Blog your way to more business - part three (Marco Spoerrle, marcospoerrle.com)

Blog your way to more business - part three
by Carla Chadwick, Web content specialist

In part one and part two, I covered how to develop blog content, and gave you some marketing ideas and free blog resources. In this issue, I’d like to focus on fundamental tips for using social networking to promote your blog.
One of the reasons blogs are such powerful marketing devices is that they’re a key component of Web 2.0. Although the term Web 2.0 seems technical, it’s just a way to identify the recent shift in the way people interact online. There’s plenty of disagreement about what Web 2.0 means. But for the purpose of this article, I’m going to say that Web 2.0 is, among many other things, a more collaborative approach to online interactions.
Because of this movement, a lot of sites have sprung up under the Web 2.0 subset of “social networking.” Social networking can take many forms when used for blog promotion, but they come under two major headings: social bookmarking and social networking. I’ve included samples of both below. All the sites I mention are free, although some have upgrade options.

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites allow you to save your bookmarks and share them with others. The advantage to you as a blogger is that you can save your individual blog posts as bookmarks. These can subsequently be found by anyone searching for information on your topic. Good social bookmarking etiquette dictates, however, that you bookmark pages from other people, as well as your own.
Here are some of the more popular social bookmarking sites:

del.icio.us

This is one of the most famous bookmarking sites, so it has a lot of users. To make sure your blog posts can be found in de.licio.us, just go to the link above and click the “post” link at the top. This will bring you to a page where you’ll enter the address of your latest blog post. While doing so, you’ll want to enter a description and tags that detail the content of your post. Once posted, if anyone within de.licio.us searches for any of the tags you used, your blog post will come up in the search results. If your headline and description are compelling, you’ll have a good chance of getting people to click through to your blog.

 

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a world onto itself, in that it has a different model than the other bookmarking sites. “Stumblers” as its users are called, are served up Web site and blog pages, based on the preferences they chose in their profile and how many people have voted for the pages they’re viewing. If a Stumbler likes your page and gives it a “thumbs-up,” this pushes it to the top of a list to be shown to other Stumblers. The more thumbs-ups the page gets, the more people will see it. For this reason, you would only want to post original content with widespread appeal. You also would want to choose the category carefully when you submit a story. As with all other bookmarking sites, you must join to submit articles. And if you want to use StumbleUpon to view sites and blogs, you’ll need their toolbar.

Digg

Digg is another popular site that gives you the ability to submit blog posts, Web site pages, photos, video or podcasts. The site has a user-based voting system that causes a submission rise to the top. I’ve had submissions that never got a vote that still brought traffic to my blog; so don’t let the lack of votes stop you from submitting again. There are plenty of other sites that provide social bookmarking services. You can find more of them through SocialMarker, which also has shortcuts for submitting to all the sites on their list. If you’re going to use  social bookmarking, I recommend choosing just a few sites and getting to know the way they work. This will allow you to get the most out of each. Although the sites I listed above are popular and get a lot of traffic, there also is a lot competition to have your posts be seen. Sometimes one of the smaller networking sites can be more beneficial. If you plan to use Social Marker as a means to find the sites you like, I would suggest selecting just a few sites to visit for each Social Marker session. Otherwise, you might find using their program too overwhelming.

Social networking

The main goal of social networking sites is to make it easy for people to connect. More social networking vehicles come online every day, but for blog promotion, I recommend the following:

Linkedin

Linkedin is a twist on a traditional social networking site because it’s focused exclusively on people who want to promote their businesses. The premise of the site is that there are only three degrees of separation between your group of friends and a massive group of contacts. The easy-to-navigate interface allows you to connect with people you know who are in the Linkedin system and then connect with their connections. When you then connect with the people in that extended group of connections, the number of people with whom you can be in touch is huge.

BloggingZoom

This site is the new kid on the block, but the fact that it was developed by two bloggers specifically to serve the needs of other bloggers has drawn an enthusiastic response. Like Digg, BloggingZoom has a voting system. But don’t worry if people don’t vote for your post. Like with Digg, people will often read a post but not vote for it. Also, their submissions process is set up specifically to be search-engine friendly, so if you submit according to their guidelines, you have another chance to be found by the engines for each post.

HubPages

HubPages offers a different sort of social networking, in that it gives you the chance to express yourself while connecting with others. Although you can also use it to connect, join subject-related clubs and comment on articles, HubPages is perfect for people who write well and want to use that skill to promote their businesses. You can create your own pages, called “hubs,” which can then potentially be seen by the HubPages community and millions of people the search engines bring to the site each month. You can even use articles you have already written for your blog, as long as you change the content by at least 20 percent. Click here to see a typical hub. These are just four of the many social networking sites that are available. To access links to many others, view this Wikipedia page, which contains a large list of them.
But don’t go off into the social networking world just yet. There’s some terminology you should understand first, so your time will be more productive.

Social networking glossary

Keywords
I’ve covered this topic in other issues of the Marketing Insider newsletter because there can never be enough said about it. But rather than go over it again in this article, go to this page for information on using keywords for beginners. You might also want to sign up for WordTracker’s free easy-to-follow nine-part e-mail series on using keywords.
Tags
Tags and keywords are closely related, in that they both are shorthand for identifying the content of a particular blog entry, photo, geographic map or video clip. Unlike keywords, each user chooses tags when one of the aforementioned files is created or saved to a bookmarking site. Users search by tags, which cuts down the time it takes to find information. To see examples, click on this page. The words in gold-colored boxes are tags. If you click on any of these tags, you’ll bring up all the posts that have been tagged with the same name.
Tag cloud
A tag cloud is a method of arranging tags by the amount of information connected to each one. The point of a tag cloud is to show the user at first glance which topics a blog contains and how much information there is on each. The more information about a tagged subject, the larger and bolder the tag. To see an example of a tag cloud, click here and scroll down the page to the “WordPlay's Tags” box.
Categories
Categories reflect the major subject groups covered on a blog. They’re similar to tags, except the person who generates the content chooses them.
Avatar or icon
An avatar or icon is a graphic that accompanies you as you comment on a blog post or use a social networking site. In some cases, it can be seen even if you visit individual blogs. An icon is sometimes accompanied by your username, so it’s a good idea to choose a good username (one that brands your business at first glance) when you sign up for networking sites. For examples of good icons, click here. For free images you can use to create your icon, click here for clip art and here for photography.
Bookmarklet
Most social bookmarking sites offer a bookmarklet, which places a bookmark in your browser. Once it’s in your bookmarks, if you want to submit a page to that service, just navigate to the page you want to submit, open your bookmarks and click on the bookmarklet. This will automatically take you to a page that has your page information filled in, making the submission process easier.
Knowing these terms in advance should cut the time it takes to get up to speed with social networking. I think you’ll find it can be a lot of fun to use social networking sites. And in the process of promoting your own blog, you’ll probably even come across interesting information you never would have found otherwise.