Part one I talked about how pitch can burn you so here is the next step in what you can do to lessen the pitch and use marketing more'. Do you know what the most highly missed opportunity that most Bloggers overlook in marketing their blogs? Email list building! Gathering e-mail addresses is still king and the MOST important feature in your site for three reasons. 1. First of all the purchase to visitor percentage rate on the internet is 1%,

Humans are social creatures so when given an opportunity to socialize, we generally get involved. If you access social sites to undertake a social marketing program, you may find yourself getting involved in the social more than the marketing. It can and does happen to us all. There are two strategies that you can put in place that may help your social marketing achieving its goal. The first may surprise. Go with the flow. If you are a social person then be social.

Any site with a community environment, or one that uses media to interact socially, can be included in the term 'social media'. For many people, particularly website owners, their goal is to use these sites to create a buzz about themselves, their website or their products. Is there anything wrong with that statement? No, a major portion of all users have the same aim, particularly the buzz about themselves component. Whilst frowned upon many site owners,

I came across a new social search today which impressed me just a little. It needs to be investigated a little more but the concept, look and feel and the results were quite impressive. The site, me.dium.com/search has a strange feel to it, probably because of the white and orange and not the traditional Google or Yahoo set up. The search results are also a little different. They are returned in three columns )you can change to two columns(. However looks are one thing.

LinkedIn is a popular social network of more than 20 million professionals from all over the world, representing 100's of different professions. Joining is not simply a matter of filling in a few details and away you go. Because of the site's nature, ie, it is for professionals, you are expected to have a complete and professional looking profile. This is the start of your personal branding and should not be ignored.

Facebook and Microsoft have reached agreement to extend their advertising partnership by placing Live Search on Facebook. LiveSide News Blog included an email from Microsoft which read in part: As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. Facebook will work with Microsoft to design the best search experience for Facebook's customers and advertisers.

Social marketing is not necessarily a difficult task. Many people would like to tell you differently, however the actual tasks involved, rather than being difficult, are just time consuming. Because they are time consuming, many website owners engage experts to undertake the social marketing aspect of their site management. This is fine and can often be quite cost effective. However, even though you have an expert carrying out your social marketing campaign,

Sphinn has joined the ranks of several other social bookmarking sites by placing nofollow's on all new links placed in the 'upcoming topics' area. Some SEO experts swear by social bookmarking sites for link building strategies - they may need to think again now. If a submission makes out of the 'upcoming topics' and onto the front page then the nofollow will be removed.

Over the last eighteen months to two years there has been a sizable increase in the number of workers using the various social media sites as communication tools. Facebook and Myspace where popular however micro blogging sites such as Twitter seem to be increasing in popularity. Some businesses are using Twitter as an internal mass communication system where short messages can be sent to the entire workplace instantly. For external communications,

Linkedin has formed a strategic relationship with The New York Times to deliver targeted news articles to user pages. The targeted articles are based on the industry and profession of the user. Linkedin will allow users to send articles to contacts and to start discussions based on those articles encouraging professional discussions on site.

Facebook has grown to be a fairly popular site for people of all ages and from all walks of life. One of the options withing Facebook is to develop your own group/ This group can be based around any topic of your choosing. For this reason many web entrepreneurs use Facebook as a form of social marketing for web sites, blogs or product/services. To do this successfully, you need to develop a strong profile and start a group based on that product/service or related subject.

If you watch teenagers these days they are forever texting each other. I dare not ask what about - but they do spend all day with their fingers on that keypad. Of course I am talking about cell phones and some reports suggest that teens spend more on text messages than on actual calls. Social blogging seems to be the 'grown up' form of texting. It certainly has a big following with many of the top web identities having a 'twitter' or 'plurk' accounts.

If you undertake a search on the term 'forum communities' you will find around a million entries. If even 10% of those entries are actually forums, then you have over 100,000 forums to choose from and if you can think of a niche, there will be a forum. Forums are effective for many activities. Networking is often hailed as a benefit in joining forum communities, however there are many more advantages.

As web 2.0 gets stronger and social media starts to dominate - or perhaps I should say - continues to dominate our online lives, will search engines use the information gathered from social media when ranking web pages? There is a distinct possibility they already are. Whether it through social media or simply social interaction through commenting, search engines need to find new methods to determine the value of web pages.

Social bookmarking is one of the oldest in the social media portfolio; forums and noticeboards being by far the oldest, dating back to the first social activities for networked computers. Social bookmarking can server many purposes, however the one thread I see from many people, particularly those in the blogging system, is to drive traffic to their pages.

Professional social network Linkedin had announced the release of DirectAds, a new advertising service for small business looking to target their ads. The Linkedin blog reported the release a day or two ago. They claim: Like existing ads on our site today, DirectAds advertisements are intended to be non-obtrusive messages that accompany the overall experience of LinkedIn.

Every web site wants to be number one, particularly number one in the search results pages. Unfortunately we cannot all attain those lofty heights. In fact getting to the top ten is no easy feat either. Fortunately we have social media to promote ourselves, our websites and our products or services. Where we may luck out on the search engines we may have better luck with social media marketing.

Social marketing is different to general marketing. With general marketing, you are promoting a brand, an image, a product or a company. When it comes to social marketing, you are really promoting yourself. If your not promoting yourself, you should be. Social marketing, as I have mentioned in previous articles, is about being social. Products cannot be social. Socializing is a human interaction and as such becomes a one-on-one or one-to-many event.

It seems it might be. As I start to look around the internet I see signs of social blogging, or micro blogging as it is often called, everywhere. There are a couple of quite humorous videos floating around Youtube centered on the addictive nature of sites like Twitter. Blog writers are probably the biggest users, and certainly the biggest culprits when it comes to spending at lot of time social blogging - but then blogging comes naturally to them anyway.

Social media - whether is social bookmarking or social marketing - is one of the fastest growing areas on the internet. Millions of businesses are now accessing these sites and promoting themselves, their businesses and their products or services - there are three main reasons why! 1 It's Free: Pure and simple - it is FREE. Compared to many other forms of online promotions - social media is free to access and free to participate. The only real investment is in your time.