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Here’s the scoop.  Social networks are big right now and they’re online going to get bigger and more important in the coming years.  If you don’t know how to use them to your advantage, your online publishing business is going to be at a competitive disadvantage.

There are a million and one detailed tips for the effective use of social media but the most important thing to understand is what not to do.  Don’t, under any circumstances, enter the social media space armed with nothing more than a sales pitch and a desire to share it with everyone.

The crowds at these social networking sites are not very receptive to advertising.  They appreciate authenticity and sincerity.  They’ll make the effort to find your products and even to ask you about them if you enter the social media space the right way.   Be social.  When you’re working with social networks, you need to do so without scaring people away or embarrassing yourself with an out-of-place sales pitch.

Brush up on every tip for effective social networking you can find.  There’s no reason not to be informed and many good reasons to figure it all out.  Just remember that being a marketer is okay, marketing (in any obvious way) is not.

Whenever anybody asks me about Twitter for Marketing, I have one response: “Twitter Rocks!” That’s right, rocks. It is one of the most awesome additions to the Internet and with the right knowledge it is one of the best marketing methods out there for driving targeted traffic to your website, quickly and effectively. If you visit the Twitter site, you will probably think I’m a loon. However, bear with me while I break down how you can use Twitter to be a viral marketing engine that gets you steady traffic.

What Is Twitter?

Twitter is the original microblogging platform that allows friends, family, co-workers and potential visitors to communicate and stay up-to-date on the goings on in your life and business. It answers one simple question: “What Are You doing?” Specifically, what are you doing right now? Now, this may seem a bit ho-hum, but it goes way beyond just the ordinary. You can follow people, get followed and send out updates on a continuous basis. It is called microblogging because you are only allowed to use 140 characters or less to communicate your entire thought.

Only 140 Characters, Oh My!

You might think that 140 characters isn’t all that much to get across an entire advertising message, let alone getting it to go viral. You are so wrong. If you tailor a message that is interesting, unique with a title that grabs attention, you can not only pick up followers, but people will deliver your site simply because they want to find out what your whole message is.

Through direct communication, you can send messages to up to 1000 of your friends in one day. I’ll bet your wondering how you get 1000 people to follow you. I started with 10 and I am now at 1,057 followers, and I’m following approximately 2K people. I’ve been Twittering one month, but I’ve picked all these people up over time. Now, when I send out a message, all the people who are following me read my message and follow any links I put in it.

People Need To Know That You Care Before They Care What You Know

They also like what I post, so I get direct messages where they’ve reposted what I’ve written to their friends and followers. Viola, it just when viral. Instead of sending a message out to only 1,000+ readers, many times messages are cut and pasted and sent out to my followers followers. It is indeed a powerful medium to get your message out quickly.

Making A Message Go Viral Takes A Bit Of Ingenuity

People hate to think your selling them something and the only reason you picked them up or followed them is because you want to send them spam tweets. What you have to do is send out the occasional tweet that points them towards some kind of product or service, but mostly you simply point out the interesting places you’ve surfed. Using words like, I found a cool site here or there is taken much better than go here and sign up for my affiliate product. If you have an affiliate program, cloak your links so that it doesn’t look like an affiliate link. One great place to do that is with www.tinyurl.com. It will take you extremely long URL and make it a super-short URL, which is good because you only  have 140 characters in which to type you message. You wouldn’t want it taken up with your URL only.

Tweet My Blog

Another great thing to do is get the TweetMyBlog WordPress plug-in. It allows you to tweet to your Twitter account every time you update your blog. It shows that there’s an update and a brief title and a bit of what it’s about. This is automatic and people will follow you if they’re interested in what you’re blogging about.

Twitterfeed

Another great automation tool is Twitterfeed.com. Through this site, you can load up your blog’s RSS feed and every time you update, it will send a tweet out. This, in turn, goes out to all your Twitter friends, who can make it viral if they like what you’re blogging about by Twittering their friends and followers.

Twitter Is Addictive Fun

Twitter is one of those addictive devices that’s so much fun, you can spend all day – off and on – twittering about what your doing. When I went on vacation in Florida, I twittered about my vacation and trip to Disney World using the SMS texting feature that Twitter has to give live updates. It was fun and it again let my followers know that I didn’t just Twitter about business stuff that tried to get them to buy. If you mix it up between personal, fun and business, you will build a following of people who simply like to Twitter with you.

In the end, you will have a Twitter-list that doesn’t mind hearing about your “next big thing”, and will likely visit the site you Twitter about and tell their friends, too.That’s why when asked by fellow Internet entrepreneurs, what I think about Twitter, I say: “Twitter Rocks!” Try it and find out about the power that 140 characters can give you.

If you’re trying to get a product or concept spread around the internet using a video you’ve created, then you’re interested in viral video marketing.  The term viral, of course, refers to the rapid spread of the information on the internet.  It’s not easy, however, to get your video to climb up the most-viewed lists.  There are some basic ideas here that you can explore and build on.

While you’re learning about this marketing technique, you’ll come across the term Web 2.0.  This refers to the fact that people are networking on the internet.  It’s different from the old days when we just clicked on our internet browsers and let them take us wherever.  Now people are proactively disseminating information to each other using videos, photo spreads, blogs, websites, and forums.  Web 2.0 basically refers to people-to-people interconnectivity.

If you have created a video, one of the easiest ways to get it onto the internet is through a site such as Youtube™.  Basically they have laid out all the html codes you’ll need in their upload assistance.  That means you can create your video, go to Youtube™ and upload it.  They provide you with the technology to tag it with keywords.  They’ll also tell you if you are getting any views—more about that later.  Then you can copy it—complete with the html tags—to places like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and more.

If you want to get your video to go viral, you’ve got to keep it short!  People just won’t sit still for longer than two minutes for a video unless they’re really hooked.  It’s better to do a series of videos and link them together.  The message is important, but your first video has to have that hook that keeps people wanting more.  Avoid making your video look like an instructional thing—you want to find some catchy way to package your idea and then lead people back to your website.  Also, even if your videos are sequential, you will launch them all at once.

When you create a video, Youtube™ allows you to identify it with three thumbnails.  One of these thumbnails is taken from the exact center of your video.  So whatever frame is in the center will be one of your thumbnails; make it a good one.  You can also change your other thumbnails, plus your keywords and video title, every few days.

Now let’s talk about how you create that traffic for your video.  Some statistics say that there are a quarter million videos available on Youtube™, with maybe 65,000 more added each day!  It is brutally difficult to get yours to stand out.  One of the most popular tricks is to create multiple Youtube™ accounts.  Then you can view your own video and comment on it using these multiple accounts.  Get your relatives and friends to view the video and comment on it.  Send links to it to everyone you know.

You’ve already utilized Youtube™’s technology to put your video on your MySpace, your Facebook, and others. Then you need to create multiple accounts at each of these various social networking sites, and backlink these sites to each other.  Call upon your friends and family again to visit these, comment, and forward links.  It’s a lot of work, but it’s the best way short of hiring a firm to make your videos go viral.  All it will cost is your time!

Fredi Donosa