Leveraging Social Media To Increase Site Readership

The Rise Of The Social Media Age: As the web continues to develop, expand and grow, social media profiles continually increase in importance; and the value they have is phenomenal. Social media is utilized for a wide variety or reasons, namely networking, socializing and more recently, marketing. These aspects of social media are only one part of the larger picture, there are many more features and elements of them that will make having a profile more worthwhile than not having one.

There are a huge amount of new social media sites emerging at the moment, they all allow you to take different actions and one feature most of them have in common is adding friends, joining communities and submitting your latest; and best content. But, what hidden benefits do these profiles have? This post explores 3 of the hidden benefits about social media profiles which will help your blog or web site in the areas of traffic building, readership development and link-back quality.

1. Get High Quality Links To Your Site Via Profile Development

As a blogger or a web site owner, you will most likely already be used to submitting content to social media sites and voting for them; but as you are doing this, continuing to add friends; and join communities. You increase the popularity of your profile, this means that you are getting link-backs to the profile from within the site, and you should also be actively linking to your profile from your own site or blog to increase the amount of back-links to the actual profile itself.

The process of increasing back-links to your profile means that it will have a higher likelihood of getting Google Page Rank and higher prominence at the social media site itself, this means that you can leverage the rank from that profile to your own site by inserting one or two links to it. Do not use social media profiles as an opportunity to spam and include tens of hundreds of links; people will no doubt flag you and you will be eternally banned from the service.

2. Grab Interested Readers Using Highly Targeted Categorization

Any well trained marketer will tell you that getting readers who are already interested in what you have to say (topic or subject) is a huge advantage. This is what you can do on social media sites, you can pinpoint the kind of people who are most likely to go to your site and subscribe to it or interact with it in one way or another.

You can easily find these targeted readers by clicking on popular ‘tags’ or searching for them by inputting popular keywords into a search box on the site. Popular tags, stories, news items or keywords will usually be displayed somewhere on the site, most likely on a sidebar or at the footer, so look carefully and you’ll be sure to find them.

When you find these people, interact with their profile, visit their sites or blogs if they have one, comment on a couple of their posts, add them as a friend, vote for their submitted articles and you’ll soon grab their attention and they’ll be visiting your site.

3. Increase Your Conversions By Building Strong Relationships

Building relationships is a vital key to success, in the online world it is of even greater importance as face to face communication does not exist as such. How do you put your best foot, or best virtual foot, forward? There are many different ways to go about doing this, and some are certainly better than others. The most effective way is to have a prior connection with the person, you can do this with the people who have previously commented on your blog or have had some sort of interaction with you via email, voting your stuff etc…

Why do I suggest already having a point of recollection? It’s simple, they’ve seen your stuff around before, articles, ebooks, newsletters etc…They’ve already made that first step with you, so you can use that as a springboard to start furthering this relationship. The best way to do this is by finding as much common ground as possible, I am referring to social media profiles and adding them across all of the ones you and the target person share in common.

After you’ve added them across all the social media sites you share in common, add them on your IM (Windows Live Messenger, Skype, AIM, ICQ etc…). You can usually include a greeting of some-sort, state who you are, how you know them and that you’d like to get to know more about them. People have become more open nowadays, so they will most likely accept you. From hereon in you can talk to them more and more and keep those communication lines open. Another way of keeping in touch is by sending out a weekly newsletter to their inbox to strengthen that bond that you already  have between them.

Continue To Conquer And Expand Your Readership Online…

The methods mentioned above are only one of many ways to conquer and expand your existing readership online. The most valuable lessons to learn from this post are firstly, the fact that you should develop existing relationships online, secondly, you should be targeting highly relevant readers to make communication with; and third and most importantly - you should always respect the person with whom you are communicating. You should never use abusive or vulgar language in conversation, keep it clean and highly valuable for both parties. 

Posted on May 17, 2008
Filed Under Social Media | 8 Comments

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5 Tips For Bettering Your Lifestyle And Well-Being

1. Getting At Least 8 or More Hours Of Sleep Every Night Is Quintessential

Sleeping: Personally, I know some people that live on only three to four hours of sleep per night. I must point out that this kind of behaviour and lifestyle pattern is plain stupid and is very dangerous for your health. People sleep for one main overarching reason, you need to rest, relax and re-energize your body.

Sleep Less And Risk It All: Losing out on sleep won’t simply make you tired, for example, it increases the likelihood that when driving you’ll crash into a car. Why? This happens because you are so tired, your body starts shutting down automatically, you become less alert as a result of this lack of sleep - keep in mind that your vital organs and cells have been working flat out for the whole day…they can’t last for more than 48 hours without sleep.

Sleep Revitalizes You: The cells and the organs that keep you alert, awake and active during the day need time to restore their energy supplies - when you feel tired, go to bed, staying up or sticking it out will only make you feel worse. If you happen to suffer from sleeping disorders perhaps in the form of insomnia, you should explore all avenues to rectify this issue in order to maintain a healthy, balanced and more rewarding life experience.

2. Dedicate Some Time For Friends And Networking, Online Or Offline

Friends and Having A Good Time: We are all human, it is only natural for us to find friends and develop relationships with them. Making time for finding and creating relationships is a very important aspect of life; it’s importance to ensure you have a support group or network to ensure you can get help if you ever need it. It’s not all about getting help though, it’s also about going out with these friends and having a great time, giving you a break from computers, games and all the other modern day distractions and contraptions.

Speaking to people face to face is better for the most part, but if you don’t have too much time on your hands, use your instant messaging platform as a tool for communicating with others and having an intelligent conversation. If you want to take things to the next level, you can go further and video stream a conversation, this will help you bounce back ideas and daily happenings with other people and enhance your creative ability.

3. Don’t Put Yourself Under Any Unduly Stress Or Pressure

Stress: In life, we often take various tasks or events too seriously, sometimes we just need to learn to let go. I worry about certain things a bit too much, the best way to get out of this habit is to learn to put things into perspective and plan ahead. I’ve found that when I plan ahead and I complete tasks before a deadline, I feel much less under pressure and I feel virtually no stress whatsoever. 

How To De-Stress and Detoxify Yourself: I could go on for literally hours and hours talking about detoxification and stress relief. Safe it to say that the following strategies work best and are the most effective. Relieving yourself of stress is about getting out of your work environment, go for a swim, take a hike, go for a bike ride, do some walking, jog, run, skip, hop or go to the park. A change of scenery works wonders.

Detoxification To The Max: When you feel you’re lacking energy, something is obviously wrong with your body. The number one problem here is usually attributed to lack of sleep or bad nutrition. Getting more sleep is always helpful as mentioned above, but sometimes your body just needs to flush out the system. Herbs, Spices, Citrus Fruits, Fibrous Foods and Water play a huge role in cleansing the insides of your body, ensure a regular intake of these foods. To balance it out, continue to eat of a lot of vegetables, rice, lentils, fish and a regulated amount of meat (too much meat can be bad for the body).

4. Plan Your Time And You’ll Be Able To Accomplish More In A Day

Planning Is Quintessential: Planning seems to be something many people either like or don’t like. It doesn’t matter what you think - leave your pre-conceived ideas behind, the time to take action and progress your life is now. By planning what you need to do, setting yourself deadlines and accomplishing tasks with finesse, you will see that you can double, if not triple your day to day productivity.

How Can You Plan? So many people have different ways to plan, some people like making a daily ‘to-do’ list, others enjoying writing in their diaries, some people like using computer notification programs and others like methodical strategies. It doesn’t matter what you like, if you’ve stopped planning you may find your life being tipped off balance. Plan your work and give yourself reasonable goals and deadlines; success will come along with this if done correctly and thoroughly.

5. Give Yourself Some “Me” Time And Do Something YOU Enjoy Doing

Are You Given Orders Left, Right and Centre? If you’re not an entrepreneur or ‘your own boss’ so to speak, you’re probably being given instructions and tasks on a daily basis by a supervisor or a manager. This alone can be highly aggravating and frustrating, to the point where you get so tired of people telling you what to do. This happens, and it’s not always relating to work, but that’s a good example of how it can happen to you.

You can resolve this problem by giving yourself some more “me” time, this is when you decide to do something for one reason only - because you like doing it, and it will benefit you. By doing this you are freeing yourself from the chains of the cubicle set up, or your boss hanging over your head. Take a couple of days, go shopping, go to a day spa, go camping, do some water sports - all with the sole intention of relaxing and benefiting yourself. Your oasis awaits you.

Posted on May 11, 2008
Filed Under Health and Wellbeing | 8 Comments

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Focused Articles Attract A Greater Reader Response

Developing Focus In Life: Life is filled with distractions, one of the many responsibilities we have is learning to deal with these distractions to become more focused. I’ve talked about focus before, and I believe it is important because it helps you live a better life. Being focused allows you to think more clearly and make the right decisions more often. Lack of focus is destructive and leads to a disorganized thought process hence a warped outlook on life.

Writing Articles Frequently: As a blogger, my responsibility to you and to myself is to ensure that I write blog posts or articles on a frequent basis. My second tier responsibility is to maintain a certain level of relevance and context in the articles I write; this simply means that I need to post about topics which are related to the field in which I write.

Keeping Articles Focused: A common misconception with blogging is the point that, since it’s your blog, you can ramble on about anything you want, when you want. This is not a good idea as it will prevent your blog from maximizing its success potential. To attract readers, you need to keep articles focused, talking about some weird childhood experience in your post about Yahoo or Microsoft is irrelevant and it will put people off your writing for good.

Topics That Attract Readers: A huge part of writing focused articles lies in the selection of the topic or theme for the post. When you’re thinking of what to write about, try and think about it from a readers perspective, what keywords make you want to read more of a post. The next step is to ask yourself, what kind of content makes me want to read the entire post. Usually content or articles about well known companies or services do well in this area. If you have new ideas to share about blogging, writing, advertising and marketing, they can also succeed in getting people to continue reading.

Structure Is A Part Of Focus: The amount of structure and ‘calls to attention’ present in a blog post will play a role in determining the amount of focus it has. Your blog post should have a sequential flow, like this one does, it goes from a basic introduction, to a point about articles, it expands on the point about articles and then goes on to talk about what to write about in those articles; it then suggests in this very paragraph how to improve focus via structure. Then it links back to the overall theme of reader response below. Now it all starts to make sense, focused idea (topic), good headings, fantastic flow, simplistic structure, great post!

Reader Response: When you write with a certain level of conviction and coherence, you are more likely to attain response or feedback from people. Why? Simply because your title caught their attention and your article was able to fulfill the time they took to read your post. A focused article may sometimes be very simple and short, but it has the ability to evoke response because of that. These kinds of articles or blog posts tend to convert better, in terms of attaining links, comments and RSS subscriptions.

Posted on May 4, 2008
Filed Under Writing Tips and Techniques | Leave a Comment

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Small Fish Super Blogging Link Love, Thank You

SmallFishBigMoney’s Strong Community Spirit: As you all know, I love the community here at SmallFishBigMoney.Com. It is continually growing and I enjoy hearing from each and every one of you, be it via email or comments. Your support is greatly appreciated, one way for me to give back to the community is by doing my super blogging link love post. In the link love posts I go over the numerous amount of sites that have linked to me and I thank them for doing so; they took the time to find me and link to me, so why shouldn’t I do the same?

Thanks For Your Continued Support…

• JohnChow, For allowing me to guest post about blog commenting, Thanks John.
• DevelopingEyes, For linking to SmallFishBigMoney.Com via blogroll. You Rock Brett!
• LearningSEOBasics, For linking to SmallFishBigMoney.Com via blogroll. Thanks Kim!
• EtienneTeo, For linking to the site via blogroll. Thank You Etienne. I appreciate it.
• DivitoDesign, Linked to the site via blogroll. It is much appreciated Stefan, Thanks!
• MixedSoup, For supporting SmallFishBigMoney.Com via blogroll, Thank You!
• Sueblimely, Linked to my blog post about Blog Profiling Sites Declaring War, Thanks!
• Diaries Of A Blogger, Linked to SmallFishBigMoney.Com, Thank You Anthony.
• WisePicker, Linked to the site and my post about link building, Thanks Ivan.
• KathrynVercillo, For taking the time to link to quite a few posts. Many Thanks Kathryn.

Thank You: I just want you all to know that your support is very much appreciated and that I could not continue to blog here everyday without you, your links to the posts, the site and the RSS feed just spur me on to keep on writing better content. I trust that you will continue to support the site and the community in any way you can and I will certainly do as much as I can to help you out. The content will continue to flow and I look forward to seeing you all again very soon.

Want To Get Mentioned Next Time? Show Your Support By Linking! Thanks.

Posted on May 4, 2008
Filed Under Small Fish Big Money News | 1 Comment

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Is Google AdSense Still The Contextual Ads Leader?

Google AdSense has long held a status as being the leader in contextual advertising. We’ve seen companies come and go, but Google seems to stay right up there on top. Despite some fluctuations in the Google profits in the first quarter of 2008 and the last quarter of 2007, AdSense continues to stand the test of time, and I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. There are some companies trying to emulate the Google AdSense success, but most are failing. They are failing because of the very bad ad-quality that exists in their system, this is something which they ultimately cannot resolve unless they get better advertisers.

Why Did AdSense Revenues Fall? And Why You Shouldn’t Be Worried. This is some very simplistic logic that the media failed to grasp when reporting about the recent drop in AdSense click-through rates. Google decided that it is only fair to give the advertiser’s a greater opportunity for more genuine clicks, and I totally understand this. So they reduced the amount of white space that can be clicked around a typical AdSense Ad. Previously the whole AdSense block could be clicked on, but this led to false and accidental clicks, so now, more valid clicks are being recorded, hence a marginal decrease in revenue as a result of less accidental clicks.

Google AdSense Has Some Competition: There are quite a few companies wanting to reap profits from the contextual advertising market, and why not, it is quite lucrative. The contextual advertising competition are companies like Yahoo Publisher Network, Microsoft Ad Center, IndustryBrains, ContextWeb and Quigo (AdSonar) technologies. Then there are the in-text contextual advertising companies whom also serve as a bit of competition to Google AdSense for publishers who are seeking a different experience, the major ones to date are Kontera, IntelliTXT, Vibrant Media and more recently Amazon Links and Chitika Linx.

The Problem with Google AdSense, You May Want To Get Packing…Yes, there is a problem with AdSense, quite a big problem actually. AdSense currently has a huge amount of advertisers in their database (directory). Some of these advertisers lead you to sites that are utterly disgusting and unworthy of a click. The problems lies herein, AdSense is being filled by less trustworthy and less reliable sites, you’re beginning to be brought to random sites that seem very scam-like and gray area. The other companies I mentioned above tend to have more quality advertisers because they target high profiles news and celebrity sites as opposed to blogs and smaller sites.

New Technologies Being Rolled Out By Google AdSense Developers, As Google tries to combat a few problems such as click-fraud and ad quality (which is what they are well renown for), new technologies are continually being unveiled. A recent update saw AdSense publishers being able to select various ads they wanted to be displayed and not allow other ads to be displayed, I think this is certainly a move in the right direction. Webmasters want to have a certain amount of control over what gets shown on their sites, so it is only logical to allow this to occur.

Google AdSense and The Future: The future for Google AdSense is still looking quite good, despite these problems mentioned above. The competing companies are failing to reap considerable profits as a result of a bad business model. Google has grown and developed into a huge company, they are backed by a range of profitable networks and services of their own. Other companies don’t have a firm foundation that they can rely on, they rely on a sole service which they provide, therefore they can’t sustain themselves in harsh times, they are bound to fail or not be very profitable.

Do You Think Google Is Still A Leader In Contextual Advertising? Why?

Posted on May 3, 2008
Filed Under Google News and Services | 11 Comments

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