Top 10 Social Media Sites - The Top 10 Social Media Sites You Should Be Using to Boost Your Business

Social media is a fast growing trend amongst the vast majority of internet users today. It provides a way for people to join together to create communities, with common interests and opinions, posting and contributing information for the rest of the worlds viewing pleasure. Today there are quite literally hundreds of social media sites on the internet, all of which are interactive and teeming with online activity. Usually these sites offer users the ability to rate and comment on others content, which can lead to some content spreading like wildfire across the web when a popular topic catches on within the online community and is shared from user to user. In this article I plan to share with you my top 10 social media sites which I have personally used to see my online campaigns soar.

With most of these top 10 social media sites, content is categorized by subject or interest, which makes searching for particular content quite easy for the average user. This is important to know if you plan to use social media sites to drive traffic from, as they hold the potential to reward you with targeted, high-quality leads if you market yourself in the right areas.

So without further ado, I give you my list of the Top 10 Social Media Sites!

#1 Facebook (Alexa page rank: 2)

Hands down, the largest social media site with over 350 million active users! The average Facebook user spends more than 55 minutes a day trawling this absolutely MASSIVE social network and there are more than one million developers and entrepreneurs from all over the world connected to them. If you haven't jumped onto the Facebook wagon, do it now. It is one of the most effective ways to drive targeted traffic to your website! It's no wonder this gets first place in my list of top 10 social media sites.

#2 YouTube (Alexa page rank: 4)

The most popular video networking site on the net. I'm sure that you have heard all about YouTube before, but just in case you weren't quite sure, this is THE BEST place to upload and share your video content, period. With over 70 million visitors to its pages per month and every category under the sun, you are bound to have limitless opportunities when it comes to driving traffic from your videos. So many people are somewhat shy when it comes to posting videos online, so get ahead of your competition by taking that to your advantage and putting one up yourself! Just make sure you put your link in the video or in the sidebar (under the More Info section) and voila! Free advertising which could potentially translate into lots of juicy new leads...

#3 Twitter (Alexa page rank: 14)

If you have not yet heard about the Twitter explosion across the internet, then you really must be living under a rock. This is another incredible social media site which brings together people sharing status updates, content, links... all in the form of short messages called 'tweets'. The range of people is so diverse, everyone from TV presenters to politicians to rockstars are a part of the Twitter community. Again, another great source for targeted leads.

#4 MySpace (Alexa page rank: 11)

Similar to Facebook, with over 270 million users. If you can market yourself on Facebook, you should be aiming to do the same on MySpace.

#5 Blogger (Alexa page rank: 7)

Blogger is designed for blogging, as the name aptly suggests, with over 20 million users on it per month. Blogging has quickly become a favourite for posting out dynamic content, and Blogger has become the standard platform for doing so. It is owned by Google, which means that content will quickly be indexed and viewable after updating. If you have a lot to say and want to be heard, set a blog up now. It's quick and easy and is another great way to generate valuable traffic.

We're halfway through the top 10 social media sites... I hope you're planning to go out and start marketing on some of the ones you've read so far!

#6 WordPress (Alexa page rank: 20)

WordPress is another free blogging platform that is a favorite amongst the online masses. It caters to the needs of the people, boasting state-of-the-art features which focus on aesthetics and usability. Content on the WordPress blog network is sourced from various locations across the web, including high ranking sites such as Google and Facebook. There are a staggering 190 million people using this network, so take advantage of it.

#7 DIGG (Alexa page rank: 105)

Digg works as an online social bookmarking site with over 28 million users. It allows people to share and promote content from practically ANYWHERE on the internet. Not to mention, Google loves the info here, meaning that if you have content posted here you can expect to rise in the search rankings - always a good thing!

#8 HubPages (Alexa page rank: 279)

HubPages works as an online publishing platform with an active community and easy-to-follow interface. By posting your different links on a hubpage, you can localize and divert a lot of traffic to your websites. HubPages works great in the sense where they actually want you to monetize your content, and help you along in doing so by providing great tips. If you're planning a social media strategy you would be doing yourself a great favour to include this in your campaign.

#9 Squidoo (Alexa page rank: 286)

Squidoo works similar to HubPages, where users create a 'lens': a webpage dedicated to a specific theme or topic. A lens can be composed of different modules - content such as videos, articles, links, text, graphics. Lenses can be reviewed by other users, and the more positive reviews you get, the higher your rank in the search engine goes. Make sure to update new squidoo lenses constantly to make sure Google doesn't think they have gone stale.

#10 LinkedIn (Alexa page rank: 42)

LinkedIn is a professional networking tool which allows people to make some invaluable business contacts. There are over 40 million users signed up in over 170 different industries. It is also a great resource to recommend job candidates, industry experts and business partners. As a registered user you can save a list of contact details of the different people you trust and do business with online.

So there you have it, a truly powerful list of the top 10 social media sites out there on the net today. If you plan to start a social media campaign online, make sure to join most (if not all) of these top 10 social media sites. Remember to constantly update your content, post consistently and create a criss-cross of referenced content by linking all of your posts/articles/lenses to each other, and most importantly, back to your main website. If you have more than one website, create multiple social media campaigns. This will create a 'web' of information which gets sprawled all over the internet - and Google loves it. By doing so you can expect to see your Google rankings soar, and the results roll in.

Boio Bess Daro Is A Savvy Network Marketer Who Has Seen All The Tricks Of The Trade In The Industry Over The Last Decade. Visit EarnFromSocialMedia.com To Learn The Techniques She Uses To Generate 50+ Leads Daily Using Social Media Sites Such As Facebook, Twitter & YouTube!

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Do Not Advertise on Social Media Sites

Don't advertise on social media sites. Lets be honest, advertising is about persuasion while social media is about empowerment - service as opposed to solicitation. The difference boils down to consumer confidence - advertising and marketing messages are inherently persuasive and rightly perceived as biased whereas word of mouth messages naturally build (or diminish) confidence without perceived bias. Granted, the value of good advertising in social media or any other environment is in its ability to spark inspiration and need, emotion and thought; from those things that make up everyday life.

So why does traditional online advertising not work in social media? First, most consumers' decisions on social media sites take place through the referral of friends. Case in point, 78% of respondents to the 2007 Nielsen Global Survey on Word of Mouth indicate consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising. Second, the push marketing approach does not apply to niche, fast-moving audiences found in social media sites. Three, the mindset of social media users is driven by self promotion and community (social engagement) - in order to connect there has to be an exchange that is of value to the user. If you chose to advertise on social media sites be conscious of the need to give that audience something of value as opposed to a advertising message.

Twiter, Facebook, Flyertalk and thousands of community boards, blogs and social media platforms empower consumers to communicate, network, contribute and make decisions about their everyday life. The gold dust of social media is consumer generated content and the sentiment it reflects about brands - dynamic word of mouth and conversation. The question is how to identify, harness, measure and act upon the conversational gold dust. In simple terms the challenge is to define and tie key performance indicators to the content and sentiment being measured.

The first thing to understand is that social media and consumer generated content serves as a repository and public record of conversations and consumer sentiment about a brand. A number of companies (Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Brand Watch, Market Sentinel) have popped up offering technology to capture those conversations for analysis but much of the application of that technology is still quite tactical or focused on brand reputation management. In fact, the consumer generated insight research opportunity is to use that insight on a regular basis and with quality marketing-based analysis to derive valuable insights that can improve marketing communications.

In our experience, the single most important measurement metric for social media is a variation of Net Promoter Score ®. Creator, Fred Reichheld of Bain & Co., measured the number of consumer "Promoters" (those who would recommend a product or services) and "Detractors" (those who actively discourage the use of a product or service) of hundreds of companies across many categories finding that on average the NPS leader grows at 2.5x. While the Net Promoter Score ® metric can provide a foundation metric, it is important to define additional metrics aimed at benchmarking the contribution of social media against other channels of consumer interaction.

Our work with Avis and OpenSkies on the social media space has allowed us to define a measurement approach to consumer generated content; based on five measurement modules.

1. Involvement

This set of metrics is aimed at understanding the propensity of involvement for either your own social media environment (community board, blog) or third party social media sites that drive users to your site. Assigning a unique referring ID to your social media property or third party social sites within your site analytics tool (Web Trends and Google Analytics) should facilitate this data.

- Site visits

- Time spent

- Pages viewed

- New vs. returning users

- Navigational path

2. Engagement

These metrics are aimed at understanding the specific actions and behaviors of users. Every engagement such as a comment should be equated to a call centre engagement or store visit. This approach allows for social media engagement to be viewed as part of the overall customer journey, providing a degree of benchmarking.

- Commentary volume

- Frequency of comments

- Sources of commentary

- Commentary creator segments

- Topics/Subjects

3. Sentiment

This set of metrics is aimed at identifying changes in positive and negative feedback across time and against competitors. This information can be used by Customer Service teams to proactively address specific issues being openly discussed by consumers. - Net Promoter Index variation

4. Propagation

This set of metrics is aimed at indentifying the distribution of social media content and its impact on how other consumers find and participate on the discussions about your brand. A key metric is search engine indexing which is related to the incremental impact of natural search traffic and visibility derived from social media.

- Citations

- Trackbacks

- Search Engine indexing

5. Transaction

While not applicable to all brands, transactions from social media can be measured by leveraging third party ad-serving and site analytics data. Establishing a control test against your average transactional site data can be an effective way of identifying variations on behavior and value.

- Registrations

- Shopping cart instances

- Conversion rate

- Revenue per transaction

- Revenue by user

Alain Portmann, Web Liquid

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Things to Avoid on Many Social Media Sites

As we've discussed various strategies to make money and build a commerce on Many social media sites, we've also indicated some strategies that will surely fail or get you banned. It's important to realize the boundaries of the playing field so that you do not make beginner's mistakes. Getting your account banned is not only embarrassing, but it also is a sure way to kill your commerce opportunity or at least delay it a long time.

In this section, we will go over some of the things we've asked you to avoid earlier, as a reminder, and include new things that you should be aware to avoid. Many of the techniques that are banned from Many social media sites are viewed as "black hat" tricks by webmasters all over the World wide web. They are just more enforced within Many social media sites so that it remains a community of trusted connections, instead of another place where your privacy is invaded and your email box is stuffed full of spam. If you are wondering if something is wrong to do, you can always check the terms of your agreement, but if it's frowned upon in other circles, it's bound to get you banned on Many social media sites. Always err on the side of caution and protect the investment of time you took to build your profile and generate friend contacts.

Here is an overview of things you should avoid when on Many social media sites, either because they violate the service agreement or because they will produce poor results, or both:

Spamming

This has to be the number one item that will quickly get you recognized as "persona non grata" on Many social media sites. Not only will you be reported to Many social media sites, but one friend will tell all their friends, and pretty soon no one will accept your friend requests. Remember, the soft sell is the way to go with Many social media sites, and even this should be done only in places that are appropriate - not on other people's walls or private messaging multiple people.

Multiple profiles

As stated earlier, Many social media sites does not allow multiple profiles, some with different names or identities. This is strictly against Many social media sites's terms of service and will get you banned. Aside from that, people who genuinely know you, may figure out you have multiple inauthentic profiles and begin to question your judgment and authenticity. The best way to go is to promote your own genuine name and image, rather than attempting to be everything to everyone.

Fake personas

You must use your own name to set up a profile. There have been cases where Many social media sites could not believe that either a famous person wanted their own Many social media sites profile and banned it, or that a person was named something wacky by their parents. You will have to prove it is your name, if they happen to question your choice of names for your profile.

Using nicknames

Along the same lines, you aren't allowed to use nicknames in your profile. It must be the full name given at birth, not some pseudonym, even if that pseudonym is the name you normally use in your commerce. If it doesn't pass the authenticity test, it will be banned.

Representing something other than a human being

No, you can't add a profile for your commerce, your pet, or your imaginary friend. The profile has to represent one individual and that individual has to use their own legal name.

Harvesting email addresses

No doubt you will come across third party software scripts that will try to do things that you are told are against the terms of service, like harvesting email addresses. If you use them, you will very quickly be spotted by the Many social media sites staff and be banned. Don't take the chance. It's always best to just abide by the rules of service and work within the guidelines.

Poaching friends from other friends

Okay, so this is probably going to be one of the ways you network, but if you do it too much it will surely point you out as someone who is only interested in building a large friends contact list. When building your list, always seek to add quality, not quantity.

Being seen as needy

This happens when you send out too many private emails, spam the inbox, or constantly send gifts and application invites for no other reason than you want attention. People will quickly learn to ignore your overtures and you will be left with no contact at all.

Cloaking ads

This is when you use scripts to change paid advertisements content that is viewed by Many social media sites versus what a viewer might see. This is also referred to as "gaming ads" and can get you banned.

Selling private ads on your profile

This is against the terms of service, even though some people do it. If you do it and get caught, you will get banned. So, you will have to decide whether the risk is worth the income, but it normally isn't.

Selling inappropriate items

There are some products that are not allowed to be sold online. Check the terms of service to make sure you aren't attempting to sell something that is not allowed.

Using offensive content

This can be anything from religiously offensive content to pornographic material. You won't really get a chance to defend the content you posted, you will either be warned or banned for "offensive content" and you will have to appeal that decision.

Adding too many friends at once

You do have a limit of 50 friends per day, but excessive activity will get you tagged as a spammer. So, you don't want to attempt to hit your limit every day, instead let your friends contact list be built in a more natural manner so as not to attract too much attention from the Many social media sites police. There is also a maximum of 5,000 friends to your account, so you won't ever have more than that on your list, so quality is important to obtain more than quantity.

Excessive poking

There are applications that allow you to poke people as a way of getting the attention of people you like, but many people find it ultimately annoying. Many social media sites will suspend an account and issue a warning for excessive poking and may ban you if the offending behavior continues after the warning.

Too much self-promotion

We have given some tips for promoting yourself on your profile page, but this can raise a red flag. Be careful not to attract too much attention to your own self-promotion by continuously posting too many posts to your own wall.

Joining too many groups or networks at once

This will clue the staff at Many social media sites that you are harvesting contacts. So, be careful not to add yourself to too many groups or networks at once. Instead, spread them out over time and take the time to contribute to discussions with posts that are not self-promoting but add value to the community.

Using copyrighted material as your own

If you post copyrighted material as your own on your profile, you will be tagged for banning. Always seek to give credit or use the links in given outside websites to make sure the Many social media sites staff can see where you got the material you posted in your profile. This can also be cause for banning if you take a copyrighted video and then change it to suit your tastes.

By the way, do you want to learn more about using articles like this to drive traffic to your website and increase online conversions?

If so, I suggest you check this out: article marketing traffic.

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How The Internet Business Can Make Money With The Social Media Sites

Understanding the big picture, the business concept, of the social media sites is crucial, because it gives you the idea how to utilize them for your internet business. What is their driving force?

1.What Is A Social Media Site?

As we see, the term is built of two words: media, which means advertising distribution channel and social, which means a group of same thinkers inside some bigger group of people. It also means the interaction between the group members. Both parts are very useful for the internet business marketing and actually belong to its basic vocabulary.

So social media means communication place, which is established for people, who has the same interest or hobby, where they can change ideas and share benefits. If you think your own internet business this sounds just great!

Wikipedia puts it in this way:

"Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers."

It is important that social media uses the crowds and their own will to connect information in a manner they want. So the social media sites are voluntary and extremely interactice, which gives lots of benefits for their members in the form of internet business forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and videos. Funny thing is that social media sites are driven by users, they make the content.

2.How To Grab Attention In The Social Media Sites?

When people participate in the social media, they act in interest groups, which is natural. In the internet business marketing this is called segmentation. If an internet business marketer wants to grab attention on the site, he has to stand out from the crowd. The requirement to be different is the same than in other mediums.

Social media sites are like open markets, where you as one participant build your own brand, your own expertise, which attracts some of the group of the same thinkers and a part of these interested people want to visit your website. In a way the question is about pre selling job, but never about advertising.

If the social media site has exactly the same content or idea than your internet business site has, then it can be a lead producer for your website directly or your website can even be able to sell the products to the visitors. In case of the leads, it gives your internet business site a great opportunity to approach them later with several emails or newsletters.

The competition in the social media sites requires that you need the AIDA process: attention, interest, desire and action. It is a process which needs planning, because the sites are full of personal messages. The most important thing is your promise: what is so useful in your offer?

The social media sites offer a great place to build your own brand, which is a multistep process. It is all about information, about influences and about feelings towards different actors. Social media marketing also involves the process of promoting and spreading ideas among targeted internet business audiences. Social media marketing can also be used as a calculated tactic to nurture feelings or goodwill towards a specific website or internet business.

Social media marketing is a strategic and methodical process to establish your influence, reputation and brand within communities of potential customers, readers or supporters.

Juhani Tontti, B.Sc., Marketing. Social Media Marketing Rocks! Make A Visit To My Home Page To Find More About Social Media Marketing For Your Own Internet Business Start HERE:

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Web 2.0 Marketing Made Easy With These Top 10 Social Media Sites!

In the last article we discussed how web 2.0 marketing can be a valuable asset for your business. We talked about web 2.0 marketing, social media services and marketing by social media, how it is the new phenomena of the decade and how you can use it to spread knowledge, gain trust, build relationship and gain more new clients.

Today we're going to talk about the top 10 social media sites, how they play a role in web 2.0 marketing, and how you can easily build accounts with each of them, along with our personal ranking chart and how marketing by social media to these top 10 sites can help you begin expanding your business.

1. Digg.com - After in depth analysis, we decided Digg, in terms of article marketing, social media marketing, and expanding your presence on the internet, to be ranked higher than both Facebook and Twitter. Here's why; Digg is a social bookmarking site that let's you easily setup an account, connect it directly to both your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and bookmark links with embeded urls that direct back to web pages, articles, social sites, videos and blogs. Digg has been around since 1998, and has a page rank of 8. Digg receives millions of visitors every single month. When you are marketing by social media, using Digg as a social media site is crucial to your success.

General posting capabilities - 10

Account setup - 10

Google pagerank - 8

Activity - 9

Spam Friendly - 9

Overall User rating - 9.2

2. Facebook.com - Facebook by far has been the fastest growing full capacity social media site thus far. Currently they have over 400 millions users worldwide with over 50% of them active on a daily basis. Facebook has a fully capable user interface with applications, blogs, comment posting, friend adding, video uploading and more. Adding friends on Facebook is easy. Building lasting relationships is a bit more challenging, but critical. Adding comments each day to your own page can be seen by your friends, which virally transcends out into the community and can eventually be seen by thousands and thousands of potentially interested prospects. But be careful, once you get up towards 5,000 friends, Facebook will prevent you from gaiNing any more friends, and at that point you will need to create a fan page where you can post from and invite friends to give you positive feedback.

General posting capabilities - 10

Account setup - 8

Google pagerank - 10

Activity - 10

Spam Friendly - 7

Overall User rating - 9

3. Twitter.com - Twitter is the newest and fastest growing web 2.0 marketing platform known to date. Twitter doesn't have the expansive user interface and full personal networking platform that Facebook does, but it's simplicity and fast posting capabilities make it a site to be reckoned with. Twitter was developed with a simple idea that asks, "what are you doing?" This idea turned out to be such a gold mine, that now social networks left and right are adding the "what are you doing" feature to their interface. This feature allows you to inform people about what kinds of recipes you offer, products you've tried, websites you read or promote, and so on and so forth. With the url shorteNing services like biturl, you can turn your long website addresses into short links allowing more room to pass along your message to your followers.

General posting capabilities - 10

Account setup - 8

Google pagerank - 9

Activity - 10

Spam Friendly - 6

Overall User rating - 8.6

4. Ning.com - A lot of people don't know about Ning sites, yet even more are learNing about them everyday. If you don't know, Ning is a simplified social network platform that allows you to open your own social network based on any topic of your choice, and build a community of members within the site. Ning allows you to fully customize your user interface and member's pages, connect with Twitter and Facebook, upload blogs, photos, pictures, and add applications to make the network more interactive for your members. For web 2.0 marketing, sigNing up with a Ning site is easy, fast and free. Currently to open your own social network is free, but we believe that by July of 2010 they are planNing to convert all sites into paying sites for the moderators, with plans less than $5 per month and up to $50 per month, still allowing members who sign up to join for free. These Ning sites are customized to your specific target market place, just be careful that you follow all of the moderators rules for that site, because they will ban you at the click of a button if you're off beat, and it's not easy to persuade them to let you back in.

General posting capabilities - 9

Account setup - 8

Google pagerank - 8

Activity - 9

Spam Friendly - 7

Overall User rating - 8.2

5. Delicious.com - Delicious is a social bookmarking site that is excellent for web 2.0 marketing and marketing by social media. Its user interface is simple, easy and elegant. You can insert keywords and descriptions to your liking. Their social media services allow you to bookmark and embed links into keyword phrases which link back to your website helping your organic search ranking in search engines. Delicious is a must-use social media site when marketing by social media.

General posting capabilities - 9

Account setup - 7

Google pagerank - 8

Activity - 8

Spam Friendly - 9

Overall User rating - 8.2

6. Current.com - Current is a wonderful social media platform, capable of helping your website to attract more new visitors through both bookmarking capabilities and article marketing capabilities. When marketing by social media, Current brought some of our articles to the first page of Google within only days after uploading them. Current is great for implementing article marketing into your organic SEO process and web 2.0 process.

General posting capabilities - 9

Account setup - 7

Google pagerank - 7

Activity - 9

Spam Friendly - 8

Overall User rating - 8

7. Propeller.com - Propeller is a full service bookmarking social media site, allowing you to generate backlinks by inserting keyword phrases into your posted urls. Propeller is easy to setup, expansive and extremely active. It is one of the top growing and page rank social media sites out there and definitely falls right into place as one of the top 10 social media sites for marketing by social media and web 2.0 marketing.

General posting capabilities - 9

Account setup - 7

Google pagerank - 8

Activity - 8

Spam Friendly - 8

Overall User rating - 8

8. Ezinearticles.com - Ezinearticles is strictly for article marketing, but it is vitally crucial and powerful for implementing successful web 2.0 marketing tactics. When marketing by social media, and article marketing, ezine articles is a phenomenal website. With many years of experience and a strict posting guideline, they limit their publishers to informative and helpful content only. This allows their site to stand out and attract more interested readers compared to many other article marketing sites. The social media services they offer are free, and with only a few good articles you can have dozens or even hundreds of new visitors within days or weeks reading your articles and visiting your website.

General posting capabilities - 8

Account setup - 7

Google pagerank - 6

Activity - 8

Spam Friendly - 8

Overall User rating - 7.4

9. Stumbleupon.com - Coming in at number nine on our top 10 list is an innovative social media sharing site that allows you to submit favorite pages, articles, videos and so forth into the members area, and when others submit, or "like" the same page, the number of "likers" or "submitters" goes up, which of course that page then gets more exposure. The innovation comes by their downloadable tool bar allowing you to seamlessly browse across the internet and when you see a page you like, you simply click the little Stumbleupon icon and the site then gets added to your favorites.

General posting capabilities - 8

Account setup - 7

Google pagerank - 7

Activity - 7

Spam Friendly - 8

Overall User rating - 7.4

10. Diigo.com - And last but not least, we have Diigo, a social bookmarking site with expansive capacities and an ever growing member base. The user interface is simple and easy to manage. There is a wide range of social media services and capabilities, and though the site is still in beta mode and started in 2005, it seems promising.

General posting capabilities - 8

Account setup - 7

Google pagerank - 6

Activity - 6

Spam Friendly - 8

Overall User rating - 7

With this list of top 10 social media sites, web 2.0 marketing and marketing by social media will be easier and more productive for you. Maintaining your social media sites, and adding fresh new relative content on a continuous basis is the key to successful social media marketing. Good luck!

Sincerely;
Nate Crane
Part of The SaW Team - Saw is a firm that offers advertising and marketing tools, education, vehicle graphics, banner printing, web design and signage for small, medium, and large businesses.
For other articles and resources see:
Vehicle Graphics San Diego, Banner Printing San Diego

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