At a recent Social Media-themed breakfast event for New Hampshire’s Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, one speaker (Leslie Poston, co-author of Twitter for Dummies) told the assembled audience there were 537 different social networking sites online. 537! And that doesn’t even count all the networks on Ning and other services like it, which allow you to build your own social network using their templates, or custom-made communities like “Greenopolis,” or “Equestrian Life.”

So when it comes to deciding which social media platforms make the most sense to use, the options can be overwhelming – if you let them. However, with a little focus, guidance, and strategic thinking, you can just as easily simplify your choices.

What follows draws from our 6-week “Social Media Kick Start” Virtual Boot Camp, which expands on these topics with self-paced learning modules.

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I often get asked the question, “How do I get more followers on Twitter?” Many of my clients want to pay a sum of money for the latest scheme to get them 10,000 new followers in 24 hours or some such nonsense as that. As in all marketing strategies, it’s not the number that counts. Rather, it’s the quality in the numbers that really matters. So, 10,000 followers who are not members of your target market are fairly useless to you. Of much greater value would be a smaller list of 1000 followers who are all members of your target market.

All in all, online social networking is not that vastly different from face-to-face networking. Some basic networking principles still apply, regardless of the platform:

To be interesting, you have to be interested (in others). Try to be a resource and give first before asking for anything.

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Social media optimization is a way for organizations and individuals to generate publicity through social networking tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, online communities like Facebook, and automated tools like TwitterFeed and Ping.fm. The term “social media optimization” was originally coined by SEO consultant extraordinaire, Rohit Bhargava, the senior vice president of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and author of the Influential Marketing Blog. (Bhargava’s work was so groundbreaking, Jeremiah Owyang, another social media optimization expert, even dovetailed a few of his own rules to the original work.)

Social media optimization is basically a way to promote your blog, website, or even your company’s brand, through social media, without being obnoxious or overtly commercial. Sure, you can blanket sites like Twitter with “Want to lose weight? Download my free report, ‘19 Ways to Lose Weight Fast’” repeatedly, or brag about your latest affiliate paycheck, but that’s not going to get you any followers. At least none worth talking to.

Bhargava terms these people”Twankers” (people who use Twitter for one-way broadcasts about their own greatness) and “Twidiots” (people who only tweet insignificant things like their latest press release or what they had for breakfast). If you’re just having one-way conversations and telling people about the minor, mundane details of your company, you’re not providing any value, and your SMO efforts will be wasted.

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I have to admit I’ve been slow to jump on board with the whole social marketing trend.

After so many years spent in marketing and frequently hearing about the “next big thing”, I’ve come to the decision that all these technologies are simply communication tools for building trusting relationships with prospective customers.

No one tool is going to make you a gazillion dollars.

But used with common sense and an understanding of where your customers hang out and what your customers are most wanting, I think social marketing technology is well worth learning to use.

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One of the most common questions I’m getting these days is “how should I measure the value of all the social marketing things we’re doing like Twitter, Linked-in, Facebook, etc.?”

My answer: WHY are you doing them in the first place? If you can’t answer that, you’re wasting your time and the company’s money.

Sounds simple I know, but I’m stunned at how unclear many marketers are about their intentions/expectations/hypotheses for how social media initiatives might actually help their business. In short, if you can’t describe in two sentences or less (no semi-colons) WHAT you hope to gain through use of social media, then WHY are you doing it? Measurement isn’t the problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, any measurement approach will work.

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With the world wide web of social media and the constant reminder that this is not a fade but a reality, we are all faced with questions on how do I use these Social Media sites successfully and at what point to get others to help.

I was watching the News last night and they were talking about the Lakers big win and how unruly people went out of control and started destroying things in plain view for all the news cameras and security cameras to see. Then they followed up with asking people to go to their twitter account and comment on what they think about these events. As you can see this type of social media is very popular and being used now in ways we never thought possible. When the television starts telling you to use twitter you know we are on to something big here.

I am not going to give any real meat here on social networking but wanted to touch on one aspect here which involves the URL which is most commonly used for the micro blogging sites like “spnbabble” and “twitter“. When postings to sites like this since the character limit is 140 then the need to shorten URLs comes into play as some URLs are so long that it can take up the majority of your message. So sites like MyOpenID start appearing all over the web allowing us to use our own tiny URL to help manage this shortening of URLs.

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One type of Internet marketing that you must be taking advantage of is social media. The truth is your Internet business will not survive unless you are involved in various forms of social media. The only exception to that would be is if you do paid advertising such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Marketing.

Perhaps you do not understand the various ways you can utilize these many types of social media to brand yourself and expand your business. Here are 7 types of Internet social media you should be doing everyday.

1. Blogging

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If there was an advertising guide that could tell you exactly what to do to make money off of using Facebook, then no doubt there would be millions of copies sold. People want to make money and Facebook wants a portion of that revenue for using their website; it is more than just a social networking site. Sure you can find friends and such but for some people Facebook is all about business.

Facebook is a social networking website devoted to promoting interaction between its members. People use the Facebook application as a way to share stories, find friends or promote a website/store. They do this through blogging and through bulletins found on the Wall within Facebook. You can post networking news for the world to read through your profile. If you are a small business owner and wish to display your products, then simply upload photos into albums so that visitors and friends can see your merchandise. This may lead them into your store or to your website.

Business experts can be your advertising guide. Take a cue from them and see how it is that they get so much business through ads. Another great way to understand how advertising works is to take a look around at different websites. Do you notice the flashing banners and advertisements that are lit up? They beckon people to “click here” and be transported to their website.

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The 7 Basics That All Sites Need to Adhere To

Basic #1:

Have a great keyword-loaded URL [Get your domain and hosting at bluehost.com]. Create small uris with: Snipurl.com, Tinyurl.com, ICANN.org is the technical coordination body for the Internet (what to do about domain name disputes).

Basic #2:

Easy to use Site Is your site easy to use and navigate? Does it satisfy its intended purpose? Use techniques that are friendly to your customers and prospects. View compatibility with various browsers: AnyBrowser.com.  Check your graphics efficiency: Optiview.com ’s Quickscan, keep track of your site’s performance: atwatch.com, dotcom-monitor.com, Keynote.com or lnternetSeer.com. Make sure your links work: SevenTwentyFour.com or validator.w3.org

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The biggest problem any marketer faces is getting traffic to their website. No matter how good your website or your product, if you do not have traffic coming to your website it is not worth the code it is written in.

Without traffic you will make no sales, no profit and will be out of business.

Fact.

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There are many ways to make money online. Unfortunately, many of the money-making techniques actually take money to make money. This means that you need to begin with money if you hope to make any money.

However, there are several free ways to make money online. Let?s take a look at four of them right now.

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