Drones

In the very recent past, a friend of mine [Kate] was lucky enough to get her website listed (bookmarked) on Digg, a very popular social bookmark site. With her permission, I was given an excellent chance to overlook and analyze the traffic generated from these types of sites. Read on to discover the pros and cons of social media site traffic, and how it could be utilized in your own website or online marketing efforts.

Firstly, it should be said that any sort of internet traffic, should not be considered useless. Visitors to your site should all be welcomed, as any visitor is a good thing. In saying that, however, it should be noted that traffic in all its greatness, is not created equally. Great differences become apparent when you start to analyze its source. The purpose of this article is to take a much closer look at the traffic generated from social bookmarking, from the perspective of internet marketing.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 2 years, you’d notice a very big trend on the web–social bookmark and media websites have become “all that” on the web. Slashdot, Stumbleupon, Digg; any of these popular sites sound familiar?

This is where a lot of social bookmark traffic will originate from. In essence, these sites are driven and “controlled” by the users. Users or members choose which content they want to bookmark, and this will lead to viewing and discussing of said bookmarked content. Sites such as these are immensely popular and flow traffic that the average website owner can only ever imagine having. That’s a lot of traffic, isn’t it? But is it really useful?

All this traffic and hype must be a good thing, right? But is it really worth your time? Should you integrate active promotion to these types of social media websites? What about concentrating all your online marketing strategies on these types of sites? The question more at a point is, what are the real pros and cons of getting your website listed on the front page of sites like Stumbleupon or Digg?
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YouTube is a web-based video sharing platform with features that include light social media functionalities such as profiles and comments as well as monetization for user-created content.

YouTube got started as a simple video-sharing website by former PayPal employees. Their inspiration came from being unable to find a website where they could upload short videos that they had shot at social events.

They were also inspired by how difficult it was for them to find replays of popular TV broadcasts anywhere on the internet. It launched in 2005 and became popular pretty quickly. It was bought by Google for almost $2 billion one year after it launched!

Make no mistake, you will find all types of video content on the platform. Music videos, movie trailers, gameplay footage, sports broadcasts, and news, you will find it all on YouTube, no matter where you are from!

Content creators, media stations, large corporations, small businesses and regular people from all over the world can use the site to broadcast and publish their content, with videos such as concerts, sports broadcasts, live blogs, gaming tournaments, how-to videos, documentaries and live seminars being uploaded and streamed on the platform at all hours, all the time.

Let me ask you something: are you using YouTube as a marketing strategy for traffic generation in your business?

Quite simply, YouTube is by far one of the most powerful but still underutilized platforms on the internet when it comes to online marketing.

Notably, YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the net. As such, it’s also the best platform for engaging in the act of video marketing. Which, if you didn’t know, is one of the most powerful tools for the persuasion of audiences for generating clicks and conversions.

Consider the impact that video has on you in your own day to day life. Think about the placement of television sets in your world and how they’re often a centerpiece of most living areas. How often have you started watching a TV show or documentary far too late in the evening and ended up staying up way passed your “bedtime” just to get your fill of the action?
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Many P.C. users depend on Google internet searching to obtain the information they require. One benefit of utilizing Google for your research is that it can gather relevant data from the Web in double-quick time. Also, launching a search on Google is easy. A basic Google search will scour the internet for details that are related to the search term(s) you entered. Google also has many additional products and tools available on its website that can assist with the streamlining of a users’ searching.

Numerous industries have invested heavily in and profited from, Google marketing. Some of these were initially ‘bricks and mortar’ companies like music, publishing, gambling, or automotive, whereas others just sprang up as solely online companies, like digital media and design, internet service hosting and blogging.

In 2008, candidates for the U.S.A. Presidency heavily depended on Google’s marketing techniques to connect with potential voters. Throughout the primaries of 2007, candidates gained, on average, more than five hundred social network followers every day to assist in spreading their political message. President Barack Obama managed to raise over one million dollars in just one day of his Democratic candidacy campaign – and this was due largely to online donors.

In this ebook, we are going to look at Google in greater detail and outline some traffic generating techniques that have been proven to work. By the time you have finished reading this ebook, you should (hopefully) have a much clearer idea about the overall dynamics and process of web marketing.

We will also aim to show you how what you do with your website and business online can dramatically affect the exposure you will get and, ultimately, the profits you will make.

Google is really a multi-national, publicly-traded company built around the company’s hugely popular internet search engine.

Google’s roots return to 1995 when 2 college students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, met each other at the University of Stanford and collaborated on an investigation project which was to, in the course of time, get to be the Google internet search engine. BackRub, (as it was known then due to its analysis of backlinks), stimulated curiosity about the college research work but didn’t win any bids from the main portal vendors.

Undaunted, the founders gathered up sufficient funding to start and, in September of 1998, began operations from the garage-located office in the Menlo Park area of California. In the same year, PC Magazine put Google in its Top one hundred Internet sites and SE’s for 1998.

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Do not worry that you are doing a particular thing right or wrong. LinkedIn has a to-do list that will show you what is remaining and what is already done.

Working on LinkedIn is not similar to your Facebook or Twitter profiles. Here, every single interaction is a business-oriented one starting right from your profile. Your profile is your business card.

Business owners need to fill in only the relevant material on their profile, including their other social media accounts, websites and/ or blogs and any other important details. Your dog’s birthday is not something you include on your profile.

When it comes to creating a company page, LinkedIn has a wizard to help you do it. Think Merlin, but for LinkedIn. Begin by keying in basic info about the business such as a description, number of workforces, and the particular industry it serves. Keep all this as brief as a paragraph. You need to be smart here. Take advantage of your SEO knowledge by using keywords relevant to your industry. This will help your LinkedIn page have a higher ranking whenever a curious customer looks for services related to your industry.

The LinkedIn wizard will then prompt you to upload your logo, location(s), and your blog’s RSS feed. Once you have completed all its commands, your page will be ready to be viewed by anyone on this platform.

This is when things start to really get fun on LinkedIn. All your information is analyzed and displayed making you visible in their search engine, in your industry, and to potential clients and partners.

LinkedIn is a global professional network with over 500 Million active users who come from 200 countries worldwide. Linkedin provides full time opportunity to get quality leads, sales, and ultimately boost your profits.

Marketers using this largest professional networking giant for their business are getting an unexpected flow of targeted leads as LinkedIn sends nearly four times more people to your homepage than other social media networks.

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Internet marketers are going crazy over this new social network called Digg and for good reason too. Using Digg correctly can send tens of thousands to your website virtually overnight.

This is how Digg works: People register with the site, and thus join the Digg community. These registered users then submit newsworthy or rather Digg worthy content. A short summary of the news item is written about the content. You can submit nearly anything to Digg; this includes videos, stories, blog entries, funny pictures Anything!

What then happens is Registered Users then Digg the story or whatever has been submitted. The Digg is actually a vote for the content that was submitted to Digg.

The stories with the highest number of Diggs make it onto the front page of Digg. Stories can also be Buried which will send them shooting down to rankings at Digg.

Digg stories are then kept in the up and coming section for around 12 24 hours.

If the story does not receive enough Diggs it is then sent to the Digg homepage. If the story starts to get buried it will automatically disappear.

Writing a good story that gets a number of Diggs, and by number I mean a few hundred can produce tens of thousands of page views which will mean thousands of visitors and potential customers to your websites.

To produce a popular story you need to write about something that will help people, actually, writing about Digg itself is a very popular subject and frequently makes it onto the top spot.

This is a form of viral marketing, get it right and your site will do incredibly well, get it wrong and nothing will happen. Site promotion like this is a far, far more powerful way of gaining popularity and backlinks to your site than traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Techniques.

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First and foremost, it’s important to remember that Pinterest is a “Social” Networking Site. Many people forget that the strength in these types of sites is in actually being social. On Pinterest, this is fun and easy to do, and there are several ways to do it.

One way to build followers is by following others first. When you are on the main Pinterest page and logged into your account, you’ll notice that Pinterest recommends “Friends to Follow” on the left hand side. These are recommendations based on people that you are already connected to through Facebook or Twitter.

If you click the red “Follow” button you will begin following all of their boards. Alternatively, you can click on their name and just select specific boards to follow.

You’ll also notice that Pinterest displays “Recent Activity”. This will show you people who have recently begun following your boards, so that you can follow them in return.

Another method for building your followers is to search for pins via category or keyword, and then follow the boards or pinners that interest you.

To search by keyword, type your keyword(s) into the search bar in the upper left hand corner. To search by category, click on “Categories” and select your category from the drop down list.

At the bottom of the pin the pinner’s name will appear as a clickable link. Click on it to be taken to their Pinterest profile, where you can either choose to follow all their boards, or select specific boards.

Another method for gaining followers on Pinterest is to simply share news of your new Pinterest account through your other social media networks. Let your tweeps know -share it with your Facebook friends – blast it on Linkedln – wherever you have a presence, let it be known that you’ve expanded your presence to include Pinterest.

With Pinterest’s wide spread adoption, you’ll notice that your social media circles will quickly start to overlap.

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Today, Twitter is a social website used by absolutely millions of people to send messages to groups and friends every day. It has become one of the hottest social networks on the Internet today with thousand of new people signing up on a daily basis. This new phenomenon, ranks right up there with Facebook and LinkedIn for social contact and social media marketing. Today, companies are using this information to keep their friends, families, and customer base up to date on what is happening in their lives, families, and business ventures.

Twitter has long since considered itself to be one of the top communication systems for exchanging quick little “blurbs” of information with those you wish to keep in touch with. This short and direct communication has become known as “Tweets”, or short-form messaging system, that allows a connected individual to share and listen to what is happening to and with the people their surround themselves with.

As Twitter has evolved it has become a communication device that provides many platforms for communication, but mainly communication on Twitter is done through posts, or “tweets”, which are restricted to less than approximately 140 characters in length. Using Twitter, members can keep people updated, as well as follow updates from other members. Today, tweets are used for more than just updates; they are also used to discuss hot topics, videos, music, and events happening in the daily news.

One of the bonus features of Twitter is the ability to “Retweet”. This enables users to share things like tweets, links, and other little gems that they pick up from others who also use Twitter. New users often do not understand the benefit of retweets, but after a little time on Twitter they soon learn the value of retweets and set out to share as much as possible.

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What Facebook is all about Nowadays Everybody knows what Facebook is, even people that do not use it know what it is. This is because Facebook has transformed from a niche social site for college students to the largest and most widely used social media platform in the world. Yet in spite of its social media tag, Facebook has become a platform that appeals both to regular people and to businesses, because it has something in store for everybody. Let’s find out what it is that makes it so valuable in the online world.

Facebook for Social Facebook is primarily a social media network designed specifically for social interaction. What differentiates Facebook from other social networks, and what has made it so special is the plethora of easy to use features that allows people from all around the world to find and interact with like-minded people even when they are separated by regional and cultural barriers. Facebook allows people to create online profiles complete with personal photos and pictures to showcase socially centered occurrences, where people can list their interests and preferences, as well as post their contact information, so others can get in touch with them.

The site’s popularity, combined with all these features, has made it the perfect platform to locate long-lost friendships and to meet new friends. Facebook is also a great venue for entertainment for people from all walks of life, because they can use the platform to play games, to live chat with Facebook friends and to share video content. Some of the most popular social features offered by the Facebook platform include photo albums that can be shared with friends and with other people, comments on other people’s profiles, and Facebook “groups” which are often used by families and groups of friends as hubs to share content privately.

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