Social marketing,  involves both interacting and engaging with your target audience, as well as setting up individual webpages on communities like Squidoo and HubPages.com.

Squidoo is an exceptionally popular service that allows users to create one-page websites referred to as ‘lenses’.

With Squidoo being an authority website with search engines like Google, each time you build a lens, you are able to rank for specific keywords used within your page’s title and content itself.  It’s a very effective strategy for generating back links and generating traffic to your website.

Squidoo also offers additional modules that you can integrate into your lens pages, including the option to incorporate an opt-in form into your page, so that you can begin to develop an email list of prospects.

You can also earn money from within the Squidoo community based on affiliate commissions generated from the different modules and add-ons that you inject into your lense pages, including Amazon modules, and Adsense.

http://www.Squidoo.com

Another similar service that allows you to develop one-page websites that rank heavily within the search engines is available at www.Hubpages.com

With Hub Pages, you can also earn revenue from different add ons that you decide to implement, but are also able to add tags to your hub pages for better ranking within the search engine.

With Hub Pages, there are a few restrictions in place that you need to pay attention to, including:

• You are only permitted to feature two external (outgoing) links on each hub that you create.
• Your content must be unique, (no PLR is permitted).
• You are not permitted to use excessive tags.

As long as you focus on developing high quality hub pages, you can benefit from the popularity of the Hub community, as well as the back links from each hub page that you create.

Make sure when you create external pages on websites like Hub Pages or Squidoo that you interlink your pages to your main website’s URL.

By cross linking from feeder sites to your main landing page, you will be able to develop a solid back link campaign, quickly and at absolutely no cost.  This is also a very effective method of ensuring your website is indexed by the major search engines, VERY quickly!

There are other free methods of building back links and maximizing your exposure online, including by developing a quick blog on http://www.WordPress.org and http://www.Blogger.com

Both of these services also carry weight within the search engines, which means that you will be able to increase your outreach just by spending a few minutes developing a single page website that showcases your main website, or your products and services.

Blogger is a great place to make feeder sites.  It’s a free blogging platform run by Google, and pages there can often rank very well in many search engines.

Pages on Blogger aren’t given special ranking privileges by Google simply because they run the site.

But like Squidoo, HubPages, and other similar sites, they have enough pages with backlinks and authority that the overall site seems to get a nice boost.

If you’re going to make a blog to promote your membership site, there are two ways to go about it.

You could either set up a little throwaway blog that you only post a few articles on, linking to your site in each article, or you could try to create an authority blog.

An authority blog is one that you post to fairly regularly, work towards getting a lot of regular viewers, and try to get “authority” status in the search engines.

If you want to create an authority blog, it will be a lot more effective.  Your readers will come to respect you as a real expert in your field, so they will be more inclined to join your membership site.

It’s a great way to get members, just keep in mind that running an authority blog requires a substantial commitment.  You have to post regularly, or it won’t be very effective.

As with other feeder sites, you’ll want to use your keyword you can.  If you can get your keyword in the URL, it’s a very good idea to do so.

If you just want to create quick throwaway blogs for fast search engine traffic, you don’t necessarily have to use unique content.

To the best of my knowledge, Blogger doesn’t have any requirements that say you can’t use PLR, so this is a good way to build feeder sites quickly.

If you want to become an authority blog, I wouldn’t use PLR.  Unique content is a much better idea, even though it takes more time.

By cross linking from remotely hosted pages to your own main site, you will be able to develop a solid back link campaign, quickly and at absolutely no cost.  This is also a very effective method of ensuring your website is indexed.

The idea of a virtual assistant is to take away the headaches that you may be having with your business.  This may begin with some of the extra work that you have, and may even move into implementing website designs.  If you want to make sure that you find the right virtual assistant, you will want to make sure that they have the qualities you need in order to function at their best.

Just like a job interview, you want to make sure that a virtual assistant is presentable and professional in what they do.  Even if they are doing work behind the scenes, they are representing your business.  Because of this, you should examine their manners and professionalism before you hire them.  If you are unsure of how to begin, there are several practical things to look into.

A virtual assistant will begin their presentation virtually.  This means that any virtual assistant will have a website.  You will want to make sure the website is organized, presentable, and informational on who they are and what they do.  The website is their first presentation, and often times reflect their personality.

From here, you will want to meet with the virtual assistant, or at least call them, to make sure that they are a good fit.  By simply putting together some questions about what you need, you will be able to see if the virtual assistant will work for you.  They should be able to consult with you at a professional level.  Everything from answering the phone properly to providing you with quality answers is important.  This includes everything from confidence to articulation in the conversation.

Of course, you will also want to make sure that your virtual assistant has the proper experience.  This begins with education, but can also include a variety of other things.  There are virtual assistant certifications that are available for serious businesses.  Even if they are just starting out, this will help them to show they are professional.  They should also have some knowledge or association with the Virtual Assistance Chamber of Commerce.

If you want to make sure that your virtual assistant will work well for you and present the company in a professional manner, then you will also want to make sure that they are confident, articulate and experienced with what they are doing.  This will give you the ability to find someone who you know will work well with what you provide.

Just like a job interview, most business owners will want to examine the credibility of a virtual assistant before they decide to sign a contract with them.  Just like a resume, most business owners will want to make sure that the credentials are available for the virtual assistant.  This will help to define how good they will be for the work that you are asking them to do.

There are several ways to define the credibility of a virtual assistant.  There are no set standards for an assistant, meaning that the number one credential should be in your confidence to have them do the work, and in their confidence to do the work effectively.  Having the personality and understanding the vision should be one of the number one considerations for a virtual assistant.

Beyond this, there are a variety of possibilities for a virtual assistant.  One of the growing credentials for an assistant is the certification for a virtual assistant.  However, this is not a required credential.  It will simply allow the virtual assistant to gain the knowledge that they need in order to expand their abilities.  Some will, instead, have credibility related to schooling or certification from things such as computer programming.  There is also the possibility that they belong to the Virtual Assistant Chamber of Commerce as a member, or the national and international associations.  This will help you to define whether they are virtual assistants, and will help you to see their seriousness in their job.

One of the other determining options that you can look into is the years of experience that the virtual assistant has.  You can expect that a smoother job is going to be done with someone who has at least five years of experience in what they are marketing.  Unless you have worked with virtual assistants before and know that they can do the job by your standards without that much experience, it is best to make sure they have some experience.

If you want to make sure that your business has the best reputation, then you also want to make sure that you have the right person working for you on the pieces to the puzzle.  Having a virtual assistant with the required credentials is one of the necessary parts to helping you put together the whole of your business.

Personal branding your affiliate marketing campaigns can help you succeed in affiliate marketing. The market will recognize you among other players in the business. Connection is also properly established with customers with personal branding.

Why You Should Use Personal Branding

Personal branding adds your touch to the business. Personal branding goes well beyond a sleek logo or a perfect tag line. It is a way of sharing your expertise and own set of values with your target market.

Personal branding helps a lot in establishing rapport with your clients. A sense of connection is formed leading to trust and confidence of your market to get what they need from you.

In a business world where competition is very stiff, other marketers can steal your concept, your tools, and your system. There will also come a time when your patent for your product will expire. Personal branding attaches your identity with the goods or services that you sell.

People will know it is you when they see something on the market. If they trust you, they trust what you offer them.

Tips on Building your Personal Brand

Building a personal brand is not an easy task. It does not come in a package nor is it achieved overnight.

Here are some tips to get you started in building your brand:

• Run your own blog – If you want to be seen as an authority in the business, you should have a site devoted to it. You can also receive important feedback from your followers and potential clients.
• Distribute information online- You can write free ebooks or newsletter and distribute this to your list or potential customers. This can help you as an affiliate marketer in building trust with your market.
• Publish write-ups on trade publications- Print is still a very powerful medium. People can get their ideas and business sources by reading magazines and journals. You will develop the authority in your field through this effort.
• Give seminars and webinars- These talking engagements put the spotlight on you and serve as a good venue to show your expertise. You can also push for your services or products during these events.

Affiliate marketing is like standing in a crowded room where everyone is wearing a black suit, donning the same shoes, and sporting the same smile. It is a crowded business and people will have a hard time seeing you. Personal branding magnets the attention of the market to you and puts a spotlight on what you can give them.

Article marketing is one of the most popular methods of generating relevant back links from authority websites, and in maximizing your outreach with well-crafted, high quality content directed at your target audience.

Each article should be between 300 and 600 words in length and provide useful information that your target audience would find appealing.

The greater the number of articles in circulation, the more exposure you will receive, however you always want to focus on producing high quality content, rather than just on the quantity that is being distributed between these networks.

Apart from directly benefiting from the exposure received by having your articles showcased within popular article directories such as www.EzineArticles.com, you will also benefit from the frequency in which search engines crawl article directories due to new content being posted each day.

Here are the top article directories that you should focus on submitting content to:

http://www.Buzzle.com

http://www.GoArticles.com

http://www.ArticlesFactory.com

http://www.WebProNews.com

http://www.ArticleDashboard.com

http://www.ArticlesBase.com

http://www.ArticleWheel.com

http://www.ArticleFriendly.com

http://www.ArticleRich.com

http://www.Articles-Hub.com

http://www.SubmitYourNewArticle.com

http://www.Articlesnatch.com

http://www.earticlesonline.com

Off site SEO refers to search engine optimization techniques that are not performed on your website itself, but are influenced by external factors.

When it comes to off-site SEO, it’s all about generating solid back links to your website from relevant authority websites.

There are many different ways of establishing quality back links to your website, including:

Link Exchanges
Blog Commenting
Forum Marketing
Directory Listings
Social Bookmarking

Place emphasis on the quality of your incoming backlinks rather than the quantity of backlinks you have. While the more backlinks in circulation, the better, if you have more backlinks coming in from solid, established and authority websites, they WILL carry more weight than those pointing to your site from start-up websites and blogs.

You also want to try to create a backlink campaign that has ONE WAY backlinks, where you are not required to provide a reciprocal link, as it will add more value to the backlinks pointing to your site.

One easy way of creating a back link strategy is by analyzing existing competition in your market, and determining who is linking to them, and what anchor keywords they are using so you can obtain a link from the same source, using alternative keyword phrases.

Directories

With online directories, you can add your website into specific categories and instantly establish back links to your website, just be careful not to over-do it!

You want to develop a natural back link campaign!  Do NOT create thousands of backlinks using automated software or services, otherwise you run the risk of being penalized by the search engines.

A few directories to consider are:

http://www.DMOZ.org

http://www.Lii.org

http://www.Info-Listings.com

http://www.Buzzle.com

http://www.MasterMOZ.com

http://www.maxpromo.com

Social Bookmarking

Here are the top 20 social bookmarking websites for generating fresh back links to your site. All of these contain DO follow, ensuring links leading to your website will count within the search engines as a valid back link:

1 – http://slashdot.org (PR9)

2 – http://digg.com (PR8)

3 – http://technorati.com (PR8)

4- http://www.furl.net (PR7)

5 – http://www.backflip.com (PR7)

6 – http://www.hugg.com (PR7)

7 – http://www.mixx.com (PR7)

8 – http://ma.gnolia.com (PR7)

9 – http://www.connotea.org (PR7)

10 – http://mystuff.ask.com (PR7)

If you already have a blog, chances are that you are using WordPress as your platform. If you’re not, you should be. There are many reasons as to why WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the Web today.

In terms of Internet marketing and getting rankings, WordPress offers the most search engine friendly blogging platform in addition to being very user-friendly. The other great thing about it is the number of plugins which you can add to your blog.

If you are not sure what a plugin is, it basically adds new functions to a WordPress blog. A plugin is essentially a program written in the PHP programming language that adds a specific set of features or services to the WordPress blog. All you have to do to add a new feature or service to your blog is find a relevant plugin, upload it to your plugin folder and then “activate” the plugin on the dashboard. It’s that simple.

That being said, there are literally thousands upon thousands of plugins out there (most of them are free) and if you are a newbie, you may get tempted to add as many plugins as you can to your blog. The bottom line is that you only need a couple of them to get your blog going. In order to help you with which plugins to choose, I’ve chosen the top 10 WordPress plugins that you must have.

Editorial Note: Most of the plugins mentioned below can be found by searching the WordPress Plugin Directory. The rest can be easily found by doing a Google search.

1. Akismet

Don’t you just hate people leaving spam comments on your blog? I certainly do, and if you dislike such comments appearing on your blog, the Akismet plugin automatically filters them for you. I don’t have time to deal with spam and I hope you don’t either.

2. All-In-One-SEO Pack

If you are looking for the ultimate plugin to transform your blog into an SEO optimized blog, then this is the one. It’s easy to use and before long you can be ranking for your keywords.

3. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

If there’s one thing you don’t want, it’s for the blog to be banned from ping services. When you update or edit your blog, you automatically send a ping to let them know that your blog has been updated and that the changes need to be indexed. However, you can get banned from ping services if you end up doing this too often. In order to avoid this from happening, you need to use the MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer plugin.

4. Remote Database Backup

Whatever you do on the Web, you need to have backups. Backing up data is one of those things that people don’t take seriously until a site failure happens to them. This plugin helps you backup your WordPress blog at any time.

5. SEO Smart Links

This cool plugin allows you to automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog. Furthermore, you can set up your keywords along with their own matching URLs. A must have if you want the maximum SEO benefit for your blog.

6. Sexy Bookmarks

This allows your readers to submit your articles to numerous bookmarking sites on the Web. A must-have in the era of social media. Get your Sexy Bookmarks plugin today.

7. Frame Buster

This plugin will thwart any attempt to load your site in a frame. Optimal for getting images to rank on the search engines.

8. Google Sitemap Generator

If you want Google to index all the pages on your blog as quickly as possible, then you need this plugin. It allows you to create a sitemap with a clíck of your mouse.

9. CommentLuv

This plugin allows your visitors to comment while adding a link to their own blog post. This will encourage them to comment and in combination with the Akismet plugin can get you genuine and informative comments on your blog.

10. WP Backlinks

This plugin allows you to track the links going back to your blog. For SEO purposes, you want as many links back to your website as possible, but at the same time, you want them to come from reputable and legitimate sites. The WP Backlinks plugin gives you the ability to control and verify this.

If you go ahead and add the plugins featured on this blog, you can be ready to start dominating the Web with your blog. Keep in mind that it’s the quality and frequency of content that you add to your blog that will determine its success. My hope is that you have found this article about the top 10 wordpress plugins on the Web very useful.

About The Author
Martin Sejas is a top Internet business consultant in Sydney who helps people achieve their dream of having an online business. Register for a freé consultation today at www.marketingadvice.com.au.

If you are using article marketing as one of your traffic building strategies, then there’s one important element you need to understand and master.

Your author’s resource box is the ONLY element of your article that allows for promotion, so it’s vital that you create a compelling resource box that invokes a call to action and entices every reader to follow through by clicking on your links.

With sites like Ezine Articles, you are able to create multiple resource boxes, choosing one that compliments each article that you write. You can also create multiple author’s accounts so that you can cover a large number of topics, all within one account.

Use your resource boxes wisely, and make sure that you offer your reader with an incentive to click through.

One way of doing this is by offering a free giveaway in your author’s resource box that is relevant to the topic or market that your article is focused on.

If you are not sure what you can offer within your resource box, here are a few things I have used successfully for over a year now:

• Free Report
• Newsletter or Ezine subscription
• Free ebook
• Free sample of a paid product
• Free Trial Membership

When creating your author’s resource box, make sure to use anchor text whenever possible. This will help you rank for specific keyword phrases within the search engines.

A Press Release can provide you with more than just a way to get people to your site. It can give you a broader target audience to sell your product to, as well as help you build brand awareness, especially if you are a new info product developer.

With Press Releases, you are able to reach out to a larger market than many other forms of advertising, and in most cases, word will begin to spread within hours of your press release being approved and distributed.  Press releases are also a cost effective method of advertising your info product, and is also one of the fastest and easiest methods of generating exposure for your new product.

Press Releases lend instant credibility to a business, or brand even if it has just launched and by being circulated among leading publishing agents and authority sites, the association alone can jumpstart your business launch in a very powerful and effective way.

Traditionally, a well-structured press release should not be more than one page long. Everything a reader needs to know about your news story will need to be included within a single page for best results.

A second page is acceptable, provided your story makes it worth the time a person would need to read it.

This means that you need to trim down the outline of your Press Release and ensure that it focuses on the key benefits and features of your release, whether it’s an introduction to a product launch, a story about your company, a new launch of a service, or a software program that will benefit the end user in some way.

A Press Release that addresses the fundamental aspect of what people are looking for (how it benefits them) will out perform any other kind, so keep it trimmed and on point.

The power-boosting words used in that headline are rises, challenge and ‘helping’. Some other words you could use in your headline that will demand attention are:

• Announcing!
• Secret
• Free
• Discover
• Strategies
• Success

There are some writing service companies that specialize in providing you with press release writing services.

http://www.custompressrelease.com

http://www.prnine.com

http://www.Press-Release-Writing.com

http://www.contentdone.com

http://www.contentcustoms.com

Press Release Distribution Sites

There are distribution sites on the Internet that will publish your press releases for you. Most will ask you to sign up for an account with them and then you can start uploading your press releases with them.

Once they have been submitted to these sites, they will be available to all the news search engines to be picked up when an Internet user searches for the subject of your release.

They will be reviewed to ensure they are proper press releases and not advertisements, spam, or anything promoting adult content websites.

Here’s a few resources to help you get started:

http://www.PRWeb.com
http://www.URLWire.com
http://www.PRNewsWire.com
http://www.Free-Press-Release.com
http://www.marketwire.com
http://www.wiredprnews.com/
http://www.livepresswire.com/
http://www.PressReleaseNetwork.com
http://www.WebWire.com
http://eWorldWire.com
http://www.BusinessWire.com

Most business professionals are on LinkedIn at this point. LinkedIn tells us that:

• LinkedIn has over 70 million members in over 200 countries.

• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and
about half of our members are outside the U.S.

• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

To me that states clearly that if you have almost ANY kind of business and are prospecting, LI will be a good resource for you. But just setting up a profile and dabbling once a week or so is not going to do much for your prospecting efforts. Below are a few tips that not many folks know about, but are powerful techniques for increasing your visibility and maximizing that “inbound marketing” that Social Media is known for.

1. Create 3 saved searches. If you are doing a search on a company, person, industry or whatever, save your searches. At the top where you see the number of records in your search you’ll see a “save this search” button – you get 3 if you are at the basic level. LI will send you a weekly email, if you want, to get updates to your search.

2. Recommendations are important, so ask for them. But make it easy. I first call or email my contact and ask if they will recommend me. If so, write the recommendatíon yourself – so you are sure that you are sending the right message. Be sure to talk about the problems you solved – that’s really the point, isn’t it?

3. Use the Question and Answer area to gain more visibility on the Internet. On the question that you answer you will see a “share this” with a drop down menu. You can email your network, Digg it, Bookmark the question on Delicious, or use the link provided in your answer and link to one of your blog posts, or somewhere else on your site to pull in traffic.

4. Join groups that are in line with your business, your objectives or your hoped for job. Fish where the fish are. The more “on target” the group, the more valuable the content they provide, and the networking opportunities will be.

5. Use groups to expand your network, but be selective. In the groups tabs, you will see “Groups Directory”. Select that and on the next page use Search Groups, selecting “other” from the drop down categories menu. Join the groups that interest you. Once you are a member, you will have access to the members in that group. Try connecting with the ones that make sense. You might evaluate based on the size of their network, the type of company or industry they are in or how much interaction they have had with the group.

6. Did you know you can export your connections? Go to “Contacts.” Then “Connections. ” At the bottom of your Connections box is “Export Connections. ” Export the connections and import them into your preferred address book. Do this frequently so you are consolidating all of your contacts in one spot (might be Outlook, Act, Salesforce).

7. Refer to both the LinkedIn Learning Center and their blog. The Learning Center is full of great tutorials and the blog has info on updated and new features with full explanations.

8. For better and more valued networking, when you invite someone to join your network, don’t use the canned LinkedIn message. Say something about who you are and why you want to connect with that person.

9. To really maximize your profile, find one or two LinkedIn specialists (Google that phrase, or check Amazon for authors) and look up their profile. Study carefully and learn by example.

10. Be creative about how you use the Answers section. It can be used to ask for solutions to problems, for resources, for vendors, for processes. But it can also be used to find good connections, or find other groups you may want to join, to deliver information on your products or services, IF it provides an answer to the question. Sometimes you’ve got the perfect solution!

11. You can share a group with your connections – more value added to your community. When you are in a specific group, on the Overview tab you will see an option to “share group” and you can send an email to 50 of your connections.

12. Don’t hop over the “People You May Know” suggestions that appears in the upper right corner of your home page. Expand the box and start connecting with people on an ongoing basis. This is a great way to widen your circle.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for almost any social media objective – branding, lead generation, or job searching. Invest some time in learning the finer points – you will be glad you did.

About The Author
Elyse Tager is a social media strategist and founder of Elymedia. Elyse develops effective marketing strategies to help the small business grow significantly. Want to learn more about growing your business with Social Media? Sign up for Elyse’s free introductory teleseminar available at => www.elymedia.com.