Social Bookmarking Secrets

The “Top Posts” area is increasing in popularity all the time on the most well-known and popular blogs and for good reason. If you don’t yet have such a feature running on your blog, I’m here to spend just a minute to tell you exactly why you need to implement this powerful strategy as quickly as possible.

The first factor to remember is just how many blogs there are these days. This means you need to stand out from the crowd and offer something new and interesting.

Secondly, most internet users are time-poor - in other words you need to grab their attention as soon as they arrive at your blog and show them enough interesting, relevant content that they stick around and have a read. Also, you hope, they will keep coming back for more.

Finally is the factor of “link bait” to consider. In the blogosphere, a particularly interesting or note worthy blog post will quickly attract links from other bloggers as well as the social bookmarking networks like Digg and Reddit.

So let’s look at these three factors in combination. You want to stand out from the crowd, you want to make it easy for first-time visitors to your blog to find your very best posts and you also want to maximize the chances of these posts receiving links from other websites.

In short, this means you need to be ruthless. You need to work hard on creating a small number of posts that are so good you could charge money for them. These are your link bait pieces, and the posts that really can make your name.

Because let’s be honest, on *any* blog there are posts that only fall into the “acceptable” category. Not everything you write is excellent.In fact quite the reverse is true in my experience. Most blogs consist of 90% average posts, with maybe 5% rubbish and 5% gems.

It’s those gems you want people to be able to find as quickly and easily as is humanly possible, and the way to do this, of course, is by providing a list of your best posts nice and clearly at the top for your blog.

Sometimes these are posts that you specify; other bloggers let their readers decide on what the top posts are but either way you’ve got to have this feature enabled on your blog.

So how to implement the Top Posts area?

Well you could of course just manually add them to your navigation bar. Just stick them near the top and manually hyperlink them to the individual posts.

If you’re using Wordpress, the most popular blogging software at present, you could add a new category to your links and call it “Top Posts” then add in your top 5-10 posts.

Or arguably the best, shiniest and most impressive solution is to use one of the top posts Wordpress plugins currently available free of charge.

Popularity Contest - this plug in allows your visitors to vote on your content showing which are the most popular on your site. You can then just add a few lines of code to whatever Wordpress theme you’re using and those posts voted as most popular by your visitors will be shown.

Top Posts By Category - very similar to the above plugin except this one looks at the category level.

Daily Top 10 Posts - tracks which posts on your blog have received the most readers in the last 24 hours and displays a list of these.

Adhesive - lets you tag your top posts so they will always appear at the top of your Wordpress blog.

These are of course just a tiny selection of the options available so feel free to take a look around, try a few on your blog and see which you like best. And I hope you enjoy the new visitors you’ll be generating as a result of implementing your Top Posts feature!

By: Prakash Singh (Viral Marketing Software)

About the Author:

The Internet is changing and the changes are happening quickly. Luckily, the changes are in the favor of entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and small presses. Welcome to Web 2.0 and social media.

Learning about and utilizing these new tools and technologies is essential to establish a dynamic and truly connected Web presence. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that it is driven by the people who use it. Unlike today’s Internet, Web 2.0 relies more on a site’s popularity among the masses. Incorporating social media optimization alongside search engine optimization enables anyone to establish a truly optimized Web presenceespecially if paired with a meaningful message.

The tools available to achieve this optimization are numerous but can seem overwhelming. However, once armed with a general knowledge, it is easy to select the tools and technologies to catalyze the greatest amount of Web traffic.

According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 “refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted servicessuch as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomieswhich aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.” Additionally, Wikipedia defines social media as “the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. Social media sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact.” Thus, Web 2.0 and social media optimization means optimizing one’s Web presence in three general ways: Interactivity, Sharing, and Collaboration.

Interactivity

The essential premise of social media is that information (media) offered to users will be interactive. Social, in a word, means interactive and interactivity can be accomplished in many ways, whether it is allowing readers to comment on or share content, subscribe to it so they can have it on hand, or display the content on their own site.

To make online content more interactive, Web 2.0 and social media users can implement these tools and technologies:

* Blogging, using WordPress or Typepad

* RSS Feeds (see Feedburner for more information on RSS feeds)

* Podcasting and Vidcasting

* Wikis

* Social Media News (Press) Releases

* Social Media Newsrooms

* Image tools such as Snapshots

Sharing

Sharing in the “live” Web means that content is offered to others through blogging indexes and media communities; by tagging interesting sites on social bookmarking sites; or by developing mini applications like widgets or mash-ups.

Remember: Anything that can be posted to a Web site will have some type of “media community” in which to share it.

To begin “sharing” content in the live Web, Internet users can:

* Include their Blog, Podcast, or Vidcast in directories like Technorati, Google Blog Search, Podcast.com, or BlogPulse

* Tag their favorite blogs and Web sites on social bookmarking sites like Technorati and del.icio.us

* Share and tag multimedia in Media Communities like Flickr and YouTube

* Use Collage tools or Webcasting like SplashCast Media or blogTV

* Create and distribute Widgets or Mash-ups using services like widgetbox, Open Social, or Yahoo Pipes.

Collaboration

Web 2.0 and social media users need to be willing to give back. This could mean commenting regularly on others’ content, joining and contributing to a social networking site, contributing to crowd-sourced news sites, or becoming an avatar in a virtual reality.

Specifically, some of these efforts may include:

* Commenting on others’ blogs (using co.mments is a good way to track them)

* Contributing to crowd-sourced news aggregators like reddit, Digg, or Fark

* Creating profiles on social or professional networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, or Facebook

* Participating in microblogs like Twitter or Jaiku

* Posting events in social calendars such as eventful.com, or upcoming.org

* Becoming an avatar in a virtual world like Second Life or There

* Participating in communities or forums like a Yahoo group, a Google group, or starting your own using services like Ning.

Participating in the new, live Web is ultimately about connecting with people. A common mistake businesses make is to apply old methods to these new tools. It has been disastrous for many of them. With a real and conversational message and general understanding of the new social media tools and technologies, anyone can participate in the new Internet and find tremendous benefit from their efforts!

By: Deltina Hay (Forum Marketing Secrets)

About the Author:

By : Vick – http://www.tipscollections.com

Participation in Link Programs Increase Backlink

Link building sites are vital for your SEO campaign. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others send software robots to index sites and cache pages for search engine results. When these robots find a link to your site on another web page on the internet, that link is recorded, and added to your site’s own popularity index.

These popularity indexes are known as “Page Rank” values, and generally number from one to ten. The top sites such as Wikipedia or Source Forge have earned a page rank value of seven, for example, based on the large number of users and external links to the site from other pages. So if you need to increase your site’s page rank value, then link building sites are a good idea.

Some good example of Web 2.0 link building sites are Digg and De.lic.ious. These two sites allow you to share your links to specific pages, or bookmarks. Another good set of link building sites are “Top Sites” and “Hot Sites”. These are usually found as special sections on many web sites, that allow you to add your links directly to their pages through a form or software interface. The web site dmoz.org is a good example of a link building site that accepts links manually. This makes for more of an application process to get accepted to the dmoz.org site. You can also spread links in blogs and forums, or check out some of the sites dedicated only to link exchange, after filtering out the spam sites.

Some link building sites are found at SEO firms that organize full promotional campaigns to add your site to many link repositories across the web, as well as to register it with all search engines, link it to blogs, forums, and social networking sites. These SEO link building sites may be what you are looking for if you need to increase your web site’s page ranking in the results pages.

There are some good link programs in which you help others to get them link and other help you. Following are few good ones to join.

http://www.linkmarket.net/

http://www.linkleads.com/

http://www.infowizards.com/

http://www.linkexchanged.com/

http://www.linkexchangeit.com/

http://www.linkpartners.com/

http://www.123exchangelinks.com/

http://www.links-pal.com/

http://www.ads4links.com/

http://www.spocka.com/

http://links-for-you.com/

http://www.webmaster-link-exchange.com/

By: Ask Vick (Social Media Marketing Tips)

About the Author:

You have a lot of options as far as methods to drive traffic to your website is concerned; one method which has been in use for some time now is submitting links of your site to Web directories. A Web directory (also known as a link directory) is a directory of the World Wide Web and is somewhat similar to the yellow pages in the way that it lists websites (and links to them) by category. The idea of these sites is to present links to different sites in an easy to navigate format.

A web directory is different from a search engine in that their display of links is not pulled up by keywords (the search terms you type into an engine), instead listing websites by category. The category a particular website falls into depends on its content as a whole instead of the content of just one page or by keywords. This means that a website will only come up on one or two categories. Web directories allow site owners to submit their links; from there, an editorial team decides on the appropriate category for the site.

RSS directories are somewhat similar to Web directories, but have collections of RSS feeds instead of links to websites.

 Directories in General

There are directories which are very general, listing websites of all types in one place. There are also some niche directories which list web pages only in certain languages or are targeted towards one area of interest.

 One popular general Web directory is the Open Directory Project. This is one of the best known Web directories; it is well liked for its large number of categories and large amount of listings in each. The ODP is also used by search engines and even other Web directories.

 People often debate the usefulness of Web directories to websites; search engines use this information (particularly ODP’s) without really incorporating any of the data. Many search engines test using clustering, making them somewhat less useful for site owners. A lot of work has gone into building a simpler directory development process, using scripts to automate the link submission process or by using PHP. Social bookmarking software for the web has also brought new ideas to the process of categorization, through tagging websites by content (think about del.icio.us and other social bookmarking applications).

 Why Use Directories For More Targeted Website Traffic?

Let us suppose that a website receives only a small amount of traffic from a directory as opposed to that coming in from search engines. However, you do not necessarily need to submit links to Web directories.

 Targeted website traffic is more often the result of a directory search; someone looking through directories is likely to be looking for something in particular; something which meets a specific need. This targeted traffic is far more likely to be a prospective customer than is someone who just happens upon your site accidentally.

 Search engines give a ranking to website or link directories, especially those which are niche-oriented. These niche directories are more commonly run by humans rather than by computers, making them a more reliable source of information – and the links within them more credible, since they are human-evaluated.

By: Judith Hoelscher (Social Bookmarking Secrets.com)

About the Author:

With more and more business allowing their employees to work outside the office, technology will need to catch up with consumer demands. Cell phones, Blackberries and Personal Data Assistants are replacing laptops computers for doing business on. Hand-held and mobile is the new trend in business technology and this is creating a demand for Internet tools such as bookmarking and synchronization programs.

Laptop computers for business use are starting to become obsolete. Sure, they are portable and one can access the internet from them, but the new trend in business technology is going by the way of mobile, hand-held devises that fit into a pocket. Cell phones and PDAs (personal data assistants) are becoming common business tools for busy associates on the run. They are small and powerful and now, able to do the same work as a laptop. These devices provide Internet connection, e-mail capability, and web browsing, as well as limited data entry function. The problem, however, comes with the Internet. On a computer, all the websites visited most often can be saved in your favorite folder. This folder provides quick access to links visited most often.

There is good news for users of the Internet! Bookmarks and bookmaking programs are now becoming available and the features on these will not only enhance the Internet used on regular computers, but on hand-held devises also. Three new services are out in the bookmark area, each different but providing outstanding services to enhance Internet use. The first one is Firefox Live Bookmark. Users can add their favorite links to it and Firefox actually keeps track of when these websites update their content. Users will always know when content has been added to their favorite websites without having to go there and recheck constantly. Firefox program can deliver the updated results as soon as they become available. It can also help with broken links. If a link is no longer valid, Firefox may help the user establish a good working link again.

The massive search engine Google is getting into the bookmark business also. The Google Desktop allows its users to be able to customize their sidebar and desktop with any features. Users can add weather, news, and sports, if they want, or just weather. The Google desktop also allows searches on the computer for files and emails to be performed quickly. It is like a massive search engine for your hard drive.

Blinkpro is a more advanced system than the other two that I have mentioned. It helps to protect your links should your computer system crash. It is basically a back-up system for the websites in your favorite folder. Blinkpro also enables users to share their links with others if they want or it keeps the sites private from other users. Finally, the program allows users to access their favorite links from any other computer, any place else. This tool can be immensely helpful if a user has many links saved at work, but needs to work from home. It reduces hunting for and resaving websites.

A final tool I need to mention that is now becoming available in computer synchronization. IBM is developing a program that enables users to speak and type more effectively and is making interfaces much more friendly. The biggest feature of this technology is that it helps to link computers with mobile phones, personal data assistants and other hand-held devices. This way, any devise you chose to use will have the same features and same information because each system will have shared with the other.

With more people taking their work outside the traditional office, the demand for more compatible technology is increasing. People need to stay connected with their data and clients and websites. The Internet is now offering tools to help people do just this. With the introduction of bookmarking programs, people can save information, have it updated automatically and change their share it with portable devises.

Synchronization allows computer and portable devise to share information. Mobile, portable, hand-held, on the go; these are all things that describe business today and programs like Firefox Live Bookmark, Google Desktop and Blinkpro are providing solutions to keep business connected.

By: Kevin Dark (Video Marketing Tips)

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