Five Steps to generate TRAFFIC through StumbleUpon!!!

StumbleUpon is a hot social bookmarking site that continues to increase its popularity at a rapid pace. StumbleUpon has always been great at driving traffic and links, but lately I’ve started to notice that it is one of the leading social sites, at times sending more traffic than even Digg.
Most of the basic social media marketing tactics apply to StumbleUpon. It also helps to have a lot of mutual friends and people that will see your stumbles. However, there are some lesser-known tactics that can also help your stumbles become popular.
Selecting the right Topic: When you discover a site and submit it to StumbleUpon, it asks you to pick a topic that you’d like to submit it under. Selecting the right topic for submission is really important as this can literally make or break your stumble. If you submit to the wrong topic then people who stumble across that page will be less likely to give the page thumbs up, as it might not fit the kind of content they’re looking for.
Use relevant tags: Just as picking the right topic for submission is important it’s also important that you assign the proper tags to your stumbles. Not only does this increase relevant stumbles but users can also search either on StumbleUpon site or using its StumbleUpon toolbar.
Get a little help from your friends: StumbleUpon offers a feature where you can send your stumbles directly to your friends. They will see a little red number next to the “stumble” button on their toolbar. This lets them know that someone has sent them a stumble and the next time they hit the button they will see that page. You can even send them a little message and they can reply back. This is a feature that you have to be careful not to abuse, and it’s very tempting to do so.
Leverage groups and forums: StumbleUpon has groups for just about every topic you can think of and you can join up to 63 groups. Within some of these groups you have the ability to post relevant links for others in the group to see and discover. This feature is not available for all groups and can depend on the settings that the moderator sets for that specific group. The forums within the groups usually allow anyone to post links. Don’t spam them, though, or you can be deleted from the group by the group owner or moderator.
Create your own StumbleUpon blog: Did you know that can post HTML and images on your StumbleUpon blog? You can, and these help make your stumbles stand out to people that are browsing or stumble upon your profile. Not only can this increase your stumbles on certain pages but it can also help increase your friend count as others often friend people based on favorable impression from blogs.

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How to promote business with blogs

 People these days share their personal opinions and experiences via blogs. It is also a convenient way to connect with millions of online readers in a jiffy. The main point to consider here is related to business promotion using blogs. It may sound a bit trickier at first instance but it can be simple if  we take care of few points.
Now before you start to write a blog, work thoroughly on its content and the target audience. People are driven to your blog only when they find the content educative and informative. Do not ever compromise with the content of your blog.
So, here a few tips that would help your business develop with blogs -

Quick Indexing – Search engines readily index the blogs with a higher frequency that are  well written and contain good quality keywords. So, updating your blog frequently and writing high quality post will help boost your rank.

Easy communication -  People will pay attention to your posts only if your post contains interesting information. They will subscribe to your posts and everytime you write a new post, it gets pushed out to your readers, giving you the ability to communicate directly with them.

Brand Promotion – It allows you to promote your product and services with millions of online readers who would not have known your presence.

Build Relationships – Build relationship with your readers. Allow them to post comments on your articles such that they get more engaged and involved with you.

Promote via social media – Enhance the popularity of your blog by engaging in social media activities like- bookmarking in sites like – Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc. Also use networking sites like Facebook and twitter to get huge results for the popularity of your blog.  You can also use relevant forums to post your content.

Be an expert – Have an in-depth knowledge of what your product says and write the same for it. People will get involved to your posts only if they feel that your posts contain relevant advice and suggestions. Not only this, they would be the ones interested in buying your product.

Cheap configuration – Setting up your blog is easy and maintaining cost is simply low.

By now, you have enough tips to get started on blogging..So, what are you waiting for??

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Social Media Marketing: - Remember the basics

If you are a Social Media Marketer or you want to be the same, so just keep some basic points in your pocket.

1. Targeting the right sites

There may be thousands of social media sites in front of you but choosing the right site is very important. Don’t just waste your time on hitting every site; just be selective in your approach. For example:- For covering US audience MySpace and BEBO is a nice option, for social bookmarking -  Digg and Stumbleupon, for microblogging - Twitter and Friendfeed and so on.

Recently a new concept has arrived in which you can handle various social networking sites from a single dashboard.

2. Maintain your consistency

Always be a consistent user of social media as it will create more transparency in your network. Regular usage of social media will increase your followers list and obviously you will have a huge network. Being consistent you will come to know that what piece of your strategy works out and what doesn’t.

3. Content matters the most

Driving traffic to your website through social media will require content development that meets the expectations of social media users. Creating blog content that targets social media users doesn’t mean that you have to alienate your subscribers, contrary to the opinion of some people. What it does mean is that you will have to dedicate the time and effort to find a topic that is of particular interest to your readers and present it in a way that also appeals to social media users. For example, social media users like lists, breaking news, photos, controversy, and informative topics.

Magic Tip: - “Just spread the content what you want to listen”

4. Building network and assisting others

Networking on social media sites involves voting for the submissions of others, leaving comments, adding friends, and generally getting to know other users. With a strong network your submissions and votes will get more attention and you’ll have some friends to call on when you need help getting.

5. Conversion and Leads

In most cases just getting traffic to a website will not be your ultimate goal. Social media traffic is pretty much useless if you are not able to convert some of it into what you want. Maybe you want to convert the traffic into links, or maybe subscribers. The conversion rate of social media  traffic will usually be lower than the rates of other types of traffic, but the huge volumes sent by social media can offset a lower conversion rate and make it very targeted traffic.

So these steps can assist in social media marketing but the three things that really required are :- experimenting, strategy and action.

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Social Media Marketing

It’s quite an interesting scenario. Given a choice between social media activity and something else -what do you think you would give up before you left your favorite social network?

According to a survey: More than one-third (36%, to be exact) would sooner give up chocolate, their Pradas, or their mothers-in-law before they gave up social networking. But only half would be willing to pay a subscription fee for those site.

It’s amazing to think the limits we’ll go to for social networking. Pradas are expensive, I

get that. Mothers-in-law are…well, that’s personal, isn’t it? But giving up chocolate? C’mon, people!

With Social Media Marketing solutions, you can easily embed social media into your existing website, or you can create a separate, on line community. Either way, you can interact with your prospects, customers, and your brand proponents in a familiar format—and then use their participation to extend your reach, increase revenue, and drive innovation.

Reasons For Social Media:

1. It’s free! – Face book, My space, Twitter, Linked In and other social networks require no funds whereas, almost all other forms of advertising and marketing efforts require some kind of fee.

2. Simple & convenient to set-up and maintain – Regardless of how much web savvy you are, social networks make it very quick and simple to set-up, customize, manage & maintain your profile. This profile lists crucial information about your business. Providing you have access to a computer, you can be a part of social media.

3. Buzz! – Unlike outbound marketing efforts such as traditional advertising, social networks not only allow customers to provide feedback to organizations, they actively encourage it. Interaction, engagement and sharing are all parts of social media, which if utilized in the correct way can lead to viral exposure, trust, customer loyalty, free market research and brand growth.

4. Volume – Face book has over 300 million active users globally and still at the growing face. Other Social networks can also boost extreme levels of popularity, with Twitter unique user levels growing by over 700% in 2008. Only My space is showing any signs of a decline in numbers.

Increase your marketing reach and effectiveness

• Generate demand and increase revenue: By building trust and deeper ties with the prospect. Acc. to a survey, Customers engaged in social media spends 50% more than others.
• Establish brand champions: One can communicate their message through social media channels and can use these channels to generate referrals, share products reviews or for innovative ideas. It also helps in increasing the site traffic and advertising revenue.
• Improve customer satisfaction: Through continuous engagement with the customers, one can improve the customer satisfaction tremendously through social media.
• Extend your brand visibility & reach: With continuous interaction with the customers and prospects or by creating a familiarity and making reputation among the customers through social media, one can build the brand buzz.
• Improve retention: By being in continuous touch with the customers and replying to all their queries i.e. building a good response rate will retain our customers for longer durations.
• Advance market research and foster new product innovation: By leveraging the insights from on line discussions, groups, prospects and employees – without having any expenses on costly research and travels.

By keeping focus on your objectives and considering the points laid out in this article, it’s not only possible to survive in social media marketing, it’s likely that you will thrive.To conclude, social media is a great tool for businesses to market themselves, but only if done right. Before you go down the social road, it’s crucial to figure out a strategy and stick to it. It’s important to consider exactly who you’re looking to target, how you’re going to target them, what you’re hoping to achieve and how you will measure success.

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Blog & Big Brands

Most of the companies have their own blog known as a business blog. A business blog works as a communication tool between the company and the outside world. It provide a company with a chance to share their expertise and knowledge with a larger audience.

According to Technorati (the search engine dedicated to blogs), there are some 71 million blogs worldwide and 175,000 new blogs are being launched daily.

Business blogs plays an important role as it helps an organization to build stronger relationships with important target groups like clients, customers etc. It can help you draw more traffic and build trust with your customers as well as interact with them.

Below are the examples of major corporates which are using business blogs -

• Coca Cola - Coca Cola’s blog Coca-cola Conversations provide them opportunity to interact with the masses. They share information on a wide variety of topics right from their role in pop culture to brand history.

• Southwest Airlines - Southwest Airlines use their blog Nuts About Southwest to communicate with their customers. Users are allowed to post their comments, thoughts, suggestions and questions. User doesn’t have to register to read or watch but if user wants to rate post, share photo / video etc. he / she needs to register.
  

• Sun Microsystem and CEO Blog - Sun Microsystem’s CEO Blog – Jonathan Schwartz’s blog received about 4,00,000 hits a month in 2006. Both positive and negative comments are allowed and transparency plays major tole in its success.

• KFC - KFC is also not lacking behind in this social media race. They also have a blog called KFC Nation Citizen Blog.

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Getting banned on Facebook

     Many online marketing companies are rendering Facebook to promote their business and generate traffic to their site. But doing excessive activities can result in getting your profiles banned. Let’s know what “not-to-do” when marketing via Facebook

Creating too many profiles: People generally create 4-5 profiles and send huge friend requests to these profiles. This can lead to getting all the profiles banned at a critical stage because the administrator can track the IP address and hence, ban the account on the charge of spam .

Excessive wall postings: Flooding your friend’s wall with your updates or promotions can prove quite unethical on your terms and lead your profile in getting banned.

Promoting link by aggressive community postings and group joining: Don’t just send similar content links in every community posts. Neither join too many groups as it again counts to spamming.

Sending too many friend requests: Facebook may ban your account if you send more friend requests to different profiles in a single day as it would be considered “marketing” act.

Don’t send repetitive messages: Don’t send same message infinite no. of times. Sending similar mails to your friends or group members will cause your profile to get banned.

Don’t poke many: One main problem faced by many users is that Facebook’s latest application “Poke ‘em” pokes on your behalf. Anyone having Facebook account can poke you and astonishingly, there is no way to customize this application. So, its like getting punishment for a mistake that you have not committed.

Highly active: Remember the old saying-”Slow and steady wins the race”. So, start your activity in a proper manner. Being highly active will also make you a prime suspect in Facebook’s eyes. You are not desperate to get the links..Are you????

Lastly you can even get your account disabled for no reason at all.!!

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Email-Marketing

Email-Marketing, is a form of direct marketing which uses your mail system to send commercial messages to your customers.
Email-Marketing is popularly used by many companies to:

• Distribute information to a wider range of targeted customers at a low cost
• It is inexpensive
• Delivery Time for any email message is short
• Easily trackable via unsubscription requests,read receipts, click-through etc.
• High Reach for the subscribers who wish to receive the content based on their interests
• Allows to build royalty and acquire new customers
• Higher profits

How to increase your sales via Email-Marketing
Build a relevant mailing list: This is necessary because you must know who would be interested in buying your product. Build a list for your targeted audience because they are the ones who can be converted into your customers.
Appropriate subject-line: One of the important rule to follow is to choose a good subject line. The subject will give the first impression related to your product. Do not make the email-reader feel that it is a same “spam” mail.
Email:Less : Send less number of mails to people as they would not be interested to learn about your new product again and again. Lower the mail delivery and increase the content for that particular mail.

Disadvantages of Email-Marketing:

• Companies send bulk of unsolicited messages, also referred to as “spam” (To prevent this from happening, the subject line and content of your emails should not imply that they are spam. Avoid using words like “Free”, “Discounts”, “Coupon”, etc.)
• Difficulty in sending a mail on different ISPs and firewalls
• Strenuous to keep an email-recipients them engaged via emails

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Twitter and Big Brands

Twitter is popular with corporations worldwide. Companies are using Twitter to get the word out about their new product(s), blog post etc. Twitter stats says, it gets 60% of web traffic from outside United States.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is micro-blogging platform and social network rolled into one. It allows user to post up to 140 characters long message. In this post, I am going to talk about few brands using Twitter and what they are doing on Twitter.

Dell: Dell has created number of twitter profiles. Dell Outlet (one of Dell profiles) has used Twitter to broadcast sales items and great deals on their products at their online store. One of the Dell tweet stated that they had been able to sell $1 million worth of products using Twitter.

Comcast: Comcast is one of the world’s leading communications company. Comcast uses twitter to provide customer service to their consumers. If you have some complaint,  just drop a line to them and surely you will hear from them.

Zappos: Zappos an online store is very active in Twitter. They use twitter to interact with consumers - tell them about the company, listen to their customers, highlight the interesting facts about company etc. Zappos exceptional customer service make them trustworthy with the consumers.

Starbucks: Starbucks keep updating their twitter profile with new offers. And actively participate in threaded discussion related to their offers.
Twitter for recruiting

Some companies are using twitter for recruiting -

Its clear, Twitter is hot favorite with big brands and marketers. Be part of it and tell the world - What are you doing?

Happy Tweettering!

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Blogs-How to promote it!

As a kid most of us maintained a personal diary which would contain our thoughts,experience,views related to any particular stuff. Similar is the role of a “BLOG”.A blog refers to a website where you can write any stuff of your taste. Blogs can be either personal or general. These days various companies are leveraging blogs to get traffic to their site. So, the main question that arises is: How can a blog be promoted …

The answer is simple if we follow some sincere steps.

Firstly if you wish the online users to spend some time on your blog,then stop compromising with your content. Build a very useful and informative content for your blog so that people wish to learn from your blog post.

Secondly update your content on the blog. The interested users would be coming to your site looking for more information. Unmodified content would make them deviate to different sites. So,always update your content..

Thirdly site examples from your previous experiences in your blog so that it looks genuine to the reader.

Lastly,commenting on different yet related posts also helps boost traffic to your blog. Search out for similar topic discussions and comment on them and post a link back to your website. This will allow blog author of the particular blog to come back to your blog ,in turn heighten,the traffic to your blog.

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How to Generate Traffic from Online Discussion Forums

Internet forums or online discussion rooms are great place to discuss topics related to your business, get information on specific topic or for seeking help from other online members. These forums have evolved from what used to be ‘Newsgroups’ or ‘Listservers’ in early period of Internet.  Nowadays, these discussion forums are all over the Internet covering every niche or market segment. You can post your queries, answer queries, seek opinion of experts or simply chat with your friends through these discussion forums. In last few years, there has been a tremendous growth in online discussion forums and almost every field and topic has got a forum dedicated to it. Some companies even use these forums as channel for online customer care and support.

Discussion Forum as a Traffic Source

People join online forums for varied reasons. Some are looking for help and support, others are willing to share their knowledge and experiences, while some are there to simply chat and learn something new. Apart from these there are another form of participants whose numbers have been increasing in recent past. These are the bands of online marketers and webmasters looking to increase traffic to their website or monetize these forums.

Online discussion forums can prove to be a great source of focused traffic for your website if used properly. They can provide an effective word-of –mouth publicity for your business and website. Though most forums ban any promotional or advertising material but they do allow informative and legitimate discussions which refer to products, services or links to third party website. Forum promotion can be used effectively to advertise your business or derive some focused traffic to your website.  You will have to use your wit to promote your website and not to be labeled as a spammer.

Basic Forum Posting Rules

Before your start posting in discussion forums make sure that you have ample knowledge on the subject and ready to take an active role in meaningful discussions.  Each forum is monitored by a forum administrator (or owner) and one or more moderators who keep an eye on every post. If you sound like a spammer or break any forum rules, it is highly likely that you will be kicked out. There are some basic rules which must be followed while participating; otherwise you may end up getting yourself banned or derailing your marketing campaign. Some of them are listed below –

1. Post on the forum regularly.  If you will post frequently on a forum, other members will start recognizing you and will take your posts more seriously.
2. Post something meaningful. You should always have something useful to contribute to the forum. Research thoroughly on the subject prior to posting. Make sure you have something valuable and informative to add to the forum.
3. Mention your website only in relevant posts. Don’t try to needlessly ‘push’ your website in irrelevant posts that has nothing to do with your product category. This may annoy other participants.
4. Don’t always post a question. Also post answers to the queries posted by others. Try to answer honestly, accurately and to the best of your knowledge.
5. Always follow the forum guidelines. Every forum has its set of rules and procedures which must be followed by every participant. Read these guidelines thoroughly and always abide by them.
6.  Try not to sound like an advertiser. The minute you are compromised, people will treat you as an outcast and you may even be shown the exit.

Forum Signatures

Signatures are few lines of text that appear below you every post every time you write something.  You can put anything from your products and services to URL of your website. Some forums even allow hyper linking the text. People have made these signatures as most effective and popular form of making money from discussion forums.  Many forums don’t allow putting your signatures straight away. Some have a threshold of minimum number of required posts while in others, admin and moderators grant this privilege. There is a limit to the number of characters which can be included, so try to use this real estate efficiently.

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Social Media Marketing and Big Brands

Social Media Marketing is getting very popular among marketers these days. This makes a complete sense to me as it is the best way to ensure your presence to the world. If you check the Alexa of top sites globally (in terms of traffic), you will find many social networking sites are among the top sites list, making them an excellent way to drive traffic to your site. Many companies including some big brands have understood the importance of social media marketing and are using it to their benefit, as these sites are becoming one of the best way to reach large number of potential customers. Examples of social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Mixx, Reddit etc.

Here are some of the big brands using social media marketing -

• Coca Cola

  • Blog: Coca-Cola Conversations

  • Facebook Application: Sprite Sips and Coke Tag

  • Virtual Worlds (Second life): Virtual Thirst
    

• Dell

  • Blog: Direct2Dell, Nine official internal blogs

  • Microblogging: Twitter - 22 corporate accounts

  • Virtual Worlds: Second Life Island
    

• KFC

  • Blog: KFC Nation Citizen Blogs

  • Social networks: KFC Nation

  • Facebook: fan page
    

• National Geographic

  • Blog: The Green Guide

  • Forums: NGC Forums

  • Microblogging: Twitter account

  • Online Video: YouTube channel, Everyday Explorer

  • Social networks: MySpace, Imbee
    

• Southwest Airlines

  • Blog: Nuts About Southwest

  • Twitter (Microblogging): Southwest Air

  • Online Video: YouTube Channel

  • Photo sharing: Flickr group

As you can see that the corporations listed above are the major corporates. We all agree that everyone across globe know about them. These corporations are grabbing every opportunity they can lay their hands on, to make their presence felt globally. Its clear that social media marketing is very powerful tool. All you have to do is – be smart and know how to make it work for you.

Happy Networking!

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Know Social Media Optimization

In today’s competitive world, you need to advertise belligerently to stand out and promote your services on the internet. We have loads of marketing tools available on the internet but the one that is used popularly these days is Social Media Optimization. SMO can be described as simple online tools that people use to share their experiences,reviews,insights etc. The main objective of social media is to increase the visibility and presence of a site online. This all can be achieved by focusing on some popular channels like :-

• Discussion Forums
• Message Boards
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Viral Marketing

  (*We would be learning about these channels in forthcoming blog posts)

There are some rules which one must keep in mind when using social media for promotion :

Initial research and study: Know the requirements of your client and study it carefully so that you can leverage only the specified channels based on demography,profession,lingo etc.

Profile Creation: Create a profile on the basis of your client’s requirements. Know the right social media community that would be suitable for your profile. For e.g. Indian’s generally participate in networking sites like-Orkut, Bharatstudent, Bigadda etc; Faceparty,Friend Reunited are popular networking sites in UK…

Conversations and Participation: An important rule to keep in mind is that you have to look “real” and not “fake”.Why would someone check a link you posted in his/her profile ,when you did not even bother to converse with that person after becoming friends. Start conversations ,share a simple joke ,build a rapport with that person so that he can trust you.

Correct pitching in discussion sites:Forums are the most critical part of SMO. You have to be very careful while posting threads in forums. Never give you link in the first post. The moderator will surely ban you. Try participating in ongoing conversations and reply something informative so that the trust factor builds up.

Create educative content: If you are creating your blog on wordpress or other blog sites,you have to be sure of the content contained in that post. People will visit your blog only if they see value in your post.

Popularize your site: Creating your content is not enough. You can populate it using different social bookmarking sites like Delicious,Stumble Upon or even creating your page on wikipedia. This would surely boost up your sales.

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