FaceBook Helps You Start Your Own Social Network

Starting another social network seemed like a big task a few months ago. How do you get all those new users to sign up with yet another social network?

I think there will be thousands of new social networks and I think there should be, especially those that are more niche-oriented and who target a specific group rather than everyone and anyone.

This is from a story at the NYTimes that explains how easy FaceBook is making it for others to start their own social networking website.

Facebook Helps Social Start-Ups Gain Users

By JENNA WORTHAM

A growing number of start-up companies are outsourcing the sign-up process. They are making use of a Facebook service that lets users log into new sites using their Facebook credentials. The free service, Facebook Connect, can help nascent Web services recruit a healthy crowd of users in a hurry, and help the users find their friends on those sites.

At the same time, the service reinforces Facebook’s role as the central hub of the social networking world.

Most sites hedge their bets by also creating ways for people to sign up directly, or to use their log-in information from Twitter, in addition to Facebook, as Plancast has elected to do.

Facebook Connect has helped give rise to a new wave of social Web services that benefit from piggybacking on Facebook and its 400 million users.

Are you building your own social network yet?

If Jay-Z Was An Internet Marketer – Music Video

Why Do I Need a Blog?

Why do I need a business blog and why should I hire someone to manage it for me?

By now, most business Website Owners have learned there are advantages to having a company blog. But why do I need a company blog? How will it really help me?

Most bloggers, even those who have been blogging for a long time, do not truly understand all of the ways a blog can benefit your business. They are good bloggers. They even may know a little about SEO and can put all the keywords and phrases into your blog. But do they really know about blog marketing and what the benefits are for their clients? Do they really know SEO or the technical aspects of operating a blog?

Do you know all of the benefits of having a business blog?

Let’s see;

Why does my Business need a Blog?

A business blog is the most cost-effective way to add fresh content to your website daily.

It is the most affordable way to build link popularity.

A business blog can make you money through Conversational Marketing.

A business blog will help drive more traffic to your website.

It gives you a place to offer special deals, make announcements, issue press releases, and get feedback from customers.

You can have a private blog that your employees or shareholders read.

There are way too many ways your company can benefit from a business blog to list on one page. As they say; “Think Outside The Box” and create new ways blogs can be used. All the uses for a blog have not even been invented yet. Be the first to try something new. Call us at 786-317-8774 and get a free business blog consultation. We’ll brainstorm with you!

Your business blog can be within your website or on it’s own domain name.

Your company blog can be used to help capture a specific search phrase or phrases in the search engines.

You can have a company blog in your website and one on its’ own domain name, each achieving a different purpose.

You can have multiple blogs all working for you at the same time. The options are endless.

It is not a one-size-fits-all deal. Our Blog Consultant will talk with you, analyze your business, and come up with a strategy that benefits your business. Click here to get a free business blog management quote.

Blog Management and Marketing

Blog Content

Your blog content will make a lot of difference to how well you do with both the search engines and with visitors. Whatever your goal is for your blog, to make your blog popular to read, to make sales, to drive traffic to your website, to get people to sign up for something like a newsletter or affiliate program, or something else, you will need good, original content.

Not only do you need good original content on your blog, you need it every single day.
Blog search websites like technorati.com and Google’s BlogSearch list blogs by the most recent posts that match the user’s keywords. If you are not posting daily, you can get buried beneath all of the other blogs that do one post or more every day. Our daily blogging service will make sure your blog is updated every day or more often if you choose that option.

Blog Posting is more than just writing. If you want your blog to be interesting to user and also rank well in the search engines, you need to know how to structure your blog posts properly.

Do you know the proper way to write your blog post titles?

Do you know how to use keywords in your blog post for the search engines without seeming spammy or obvious to your readers?

Do you know how to use good anchor text and a proper linking strategy?

Our bloggers are trained to write relevant, interesting blog posts that are also optimized for the search engines. Read more about our Daily Blog Posting Service.

Social Bookmarking and Social Networking

Social Bookmarking and Social Networking are extremely beneficial to your blog. It can help you with link popularity, attracting more visitors to your blog, more comments on your blog posts, and even help you rank better with the search engines. However, social bookmarking is time consuming.

Many people try to automate the process for that reason. Automated social bookmarking will not get you all of the benefits that social networking will get you if you take the time to do it yourself. Most business owners do not have the time it takes to participate on these social networks. That is why Blog Content Provider does it for you. Our basic social bookmarking package comes with our Daily Blogging Service, but we also offer social bookmarking as a standalone service. Read more about our Social Bookmarking Service.

Professional Full Service Blog Management

Let our staff completely manage your business blog for you. We will handle everything. We will choose a domain name for you where necessary, provide blog hosting, do the installation, create or choose a blog template, optimize your blog for the search engines, provide the daily content, and do the social bookmarking. You turn your business blog over to us and we do it all for you. Read more about our Complete Business Blog Management Service.

Blog SEO and Programming

Blog Installation

Wordpress claims you can install wordpress in just 7 minutes. Some cpanels have fantastico that will automatically create a database and install wordpress for you. But is that all there is to installing a wordpress blog? No. There are better ways to securely install a wordpress blog on your server.

Then you need to choose the right plugins to enhance the usability and improve the SEO of your blog. Every blog is different. Every blog has different goals and obstacles. So choosing the right plugins is more than just going to someone’s favorite list of plugins and using them all.

Some blog service companies brag that they install wordpress with more than 80 plugins! Wow! 80! How many of those plugins do you really need? Usually just a few. We securely install your wordpress blog and choose plugins for you that fit your specific needs. Read more about Blog Installation.

Blog Setup and Configuration

A lot of people will tell you that choosing the settings in the admin area of your wordpress blog is self-explanatory. To who? There are a lot of choices to make in the admin area.

An experienced Blog Manager knows which settings are best to use from experience. For instance;

Do you know the best sites to put into your ping list?

Do you know the proper way to create categories?

Post Slugs?

Is time-stamping a good idea?

Do you know how to configure all of the plugins or get an API Key?

Our Blog installation specialists will set everything up for you. Read more about Blog Configuration.

Blog Theme Installation and Editing

Here again, it sounds easy. You choose a theme, upload it to your themes directory, and voila! You’re done right? No. Choosing a theme isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are tons of free themes on the web. You could buy one from a designer. You can have one custom made for you.

Do you know a good theme from a bad one? I mean besides how pretty it is. Did you know that sometimes free themes have hidden malicious code in them, put there by the programmer/designer?

Are you able to determine good code from bad code? Is the code in the theme written in a way that will hurt your chances in the search engines?

Do you know how to edit the php in the header.php file, sidebar.php, or footer.php to add the enhancements that will make your blog both more attractive and more productive?

Choosing the right theme for your blog is more than just finding one that looks nice. You do not need to have a custom blog theme built. You can use a free blog theme. But you need to know how to choose the right one. Our Blog Installation Service includes choosing and installing the right theme for you. If you want a custom theme, you can read more about Custom Blog Themes here.

Blog SEO

You need to optimize your blog for the search engines. That means editing the code of your blog theme, setting up proper permalink structure, creating the right categories, and even choosing the right plugins, among other things. Our Blog SEO specialists go over your blog theme line by line to get rid of unwanted or unnecessary code.

We fix the blog title structure. We install and configure your blog plugins. We create a proper permalink structure. We edit your blog template to install feedburner, email scripts, affiliate buttons, or whatever else you need. Our clients are very happy with the search engine rankings their blogs are getting. Let us show you how we can improve your results. Read more about Blog SEO.

If you are not sure what you need, call us at 786-317-8774 for a free business blog management or SEO consultation.

Social Bookmarking Service

Why do you need a Social Bookmarking Service? Do you have a network of friends at all of the different social bookmarking websites like Digg, Delicious, Propeller, Blogs.pn, Twitter, Facebook, Blog Catalog, Bloglines, etc.? If not, you can either take the time to build up a list of friends at each network or you can use a Social Bookmarking Service that already has that.

Social Bookmarking can no longer be considered a fad nor can it be ignored if you want to create a successful Internet marketing plan. Social bookmarking will boost the traffic to your blog or website as much as ten times your current traffic and more traffic means more sales. It will also generate more comments on your blog.

This is called User Generated Content and the increased activity helps you rank better with search engines. Social Bookmarking builds link popularity. More people link to your blog and your blog posts after seeing it at a social bookmarking website.

Social Bookmarking Service Details

Manual Social Bookmarking Service – We do not use automated social bookmarking software. Anyone who does will get your blog or website banned from the social bookmarking websites. We manually bookmark each url, each page of your website, and every single blog post made to your blog daily.

Daily Social Bookmarking Service – We bookmark and share your new content every single day. This means daily traffic and activity for your website and blog.

Comments – We summarize each blog post on the social bookmarking website to encourage people to visit your blog. We do our best to be creative and generate interest in visiting your blog. We don’t just bookmark and run.

Call us at 786-317-8774 to get started right away or contact us using our Social Bookmarking Service form here.

Rotation between Social Bookmarking Websites – We do not use the same social bookmarking website each time we bookmark your blog posts. We choose different sites to bookmark your blog posts every day. This ensures that you are getting links from many different social networking sites and also ensures people do not get tired of seeing the same site or blog posted at any one social bookmarking website.

Social Networking Service – We bookmark other member’s websites and blog posts and vote on their stories they submit so they will in turn do the same for the blog posts we submit for you. Social networking is more than just bookmarking your web pages and blog posts. It’s about building a network of friends and participating in the social bookmarking websites.

Social Bookmarking Service Options

Basic Social Bookmarking Service – We bookmark each new blog post at one social bookmarking website daily. This will usually triple the traffic to your blog, depending on your blog’s topic. In other words, your mileage may vary depending on how popular the topic of your blog is. $100 per month. Contact us about our social bookmarking service using this form or call us at 786-317-8774.

Bronze Social Bookmarking Service – This is double the basic social bookmarking service plan. We bookmark each blog post at two social bookmarking websites. $195 per month. Contact us about our social bookmarking service using this form or call us at 786-317-8774.

Silver Social Bookmarking Service – We bookmark your blog posts at 3 social bookmarking websites daily. This plan is the most popular choice. $285 per month. Contact us about our social bookmarking service using this form or call us at 786-317-8774.

Gold Social Bookmarking Service – The Gold plan is bookmarking each blog post made to your blog at 4 social bookmarking websites. $380 per month. Contact us about our social bookmarking service using this form or call us at 786-317-8774.

Platinum Social Bookmarking Service – This is the premium package and gets the most results. We bookmark each blog post at 5 social bookmarking websites daily. $475 per month. Contact us about our social bookmarking service using this form or call us at 786-317-8774.

Our email address is info@blogcontentprovider.com if you have a problem with the form.

Furl Has Come Unfurled

We do a lot of social bookmarking, and one of our favorite sites is Furl. We like Furl for a number of reasons, one of which is because every bookmark provides a back link to your website. But that’s not the only reason to enjoy a bookmarking site. We also like StumbleUpon and SU bookmarks don’t provide back links (though your profile at SU does).

At any rate, we learned just yesterday that Furl is going away. It’s a sad day, but don’t utterly so. They are actually integrating with Diigo, which is fast becoming another one of our favorite sites.

You have to respect a website that does the right thing for the right reasons. That website is Furl. And Diigo is in good company in taking all of the Furl links under its own wings.

If you have a Furl account you’ll need to migrate all of your links to Diigo. If you don’t, they are lost forever. Look for me at Diigo with the user name Poetwarrior.

Traffic: The Single Most Important Thing To Do For Your Blog

You’ve set up your company blog and optimize every post to achieve high rankings in the search engines. Now what?

Don’t rest on your laurels. You need to market your blog. But how do you do that?

There are several ways you can market your blog and drive traffic to it. Here are a few that we recommend:

• Article marketing
• Social bookmarking
• Social networking
• Forum posting
• Pay per click advertising
• E-mail marketing
• Directory submissions
• Sending out link requests

Each of these methods of online marketing is effective in its own way. Article marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing online and is great for driving traffic if you do it on a consistent basis.

Chances are, if you have a blog with Blog Content Provider then we’ve talked to you about social bookmarking. If we haven’t then you should give us a call because this is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog.

Social networking is different from social bookmarking in one aspect – the emphasis is on building relationships with people with similar interests in order to bring them to your website so that they can see what you are doing. Social bookmarking focuses on the content; social networking focuses on the relationships.

Forum posting is also effective in driving traffic to your website. The idea is to simply join a conversation and be a contributor. When people see how valuable you are in giving contributions to the group they will trust you more and visit your website.

PPC click marketing, aka pay per click, is very effective, especially for the short term, but it’s the only method of marketing mentioned here that requires a fee beyond any service provider that you hire to act on your behalf.

E-mail marketing is still effective and even in this day many people use e-mail without being fully connected to the Internet. We always recommend marketing your blog through RSS feeds, but you should also have a way for people to receive notice of your blog through e-mail such as a blog promotion newsletter (be sure to ask about Blog Content Provider’s newsletter services).

Directory submissions and link requests are on the bottom end of the spectrum for blog marketing, but I wouldn’t leave them. You never know how people will find you so you should give them every opportunity to do so.

You can rely entirely on SEO for blog marketing, but why limit yourself. While most of your blog traffic will come from search engines, there is a lot more potential out there for getting traffic to your blog. Some bloggers report that Twitter, StumbleUpon, or another social media source is the biggest driver of traffic to their blogs. By focusing on marketing your blog, you can increase your traffic and your conversions. Don’t just leave it to chance.

For more information about blogging, talk to a blog consultant.

Do You Mixx?

I love using Mixx. It’s one of my favorite social bookmarking communities. In fact, I moderate one of the Mixx groups – the Mortgage and Real Estate Mixx Group.

Recently, Mixx upgraded and added some cool features. Now, when you submit new bookmarks you will be taken to a page where you are asked to submit the bookmark to one of several categories. Then you will be told that your Mixxing is 50%. If you want your Mixxing to go up you just share your story with friends, leave a comment, which you can do on the initial Submit page, and add the Mixx to some groups.

This is a unique approach to bookmarking. I like these features as they are subtle reminders that bookmarking is more than just saving a page and moving on. You should also share it with friends and people with similar interests.

3 Social Services That Are A Must For Your Blog

If you blog for your business then I’d recommend the following three social media services at a very minimum:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• StumbleUpon

With Facebook, you can have your blog posts automatically filtered through your Facebook profile so that your fans can read each post from Facebook. Your fans that are avid Facebook users are more likely to visit your blog through Facebook than any other service, even an RSS feed. Using Facebook in conjunction with Twitter is a very valuable combination. Install Twitter Tools plugin into WordPress so that your blog posts automatically post to Twitter. And you can create your Facebook settings to sync with Twitter so that every time either your Facebook status or Twitter status changes then they are both updated. So that blog post you just made that suddenly updates your Twitter status also updates your Facebook status. Powerful! Instant promotion to all of your fans on both services.

StumbleUpon should be used for its traffic possibilities. There is no automation for SU, but you can submit your content to StumbleUpon and share it with a handful of friends. If it is content worth reading then they will vote on it and share it with their friends. For many bloggers, StumbleUpon is the highest or second highest source of traffic.

Get bookmarked.

Enjoy These Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is one way to promote your blog. The following list of social bookmarking websites offer do-follow links:

• http://rapidpicks.com/
• http://blogmarks.net/
• http://buddymarks.com/
• http://digg.com/
• http://ez4u.net/
• http://ma.gnolia.com/
• http://mylinkvault.com/
• http://spurl.net/
• http://a1-webmarks.com/
• http://backflip.com/
• http://bibsonomy.org/
• http://blogmemes.net/
• http://bmaccess.net/
• http://bookmarktracker.com/bt/home
• http://connectedy.com/index.php
• http://corank.com/
• http://furl.net/
• http://givealink.org/cgi-pub/bookmarklet/bookmarkletLogin.cgi
• http://mister-wong.com/
• http://mixx.com/
• http://mypip.com/index.html
• http://myvmarks.com/
• http://newsvine.com/
• http://oyax.com/
• http://plugim.com/
• http://propeller.com/
• http://shoutwire.com/
• http://squidoo.com/
• http://syncone.net/
• http://tedigo.net/index.cfm
• http://www.spicybookmark.com

Now, keep in mind that social bookmarking is not about the links. It’s about marketing your blog in such a way that people with similar interests can find you easily. But getting inbound links that pass off link juice is a nice bonus.

Myth Busting: John Kreiss Destroys 5 Blogging Myths

You’ll love this guest article or my name isn’t John Kreiss.

Actually, it’s not. But the author of great article on blogging myths is named John Kreiss and you’d better listen because he knows what he’s talking about.

Five Myths About Blogging and Social Media

By John Kreiss

Based on information obtained by the 2008 Social Media Survey of Real Estate and Construction professionals published by MorganSullivan, Inc., social media are not widely used nor understood by many professionals currently working in these industries. Here are a few perceptions or myths held by some of the survey respondents:

Most bloggers are under 30 years old. According to Technorati’s annual blogosphere report, 58% of bloggers are 35 or older. There are business benefits to blogging and many marketers are starting to understand the benefits.

Blogging is for geeks and is a waste of time. David Meerman Scott’s recent example of how blogging brought Century 21 Real Estate to the top page of the Google search engine is a pretty good example of how quickly a firm can position itself for very little cost. How could positioning your company to get inquiries from clients be a waste of time? When people search for products and services today, they often use search engines like Google. Getting your company on the top page improves your chances of getting inquiries for new business. Blogging is not just for geeks anymore either. Knowledge of HTML code (universal language of the Internet) might be helpful, but it is not required. There are many successful bloggers who don’t know how to write HTML code and don’t need to because blog hosting providers including WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, and many more, make it quite easy and user friendly to build and operate blogs.

Blogging is time consuming. Some blogs can be time consuming, but many blogs get high traffic with postings of 500 words or less and some tasks including newsletters and press releases can be rolled into blogging allowing smart companies to gain efficiencies in marketing and PR activities.

Social Media would not work in construction or real estate. According to the MorganSullivan survey, many real estate and construction companies rely on word of mouth marketing to win new work. Social media are ways to use the Internet to capitalize on word of mouth marketing. If word of mouth marketing is successful, social media should be successful.

There is no way to track ROI with blogging and Social Media. This one is difficult to prove, but it’s also difficult to prove with print advertising, direct mail, and other marketing communication including press releases. Many real estate and construction companies, however, use these old tools because they’re confident that they will produce results. Start blogging and include social media sites like digg, diigo, and delicious, and see your web site traffic spike. Getting more clients to come to you seems like ROI to me.

John P. Kreiss

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Kreiss

John Kreiss – EzineArticles Expert Author

Our clients get great results using these methods of marketing: Blogging and social media marketing. Why not join their ranks?