For more business networking, there are 4 primary sites individuals use to expand their network and ultimately their income. The granddaddy of them all is craigslist – a San Francisco-based warehouse of local community news, classifieds, dating options, and job listings started by Craig Newmark that has content specific to the top metropolitan regions in the US. It’s a popular site and useful for many things – as ebay found out when they recently purchased a 25% share. ecademy is a UK-based site created by the uber-networker Thomas Power. ecademy requires membership and is set up for pure networking, particularly on a worldwide basis. The site also enables blogging, industry-specific content and chats, and is enabled for heavy-duty networking with known and unknown associates. Ryze is a site focused on business to consumer networking and provides a venue to create a community around your business and personal interests – unfortunately, Ryze use is not regulated too well so the connections and content often related to business opportunities, MLM deals, and value-less connections. LinkedIn is the current disputed leader in the US and worldwide due to its ease of use, practical benefit, and value added features including providing a testimonial for someone you know, passing along requests for connections, job listings, and easy networking with those with similar interests.

Regardless of which site you decide to use, pick one initially and commit to a week or month of consistent participation in the community and decide how you might benefit the work or personal lives of others. As with everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it – so think both of how you can benefit yourself and others as you participate.

Promote your blog? Why would you want to do that? Honestly, if you have to ask yourself that question you probably shouldn’t even have one. The whole purpose of a blog is to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on a particular topic, issue, or subject. What good will your blog do if no one reads it. In addition to sharing your thoughts with the rest of the world, did you know that you could also make money from your blog? You can signup for affiliate programs or other programs like Google Adsense. If you are using your blog to make money then you will defiantly want to promote it.

When it comes to promoting blogs, there are many blog owners who decide to let the search engine do the work for them. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use special techniques that reads the content on your website. That content is then used to rank your website with particular keywords. This means that you run a blog on graduating from high school in New York, there is a good chance that your blog will appear in searches done on New York high schools. Although many blogs are successfully ranked in search engines, not all are. That is why you are advised against relying solely on search engines, when it comes to promoting your blog.

As previously mentioned, if you love meeting with or talking to people online, there is a good chance that you belong to a social networking website or community. The individuals that you talk to and that are in your community are likely the individuals that you wish to target. Since most social networking websites work to connect internet users who have the same goals and common interests, there is a good chance that your online friends will enjoy reading your blog. But, before they can read your blog, you have to let them know that it exists.

When it comes to promoting your blog on social networking websites, you have a number of different options. Your first option is to include a link to your blog in your community profile or profile page. This will allow other community members to checkout your blog, only if they wish to do so. The other way is to inform your online friends of your blog through private messages. Once you join a social networking website and create or join a network of friends, you should easily be able to communicate with those friends. Sending each of your friends a private message with information and a link to your blog tends to be more effective than just placing a link in your profile or on your profile page.

Although there is a good chance that you are already a member of a popular social networking website, you may not be. If you are not already a member, but would like to become one, you will need to find a social networking website to join. This can easily be done with a standard internet search. In your search, you will likely find a number of popular network sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, and Orkut. Before becoming a community member at one of these networking sites, you may want to first examine the website to ensure that it is everything that you want it to be.

As you can easily see, there are a number of different ways that you can go about promoting your blog on online social networking websites. You never known, but, in addition to promoting your blog, you may also make new friends along the way.

One of the biggest marketing trends going on right now involved social networks like MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook. These networks are all fairly similar; users sign up for a free profile and can post information about themselves, their likes, what they do for a living, etc. Most let users also post pictures and videos. Once they’ve made their profile, they can search for other people and add them as their friends.

The whole point of these networking sites is to get in contact with friends, family, and, sometimes, total strangers. It’s the total stranger’s part that really interests us. By creating a profile for your business and adding people as your friends, you can get the word out there to millions.

Some of these sites, like MySpace, even include special profiles for bands, authors, and filmmakers. This makes it even easier for people to find your profile and add you as their friend. It’s great when people add you, but when you invite people to be your friend, beware of looking like spam. There are enough fake spam profiles on these sites that they’ve all cracked down on people sending out mass invites. Be sure the people you invite want to see what you have to offer.

Another of the internet marketing trends is the use of keywords. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is something everyone wants these days. It involves using keywords, or words that describe your site and your products/services, a certain number of times on your website and in your site’s titles and metadata.

By using these keywords so often, your site will be much more appealing to search engines like Google and Yahoo. The theory here is that if your site is listed on the first page of search results, you’ll get more views and more business than if your page was listed on the third or fourth page. Of course, this isn’t always true. If your page doesn’t include what the user is looking for, they aren’t going to buy anything from you. Still, there is merit to the part of the theory that says you’ll get more traffic.

You can optimize your website yourself after studying a bit about SEO, but there are many companies out there ready to do it for you. Be careful here: you don’t want someone writing text for your page that is nothing but keywords. If your page doesn’t sound natural to a human reader, chances are they will pass it by in favor of one that does.

Taking advantage of both social networks and SEO practices can result in your website getting many more hits. While, as stated earlier, hits don’t always convert over to dollars, it is important to get people to your website. Following these internet marketing trends is one way to up your hits which, in turn, often does result in more business.

Active Rain is a network that has taken this concept and turned it into a growing community of realtors, real estate-related professionals and people looking for the right agent for them. It has pages for individuals to post information about themselves and the services they provide, forums, blogs, and a Q&A forum where people can post questions about real estate. So far, 60,000 people have become members, which makes for a lot of exposure on the site.

One does not need to be an Internet guru to create a “niche” network, though. It can be done with existing networking sites and applications. The key is to start out creating decent, useful information on your focus in the market. If you are selling homes in the Sunset Hill neighborhood of Seattle, by all means, start a Facebook group or your own message board about the Sunset Hill neighborhood. Whatever it is, make sure that it allows people to weigh in, ask questions and post answers.

Post information on the schools there, and the issues about them, the job scene, house care when dealing with Seattle weather… anything and everything that has to do with Sunset Hill and Seattle homes. Make sure it’s relevant, make sure it’s up-to-date. Look beyond selling houses and post about what people buying homes in Seattle and Sunset Hill are concerned about.

If you have happy clients who have conducted their home transaction through you, keep in contact with them and let them know about the site. Many home owners would be interested to know about a site where they can find the latest in local property values, information about the new mall being built or the issues facing the schools of the Sunset Hill area.

If you have people coming to your site for information on their neighborhood, even if they aren’t planning to buy or to sell, you have succeeded. The huge success of some sites through advertising has come about through popularity gained by giving stuff away for free. If you have a decent amount of steady visitors who come to your site for the information you post, you have a decent amount of leads who might mention you to real estate-minded friends and family.

Since a social networking website is often compared to a community, you would assume that only other community members would be able to read your personal information, right? In the real world, an unknown individual cannot just decide that they want to move into your neighborhood and live in your front yard, spying on your every move, so why should it happen online? If that is your way of thinking, you are wrong, in most cases. Unfortunately, many internet users are largely unaware of the fact that just about anyone can view their social networking profiles, including non-community members.

As previously mentioned, there are a large number of social networking websites that allow anyone one with internet access to view the profiles or profile pages of their members. In fact, the number is higher than you may have ever imagined. At the current time, just a few popular of the social networking websites that allow any internet user to view your profile include Yahoo! 360, FriendFinder, FriendWise, and MySpace. With a simple click of the mouse, information that you thought was private is no longer. That is why it is important that you examine what is actually posted in your profile or on your personal profile page before publishing it.

Although being cautious may take away from the fun of joining a social networking program, you are advised to be cautious. This cautiousness may help keep you safe. When building your social networking profile or profile page, especially on a website that anyone can view, you are advised to carefully select the pictures that you post. If you post a personal picture of your self, you are advised against posting your full name and, especially, your address. With a picture, your full name, and your address, an internet user with devious thoughts could spell trouble.

If you are one of the many social network users who wants to display your information, you are encouraged to learn more about private profile settings. Private profile settings will limit the number of individuals who can view your website. Although your profile’s private setting may prevent other network members from seeing your profile, it will also prevent anyone else from seeing it. The only catch with doing this is that since other community members cannot see your profile, you will have to be the one to contact with any new friends that you would like to invite to your network.

In addition to joining a social networking website that allows you to set your profile as private, you can join a network that automatically has profiles set as private. These social networking websites include, but are not limited to, Orkut and Facebook. With Orkut and Facebook, your profile will only be seen by other members. In fact, Facebook also limits the members that can see your profile. This is done to help ensure your safety online. However, as with all other social networking websites, it is fairly easy for you to make online connections and friends, but, in away, these private profile networking sites are a safer way to make those connections.

Now that you know exactly how social networking websites work and who can gain access to your personal information, you should know what you should and should not put in your profile or on your profile page. Although you are not required to change your information, you should at least think about it. As the old saying goes, you never know who is watching you.

There are quite a lot of methods to get targeted traffic. You can try writing articles about the products or services you are selling and posting them on article publishing websites. This is a great way to market your website as well as the products or services you are selling, but what if you don’t have the knack for writing? What if you have people skills instead?

If talking to people is your forte, you might want to join social networking websites. One social networking website that is so popular is Facebook. Here, you will see that there are now over 62 million people who are actively subscribed and millions of people are logging in and out every single day.

With this amount of people, you have to consider that this is truly an internet marketer’s dream.

By joining Facebook, you will be able to create a profile page for yourself. Complete the profile page. In this page, it will state basically everything about you. It will contain your interests, your age, gender, as well as your political views.

If you already have friends who are registered and actively using Facebook, you might want to try to add them to your network in the website. You can also invite your other friends to join through email in Facebook. By building your network of friends, you will be able to gain access to other networks in Facebook. Here, you can start communicating with other people, and even build new relationships or make new friends.

This is a great way to start marketing in Facebook. Don’t just jump in and start peddling your products, services or website, you first need to establish yourself in Facebook.

After getting started and getting familiarized with Facebook, you will notice that you will be able to join groups. Find a group that is interested in the products or services you offer. When you find one, join the group.

Here, you will be able to discuss things about their interest and little by little, you will be able to indirectly market your products or services. Just remember that you first need to establish relationships within the group in order for you to market effectively and in order for you to become trusted by the other members.

There are quite a lot of communicating tools that you can use in Facebook. You can use the News Feed and you can even syndicate your blog website using RSS. The Notes feature offered by Facebook is also a great way to market. And, you can also write on the “wall” of other people’s profile in order for you to get known.

The great thing about this is that you don’t even have to invest money when you use Facebook. It is completely free and what you just need to invest is time. Although it may take quite a while for you to get people in Facebook to trust you and get them to visit your website.

You have to consider the fact that with the amount of people using Facebook, it will definitely have a lot of potential in generating targeted traffic to your website.

Basically, Facebook is a social networking website where you will be able to interact with other people online. Facebook is some sort of small online community where you will be able to make new friends as well as keep in touch with your old friends and your relatives.

Facebook today has over 62 million active subscribers and is continuing to grow. For advertisers or internet marketers, this kind of numbers is hard to pass up. With so many people in one place at one time, you will see that this website will definitely be a dream-come-true for internet marketers.

If you own a business and you want to expand the amount of customers you get, you have to consider that the internet is the place where you will be able to find more people to buy your products or services.

If you are ever planning to market your business on the internet, you might want to try out Facebook. This website will be able to give you a huge potential in expanding your business. It already has everything and all you need to do is know how to effectively use its tools in order to market your products and services effectively.

First, it already has the traffic you need. Facebook has over 62 million active subscribers. With the amount of people logging in and out on a daily basis, you know that this particular website will be able to generate traffic for you. You don’t need to work hard in order to let people know about your website as the traffic is already here at Facebook. With all kinds of people from different backgrounds and lifestyle, you will be able to find your target niche here at Facebook.

Another thing that Facebook can give you is the tools. Here, you will be able to upload your videos as well as photos. It will enable you to personalize your Facebook page in order to make it unique and stand out from the rest of the different Facebook pages. It will also let you syndicate your blogs and website through RSS and will let you post on bulletins to announce or advertise your products, services and new events.

Facebook has it all. All you need to do is create a profile that will appeal to your target niche and start adding friends and fans. Also, you will be able to join groups in Facebook. It can be groups containing members of your target niche and it can also be groups of internet marketers where you will be able to help each other out advertise your business or your products and services.

These are the things that Facebook can provide. As you can see, it will be able to give you a great way to market your products or services. With Facebook, you can be sure that it will be able to provide you with more targeted traffic to your official business website and it will also help you advertise. In fact, the members themselves can advertise your Facebook page for free.

So, the next time you want to market your business or your products or services, you might want to try visiting Facebook. Here, marketing is easy, free, and lots of fun.

If you don’t know how to market on the internet, the best way to start is by marketing on one of the most popular social networking websites available today, which is Facebook.

First of all, Facebook is primarily a social networking website that is designed to let people communicate with their friends in a dynamic way. It also serves a way for people to meet new people and establish new relationships.

For internet marketers, Facebook is packed with features that can be used to market products and services as well as their business website. If you are a first time internet marketer who wants to start easy, you might want to start with Facebook. You will see that Facebook will provide you with a lot of marketing potential and also help you let your business grow.

The great thing about Facebook is that it is steadily growing. Today, it already has an estimated 64 million subscribers. With this number, you will definitely be able to find a lot of people who will be interested in what you have to sell.

Also, Facebook has all the tools you need to market your products or services. Even if the tools and applications here are designed for communication, you have to consider that the main point about internet marketing is communication. Facebook has all the communication tools that you will ever need.

Facebook also recently launched its Facebook Ads feature. Here, you will be able to officially advertise or market your brand, business or products. You can even market your website here at Facebook Ads.

At Facebook Ads, you will be able to take advantage of its great marketing tools, such as the Advanced Targeting feature. Here, you will be able to target your niche market by age, gender, interests, location and more. This will mean that you will be able to easily target the clients you want. By having this feature, you will be able to quickly find people that may be interested in purchasing the products or services that you are offering.

The Facebook Ads will also provide you with Trusted Referrals. With this feature, you will be able to attach friend to friend interactions about your business to your ads. Facebook encourages word of mouth marketing. This is a great feature as people are more likely to buy a particular product that is recommended by the person they know.

Starting in Facebook Ads is very easy. The first is by pasting the URL of your website. After that, you will choose the audience you want. You can choose the age range, the location, education status, political views and relationship status. You can also include some keywords that will normally show up on interests.

After that, you will create the advertising where you will insert a title and a body. You can also include a photo if you want. The last step is by setting up a budget.

These are some of the tips that you should try to remember when advertising in Facebook Ads. By properly using it, you will be able to get your money’s worth and eventually let your business grow.

The earlier practice was to select some keywords, place them (or stuff them, as was the norm earlier) in the web content, throw in some meta tags (again stuffed with keywords), submit the website in directories and exchange of few links with other sites.
But that practice has for long been on its way out. Neither is it enough to make your website search friendly enough, not is it looked upon favorably by either the search engines or your customers.

Typical search engine optimization is not enough any more to established your online presence or your brand. With Web 2.0 firmly in and Web 3.0 peeping on the horizon, these are times to let people, the end users take the decision, take your message forward in so many shapes as Web-video, web-audio, web discussions, articles, blogs, forums, postings in social networking sites (SNS) and what not.

SEO in these times is about delivering the marketing message to the targeted audience, not just make it SE friendly. If latter is your choice, or you are still stuck in the old method of SEO, you will end up corrupting or distorting the message by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots. This way you will drive away real people who may actually be potential customers.
8 Milestones To Success

With Web 2.0, audio and video content have become very effective method of delivering marketing messages over the Web. But before you as a web
marketer jump on to the bandwagon, do go over following points to ponder:

(a) These multi media messages should not be cost prohibitive so that even small and medium-sized companies could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video. They are the real revenue earner for you.

(b) Remember the website design is about delivering the marketing message effectively and unequivocally and not just search engine optimization. This point is particularly important for web design firms who double as web advertising agencies.

(c) Professionally done Web-audio and Web-video requires more than just the ability to use a video camera. So avoid a rush job as professional multimedia story-telling requires a unique set of creative skills and technical ability.

(d) Make sure that all messages whether on the web or offline confirm to each other whether you have been developer of all these messages or not.

(e) Evaluate business opportunities in the broader sense of marketing. Build viable partnerships by sitting down and taking a hard look at how various factors might complement your message.

(f) Don’t ever forget that the web is used by 87% of Internet users today to research goods and services and that extra knowledge is not available anywhere else. So do give the visitor something worthwhile. Ask yourself while designing a website or any marketing campaign, what as a user am I getting and will it add value to my life, career, business, etc.

(g) Spend considerable time to analyze what the competitors are doing. If they are successful you would know why, and if they are not you would know what to avoid.

(h) Do spend time to make a beautiful web site that is attractive and add value to the visitor, but it will all be wasted effort if it does not make it easy for people to contact your client. Take time to build a site that lets people communicate with the client. Very fundamental, but equally necessary and ignored many a times.

All this sounds great but how and who can implement the strategies. Pay attention to what those old marketing warhorses are saying. Web or not, the fundamentals of marketing remains right there, and companies with experience in marketing and advertising along with providing web development services are best equipped to show you the right and time tested way to do things.
These guys may not flaunt the latest PDA or be rather old fashioned in their sense of fashion but they have years of experience building successful campaigns behind them.

Article Marketing – Article marketing was and is one of the most powerful online marketing methods available. Not only does it do wonders for you and your business, it is free as well!

Article marketing consists of writing helpful, informative, easy to understand articles that actually help your readers, not try to sell them something. Then you submit them to article banks, directories and ezine publishers. When your article runs in a popular ezine, it can do great things for your business. Writing articles is not as hard as you might think so give it a try. You will be delightfully surprised at how much it can affect your business.

Remember:

Don’t worry about fancy words. People are looking for help, not big words.

Advertise in your resource box, not your article.

Provide real, helpful info and resources, hot hype!

Write from the heart! Let your personality shine through in your articles.

Blogging – Blogging is a newer form of online marketing that just started becoming popular in the late 90′s. Blog is short for weblog and means an online publication in the form of a log or journal. Blogs can increase your customer base, your traffic and your search engine ranking, thus increasing your sales.

Blogging can be done for free through such sites as:
blogger.com
wordpress.com
and livejournal.com

Be sure and update your blog regularly; everyday would be best as people like fresh content, ideas and information.

Ezine Publishing – Ezine publishing has been around much longer than blogging and is far more effective, in my opinion. Your ezine needs to contain helpful resources and information, not just sales pitches. Develop a relationship with your readers. Let them know they can trust you and rely on you when they need your help.

Things to remember when putting together your ezine:

Keep it clean and easy to read.
Limit your advertising and be selective.
Always provide quality content and information.
Add your personality so your readers can get to know you.
Always provide contact info and be accessible.
Be consistent; send your ezine regularly as scheduled.
Be sure and proofread before sending it out.

Online Networking – Online networking, as with offline networking, is very important to your business. This is when you connect with as many people as possible to learn more and share more about your business. Many leads can come from networking. There are several ways to do this online.

Email Discussion Groups: Go to yahoogroups.com and search for appropriate groups.

Message Boards: Be sure and follow the rules for posting and offer your help as much as possible.

Social Sites: Such as MySpace.com, Ryze, Merchant Circle, etc. These can be great ways to make more contacts and get leads.

Joint Ventures – This is when you enter into an agreement with another online marketer that will benefit both sides.

Examples of joint ventures:

Ezine Ad Swaps
eBook Ad Swaps
Subscription Page Ad Swaps
Affiliate Programs
Exchange Advertising for % of Sales

and the list goes on and on. Be creative and come up with new ways you and your associates can help each other.

Podcasting – Podcasting is using digital media files which are distributed all over the internet via syndication feeds. Podcasting is still a fairly new way of online marketing and has great potential. Podcasting can be powerful because it uses voice not written words to get the message across. Offer your articles, do voice interviews, offer a chapter in your ebook via podcast, etc. Again, use your imagination to create new ways to spread the word about your business.

Ezine Advertising – Advertising your business, product, service, etc. in quality ezines can be well worth the money spent. There are a few things you can to to help you choose which ezines to advertise in.

Do a search to find ezines that cater to your target market. For example: if you are advertising kids’ books, you don’t want to advertise in an ezine about cars.

Once you find several targeted ezines, subscribe to them so you can look them over and see if the publisher is reliable in sending them out. You can also look over the other ads and make sure the publisher is selective in their advertising. You can possibly learn what the other readers think of the ezine as well.

Try contacting the publisher to see if they respond to your email. Ask about testimonials from other advertisers. Find out how many ads they run per issue and what the costs are.

You could also ask the publisher to do an ad swap to get an idea of what the response is like. Be selective in your choices and always code your ads so you know which ezines actually deliver.

I hope this article has given you some insight as to how to market your home/online business. I use several of these methods (and should be using the rest) and know from experience that they work!

The possibilities with the internet are endless and we need to keep up with new and innovative ways of marketing ourselves and our business. And we need to keep using tried and true methods as well.