His email course is certainly worthwhile as well. His insight on Google and how to navigate it for your best advantages is knowledge you NEED if you intend to maximize the benefits of Social Marketing.  I have been publishing articles here written by some of the best organizations online to help you get started on your own Social Marketing projects, but this is REALLY something we can all get behind, learn from and improve our own results. 

Chris Lang has even published his own e-book, one I will be reading with great interest. "Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Tactics" looks to be an incredible resource to help to those of us that use Social Bookmarking for our traffic. If you Blog and don't use it you are really missing out. Use of social bookmarking - done RIGHT- is an incredible tool, and with the help of Quikonnex, it's on steroids!!

So don't delay, learn EVERYTHING you can from the people who KNOW THE RIGHT way to get that targeted traffic to your sites, Blogs, whatever you've got going!!

Have a GREAT day, and God bless you!
Marianne
Success Consultant
http://www.GuruetteOnTheNet.com
http://www.InternetMarketing-Mavens.com
http://www.2EZ2BuildTraffic.com

Keywords: Digg, Google, Social Marketing, Chris Lang, Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing Tactics, Traffic, targeted traffic, Social Bookmarking

Most of the bookmarking programs provide space for you to build a profile just like the networking sites. You need to bookmark a nice variety of sites on your interests and NOT just your own to truly develop a good traffic flow. Even traffic exchanges are starting to catch the fever. 1st Link offers you a way to garner traffic in your bookmarking sites. You Digg, Stumble, Reddit etc. other people's sites as you view them and they in turn do it for you. It's a great concept and is working well. If you are a Blogger it's a great way to get traffic and stay within Adsense TOS.

Many of the Web 2.0 sites are offering ways to generate money. Yuwie and ZenZuu come to mind. They share the advertising revenues with the members. The more you use them the more you can make, and of course invite your friends. They are both also part of the new Spider Web Marketing System  which is totally new and fresh. It offers 22 revenue streams, which after you get your system set up can be totally passive if you choose to go that route. It does a great job of generating leads which you can "help" into your own opportunites. It has some incredible things coming, don't miss out. The training is excellent.

That's it for today. Have a GREAT weekend!

Your Guruette On The Net and Channel Master
Marianne McEachern

Once you’ve decided what you want from social-media optimization, you can measure the results that you’re gaining from your efforts. The most obvious indicator is web-site traffic. If your traffic begins to climb, it’s a pretty good bet that your social-media efforts are working.

But if you don’t want to rely solely on site traffic as in indication of your success, there are several other elements you can look to in the effort to determine how successful your social-media efforts are.

There are many good web analytics packages that will track what the most popular content on your site is. I think that Google Analytics is one of the best analytics solutions out there, and as its free, its well worth a look at. With this software you can see where your site visitors are coming from and how long they’re spending on your page. This information will help you determine which of your content is most successful and who is sending the most traffic to your blog, so that you can capitalize on that.

Next, you can monitor the number of visitors who are actually interacting with your content by checking your guest book, forums, or comment capabilities. Guest books aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, but if you’re participating in a social network and you don’t have forums or comment capabilities on your blog, you’re missing a large part of the value of social media.

Also pay attention to how often you’re added to social booking sites. Sites like del.icio.us and StumbledUpon are a couple of the social bookmarking sites that can help boost your site traffic. The easiest way to monitor your site in social bookmarking networks is to create an account with them and then use the account to search for your URLs. In other words, who is actually adding your site/article/blog posts to sites.

Measure how many readers are actually subscribing to your RSS feeds. The number of subscribers you have on your RSS feeds will be a good indicator of how well you’re doing in your SMO efforts. The more subscribers you have, the more popular your site is.

Another way to measure your success with social bookmarking is to watch who is linking to you. If you have a good analytics program, it will probably provide you with a report that shows where incoming links originated. If your analytics program doesn’t provide this information, you can figure out who’s linking to you using that old standby, a web search. To find out who is linking to your site use the following search string, replacing your website with the actual URL of the pages you want to
track: link:http://www.yourwebsite.com.

One last way to monitor your success in the social-media space is to monitor how many people are connected to you. In MySpace and FaceBook, that might mean how many friends you have. In LinkedIn, it would be how many colleagues you are connected to, and on Digg the measurement you’re looking for is the number of times your content is tagged.

All of these are indications that you’re being followed by someone. And the more people with whom you can build a relationship, obviously the better your success will be. And that’s probably the most important rule of all to remember about social-media networking and social-media optimization: build the relationship first and the rest falls into place.

Guest post by Andy MacDonald, author of The SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters Blog.

You've got profile pages, private messages, and public conversation. Perhaps they don't typically have all the frills of a MySpace or a Facebook, but the general concept is there.

Like social networks, there are a variety of ways your business can benefit from forum participation.

Help with Specific Problems

Perhaps the most obvious benefit is the ability to get a specific question answered. If you need help or advice with a certain aspect of your business, chances are that it is a problem others have encountered in the past, and will be able to help you out. This can be tremendously helpful in many cases, especially if it is something that is really holding your business back.

Networking

Like social networks, if you regularly participate in forums, you will be networking with other people and sometimes experts. This comes back to the "it's who you know" philosophy, and you never know how knowing the right people will benefit you further down the road.

Branding

A natural product of networking is branding. When you participate regularly, people will begin to remember and recognize you, and this together with an appropriate signature will brand your business and potentially even drive traffic to your site.

Being in the Loop

Forum participation (or even just reading them) is also a good way to stay up on current events in your industry. You get a sense of conversation that you don't always get with news articles (unless the article gets a big comment spike). For online businesses, forums like WebProWorld, WebmasterWorld, and Digital Point are good places to monitor.

For the Inexperienced

This is especially true if you are one of the many businesses that has not yet created an online presence.  You can learn a lot from forums. You should always check multiple sources before following any advice on an important topic, because not all of it you will find is going to be the best. Forums are a good way to get a feeling for how others view any particular opinions anyway. If someone posts some controversial advice, someone will almost certainly be there to contradict it. Either way, it can open up options for you to think about and open your mind to different ideas.

Forums help people in business every day. Can you pinpoint a time where forum participation has had a large impact on your business?

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network.

Sites like Digg and Twitter complement your marketing

Fickle yet valuable, traffic from social media sites represents a way of generating lots of page views in a very short, and profitable, period of time.

(Coverage of the SMX West Conference continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

To Rand Fishkin, social media marketing, aka SMM, offers a route to the key influencers on blogs and social media portals. The value of those places comes from how their support enhances a site's branding and mindshare goals.

Convince the influencers, and you convince their audiences, in other words.

Social media rose in importance as participation grew tremendously. A front page promotion on Digg or Reddit, or a trip up the Delicious Popular list, gets one's content popularity and traffic. Conversion goals become easier to reach when huge numbers of visitors arrive from social media at a site.

Barbara Boser talked about Digg, and how to build an SMM effort with this major social media site as its focus. She cautioned that the initial time commitment could take a couple of months, perhaps working every day at it.

One's profile should be anonymous and likable on social media sites. Profiles of top users can serve as a model, but Boser warned not to make the profile too similar to those. A unique name and avatar make for a memorable part of a profile, and should be part of it.

Going forward, make friends with other users. Vote and comment early on interesting stories. Avoid submitting duplicate stories, and resist the temptation to submit from your own site immediately.

After seeing what works for titles and descriptions, learn from them to write yours. Keep submissions down to two or three a day. Too much submitting, especially from one site, looks like spamming, which is extremely unpopular with social media users.

Michael Gray talked about the benefits of the micro-blogging service, Twitter.

As an opt-in permissive marketing tool, Twitter gives the follower control over the relationship. If they want to follow your Twitter updates, stop following them, start following them again, it's up to the follower.

Twitter can alert followers to your blog or site updates. It's a free way to drive people who have already expressed an interest in your content to the newest entries.

Gray said Twitter has a high click-through rate compared to pay per click or email. People who make their profiles look like a real person backs it should have an easier time making friends. Build the profile, then build friendships on Twitter.

Also, answering direct replies on Twitter promptly enhances how people view you. Just as followers control the decision to follow your work, you control what they see in Twitter, and how they see you.

Easy Web 2.0 Internet Marketing: Strategies For Quickly Building an Audience with Social Media
By Gary Smith (c) 2008

The Web 2.0 social media revolution is in full steam. Are people
finding your website?

As an entrepreneur, how do you make your business website stand
out amongst 435 million other websites and more than 1 million
blogs competing for your audience's attention?

It's not as hard as you might think.

To begin, let's look at the demographics of Web 2.0 social
networking sites, Myspace.com, Facebook and YouTube.com. This
will give you an idea on how to position your message in the
Web 2.0 World.

The Web 2.0 Social Networking Revolution

Web 2.0 is a real revolution on the Internet. And these aren't
just college kids...

  - 62% of MySpace visitors are older than 25 (40% are 35+), and
    83% are making over $30,000 a year. Nineteen percent (19%)
    are making $100,000 and up...

  - On Facebook.com 46% are over 25 and 34% are 35+, but they've
    got deep pockets. Eighty-eight percent (88%) make more than
    $30,000 and twenty-three percent (23%) make $100,000 or more.

In the years ahead these numbers will get ridiculous...

  - Social media giant Facebook is currently ADDING a million
    25+ (non-student) adults per week to their rosters. That's
    52 million new users a year.

  - YouTube.com gets over 50 million unique visitors per month.
    That equals over half a billion a year.

  - Facebook and MySpace have the equal daily traffic of Google.
    Experts predict within the next year they will DOUBLE the
    daily traffic of Google search.

So your prospects are there. The traffic is there. The spending
power is there. So NOW is the time you want to establish your
presence on the social networking websites.

Web 2.0 Strategy: Why You Should Be a Maven, Not a Marketer

As a website owner, how should you position your message in the
Web 2.0 world?

The increasingly savvy buying public will quickly shun marketers.
Internet readers want information from the Internet. They don't
want advertising, marketing, or a "pitch".

According to Schefren in his Attention Age Doctrine, the solution
is to become a social media "Maven".

A Maven is a trusted authority, like a friend, on the social
media websites. As you gain their trust, your audience will
return to you over and over again wanting to invest in your
advice.

Five Steps to Becoming a Social Media Maven

Social Media Maven Step 1: Get in the Game

Begin blogging immediately. Create a video explaining how to
solve a problem and put it on YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook
with links back to your main website. Just those two things
alone will establish more Web 2.0 presence than 90% of your
competition.

Social Media Maven Step 2: Share your passion

Build your Web 2.0 website around your passions. Thirty-two
year old Gary Vaynerchuk transformed his wine knowledge to his
video blog, http://Tv.Winelibrary.com. It now has thousands of
subscribers and does $50 million dollars a year in wine sales.

Social Media Maven Step 3: Be Controversial

Your audience will remember you more when you challenge the
status quo. Controversy sells. Think like the tabloids and the
local news channels here. For example, Web 2.0 Business Coach
Rich Schefren challenges traditional marketing wisdom in each
release of his Attention Age Doctrine special reports at
www.attentionage.net/doctrine

Social Media Maven Step 4: Create World Class Content

You will drive repeat traffic to your website by offering top
notch "how to" information. Gary's wine tastings are highly
educational on the benefits of wine, how to cook with wine, and
how to choose a wine for your special occasion. Rich's reports
teach Web 2.0 marketing principles.

Remember, as soon as your audience feels that you are "pitching"
them, you've lost them. So provide content not advertising.

Social Media Maven Step 5: Engage in the Conversation

Web 2.0 is a dialogue not a monologue. Internet businesses
profit more when they observe and listen to their communities
first before they broadcast their messages. Savvy mavens such
as Gary and Rich encourage their audience to ask questions.
The answers to these questions then become part of their
user-generated content.

How Marketing in a Web 2.0 Social Media Environment Is Exciting.

Visualize it like a big radio or television station or movie
screen where you're the star. You're building a fan base so you
need to entertain, inform, and deliver consistently for your
audience.

You have more publishing power at your fingertips right now than
at any time in history.

So use it.

Share your passions.

Reveal your trials and tribulations

Tell your story.

And, watch how quickly your audience builds.
================================================================
Master Copywriter, Gary Smith (www.rightbraincopy.com) has taught
thousands of entrepreneurs how to write copy that persuades,
motivates and inspires prospects to buy. He strongly suggests
using Web 2.0 Internet Marketing Strategies revealed in Richard
Schefren's Attention Age Doctrine. Get it now for FREE at:
http://www.attentionage.com/doctrine and discover
never-before-revealed Web 2.0 tools and techniques to win in
the Attention Age.

Copyright © 2008 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.

It's a network started by Jack Humphrey,  the author of The Authority Black Book at http://www.AuthorityBlackBook.com and the author of the article we published yesterday.

Do YOUR business a favor, learn and get involved. It's FREE, so don't miss it!

1. Higher search engine rankings for their top keywords

2. More rankings of additional keywords or "long tail" keyword phrases

3. More link popularity from sites linking on their own accord

4. More link popularity from social media sites

5. More activity on their blogs, such as more commenting and interaction

6. Direct traffic from incoming links on social media sites (One good StumbleUpon.com submission can net thousands of visitors alone.)

7. Fast traffic increases and steady growth in unique visitors month after month

8. An increase in subscribers and sales. Social traffic, properly acquired, is very warm to your message and products.

The problem for most people when thinking about social marketing, after getting a taste of all the hundreds of sites there are to interact with, is becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed into inaction.

They assume established social marketers gained their "social authority" in a short period of time. This is simply not true. Although the opportunities for driving serious traffic and rankings from hundreds of social sites exists, it is an embarrassment of riches.

And it cannot be conquered over night. It is a gradual process you manage with all your other responsibilities and grow as time allows.

What I encourage my clients to do is set aside enough time each day to get one more link, participate in one more conversation, or sign up for one more account on a social site.

A little goes a long way and social marketing is not an "all or nothing" situation. Eventually you will have established yourself on the major social media sites you need to be on. And you will have a schedule that allows you to keep up with your other work while adding this extremely powerful marketing method to the mix.

10 Steps For Starting a Social Marketing Campaign

1. Schedule a bit of time each day to do some new things.  Don't just say you are going to do them.  Write the time into your day and follow through.

2. Sign up for the major social news sites: Digg.com, Propeller.com, Mixx.com. Don't submit anything to these sites until you have filled out your profile completely and submitted news from elsewhere on the web to generate a real presence and avoid being labeled as a spammer.

In fact, BE a real presence and don't try to push your own content onto the networks you belong to. It should feel and be natural and you will know what "natural is on each network by participating, commenting, voting and getting a general sense of what members think is good and bad content. Watch their comments and votes and you will know how to proceed with your own site's content from there.

3. If you don't have a blog, you must install one immediately. This is not an option. It is an absolute necessity on today's web. I recommend Wordpress which can be downloaded and installed by you or your webmaster. Wordpress download: http://wordpress.org/download/

Option #2: Check with your web host to see if they have Fantastico available to you and, if so, that it installs the latest version of Wordpress. If so you are very lucky because the software can be installed by you very easily in just a few steps with Fantastico.

4. Once you have your blog set up, join the following networks. (These are blog communities that will help you generate visitors, authority, and links and most bloggers belong to them.) MyBlogLog.com (install the widget on your Wordpress blog), and BlogCatalog.com. (they also have a widget to install)

5. Join groups, make friends, and interact with other bloggers on these networks. Especially the people who would be most likely to link to your blog and send you traffic who write about similar things or have an audience similar to yours who'd benefit by knowing you. You can even start your own group, promote it in the network, and send "shouts" to the group when you have announcements or need attention to a new post.

6. Once you have established yourself on all the sites above, meaning you have a decent profile in each that shows you've been active and involved, move on and search for networks that are geared toward your particular market niche. There are a lot of new "vertical" social sites popping up that focus on much more narrow markets and their membership is far warmer to your kind of information than on the bigger, more general networks above.

Add a new site to the mix as often as you can and repeat the steps for becoming established there as mentioned in Step 2 above.

7. Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up tips from other social marketers and find new places you can sign up with to continue building your social authority. New sites pop up every single day. Follow places like Go2Web20.net to find new opportunities to connect with your market.

8. Remote blog. Join blogger.com and put content there that is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great content you find as you travel through all the social news sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over time.

9. Track your progress diligently. If something you are trying on a social network isn't working, you need to know that in order to save time and move on to something more fruitful. MyBlogLog.com (above) has a tracking system which will show you where your traffic is coming from so you can avoid time wasting efforts and focus more on the sites that are really pulling in good traffic for you.

10. Don't freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.

Social marketing, once you've established some authority, will replace some things you are currently doing to promote your site. Many people completely drop their paid advertising or PPC campaigns once they see the organic, natural traffic and search engine rankings pile up from social marketing.

Until then, just take it one step at a time and do some social marketing. A little goes a long way and before you know it, you will reach a point where a lot of traffic and lots of search engine rankings are piling up because you simply started doing something each day.

There's a lot you can learn about social marketing. And not all of it can be found on free blogs.

------------------------

Jack Humphrey is the author of The Authority Black Book at http://www.AuthorityBlackBook.com and the creator of a powerful social marketing community at http://www.socialpowerlinking.com .

Sometimes it seems like the ANGELS OF THE INTERNET are on vacation when it comes to your own marketing and promoting efforts.  I recently published my own Safelist Marketing Plan, only to be contacted that my PayPal was shut down. Here's a word of warning...DollarBlaster is a NO NO.

In my usual fashion, I joined something to help a friend. I know you've seen it, Dollar Blaster pages run on traffic exchanges and all over the place. They offer some marketing tools (I figured it was a no lose proposition) but PayPal shut my account down because it generates an affiliate page link with YOUR paypal address. I don't market it, the owners of the website are invisible-no responses to email and no means of contact. The program is a total RIP OFF, a cheap one, but the penalties are horrendous! Paypal won't even let you terminate your account until it is no longer associated with that site. What a pain!!! The urls look like: http://www.rightdowntown.com/?DB789456    (not meant to be a real link, just to give you the info.

Whatever you do AVOID it like the PLAGUE!!!! It seems like the harsh world of Internet Marketing always kicks you when you're down. Well-perseverence wins-so hang in there!

Have a GREAT day and God BLESS YOU!

Marianne
Success Consultant
http://www.GuruetteOnTheNet.com
http://www.InternetMarketing-Mavens.com
http://mctmgchristianradio.com
http://iamstartingoveragain.blogspot.com