And WordPress, being the most popular blogging platform, has a vast plugin developer network.  And that means there are no shortage of plugins to help interconnect all your social media efforts with your blog.

The following plugins are just a few of the many available to help you integrate your social media profiles:

Social Media Page-This plugin supports about 140 social networking sites (and you thought there were only Twitter and Facebook!).  The advantage of this plugin is that you can link to your profiles on any page or post on your site.  This way you don’t have to have your sidebars filled with numerous icons.

Social Profilr-yes it is spelled correctly! This plugin only allows you to choose from 14 social networking sites.  But the advantage here  is that it allows you to add a line of some enticing text as an introduction, sort of an About Me blurb.

DandyID Services-This plugin  supports 330 social networks! And you thought 140 was a lot!  No matter what your interests are you will find a network to suit your needs here! You need to create a FREE account with DandyID and then configure your widget using several options such as using text links, favicons or both.

Perhaps some of you are wondering, “What the heck is a plugin?”.  If so hop on over to this page Plugins, Widgets and Permalinks and read my brilliant (cough cough) explanation.

Give one of these plugins a try and let me know how they work for you.  And if you have any problem installing or configuring them let me know and The Blog Builder Guy will do his best to help you.

WP Plugins That Promote Your Social Media Profiles is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

photo credit: Ben Fredericson (xjrlokix)

The internet is filled with many different social media or Web 2.0 sites as some people call them. And the number is growing almost daily.   These sites are excellent for getting traffic and helping to build links that point back to your main site.  Below are the ones I use to build links.  There are, of course many more. 

Squidoo

Hubpages

Weebly

Vox

Webnode

Webs

With Weebly (I love that name) for example, you can create a page with information about your market niche. Pages on sites like this are well respected  by the search engines. You can monitize these pages or use them to link directly to your main site.

Setting up a page on these sites is pretty easy.  You have to join the site and then simply follow the directions for setting up your page.  Wow…following directions…what a concept….well maybe not for a guy ok, for me!  But they are easy to set up!

The most important rule to follow is to use unique content on each site.  You can't just write one article and post it everywhere.  Google and the other search engines frown on that big time!  They call it duplicate content. 

You should also use your main keywords once or twice through out the article.  Sometimes it useful to Bold or underline a keyword. It catches the attention of the search engines.  Such as two of my main keywords:  blog builder or blog setup.  See how easy it is to put in a couple of keywords!  But don't over do it.  The search engines call that keyword stuffing and they frown on that as well.

Once the article is written be sure to include a link back to your main site.  It can be something as easy as saying, "If you would like more information please visit Mysite.com ".  It is also a good idea to use a keyword as anchor text.  For more information on anchor text visit  the blog builder.  That is anchor text that will take you to a page explaining anchor text. 

As I said before there are many such sites and if you would like a more complete list let me know and I'll get them to you!

Related Blog Posts

• How To Avoid Anchor Text Overuse Penalties, But Still Get Targeted Links
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• How to Succeed in Niche Marketing | Niche Marketing Sites
• Calling All Designers: Weebly Gives Users More Variety With New Theme Community
• Site creation startup Weebly opens up to user-designed themes | VentureBeat

Using Social Media for Link Building is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

For example:  blog builder         13,900,000 results

                    “blog builder”       163,000 results

That’s a big difference and it makes finding what you want much easier.  So what does using quotes do.

When Google looks for blog builder it looks for websites that have the term blog and the term builder but not necessarily together as a phrase.  So if the website has the term blog, it adds it to the results.  The same thing for builder. So now you get all the websites that have the terms blog and builder.

Putting blog builder in quotes tells Google to search only for the phrase “blog builder” not the two separate words. 

Another tip is to use the city and state if you are searching for, say, a service.

For example: carpet cleaning                 11,500,000 results

                   carpet cleaning buffalo ny  179,000 results

Now let’s add the quotes:

                    “carpet cleaning buffalo ny”  69,000  results 

So as you can see these simple little tricks can make your searches more targeted and help you find what you want quicker and easier.

If you know of a trick or two leave a comment!

Related Blog Posts

• Business Marketing Strategy That Double Results Through 5 Simple Questions | Business Plan
• Socialmedia » SWAG BUCKS BLOG: Twitter Tuesday Phrase That Pays – 3/2
• Clearing Linkbaiting’s Name | Link Building Services Company – LinkBuilding.net
• Introduction To Link Building | Search Engine Optimization – Your SEO Daily News
• Social Media 101

Target Your Google Searches More Effectively is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

photo credit: smaedli

Using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn are a good way to introduce yourself know to the people in your market niche.  But, in my opinion, somewhere along the line you should be drawing people to your blog.

As I see the progression, I would start out with Twitter. Why?  Because it is quick and easy to set up and start using.  It is also easy to find people in your market by using Twitter’s search and trending topics features.  Once you have started conservations with people (it is called social networking for a reason…be social!) you can start to ask questions and learn about your market.  You need to know what problems they have and what they need to solve them. 

Whatever you do don’t start trying to sell your products or services as soon as you open your account!  That will turn people off immediately!

Once you have a good idea of what is needed you can start offering advice to your community on how to solve their problems. This along with regular conservations helps to build trust which is essential. 

After Twitter comes Facebook.  Why?  Because Facebook allows you to be more expansive when addressing your market.  You aren’t limited to 140 characters for one thing.  You can also add audio and video as part of your educating process.

Other social media channels like LinkedIn, YouTube or podcasting can also serve to help establish you as an expert and build trust.  But again you should be getting people to visit your blog to learn more about you, your business and how you can help them solve their problems.

Your blog gives you the chance to go into greater depth about all the different facets of your business.  You can write posts that offer greater detail on what you do, you can do a video or if you are camera shy you can record a audio presentation.  You can even post photos.  And because blogs allow comments you can get instant feedback on your posts.  Comments also make it easy for people to ask questions and offer suggestions on improving your product or service. 

And of course, you can use your blog to lead people to your other social media channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Podcasts etc.

And finally your blog is an excellent place to direct people to your “money site” whether it be within your blog, another website or a brick and mortar store.

So make your blog the hub of your social media efforts.  Use your other social media channels to entice members of your various communities to visit your blog for an in-depth view of what you do and how it can be of benefit to them.

And remember it’s about them not you!

Your Blog as the Hub of Your Social Media Marketing is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

Blogging From Scratch: Four Elements Your New Business Blog Must Have

By Mark Collier

You've decided to launch a blog for your business and you're busy laying the groundwork. You've selected a name for it, and you know what you want to blog about and who your bloggers will be.

But do you have the right elements and information on your blog? What information should be on your blog? When visitors arrive at your blog, what information are they looking for?

This article will walk you through what should be on your blog and what information your visitors want to see.

Before we look at the elements that your blog should have, for the purpose of this article let's assume two rules:

1. Every visitor to your blog is arriving there for the first time.
2. You will have a maximum of five seconds to make the following information available to them: who you are, what you do, and your contact information.

With those two rules in mind, let's consider the four elements that your blog should have.

1. An About Page

The About link should be at or near the top of the blog (at the very least above the "fold"). The page it links to should explain who you are, what you do, and—unless you have a separate page for it—why you have the blog. Think of visitors arriving at your blog by accident and having no idea who you are or what you do. The About page is there for those people.

You might think that if that information is already on your website, then it doesn't need to be on your blog as well. But that is why you should assume that every visitor is arriving at your blog for the first time and has never seen your website.

Treat your blog as a separate site from your main website, even if your blog is housed on your website. A good portion of your blog's traffic will be from search engines, so it's very possible that the first exposure someone has to your company will be via your blog, not your main website. So you must clearly explain what your business is on your blog.

2. Complete Contact Information

Contact information should also be at the top of your blog. Include at least three ways that visitors can contact you: Ideally, your phone number, physical address, and email address.

Email address and phone number are a must. If you don't want to leave your personal email address and don't have a company email that you can use, create an email address just for the blog with a service such as Gmail or Yahoo.

And if you have only a personal phone number and don't want to publish it on your blog, sign up for a service such as Google Voice, which will give you a unique phone number that you can use,; put that number on your blog.

The point is, you need to make it obvious to visitors how they can easily get in touch with you. That is where the five-second rule comes into play.

Let's say you sell mountain bikes, and someone arrives at your blog after doing a Google search for a particular model, wanting to find out whether it's available yet. The person arrives at your post that confirms the model has shipped and is in stores now.

Excited, the person scans your blog for contact information to ask what the price is. The person immediately spots your phone number, address, and email address—exactly what the person was looking for!

But if that contact information weren't available and easy to find, that person probably would have left your blog and gone to the next search result. Again, that is where the five-second rule comes into play.

3. Your Product/Services Page

In the About page, you tell visitors who you are. With this page, you tell visitors what you do and what you can offer them. If you are an advertising agency, for example, this page would explain the services you offer and the clients you cater to. If you are a B2B company, you would clearly explain what industry you are in and which businesses you service.

That is also why you should have your About page on the blog, as well as several ways visitors can contact you. On your Products/Services page, include links to your About page and tell visitors how they can get in touch with you.

4. Pictures and Bios of Every Person Who Writes for Your Blog

So many blogs have no mention of who their writers are, and all their posts are signed by "Admin" or "The Blogging Team," or something similar. Let's face it, though: people can more easily connect with and trust another person than they can a company logo.

That's why it's vital that you have pictures of your bloggers on your blog, as well as a bio for each writer. Doing so makes it much easier for readers to trust your writers and connect with them.

A picture of each blogger, should preferably be on the front page of the blog. A good example of a blog that does this well is HomeGoods' OpenHouse blog. Notice how the pictures of the bloggers are at the top of the page. There's also a bio for every writer, which makes it easier for readers to trust the posts because they can literally see who is writing them. It also encourages readers to leave comments and contact the writers. http://openhouse.homegoods.com/

* * *

When you create and design your blog, make sure to include the four elements discussed in this article. Their intent is to clearly tell your readers who you are, what you do, and how they can get in touch with you.

The power of blogs is that they allow you to put a human face on your company. By adding the above elements, you are making it much easier for your readers to see who you are and what you do—and so to connect with you and trust your content.

Mack Collier is a social-media consultant and writes for The Viral Garden and MarketingProfs Daily Fix. Reach him via mack.collier@theviralgarden.com and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mackcollier.

Blogging From Scratch: Four Elements Your New Business Blog Must Have by Mark Collier is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

Give it a click and let me know what you think!

Social Media Marketing

Be sure to visit the What's in it for You Page

To learn more about how a blog can help your business grow.

Social Media Marketing-What’s in it for You? is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

Social media definitions:

“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.” Wikipedia

Social media is about people sharing opinions and ideas.  These ideas can be expressed in text, video, audio or pictures.

“Social Media refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge and opinions using conversational media.”  Social Media Bible by Lon Safko & David K. Brake (p6)

So there are 3 definitions and the common factors among them are:

• People
• Interaction 
• Sharing

A simple definition would be people interacting with each other through various social media sites for a common purpose.

Social Media Marketing definitions:

“Social media marketing is a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service.” Wikipedia

Social media marketing – “a process that empowers individuals to promote their website, products or services through online social channels and to communicate with and tap into a much larger community that may not have been available via traditional advertising channels.”  The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamara Weinberg

Social media marketing then is using social media to market your products or services to members of your social media community.

What are the media in social media?  Let’s put them into categories to make it simpler.  And remember this is not an all inclusive list.  Who knows what new sites will be launched before I get done typing this.

Social Networking:
Facebook
LinkedIn
MySpace
Ning
Bebo

Photo Sharing:
Flickr
Photobucket
Picasa

Video:
YouTube
Viddler
ScreenCast
Hulu
Google Video
12 Seconds

Audio:
iTunes
Podcast.net
Podbean

Microblogging:
Twitter
Plurk
Posterous
FriendFeed
Tumblr

Publishing:
WordPress.org
WordPress.com
Blogger.com
TypePad
Constant Contact
Wikipedia
MovableType

RSS Aggregators:
Atom
FeedBurner
PingShot
FeedDemon
Google Reader
Bloglines

Web 2.0 Sites:                                
Weebly
HubPages
EzineArticles
Scribd
Squidoo
Jimbo
ZoomShare
Spruz
Webnode

Social Bookmarking Sites:
Digg
StumbleUpon
reddit
Technorati
del.icio.us
Propeller
Fark
kaboodle

Those are just a few of the media in social media.  Once we have set our goals we will select from the above sites the ones that will help us best achieve our goals.

Be sure to visit the What's in it for You Page

To learn more about how a blog can help your business grow.

How to Set Goals for Social Media Marketing-Part 2 is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

Ah, goal setting!!  There are so many different theories on how to set goals.  The most important thing is to actually set them!  Who woulda thought? Easier said than done though. 
Sometimes just the thought of setting a goal is overwhelming.  All those negative thoughts start creeping in….ok, flooding in!  You know what they are, I don't have to repeat them.

So what you need is a plan.  A  SMART plan. 
SMART-Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Using the SMART plan makes goal setting much easier because you are able to clearly define what you want and how to go about getting it.  Often times you will find that the original goal has changed because you have analyzed it and discovered that it isn't what you really wanted.

Specific-What exactly do you want to accomplish?  Why is it important to you? Perhaps you want to get more traffic to your blog. Ok, that's good but what is "more traffic"? Is it one visitor a week?  Is it 100 a week?  Maybe it's 5 per day.  Make it clearly defined.
     Why is getting more traffic important?  Will it lead to increased sales? Will it raise your site higher in the search engines?  Whatever you want to accomplish must be important to you otherwise why bother?

Measurable-the old saying is… "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it."  You must setup specific criteria for measuring your progress towards your goal.  If your goal is to have your site rank higher in the search engines then perhaps you can make 3 posts to a high PR forum each week.  You could also submit your site to say, 4 social bookmarking sites per week.  With a plan like that it is easy to measure your progress…you either made the posts and submissions or you didn't.

Attainable-Your goal cannot be unattainable such as creating 1000 backlinks to your blog in one week.  It ain't gonna happen no matter how well intentioned or hardworking you are.  It's got to be realistic!  But the goal must also challenge you to work harder than you normally would.  It has to stretch your abilities.

Realistic-This doesn't mean that the goal must be easy but it does mean that you have the skills and time to acheive the goal.

Timely-Every goal needs a timeframe, otherwise there will be no urgency to complete it. Set a deadline for yourself   "I'm going to have new 100 subscribers to my blog 6 months from today!"  You know what you want and when you are going to have it!

In my next post I'm going to talk about how to formulate your Social Media Marketing strategy.
 

To learn more about how a blog can help your business grow,be sure to visit the What's in it for You Page.

How to Set Goals for Social Media Marketing-Part 1 is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

photo credit: Alan Vernon.

There is a lot of buzz these days about Social Media and how it can help your business grow.  Buzz is cool but what are the specifics? What can it really do….

• Increase Website traffic-If you are out there in the social media space then you should be leaving links to your website.  Now I'm not saying every single post you make should contain your URL, that could be considered spamming.  That only irritates people!  But on occasion or when it is appropriate add your URL. The search engines will pick up on it and give you some love!  And if people like what you have to offer they will spread your links around to their friends.

• Link Building-When people see your content and like it they will tell other people about it.  That is, they will post links to your content in the place they visit in the social media space.  These links tell the search engines that people think your content is noteworthy and worth paying attention to.

• Brand Awareness-Obviously the more people know about you and your product or service the more likely they will be to buy from you.  The trick is to make sure that you leave a positive impression in people's minds.  They may not buy from you today but down the road when they need what you have they will come to you. And of course they will tell their friends and family as well.
  
•  
• Drives Conversions-If you are posting helpful content, helping to educate people and not just trying to sell sell sell, then they will see you as a trusted and knowledgeable source.  And when the time comes they will buy from you.

• Facilitates Conversations-If your links are starting to grow then you know that it is because the people in the communities you are a part of like what you have to say and are talking about you.  In a good way of course!  The more you contribute to your communities the more you will be liked and talked about.  And that goodwill almost always leads to more sales.

Those are the major reasons why Social Media Marketing is growing on a daily basis. I'll be doing more on this topic as time goes on.  Feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think!

How Can Social Media Marketing Help You? is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!

They have great support and good pricing which is why I use them and recommend them.  There is a point here, don’t worry!

A couple of days ago they had a post on Twitter saying they were going to be holding a live webinar dealing with their customer service.  So I tuned in to see what it was about.

Their customer service manager is Douglas Hanna and I swear I have socks older than this guy!  He hosted the webinar and started out by detailing the company size, sales, employees etc. all that corporate stuff. 

Next he started discussing customer service and he outlined all the positive points of their service backed up by various metrics.  And THEN he started detailing what he felt were the ‘bad’ areas of their customer service. I was shocked!  Here is the customer service manager telling, who knows how many people, that their service wasn’t the best in the world! Then I thought, here he is actually being honest with his customers and potential customers.  What a concept!!  “We aren’t perfect but here is what we are going to do about it.” 

Now let’s make a comparison to the business I talked about in a previous post The Power of Social Media and HostGator.  Here is HostGator telling the world that their service isn’t perfect and it needs improving and the other business doesn’t seem to care about their customer service and apparently isn’t doing anything to improve it.

One company is using Social Media in an honest and transparent way to educate and improve their business practices and hopefully their bottom line.  The other probably doesn’t even know they are being talked about in the Social Media space.

And the cool thing is that Social Media puts both of these companies on equal footing.  The small family business and the large multi-million dollar company are given the same power to reach their customers, open lines of communication, educate and counter any negativity.  One uses it to their advantage and the other well…who knows?  Kudos to HostGator and the other company…not so much!

Which company are you going to model yourself after?

Being Transparent is a great post from: The Blog Builder Guy-I Build It So You Don't Have To!