February 3, 2012

The Wonderful World of Web 2.0

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a term that’s often misused.  Some people use the term to refer to a particular style of graphics design, but that’s not what web 2.0 is really about.  Web 2.0 is all about user-generated content.

This means the visitors to your site generate the majority of the content on the site, as opposed to the site owner or writers creating the content.  A perfect example of web 2.0 is Squidoo.  Squidoo is a social network, which is a type of web 2.0 site.

Although the site does post some of its own content, such as the lensmaster tip blog, the vast majority of the site was built by individuals creating their own pages within the site.  When a user signs up to the site, they’re allowed to position themselves as experts on anything from A-Z (they even have a separate section for R and X rated pages that are kept from the general G-rated public).

They create a unique page on the Squidoo domain, with all sorts of information about their niche topic.  They can create or join groups and post in the SquidU forum to communicate with others in the community.

One of the oldest types of web 2.0 sites is the forum.  Forums are almost as old as the Internet itself, and they were one of the first types of web 2.0 concepts.  Other very old web 2.0 predecessors were guestbooks, free-for-all link sites, and classified ad sites.

These days, web 2.0 sites are more complex.  Rather than simply posting messages on a forum, users can typically generate their own profiles, create their own custom pages, and have more involvement in creating the site and its content.

There are many different types of web 2.0 sites.  MySpace and Facebook are two well-known social networking sites.  Blogger is a very popular blog platform, which allows people to develop a type of online diary or journal.

Twitter is somewhat like a blog, only users post very small snippets of content in each post.  Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg allow users to post their favorite links, and allow other people to vote on those links.

Squidoo and HubPages are two sites that let people create pages of information about specific subjects, a bit like a one-page website about a particular topic, similar to Wikipedia.  The basic function of web 2.0 sites is to allow users to post their own content to the site.

Web 2.0 sites can be leveraged for marketing purposes if used correctly.  The key is to immerse yourself in the community and become known as a real person rather than a nameless marketer hoping to cash in on their pooled traffic generation.

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The Importance of Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking

Virtually every way to make money online, be it an e-business, a blog, internet marketing campaign, or so on, requires traffic in order to succeed. Traffic relies heavily on several key factors, perhaps the most important of which is the number of users coming in from search engines. Therefore, increasing your search engine rank (how early your site appears in the results pages for a given key phrase) plays a large role in dictating how much traffic your site gets. Social bookmarking is a tool commonly used to improve the amount of traffic to websites. Here, we’ll go over how to increase your search engine rank using social bookmarking, as well as other ways in which social bookmarking can benefit your web site.

Social bookmarking refers to a method of sharing links, news, and other information on a given site. Commonly used social bookmarking sites include digg, reddit, StumpleUpon, and del.icio.us. These sites allow users to share everything from entire websites to individual articles, videos, music, and much more. By marketing your website on social bookmarking sites, you enable it to become something that people share with each other, branching out and expanding over time.

This internet marketing technique is known as viral marketing, because of the self perpetuating nature of that which is being marketed. It is a highly efficient form of advertising, and is also tremendously cost effective. This cost effectiveness comes from the fact that the marketing campaign allows users to promote the product or website on their own, and other than the costs for the original creation of the content being marketed, the growing campaign is free. By taking advantage of the way social bookmarking sites work, you can create a small piece of seed content (a video, for example) and then allow the popularity of that content to explode as more people find and share it.

Viral marketing through social bookmarking sites essentially takes the same tactics as a word-of-mouth advertising campaign and puts it in a setting to which hundreds of millions of people have access. If you are looking for a new way to promote products or content on a website, there are few methods more effective than viral marketing. Social bookmarking sites play a key role in developing a high level of exposure and hype for any upcoming or existing product, all for a very small amount of cost to the marketer.

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WordPress Tools – Custom-Make Your Web Experience

wordpress toolsBlogs are the latest great internet marketing tool. Instead of providing your website visitors with one set of static articles that provide dry information about your business, your blog is a dynamic platform from which you can spark conversation and pique people’s interest in your industry and in your business. There are many applications for creating blogs, such as Blogger and Xanga. One of the most popular platforms is WordPress. WordPress is the most popular blogging software in use today, and that’s no surprise, considering how easy it is to use. But one of the things that makes it fun to use as well is that there are so many great applications and tools that you can add to give your readers an experience unique to you.

The first category of WordPress tools is that of tools for the blogger. These are fun little tools and widgets that allow you to post specific things that interest you. Some of these are cross-linked with other sites with which you have an account. For example, you can install a tool that synchs with your iTunes account, and that little widget will go on the sidebar of your blog and show the last songs you listened to so that your readers can check out your taste in music. It also helps in blogging because it can give you something to talk about.

Another category of WordPress tools includes tools that are used for the benefit of your readers. There are widgets that can show them what other WordPress users are online when they are. There are widgets that allow them to post your blog and others that interest them to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, and Deli.cio.us. There are even tools that allow your readers to leave voice comments in your comment section. Blogging is all about interaction, and these tools make it easier and more fun for your readers to respond to what you’ve written

There are multimedia tools, too. These tools make it easier for you to include media of all kinds on your blog. You can use these tools to embed video, pictures, Flash, and JavaScript. There are tons of other more specific tools, too, that are designed to more effectively block spam, help you administrate better, and even encourage your readers to comment. The world of blogging is filled with possibilities to invite your readers into your own personal cyberworld.

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