Blog Tipz

Social media is all around us. Some would rather not refer to these sites through the term, but these sites can’t be ignored. With more than three hundred million people on Facebook, millions of additional members on other sites like Twitter and StumbleUpon, it is clear that you have to target these websites – promotion through your site alone won’t work.

In this post, I’ll be exploring the various ways to utilize each of these services, and how they fit into the overall picture of building your brand online in an efficient manner.

The Largest Social Networks

Facbeook and MySpace have been the largest social networks for the past several years. They haven’t necessarily been given the same hype factor as Twitter in recent times, but are still certainly competitors in the market. Usually, you wouldn’t think of these services as being a way to promote your website, but through Facebook Fan Pages and a regular MySpace profile, you can maintain good rankings for terms that relate to your site – these sties have been developed and are already highly ranked for many terms.

When you create a profile on any of these sites, you have to ensure that it is competitively designed (more so for MySpace than Facebook), so visitors know that it is actually you and not someone else simply acting as an impostor.

Once you have to created a profile, connect it to your blog through a system of automatic updates, as well as manual updates (such as questions posed to your readers, new information that the community has published, and other resources.

Posting content doesn’t end with automatic posting, as you may have read elsewhere. You have to involve your community and ensure that your friends receive all your updates.

Twitter

I am placing Twitter in its own category, because it is separate from the other social networks in how members interact with one another. Generally, other social networks focus on private conversations and do too much – photos, chat, video, etc., which can be useful if you are developing a complete profile online, but not for the purpose of sharing content – the pictures will be on your site.

For automatic publishing, Tweet This as well as Twitter Tools are great solutions, but you still have to develop a community. To do this, re-tweet others’ tweets, reply to people who are addressing you, and share tips that haven’t yet been placed on your blog.

In some ways, you can use Twitter as a private area, sharing tips with your followers, developing a small community that really adds value to your site. Promotion of posts can also be done through private messaging and if you run an e-commerce site, you can share coupon codes, links, and other information through your account/profile.

Other Sites

StumbleUpon, Digg, and other communities have been created to help share useful information with others. They can quickly draw in a few thousand visitors, but the traffic isn’t “as good” as through other, more natural methods.

On most sites, it isn’t too hard to submit content yourself, although there are algorithms in place that prevent you from submitting too much of your content. In the promotion of content, you must have a plan that will truly work to your benefit. You shouldn’t rely on others to promote your content, as there won’t be anyone to do this in the beginning stages of your site.

Often, you have to look at some of these smaller networking sites as blogs. They may or may not drive traffic to your site – it all depends on when and how the item is listed on the site. Some sites will drive a few visitors, while others will simply help create additional links back to your site.

Conclusion

Following a general outline like the one listed above will help you when it comes to promoting across various sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and all the smaller networking sites. Each has its own pros and cons, and some people would prefer to stay away from these sites. However, there really is no true way to avoid them anymore.

What method do you like to use to promote your posts?