Hey all! I wanted to post about something I’m passionate about which is called “social bookmarking.” Social bookmarking has been around for several years now and should be utilized to spread your content, articles, and posts around the Internet to high-ranking websites. Social bookmarking, in my opinion, is a fairly under-utilized by most Internet Marketers and Bloggers. Social bookmarking will allow you to get your content more exposure and better rankings over time if you go it about it properly with a good strategy. Another aspect of social bookmarking is the ability to add “tags” to each submission which categorizes the content and allows other people to find it easier. Tagging also gets the post listed on the page with similar tagged posts which is just another inbound link to that page on your site. It’s never bad to have have inbound links to interior pages of your site from high ranking bookmarking sites.

Here is my Social Bookmarking and Social Networking process I like to use after posting articles to my sites:
1. Post article or blog post to my site.
2. Share Title and article url on Facebook to my friends. When friends Like, Comment, or Share your post their friends see it and they can do the same, which brings in more traffic and it can go viral.
3. Share Title and article url to my Facebook Fan Page. Posting to your Fan Page will allow your fans to Like, comment, and share your content which leads to more fan interaction. Make sure to respond to all your fan’s comments and keep the conversation going as long as possible.
4. Post Title and article url to Twitter account. Tweeting your post can get it retweeted and commented on which gets it more exposure. Make sure to retweet other peoples Twitter posts so they will retweet yours.
5. Submit Title and article url to Digg.com, Delicious.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com, Diigo.com, Google Buzz, and my LinkedIn Group. You need to be joined to all of these sites to make a submission. Once logged in on your computer, you can just go to each site and submit. These are my favorite social bookmarking sites and tend to rank really well in Google which benefits your site when you have them linking to you through the bookmarking submissions.
6. Post my Digg submission to Facebook and Twitter asking my friends and followers to Digg it for me, which can get it more traffic. The more you Digg, retweet, and bookmark your friends’ posts the more they will do it for you can help it go viral.

This is a quick little process for social bookmarking your content and articles to social book marking sites. If you can get a bunch of your friends and followers to bookmark your articles as well you can really improve the rankings of each post, as the more bookmarks you have to each post the more inbound links you are creating to each. All of the posts I bookmark tend to rank really well in Google, so I know it’s an effective way to build the rankings to your inner pages and content. You have to be really pro-active with your bookmarking of other people articles to ensure they will bookmark yours more frequently. Social Bookmarking is still an untapped strategy for affiliate marketers and bloggers. You are working hard producing content, so make sure you utilize social bookmarking to help the whole overall process work better and get more traffic! Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions at all.

Hey everyone! Here is my presentation from the Social Media Summit in Miami a couple of week ago. It was a great event and a really nice turn-out. Let me know you thoughts or questions…I hope its beneficial!

Social Networking Strategies:
- Make Social Networking Part of Your Daily Routine
- Add Friends, Followers, Connections – Pro-actively
- Like, Share, Comment, Retweet, Digg, Buzz…for others
- Post to Blog then Share on Facebook, Twitter, Digg et al

Social Networking Tips:
- Edit Your Facebook Updates Max Option
- Robin Good RSS Submissions to Syndicate Content
- Launch Your Own Facebook Fan Pages
- Read Mashable.com Daily
- Mass Friend Invites to Your Networks
- Mass Friend Invites to Your Fan Pages
- Instruct Friends How to do Mass Invites
- Run Contests & Promotions to Fan Base
- ‘Like’ Interesting Articles on the Web

Social Media Must Have Tools:
- Ping.fm – Update Multiple Networks at Once
- WordPress Social Plug-ins & Like Buttons
- TweetDeck, HootSuite, Co-Tweet
- SocialMarker.com – Automates Bookmarking
- Mass FB Friend Invite Javascript Code
- Google Alerts – Instant Content Notification
- Ning.com Social Networks
- Facebook Connect, Like, Recommend Integration

How to Be a Productive Networker:
- Learn to Type Really, Really Fast
- Become a Better Writer of Concise Thoughts
- Stick and Move – Float Like a Butterfly, Sting..
- Proactively Friend, Message, Interact
- Be Prolific – Channel Your Inner Jimi Hendrix
- Be Brilliant – Impress with Finesse
- Think Before Doing – Don't be Negative
- Be Bigger, Badder, and More Awesome!
- Work Your Freakin Butt Off!!!

Let me know if you have any questions what so ever about how to be a really great social networker!

Affiliate marketing is an ever growing industry that allows people to earn income through their websites and blogs primarily. Now with the advent of social networking, affiliate marketers have another method for generating traffic to their websites and blogs. Here are some of the ways affiliate marketers, regardless of experience level, can leverage website content and social networking to dive traffic to their websites and generate commissions. Here are 5 great, free ways to generate traffic to your sites or blogs:

1. Content Posting – whether you do it on a blog our website (I personal think blog posting is quicker and more efficient), content or article posting is the best way to generate free traffic from the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Some affiliates build “niche” websites or blogs that focus on a particular topic or theme, which can make coming up with article ideas easier. If you run a site/blog that is more general in nature like a coupon website, you can post unique “merchant reviews” which describe various Advertisers that you are affiliated with and their current coupon codes. So content or article posting is an extremely effective way to generate free traffic to your site, but make sure it’s all original and unique, otherwise it likely won’t be valued as highly by the search engines or ranked as well in the free traffic listings. I recommend daily content posting to be most effective.

2. Social Bookmarking – this is one of the most under-appreciated methods of marketing online and leveraging your website’s content. Social Bookmarking is basically submitting your article or blog post urls (page addresses) to various websites that have been known as web 2.0 sites. Some of them include Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Reddit. Once you have posted a new article on your site you can then submit the url of the page to these sites and they will then become listed on the site. You have to join each site first before you can post links. Then, other people can bookmark them as well which can increase the popularity and traffic each article receives. If you are connected to other people that do social bookmarking you can bookmark each other’s articles, or in the case of Digg you can Digg each others articles which can get them more visibility and rankings. The bookmarked articles will build up their own inbound links through the bookmarking and may even rank on the bookmarking sites themselves which can lead to additional organic rankings.

3. Blog Commenting – One of the best ways to generate inbound links to your site or blog is to comment on other people’s blog posts. You really have to do a good job when leaving comments because they will be “moderated” which will determine whether the comment will be published to the site, so make sure to leave a quality blog comment and have something valuable to contribute otherwise it will be a waste of time. The nice thing with blog commenting is you can list your name, email, and site url, which adds inbound links to your site. You can use Google Blog Search to find related blogs to yours that rank well and then comment on those. Another nice feature is that you can usually select to receive an email when someone else comments which will lead you can to leave another comment which allows another link to be posted. Doing this in high volume is a must and it takes effort, so make sure to go about it right and it will pay dividends with improved organic rankings and additional traffic. how many links and clicks you build is in direct relation to how much you do it so do it in volume and make it part of your daily routine if possible.

4. Social Networking – social networking is taking over the Internet so why not get into the fray and leverage it for all its worth? Facebook and Twitter and the 2 big social networks and where you should probably be spending the bulk of your social networking. Make sure to add friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter as much as possible because it only expands the number of people you can exposure your content and articles to. Also, when people “Like” your articles on Facebook their friends see that and could like it themselves which allows it to go viral. Similarly on Twitter, the people that are “following” you can “retweet” your content and it gives it more exposure. Another aspect of social networking that is a must are Facebook Fan pages. Fan pages are great because it allows you to build up your own community on Facebook that can grow over time. You can message all your Fans via email and through message posting through “status updates”. So go out and add a bunch of friends of Facebook and followers on Twitter so you can leverage your content to them and generate more traffic to your sites or blogs.

5. Online Forums – joining online forums is a great way to connect with others like-minded people in your niche and learn more about whatever you’re interested in. The really cool thing about forums is that you can set-up your “signature” which gets posted under every forum comment you leave or new topic you post on the forum. Most forums allow you to add a few links to your websites or other personal information like your Facebook profile link or Twitter name. Therefore, the more posting you do on the forum the more links you can build up to your site, Facebook friends you can add, Twitter followers you can add, and clicks from other forum members to your site. Forums are also great because you can learn so much from other people and generally have a great time. Similar to blog commenting, forums will send you an email when someone responds to your comment or topic which encourages you to return to the forum to comment again, which adds more links to your site. Inbound links to your site tend to make it rank higher in the “natural” or free traffic listings on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

These are some free ways to increase your website or blog traffic. All of this takes work and the more you put into it the more effective it will be. All of these methods work in conjunction with each other and should be done as much as possible to increase your traffic. Over time, you will build up a tremendous amount of content on your site, inbound links, and organic rankings which will lead to affiliate commission via the banners and links on your site. Please let us know if you have any questions about these free traffic generation methods. We look forward to hearing from you! Now go out there and build out the web!

Social media is the hottest sector on the Internet right now and only getting bigger and more powerful. This means, as an affiliate, you need to be actively using social media sites to promote yourself and your websites/blogs. Here are some practical ideas for using Social Media to enhance your affiliate marketing efforts.

Create Your Presence - I always recommend choosing a username that you can use to sign-up on all the best social networking sites. It usually has to be fairly short, ex. mine is experienceads. I use this username on the majority of the social media sites to keep things consistent. Use Username Check to see if your prospective username is available on all the social networks. It’s also a really cool tool to use to get signed up on all the top social networks. Once you get yourself signed-up for the social networks you should look to add friends or followers depending on the type of site it is. By “following” people on Twitter for example, they may follow you back and this is what builds your following. Also, the more content you post out there, the more people will follow you that read your content. You can also create other identities to promote in a particular niche. For example, if you are in the online dating niche, you can create a username like: EvansDatingAdvice and build out a following specifically talking about issues related to dating and singles. I recommend starting out with your main identity and branching out from there. The more identities you have the harder it will be to manage. Also, it’s important to complete your profile on each social networking site with unique content about yourself and what you do.

Join Ping.FM – Ping.fm is probably my favorite social media tool because it allows you to effortlessly update your “status” on all your social networks through one interface (and even through IM). How cool is that! Once you sign up at Ping.fm, they will ask you to enter all your usernames and passwords for your social networking sites. And, it also gives you the links to sign-up for new accounts on all those sites you aren’t on already, so you can get them into Ping.fm. Once you have entered all your usernames and passwords, you can then “ping” out your message, blog post url, site page url, personal update (what you are doing a the moment), and anything else you feel you want to share with the world. You have to keep it short though, usuallu under 140 charaters. This is known as “micro-blogging.” This is a great way to manage multiple social sites at the same time.

My Favorite Social Networks - I have been using social networks for years, before it was cool to do it. Now that it’s all the rage, it’s interesting to see how people go about connecting with each other and making friends and contacts. Some of my personal favorites for online marketing are: FaceBook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and of course Twitter. There are many other niche social networking sites you can join to meet like-minded people to connect with and do business or just make friends. You will develop your own list of favorite social networks based on your interests.

Launching your Own Social Network - The Internet has come along way and the best things are still free. If you want to launch your own social networking site you should check out Ning. Ning is the easiest and fastest way to set-up your very own social network, with tons of great features. It truly is amazing so you should check it out and experiment with it. Here is one of mine for you to review: Cost Per New Social Network. You will see a link on the site to launch your own social network.

Social Media/Networking Etiquette - Social media, like anything else online, has the potential to be abused and mis-used. If you go about it the right way you will do well with it, however if you go about it the wrong way you are likely to not get far. Here are some suggested tips to maintain good social media etiquette:
- Don’t just go looking for people on Twitter asking for recommendations and pasting them your affiliate link or saying you have tried something and recommend it when you have not. This is very annoying and not genuine at all. People are usually hip to this and will drop you and not be friends with you. If you are going to respond to a users request for a recommendation on a product or service, make sure you are giving them good information and not just giving them your affiliate link. By providing good merchant or product reviews on your sites or blogs you can share the urls of your posts when it’s appropriate.
- Connect with People Genuinely – It’s always best to connect to people that will be receptive to your connection request. It’s not a contest to see how many people you can connect to, but a way to grow your network with quality connections you can do business with or learn from. Too many people try to build their networks through “open networking” which is not a good idea in my opinion.
- Share Stuff, Don’t Inundate – The whole point of social networking is to share information, links, news, and resources with people. Also, to keep them up-to-date on what you are doing in life. If you are constantly sharing items that are turning people off your network won’t grow and you will lose connections. Take your social networking seriously and it will be a great foundation to build on going forward.

Additional Benefits of Social Media/Networking – One of the biggest benefits of using social media sites are the SEO (search engine optimization) benefits. By announcing messages and sharing links through social sites you can get ranked in the search engines for those particular messages. Site’s like Twitter have excellent Google organic rankings and I frequently see my pings/updates ranking in Google. Also, when your connections and people on the social networks see your updates it creates traffic back to your site. It also causes your connections to comment on your post or update creating more interaction.

Social media and social networking are amazing tools for expanding your affiliate marketing endeavors. The more time and effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it. Let me know how you liked this article. I have many more tips and resources for using social media sites, so let me know and I will forward them over to you. You can reach me at: evan@experienceadvertising.com. Thanks!

Twitter.com is one of those things you just have to check out and use for your networking. You can sign up for an account and then build the number of people you are “following”. Its all about getting updates from people and giving updates on what you are currently doing. You can send people messages to see if you can do business with them or network in some way. You can respond to peoples “tweets” and get a quick dialogue going about the topic. You can search on the site and then read the tweets of people on the twitter network. Once you find some interesting things you can see who authored them and follow that person. That person will get an email that you are following them, and then might reutn the favor and follow you. The more you use Twitter the more potential connections you can make with people. It really is an amazing networking tool. Corporations are using Twitter now to get out deals to customers. Coupon sites are using twitter got out deals from all types of merchants so it s really powerful word of mouth marketing tool. I highly recommending joining www.Twitter.com and start tweeting away! Look for people to add the people you are following. Then add them! Make sure to use it daily, it’s a really powerful social media tool  that is still evolving. There are tons of cool widgets for twitter and you can plug it into other networking applications like Plaxo. If you have any questions about how to use Twitter, let me know. Thanks for reading.