interview is over. (A gift is also nice.)
Hot Tip! You may also ask the host for a copy of the interview that you can add to your affiliate center.
More Traffic = More Sales = More Profits .
Traffic, traffic, traffic. Useful tips by Nicole Dean!
Web traffic makes the world go ‘round. We all want it. We all need it. So, let’s go and get it!
I was chatting with some friends and they asked me…
“Nicole, what are some more ways to get free traffic? And it can’t be the usual stuff like article marketing or advertising.”
I grabbed a notebook and started jotting down ideas. I stopped when I quickly reached 26 ways to get web traffic. And, then I narrowed it down to 7 of my favourites to keep this short and easily digestible.
Many of these ideas are not revolutionary new “secrets”, but I also doubt that you’re using all of them, either. (Don’t feel bad. Most people aren’t.)
All 7 of the ideas I’ve listed are effective methods of traffic generation that will also help you to be seen as more of an expert in your field. If you’re looking for ways to “game” the search engines… well, several will work for that, too, but that’s not what I’m looking to teach here.
This is long-term traffic generation for people who are in it for the long-haul.
If that’s you, keep reading.
And, be sure to read all the way to the end, as I saved the best for last.
1. Blog Contests
Contests are nothing new in the online world. Many people have been using contests to get free web traffic for years. However, there is a slightly new twist since the blog revolution that has made running a contest much more effective and fun.
The concept is the same. You come up with a prize (or many prizes) that would be appealing to your blog readers. Of course, offering your own product as the prize would be preferable since you can mention it on your blog (so everyone who sees your contest will also see your product link). But, if you don’t have your own product, you can easily ask around and find people who will donate.
Once you have your prizes, the fun starts. You have several options for your contest.
1. If your goal is to get people to interact, ask your readers to post a comment to win.
2. If your goal is to get incoming links to your blog, and, if your readers are bloggers themselves, ask your readers to blog about your contest (on their blogs) and then comment to let you know they did it.
3. If your goal is to get to know your readers, ask them to complete a survey to win.
4. Or a combination of the items above. Immediately after you post your contest, send a mailing to each of your e-zine lists, letting them know about the contest. You’ll want your loyal readers to have the opportunity to win.
Note: If you don’t have your own lists yet, you’re missing out on big profits. Learn how to get started with this amazing course: www.ListProfitSystem.com.
Next, contact your circle of influence (your friends) and let them know about your contest. Offer to do a blog post swap. If they’ll blog about your contest, you’ll owe them one the next time they have something they want to spread the word about.
Then, go and submit your contest to all of the contest websites. Yes, there are sites that list contests and free offers. This is obviously more effective in certain niches than in others, but it is free exposure to your contest. (Search google for “submit contest” & “submit sweepstake”.)
Of course, if you really want good mileage for your contest, you can also post on message boards in your niche with the signature pointing to your contest.
If your wheels are turning… you’re probably also thinking of the possibilities of offering your product or service as a prize to a popular blog in your niche and asking them to run the contest. ;) Good thinking. It works both ways!
More Ideas In Next Post!!!!!
Below are the top thirty social books marking websites.
These have been ranked by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quant cast. There are no exact measures of traffic but these numbers no less give us some idea about the market share of each these social bookmarking players
.
1. The single biggest social bookmarking website on the internet is Digg. www.digg.com
2. Digg is followed by Technorati www.technorati.com
3. Next in line is del.icio.us – one of the senior players on the social bookmarking scene http://delicious.com/.com
4. The fourth largest social bookmarking site is Propeller. www.propeller.com
5. Then we have StumbleUpon – rounding up the top five social bookmarking sites around. www.stumbleupon.com
6. Reddit. You can check it out at www.reddit.com
7. Next up is the most hilarious social bookmarking site you will find and it’s called Fark. If you are into pop culture, you need to make it to www.fark.com
8. MyBlogLog – which obviously specializes in blogs. www.mybloglog.com
9. Slashdot is aimed at the techie population. Its tag line goes like this ‘for nerds, things that matter’. www.slashdot.org
10. Kaboodle completes the top ten of the biggest social bookmarking websites around. This is aimed at those looking to buy things on the internet – shopping! You can share notes about products and stores at www.kaboodle.com
11. Bloglines tracks blogs, news and feeds. It is still quite a busy site in terms of traffic www.bloglines.com
12. Newsvine encourages users to post the latest news items from around the world at www.newsvine.com. It becomes a one stop shop for all kinds of news.
13. Blinklist is a very simple and easy to use social bookmarking website. It sticks to the basics of creating and sharing bookmarks. www.blinklist.com
14. Netvouz allows users to have their own personalized bookmark page. Like Blinklist, it is also quite simple. www.netvouz.com
15. Clip the highlights with Clipmarks. It shows the most popular and recent ‘clippings’ from the web by submitters. www.clipmarks.com
16. Then we have Furl at number sixteen, which claims to be ‘your personal web file’ It allows the same features of bookmarking, tagging and sharing. http://www.furl.net/
17. Mister Wong lets you do your social bookmarking in several languages, so you can make use of resources that may or may not originally be in your language. www.mister-wong.com
18. dzone. This is aimed specifically at web developers www.dzone.com
19. Magnolia. This simply lets you find websites and build a community with users who have the same interests. http://www.ma.gnolia.com/
20. Rounding up the top twenty social marking sites we have Tailrank. Tailrank tracks the hottest news in the blogosphere at http://www.tailrank.com/
21. Shoutwire has several topical categories. www.shoutwire.com
22. Simpy is a very simplified social bookmarking website. www.simpy.com
23. BlogMarks promises users a hassle free way to save their bookmarks and share them too. www.blogmarks.com
24. Faves – which used to be known as BlueDot.us. Faves builds personalized pages for its users based on preferences and interests. http://faves.com
25. Spurl lets you upload bookmarks from your computer on to the social bookmarking website. www.spurl.net
26. Spotplex contains social bookmarks in multiple languages. www.spotplex.com
27. Linkswarm is a humorously written social bookmarking tool but with all the same features. www.linkswarm.com
28. Spotback also involves collaborative filtering. www.spotback.com
29. PlugIm. www.plugim.com
30. Rounding up the top thirty list on the best social bookmarking websites is appropriately called MyBookMarks. www.mybookmarks.com
By now you know that how much social bookmarking can do for you. It is a phenomenon that has the potential to drive huge amounts of traffic to your website. The World Wide Web is dynamic, as we saw when discussing the world ‘live’ web. It focuses on websites, blogs articles and videos that are constantly being updated.
Especially when considering your blog, it is vitally important to stay on top of the traffic game by making sure that search engines have the latest knowledge of it instead of relying on the search engines to do all the work to find you, since search engines have several million blogs to sift through every day.
So, you should do whatever you can to ‘help’ the search engine search results by informing them every time you update your blog. You do this by sending a ‘ping’ to the major directories every time you add a new posting to your blog.
The technology behind the ping function is, however, not new or solely related to blogging. It is, in fact, a simple program that has been used for many years as a way of making sure that a certain IP address actually exists and is able to accept requests from remote machines.
‘Ping’ is sometimes also used as a verb – to ‘ping’ is the act of using the ping program or command. Sending a ping is almost like running a sound check on the computer that you are trying to test.
Using the ping program or command is also commonly used to figure out how much time it takes to get a return response from the host. A ping can also help you learn the numeric form of the IP address of the host computer, simply from the domain name.
That was the original ‘technical’ meaning and usage of a ping.
Let’s make sense of it for our own use. In simple terms ‘ping’ implies ‘getting attention for’ or checking the presence of another party that may be online. A ping works by sending information or a ‘pack of data’ to a particular address and then waiting for the correct anticipated response.
In fact, the word ‘ping’ has interesting roots. The technical computer term for the program is Packet Internet or Inter-Network Groper – hence the acronym PING. Ping is also the term used for the sound of a returning sonar pulse used by submariners.
The ping function is also relatively commonly used for validating the existence of an emailing list. This sort of ping involves sending a message to the mail server service of the members of a specific email list requesting an acknowledgement code or ACK. This ensures that all the emails listed are both live and valid.
This is done before sending a genuine real life e-mail message in order to confirm that all of the addresses on the list are reachable and not dummy addresses. So, this form of ping is not sent to you personally, as this kind of e-mail validation takes place strictly in the background without your knowledge. It is a behind the scenes communication between the computer that sends the ping and your email host’s mail server computer.
However, if you have your own mailing list, it enables you to make sure that you are not sending newsletters, updates, promotions etc. to email addresses that either did not exist in the first place, or have since become dead or dormant.
Pings have become increasingly important to bloggers as a part of their efforts to keep search engines informed about their latest updates. Bloggers inform the various search engine and aggregation services such as social bookmarking websites by sending a ping to these service providers. It is simple notification that basically says – I’ve just updated m, blog - care to check it out?
Once the service receives an appropriate ping signal from a website, it is taken as a confirmation that something has been updated on that blog or website. The service then visits the blog or website in question and immediately indexes any new content it discovers. In this way, it could be suggested that a ping is like an ‘invitation to visit’ more than anything else!
Having the ability to actively ‘ping’ an update message to all of the major directories means that search engines no longer need to regularly visit blogs to discover new changes. Pings allow bloggers to make the first move by informing search engines of changes when they happen. This allows search engines to be more efficient by reporting and showing updated links as soon as they happen. It also means that blogs are indexed on time.
For you, it means that new content on your website is presented to the public in a more timely fashion whether you rely on search engines or social bookmarking websites for your traffic. When you send a ping to the social bookmarking website.
where you are registered, it knows immediately that there is some interesting new material out there and puts it forth for their users to view. As we saw in the social bookmarking site reviews earlier, many of them highlight the latest posts made, so the more you can post regular updates to your site, the more it is going to pay you to ping your social bookmarking website. This is because an increasing number of more ‘new’ posts also means an ever-increasing number of links back to your website.
Most of the blog authoring tools automatically ping a server every time you update an existing post or create a new one. The blog authoring tool sends a signal to one or more ping servers. The ping server receives these signals from many thousands or millions of these events, with the number obviously depending on the number of updates made to blogs. The ping server then creates a list of the blogs that have new, updated material.
One thing that you should be aware of is that many of the big players in the blog search engine business use their own proprietary ping servers and software.
Whilst this works excellently for the blog search engine itself, it does not necessarily provide you with the maximum benefit. This is because it effectively creates a conflict of interest between the blogger who wants his/her post to remain visible for as long as possible to generate maximum exposure and publicity, and the web service owner who wants his/her search engine to be updated with the latest blog posts as quickly as possible.
As a result of this conflict of interest, bloggers have had to find independent ways of pinging their blog to the search engines and blog directories, and this has led to the development of ping servers that can ping several proprietary ping servers at the same time. This ensures that the blog gets the most publicity possible and it is updated on several search engines rather than just on any individual one.
Here are a few of the many independent ping servers that you can utilize the services of:
• Pingomatic: Find it at www.pingomatic.com. You will see that it is an extremely simple website. You just have to enter the URL for your social bookmarking website along with its name. Below that is a list of the web services that ping-o-matic can ping for you, so all you need to do is choose.
which services you want to inform of your updates. You could also just enter the URL for your website or blog directly. Ping-o-matic updates all of the major web services such as Weblogs, Feed Burner, My Yahoo!, Technorati, News Gator etc.
• Kping: Find it at www.kping.com Kping is also a free ping service that lets you ping up to 57 different services at the same time, and once again includes all the most important is services and directories such as Weblogs, Technorati, News Gator, Topic Exchange, Strategic Board and many more.
The Internet is the most vibrant commercial market place in the world today. It is where almost every one goes to buy, sell, bargain, promote, publicize and advertise.
And yet, at the moment we are merely scratching the surface, and the ultimate possibilities that the web may be able to offer us are essentially endless.
The world is your potential market no matter what it is that you are selling. Whether it’s old shoes or an opinion, there are people out there on the internet who want to know about you and your stuff.
While the possibilities are endless, you nevertheless need to do some work in order to harness the power of the internet and market your product much more efficiently, because you must understand that the current competition is intense, and it is only ever going to get more so. There are millions of websites out there competing for the attention of users around the world, and you have to make an effort in order to grab your share.
In this book, I have described how you can boost the traffic to your website by harnessing the power of social bookmarking. Ideally, you should already have accounts with many social bookmarking websites, so that your audience is not going to be limited to the members of one particular social bookmarking website that you happen to like.
Being a member of many sites will allow you to integrate your various social bookmarking activities still further, thus making your bookmarks, blogs and websites accessible to the users of as many social bookmarking community sites as possible.
Social bookmarking communities are websites that are relatively easy to use, which are nevertheless extremely effective for driving large numbers of extremely targeted new visitors to your site in record time.
Social bookmarking is, therefore, something that you must start doing as soon as possible if you have not already done so.
But, the great news is that it is not at all difficult. Follow the easy steps to social bookmarking that I have laid out for you in this book and you are well on your way to website traffic gold!
Fark
www.fark.com Fark.com does not obviously seem to be a social bookmarking website. It is a humorous look at pop culture and the news, and is widely read by people as an entertainment site. However, it is one of the most powerful social bookmarking sites around, and has the power to drive massive amounts of traffic to any website.
Fark is, in essence, a community based website.
Its creator Drew Curtis designed it so that it allows users to comment on a batch of articles and news items that are updated daily. A seven day archive is also available for comment. Links to the articles or news items are submitted by registered Fark members which are then approved (green lit) or disapproved by the site administrators. Whether the links are approved or not, they can still have comment threads around them. Moderators monitor the discussion boards and any content that violates posting guidelines is removed.
Another variation of Fark is Total fark. This is a premium version of Fark and requires a $5 monthly fee, whereas Fark is totally free. The advantage of Total fark is that members have an online community and can take part in active and energizing discussions.
They can comment on all posted links, not just the green lit ones.
In fact, the links submitted by this sub-community are not really meant for being green lit and are displayed on Fark but reserved for comment and discussion by Total farkers.
However, they may be green lit if they are particularly interesting, funny or embarrassing. This is particularly useful for you if you are looking at Fark from a social bookmarking perspective. If your blog is about any of the categories which Fark discusses, you can promote it heavily by posting links and inviting comment.
However, you must be careful. Your link must be good quality because the average Farker is intelligent and discerning.
Furthermore, the administrators will soon work out if you are spamming. As mentioned before, there is no substitute for good content to drive traffic to your website, but once you build up credibility for your site, you can be assured that people will visit your website or blog for their daily fix.
Using Fark: Making It Work For You
You sign up for a free account on Fark and create a profile for yourself which is visible to other users. You can upload a picture and write a short bio about yourself, and you should do so, because this is important when trying to build up a community of like minded people to direct to your website. The Fark categories include Not News, Sports, Business, Geek, Showbiz, Politics, Videos and Voting.
So, all of the news and infotainment articles that you could ever hope to read are listed here. Fark describes itself as a new aggregator website and an edited social networking website, which receives about 1800 to 2000 links each day from users.
As suggested earlier, if your aim when using social bookmarking is to get people to visit your blog or website, then you should understand that each day, out of the 2000 odd submissions that Fark receives, only about fifty make it to the main page. So there is a high chance that your submission will not make it.
However, the kind of interaction you are seeking can be found on Total fark. Furthermore, all the submissions that feature on Total fark are archived in their entirety and not just limited to a seven day archive. Total fark also allows for greater interaction and connectivity.
Users can, for example, add other users as ‘favourites'. You can highlight posts made by your friends in any colour you like and of course they can do the same for you. Every time someone ‘favourites' you, it creates a link back to your website. Not only can you ‘favourite’ your friends, but you can also do the same for your favourite posts and links as well.
Fark also has a voting feature where users vote on a particular humorous idea and whether it works or not. This is a great way to get people on your site, that is, if your link makes it to the voting section.
One of the most unusual distinguishing features of Fark is the tags given to the stories by the submitters themselves. They are displayed right next to a cleverly funny headline and carry a link to the actual story, as well as to the forum that is discussing the story. Next to the article you will find a number in parentheses.
This indicates the number of comments that have been made about the story, and the more comments a story gets, the more likely people are to visit
Stumble Upon
www.stumbleupon.com Stumble Upon is just a little different from the other social bookmarking websites (actually they are all just a little bit different from each other). It works as a browser plugin to let you ‘stumble upon’ and rate websites, articles, blogs, photos, videos etc. A person using Stumble Upon is known as a ‘stumble’, and when you come across an interesting web find you just click the Stumble! Button
on your tool bar and add it to your Stumble Upon favourites. All the functions that you would normally use in social bookmarking are made available on your browser with Stumble Upon.
Stumble Upon is a great way to discover exciting new content on the web in a relatively random fashion, as well as sharing your finds with your friends.
When you click the button on your browser, Stumble Upon generates web page matches according to your preferences. The pages displayed are those that have been recommended by your friends or other users of Stumble that have interests similar to you.
Using Stumble Upon: Making It Work for You
To use Stumble Upon all you need to do is to sign up for a free account and then download the free browser plug in. Once this is installed and activated, then Stumble Upon chooses which new website will be displayed depending on the ratings you assigned to previous pages, or on ratings of websites by your friends and the sometimes perhaps even based upon the ratings of other users on Stumble Upon who have the same interests as you. So, if people in your network give your website thumbs up, more and more people are likely to visit it.
The content on Stumble Upon is based on a rating system that allows users to give thumbs up or thumbs down to a website, so it is an entirely recommendation based system that makes extensive use of social networking principles. It also has a one click blogging system, and users can rate a blog with a thumbs up or thumbs down decision.
What Stumble Upon actually uses is called collaborative filtering. This is an automated process that makes active use of the opinions of the people using the system. It also takes into account the personal preferences that come about from machine learning. This creates a virtual community of people who are connected to each other, and over time this community should become ever more closely linked because of the new linkages being added every day.
The website updates each user’s personal profile, which is a blog style record of the sites that that particular user has rated.
Then, Stumble Upon generates peer group networks of users that are connected by similar interests, and it is these social networks that organize the distribution of the content on Stumble Upon.
What happens is that users of Stumble Upon only the get to view the pages that have been recommended by their friends or those who have similar interests.
Instead of just giving a site a thumbs up or down, you also have the option of leaving comments on the website, and this will also appear in the user’s profile/blog. This way of discovering content on the web is becoming surprisingly close to automating the word of mouth marketing function.
Stumblers have the chance to rate and review the blogs created by their peers, and, as a Stumbler, you could also join certain interest groups as well to further increase the interactivity of your account. These are community forums created to discuss specific topics wherein users post comments in such a way that it becomes more like a discussion board.
Stumble Upon claims to have a certain edge over conventional search methods, and some of these could be crucial to increasing your website’s visibility and directing traffic towards it.
Using search engines often means that we have to carefully sift through pages and pages of seemingly relevant content, but often these results are nothing more than somewhat irrelevant keyword matches which may be far from what you are looking for.
Using Stumble Upon, however, you can be sure that if the content on your website is good, then people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say will see you.
Members have also come to trust content on Stumble Upon, since members are taken directly to matches that are sorted according to interests and preferences. They are more likely to visit your site if it is visible on Stumble Upon.
Like most other social bookmarking sites, Stumble Upon uses technology that is essentially driven by humans. By using a combination of machine learning and human opinions to yield search results, Stumble Upon delivers content that is highly relevant and appropriate, so that the user gets a high quality website every time they search for something and they come to trust this pattern. This means that when your website shows up on Stumble Upon, it will almost automatically have greater credibility.
Stumble Upon is quite easy to use too, so it could work for you, even if you are just learning the ropes of social bookmarking. Also, if your target audience is not exceptionally good at understanding the workings of the internet and social bookmarking, Stumble Upon is a good place to start. Users can add your website to their favourites with a simple click and they also have the opportunity to pass your link on to others in their online community. They can also give feedback or make comments.
This creates an inevitable network of visitors to your website. Stumble Upon lists nearly five hundred topics that users can choose to list as their interests and preferences. This allows you to get your website known in different circles and communities of users.
The internet just keeps getting bigger and more complex each day. Information is also constantly changing. Stumble Upon has a dynamic approach keeping fully abreast of all of the freshest sites, blogs and articles on the internet. It filters tons of information on the website to bring content to its visitors. So if you have created a new website, you can promote it and invite feedback and comments on it by using Stumble Upon.
Furthermore, the more active you are on Stumble Upon, the more visibility you will gain, because Stumble Upon compiles a list of its most active users, and this gives extra exposure to those who are very active and helpful. It also shows you people on Stumble Upon who are geographically close to you.
del.icio.us
www.delicious.com Just like any other social bookmarking site, del.icio.us is a collection of people’s favourites. These favourites are yours and those of many others like you. Whenever you find an interesting article, blog, music, recipe, review or just about anything else, then you can simply save it to del.icio.us. This makes your favourites accessible from anywhere, not just your computer.
Furthermore, you can share these favourites with the people around you, whether they are family, friends or co-workers, and you can even build your very own community of like minded individuals on del.icio.us. Del.icio.us also opens up the window to the best content on the web, so that you don’t have to sift through the thousands of search engine results. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favourite, and this already acts as a content filter so you know that you are only getting the best resources and most appropriate website shown to you. Users can, as always, browse the numerous tags to search for what they want.
Using del.icio.us: Making It Work For You
Del.icio.us is basically a social bookmarking website that enables you to save your bookmarks online. You can use it to your advantage to get maximum exposure for your website or blog.
It gives you access to the links that other people have tagged as favourites and this provides you with an insight into what kind of content people are looking for and how to position your website in relation to this content. You can assign one word descriptors to your posts; that is, tags. Tagging allows greater flexibility – since you can give a post multiple tags and increase your chances of being viewed.
The following are some of the major reasons why people visit del.icio.us and my suggestions for harnessing the power of its extremely large visitor base to increase traffic to your website:
• Many people searching social bookmarking websites are looking for information or doing research. If your website is information based, then use the site to pick up tips on what kind of information people need most, so that you can post accordingly. Stay active in the ‘tags’ that directly or indirectly relate to your own website. Only when you post comments actively will people comment on your posts, thereby creating a network of back links and opening up new business avenues.
• Many people now do a considerable part of their buying and selling on the internet. For example, people commonly choose presents on the internet and have them delivered. They even have their own wish list posted on the net and share it with others. This can be a gold mine if your online business is product sales based.
Trawl the wish list tags to get an idea of what people are buying. If you find a wish list that’s looking for what you are selling, drop them a message and tell them you can help. If the user finds you and your service helpful, they are likely to recommend your product to others as well. This could open up a treasure trove of visitors and buyers on your website.
• Many of us listen to pod casts – whether it is news, music, reviews or entertainment. There is a considerable market for pod casts. If you are in the business of developing pod casts, make sure you check out the mp3 and podcast tags on del.icio.us to see what people are listening to now.
• The internet is also fast becoming a popular travel resources centre. People are buying bus, rail and air tickets online. They are choosing destinations and hotels online. And when it comes to traveling, word of mouth is a great marketing tool. People are likely to trust information from people who have been to the place, used the same airline etc. If your online business is travel related, it would be a good idea to get yourself acquainted with the travel and other related tags. Become an active member, help people organize the travel and get the benefit of guiding traffic to your travel based website at the same time.
• Creating a link log can also help you immensely and is quite simple to do. Make sure you comment on other users’ blogs as well and they will comment on yours, thus creating a network of links that point back to your website.
• You can also use del.icio.us as a tremendous networking tool and also for pooling resources and completing projects that need collaborative work. Groups of people can use a shared account. They can use special tags for their own work and share relevant bookmarks that will be useful to the entire group. You can, in fact, basically organize your tags and resources in any way that you want.
