subject: Drive Traffic to your Blog using Social Media Networks [print this page] Drive Traffic to your Blog using Social Media Networks
With instant access to your target audience, and the ability to keep a steady pulse on what our market is currently interested in, it has never been easier to drive traffic to your blog using social media networks.
You can generate new interest or exposure for your blog, and social networks can help you quickly locate potential buyers, connect with authority figures in your niche, expand your outreach and even conduct niche research to determine current buying patterns, trends and overall demand.
Facebook
Sign Up: http://www.Facebook.com
With Facebook, you can interact with those in your market by adding them as a contact, but you can also generate exposure within the Facebook community using:
1) Facebook Fan Pages
Creating a Facebook Fan Page is a free (and effective) method of generating traffic to your blog and building a reputation within your niche market. You can add notes, messages, download links, and images to your fan page, while managing your fan pages all directly from within your main Facebook account.
Marketing Resources:
When marketing your business with Facebook, there are many different applications available to help you maximize your exposure and maintain your account, including:
Paid advertising is a great way to drive traffic to your blog and is really recommended for established bloggers who have a product to sell. Facebook offers its own internal advertising center where you can set up "Adwords style" advertisements that appear on the right hand side of a person's Facebook profile.
With Facebook advertising, you can pay per click (CPC) or impression (CPM), and can schedule your ads to run for a specific time or on an ongoing basis. You can customize your Facebook ads so that they become visible only to potential customers based on gender, age, or even location.
You can create your advertisement by visiting http://www.Facebook.com/advertising
Twitter
Sign Up: http://www.twitter.com
Twitter is a micro blogging site that provides you with an opportunity to write short 144 word messages to the people who follow you.
By sending out your own messages, 'follow' updates from those you are interested in and retweeting interesting information to those who follow you Twitter has grown to be an active forum for bloggers and affiliate marketers.
You can enhance your blog content by:* Adding a Twitter plugin to your blog so your blog posts are automatically sent out to your followers* Add the link from your Twitter profile to your blog* Add a Twitter widget to your blog so people can join in the conversations you are having* Start groups of followers* Use #hastags with your keywords so anyone looking for your keyword phrase has the opportunity to find your Tweet* One thing to keep in mind when using Twitter as a marketing channel is that the more interactive you are, the more exposure you'll receive.Every post you submit through your Twitter account will go out to everyone who follows you. In addition, your posts will be archived within your main profile page so that new followers can browse through previous updates.Twitter is an incredibly useful tool when conducting niche research or testing the viability of a market.MySpaceSign Up: http://www.myspace.comNot as active as it once was MySpace has a huge entertainment industry following so if you blog in the area of music or entertainment it is a great place to be.With MySpace, you can quickly create squeeze page style templates, generating interest and fresh exposure to your products and services and can also quickly locate potential partners, joint venture offers and others interested in your niche market. In order to create a memorable MySpace page, consider customizing the design and layout. XangaSign Up: http://www.xanga.comXanga offers users the ability to share music, book reviews and create blogs so it is a great way for you to share your blog posts and link back to your content on your main blog from time to time.You will also be able to quickly connect with your target audience through their social networking community features.Each site created within the community is called a "Xanga Site" where you can post frequent updates, including blog posts, and article content.You can also choose to make certain posts private, preventing access to the material unless the reader joins your contact list.NingSign Up: http://www.Ning.comNing offers people an opportunity to create their own social network. In addition, you can browse through thousands of social communities and join those that relate to your niche market.If you develop your own social network within Ning, you will be given a unique URL that you can give to your customers, peers and associates.In the past this was a free service but now there is a small monthly charge to run a small social network.You customize your social network with a unique blend of design customizations and layout ideas and develop surveys, polls and allow those who join your network to respond to profile questions, open conversations and threads.You can also enhance your network by adding in modules through a simple 'drag & drop' system, and best of all, users only require one login to access all of the social networks and communities they become a member of from within Ning.LinkedinSign Up: http://www.Linkedin.comGreat for business to business bloggers Linked in is a business oriented social community where you can invite people to become part of your connections.One of the greatest aspects of creating a Linkedin account is in being able to generate organic traffic to your site from the major search engines.Website links featured on your Linkedin profile page will quickly rank within the search engines. By modifying existing labels and tabs to feature relevant keywords relating to your niche market, you will be able to quickly optimize your Linkedin account and boost your search engine ranking!Linkedin is also helpful in promoting your blog's RSS feed by connecting your Linkedin account with external blog sites, including Bloglink, Blogger, Live Journal, Movable Type,Vox and Wordpress.comSo there you have it, the top social community sites where you can quickly build an online presence and generate traffic to your blog.Spend some time creating your social networking accounts and post frequent updates to retain your following base and establish contacts and leadsThere are literary thousands of different social networking sites that you can use for traffic generation. As well as the ones mentioned above here are a few more popular ones.Friendster: http://www.Friendster.comOrkut: http://www.Orkut.comZorpia: http://www.Zorpia.comBebo: http://www.Bebo.comFlixster: http://www.Flixster.comTagged http://www.Tagged.comhi5 http://www.hi5.comFubar http://www.Fubar.com http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/drive-traffic-to-your-blog-using-social-media-networks-4431758.html
