Social Media 101: How Internet Marketers Can Use Social Media
Online networking and social bookmarking are all the rage today. But it’s hard to know which online social network is right for you if you haven’t tried all of them. That’s why so many Internet users find reviews of these type of sites so helpful. When you read the reviews, though, you might be surprised at how much variation there is in people’s opinions. Some people would fight for their social media choices to the bitter end. That might be because they were ignorant of the options, so all their time was taken up with one site before they knew what was happening. I’ve known a few who fought for their choice without even knowing the difference between business networking, social bookmarking sites or sites that offer social networking just for fun. Many people don’t know that there also are social media sites, like Yuwie, that pay for people to use and promote them.
People often don’t know the difference between one form of online social networking and another because there is huge amount of cross-over in the platforms. For example, Facebook can be used for business or pleasure. Thousands of user-created free networking communities have sprung up all over the Internet, such as Book Market. These type of social networking sites are significant because they’re created by users and focus on distinct interests. Interests can be as specific as book aficionados, who now have many online communities geared just to them. Online social networking websites that feature book reviews, like Booksconnect, cater to bookworms everywhere. Another powerful form of online social networking is social bookmarking, because it opens up new worlds of information storage and retrieval. Social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us allow people to save their favorite bookmarks so they can access them online any time. This platform type is also great for people who conduct searches, because tags that allow for easy searching can be assigned to each bookmark. This ability also makes these sites tremendous for Internet marketers, because they can get backlinks for their Web properties. The individual links aren’t that valuable yet when a site has many of them, it can change the amount of search engine traffic it receives. And with sites such as Digg, if a URL is posted on one of these bookmarking sites that has good pagerank, top search engine rankings can be had for that page if it has good keyword tags and was submitted correctly.
Blurring the line even further are sites like Digg, which are set up for both social networking and social bookmarking. They are quite useful for bookmarking URLs but they also provide a tremendous platform for online social networking and marketing. Business and personal contacts galore are just waiting to be discovered on these sites and blog posts featured on these social networking sites have the potential to rank well in Google and other search engines. These powerful benefits are just some of the reasons that people who make their livings online love social media sites.