No one can deny that Facebook has become a powerful force in Internet Marketing and we don’t want to be left in the dust. I have started a Facebook fan page and it’s a pretty simple task.

Become Our Fan

I would love for you to follow our Fan Page by becoming a fan and participating in any way you choose. Don’t forget to comment on our wall.

I have been adding submitted pictures of subscribers wearing our promotional buttons (get your free button today) on our Photo’s page. Next I will add a landing page using the custom tab feature so new visitors don’t land on the wall or info page.

Do you have a Facebook Fan page? Feel free to add the link in your comments. If you don’t, you can set one up here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php Any suggestions on improving a Facebook Fan Page or getting the most from it?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a website out there that looks at how the top brands are using social media and how effective their campaigns are? Let me introduce you to ENGAGEMENTdb. ENGAGEMENTdb is developing the first database measuring online engagement for the top brands.

It would be irresponsible, as marketers, to ignore what the top brands are up to. Even though we can  barely comprehend their marketing budgets we can learn a lot by watching what works and learning why. Are they on Linkedin or Facebook? Do they have a blog or a discussion forum? Do they have a YouTube or Flickr presence? Hey, do they Twitter? If they do ENGAGEMENTdb has will not only let you know but will actually give you they links to each and rate how well they are doing. Now you can track favorite companies online. You can even add add your company to the this comprehensive social media database!

You can download the free 2009 ENGAGEMENTdb report (.pdf) and get details on social media efforts of the top brands. For example, see how Starbucks obtained the highest engagement score with just a six person social media team. See the best practices that build brand engagement.

ENGAGEMENTdb is just starting out yet their content is very impressive. ENGAGEMENTdb has no Google PageRank and an Alexa rank of 289597 and I’m certain we will witness a top ranked site emerge very soon. I know they make my bookmarks.

It is nice to get details like this without buying expensive white papers. What do you think? Can we learn from a site like this?

Everyone’s heard of Technorati. Personally, Up to now I haven’t taken full advantage of the Technorati benefits. Just a short while ago I was looking over Technorati.com and the next thing I knew half an hour went by. There really is a ton of information there.

If you love Blogging as much as I do you will appreciate Technorati’s ‘Top 100 Blogs‘ and ‘What’s Popular‘ sections. These two sections under Technorati’s Blogger Central are great starting points to quickly see what the heavy hitters are doing. If you’re looking for tips and ideas you may as well learn from the pros.

I’m just now getting to claiming our new URL so we’re starting over on Technorati but like I said we weren’t really taking advantage before. So check our Technorati Profile and don’t forget to add me to your favorites if you like the site.

Blogging is the greatest thing for user interaction since the beginning of message boards and forums. People love to express their opinions by posting on their Blogs and others love reading and commenting on them. Niche Blogs seem to be the best examples of this interactive and enjoyable behavior, probably because it truly is sincere interest.

Almost immediately we Internet Marketers could see the marketing potential of Blogs and other methods of social networking. Start a Blog, write posts directly related to your market’s interest, optimize it for the search engines and insert a few advertisements. Pure gold to any marketer with any vision or common sense at all. That’s even without considering other benefits like RSS subscriptions and the fact search engines seem to index Blog content like it was going out of style.

So why do so many Internet Marketers pass up some of the easiest and quickest benefits when it comes to blogging? Those benefits I’m referring to are those you get from commenting on other marketer’s blogs. I think it’s because we let ourselves become hyper focused on promotions and our own site’s content we forget to stop and look around. It’s true, many marketers are simply too self-centered to notice others not in a JV or affiliate relationship with them but I think most of us just get tunnel vision. That short sightedness can cost a lot. Let’s take a quick look at what many are missing;

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Here’s one that gets everyone’s attention. If you actually read and participate on other marketer’s Blogs and that post gets indexed and ranked you have a potential back link. We all know what these one-way links can mean, especially if coming from a site considered to have weight in the view of the search engine. Unfortunately many, or even most, Blogs are now using the “No-Follow” tag. This prevents the spiders from following the link to your site. There is a ‘No Follow Free‘ movement out there so more and more Blogs, including every one of mine, are passing some of their link juice to commenters.

Indirect Traffic
Indirect traffic from other marketer’s blogs, especially the more popular ones, can really add up. This is a huge benefit that many marketers overlook – targeted traffic. We’re in an era of interactivity with the popularity of Social Media or Web 2.0 and we need to re-think that strong traditional business belief that the competition is the enemy. If your site’s competition is generating traffic you now have the opportunity to share in that wealth by participating a little. Read the post, form an opinion and make an appropriate, intelligent and impressive comment and watch what happens. Soon you’ll start receiving traffic from those impressive comments because people will want to know more about you. That’s how you create another stream of readers, subscribers, commenters and hopefully a few buyers.

Credibility As An Expert
Commenting on other marketer’s Blogs can quickly translate into credibility as an expert in your niche, or in this case an Internet Marketer. If you impress people with your comments and they keep seeing your comments over and over you will gain their respect and become viewed as an expert. What do you think being considered an expert will do to your conversion rate?

Building Relationships
Here’s something many fail to understand about why social marketing is so effective. Most online business owners are looking at Web 2.0 as a new way of doing business. It’s really just a new way to utilize a tradition business requirement that’s been around since the beginning of time – building relationships. This is a requirement, not a marketing tactic or part of a business plan but an absolute requirement if you plan to stay in business for any time at all and it’s always going to be a requirement. That’s why classics like ‘How to Win Friends & Influence People‘ by Dale Carnegie will always be popular. Written in 1931, it’s as true and relevant today as it ever was. Social networking just opened up the flood gates of relationship potential and we’re seeing history in the making. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

The Bottom Line
Blogs provide a wonderful degree of interactivity and if you’re going to invest the time to read someone’s post take an extra few minutes to give your feedback and comment on the piece. The benefits can be enormous and the time required minimal. Blog comment benefits are one of the easiest and quickest ways to generating traffic, page rank, friends and respect. Are you taking advantage of it?

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We all know that if no one goes to your site it doesn’t have a chance of generating an income. Common sense also tells us that we need a steady flow of website traffic. If there was one single hard and fast rule in generating income for your website, which there isn’t, it would be a steady and continuous flow of traffic.

We want a lot of site traffic but not just any traffic, it MUST be targeted traffic. That term, targeted traffic, may seem to be getting a little old or worn out but it’s just as true today as it ever was. If your site is a tool to sell E-Book software, for example, what good does a thousand people auto-surfing for their own site visitors do? The fact they are jumping through hoops to get low NO quality traffic should be a pretty good indication they’re probably not buyers.

Generating targeted visitors to your site is just as important as sales copy, pricing and every other sales consideration – other than ROI (Return On Investment) of course. If you’re taking a loss then the whole business in in trouble.

The need for targeted traffic is the same as it always has been but many of the preferred methods of generating those site visitors is changing. Not completely, the traditional methods such as article marketing, ezine advertising, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) etc. are still necessary but now we have many other options with the success of Social Networking or Web 2.0.

It’s a very exciting time, especially for those of us taking advantage of the Web 2.0 era. I hate that term, Web 2.0, it sounds like an alternate internet somewhere. I remember when I first heard the term I was wondering how they were going to keep it separate from the old web lol. Social Networking and Web 2.0 are the same thing if it’s still unclear. Not to complicate things but I prefer Social Marketing.

What makes social marketing exciting from a traffic generation stand point is just how ‘targeted’ it can get. When sites like MySpace started getting Internet Marketers excited, I jumped right in. Right from the start I could see how if not used properly the whole thing could be a huge waste of time. Those marketers adding anyone and everyone as ‘friends‘ in order to get their friends list up into the thousands were going about everything wrong. I decided to only allow other members in that had something to do with online business. My MySpace page only has less than 600 members but it’s targeted. I even had the Google PageRank up to 05/10 but I see it’s down to 02/10 now -slap:-( My niche is Internet Marketing so now if I send a broadcast it can be seen by several hundred other marketers and online business owners. For that broadcast to go out to ten thousand teeny-boppers, bands and spamming models (I’m being very kind with that term) would only be a waste of everyone’s time and completely ignored. So you can’t just sign up, jump in and start sending traffic to your site like many are implying, you still need to give it a little thought and planning to make it work.

MySpace was my first but it’s certainly not the only kid on the block. There are literally thousands of Social Networking sites out there. Many with their own twists and benefits. In fact, there are so many you could easily get caught up in another problem – no time for anything else. What good is the traffic if you never have new content for the visitor to see and you don’t have anything to offer? Combine all of the various sites out there for social networking, social bookmarking, Blogging networks etc. with the fact that you’re actually making new friends and having fun and you have the potential of becoming addicted.

Social Networking has turned the tables on large sites. Many of the larger sites that were dominating the search engine listings and there niche market have all but taken a back seat to someone that just runs a blog and it grew by accident. That’s got to hurt, right? You spend years developing an online business. Countless hours and a ton of money building traffic and growing your list and some guy with a blog comes around and kicks your butt right off the top search results! It’s just amazing to see someone posting daily to a blog and just being social skyrocket to a pagerank of 7/10 with RSS feed subscribers of twenty thousand or more. You see, it pays to stay on top of things. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

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There are a ton of Blog networking sites/directories but I’m only going to mention two for now. They’re my favorites and you’ll soon see that it takes up a little of your time to actually get the most from them so small steps might be best for now. The name ‘Directories’ seems insufficient because these are truly full featured social networking sites for Bloggers.

As with any social networking site, you can only benefit from the possible traffic if you actively participate. Yes, that means being social. You need to comment, read, comment more, rate and than add more comments. The cool thing about the two sites I mention below is you can even get credit from just visiting a Blog without commenting but I do recommend you comment. Most Blogs have added the available widgets so they and their visitors will see your picture or avatar and some will click to see what’s there. It’s important to be logged into both networks while you are Blogging so the widgets know to add you as a recent visitor.

A note on commenting. Keep in mind you’re commenting to create online bonds and relationships with new friends and contacts. You’ll get traffic and fellow participation from building these relationships not by simply commenting on a Blog. Never never never comment just to get a link back to your site! Most Bloggers will delete silly comments like ‘Nice site‘ and ‘I agree‘ and many will even ban your IP address. To truly participate you need to actually read the piece and form an opinion. Only then can you intelligently comment on the post. That’s all that anyone is asking and everyone hates comment spam. Please don’t be that comment spammer.

Here Goes Number One:

At the top of my favorites list is MyBlogLog.com. See my profile here. MyBlogLog.com is a very popular site that helps you develop Blog traffic, track your stats and they even use no-follow free links to your submitted Blogs so the search engines follow the link to your site.

Link love and the occasional click is certainly not going to significantly increase your targeted site traffic alone. You need to participate here too. MyBlogLog has a huge collection of communities and you should join and participate in as many communities as you can stand.

Add as many friends as you can that share your same interests. Remember, the key to quality traffic is targeted traffic and you can get that by being somewhat selective when adding new friends. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to friends but you still want as many as you can.

Now that you belong to a bunch of communities why not create a few of your own. Popular communities can be pure gold to Bloggers and you will benefit from creating a quality resource and venue for your MyBlogLog friends.

Lets make our efforts count. Visit your friends profiles and leave a message. Be sensible and leave a nice comment and not the usual ‘Please visit my blog’ or ‘Subscribe to my feed’ nonsense we see everyday by those that haven’t quite figured it out yet. You have to be sociable and spamming everyone’s message board is not the way to generating quality traffic. Sincere comments and messages will bring people to your profile and that’s your online calling card. It’s a simple click to your Blog and many will take that step if you’ve made it interesting for them.

Now here’s the real fun part. Blogging! Yes, now you need to visit your friends Blogs, read the posts and place a comment or two. Go back to their profile and let them know it was you that posted a comment to their enjoyable article. This will certainly earn at least one visit to your Blog and possibly a comment. It’s a two-way street. If someone is kind enough to comment on your Blog visit theirs and try to comment there as well.

Now For My Other Favorite:

The second Blog networking site I swear by is BlogCatalog. See my profile here. If I had to decide which of the two sites I like the most I’d have to choose BlogCatalog. BlogCatalog is very similar to MyBlogLog. Your messages box becomes your Shoutbox and communities are called neighborhoods but it works pretty much the same.

A nice feature unique to BlogCatalog is the Comments & Reviews section for each neighborhood. Each Blog gets it’s own neighborhood and it’s a great place to participate in neighborhoods you join.

Another priceless feature of BlogCatalog is the ability to post a broadcast that your friends will see. This is an incredible feature that allows you to let friends know you just added a cool post or whatever you want. Don’t get carried away or everyone will simple unsubscribe and you’ll loose friends.

I also like BlogCatalog’s Related Blogs and Tag Cloud sections. These can help Bloggers find your profile and help you find similar and relevant Blogs to befriend.

The only drawback to BlogCatalog that I can see is they do add the ‘No Follow‘ tag to the external links to your Blogs. It’s their prerogative and decision but it would be nice if they would consider spreading a little of that PageRank since they would be nothing without the members but that’s just my opinion. I still love BlogCatalog and I’m glad to be a member.