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GETTING ORGANIZED

When you have an internet marketing business the worst thing that you can do is to treat that business as a hobby. People who treat it as a hobby will never be very successful. You have to take your internet marketing business or any business for that matter very seriously. This means that you have to work hard to make it successful. You can work whenever you want to but you will have to work at it.

No one can make your business successful except you. There are too many people who start a business and then treat it like they would their favorite hobby. They don’t understand why they are not getting the results that they want.

A Business has to be treated very seriously. When you have a brick and mortar business you would definitely not treat it like a hobby because you know how much it cost you to get it started. So why would you treat your internet business any different? Even if it doesn’t cost you a lot to get started you still have to think of it just like you would any other type of business. This is one big mistake that a lot of people make but don’t even realize it. So your best bet is to start out treating it like a business and continuing in that fashion. That way you will not be making the same mistake that a lot of people do.

TREATING YOUR BUSINESS LIKE A HOBBY CAN BE DAMAGING

When you have a business online you will automatically expect it to be different than a brick and mortar business. This is true in a way but it is still a business and not a hobby. You have to realize this up front because there are things that can happen to your internet business if you don’t take it seriously enough. Here are some very common things that happen when people don’t take their business seriously enough.

• Your advertising will fall short. This means that as a hobby you will only do a small amount of advertising. When you have a business you have to continually advertise using more than one method. A business that will be successful will have to be seen by a lot of people. This is very important but if you don’t take it seriously enough then you will never do the advertising that you have to in order to be successful.

• The money that you want to make will never materialize. In order for your business to make money you have to get it in front of as many people as you can. When they can’t find your business they won’t buy your product. This is just a fact of life. By treating your business as a hobby you will never have enough people who see your products. It takes hard work and continuous advertising to sell your products. People who don’t work their business the right way will never make the kind of money that they want.

• You will end up quitting your business or getting very discouraged that you give up. There are so many people who never treat their business like it should be. They then don’t make enough money and can’t figure out why. They will then get so discouraged that they give up or they just quit altogether. This has happened so many times with internet businesses. Having a business online is not going to be easy but it will be very rewarding if you are willing to make it happen. You have to do whatever it takes and don’t let anything or anyone discourage you from your goals.

BELIEVING THERE IS NO WORKINVOLVED

This is a huge mistake that so many people start their business believing. Just because your internet marketing business is online does not mean that you won’t have to work to make it a success. With any business you do whether online or not you have to be willing to work hard to get where you want your business to be. You can’t just do a little work and expect miracles because when you do that you will end up sorely disappointed.

Even if you are only willing to do a little work every day on your business, you have to at least do something. The more effort you put into your business the more money you will make, and the more successful your business will be. You have to make as much effort on your business as you can every single day. Otherwise, you will never get anywhere with it.

You have to be constantly learning about anything that affects your business, and advertising with three to five different methods at a time. You want to make sure that you don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak. The more methods you are using the more advertising success you will have. This is very important if you are going to have any kind of success. You have to learn how to work hard but also smart. This means that you need to do things that will help your business grow, and don’t let yourself be sidetracked by anything that will not help your business.

Too many people start their internet marketing business believing that they will be successful and get rich quick over night. This has happened but it is very rare. This brings you to the next mistake that a lot of people make with any business they do.

YOU WILL NOT GET RICH QUICK ONLINE

You have heard about people who get online, start their business, and then make a ton of money right away. This can happen if you are very lucky but it is not likely to happen to you at all. Too many people hear about the people that it does happen to and think WOW I can do that. You might be one of the lucky ones that it will happen to but most of you will never have it happen. So you need to be realistic about doing a business online.

You can get rich online very easily. However, you will have to work hard, be persistent, have patience, and have the attitude that no one and nothing is going to stop you from becoming successful. Most of the people who have already achieved success from their internet business, had to do the same thing to make it where they are today.

When you have an internet marketing business you will be able to make as much money as you want to but it will take you some time to do. For some people it will take months and others it may take years. You need to realize that no matter how long it takes you, you will have to work for it. There is no other way for you to have a successful business.

When you start with a business that promises to make you rich over night or quickly, you might want to run the other way. They are usually not being honest with you. Honesty is a big thing on the internet because no one has any other way of knowing you or what your business can do for them.

You have heard the saying, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. This goes double for any business online. So before you start any business you have to realize that no matter what business you do, especially internet marketing businesses, you will have to work hard in order to be a success with it.

KEEP YOURSELF FOCUSED AT ALL TIMES

When you start an internet marketing business, one of the mistakes that you will make is to let a lot of different things distract you from building your business. This happens to everyone that has a business online. The one thing that you have to do is to learn how to keep yourself focused on what you are trying to achieve. The more focused you are on your business, the faster you will make money with it, and the success you want will be yours that much faster. There are a couple of different things that you can do to help you stay focused on your business.nt to write down your long term goals for one year and five years. Make sure that you are realistic with your goals.

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Making Sure You Plan For Success

Getting affiliate links is the easy part. Having a place to host them—now that's a little more involved. Having a place to host them where people will convert to buyers—that's even more work. You need to create a place where people can find you, where they'll want to come for information or assistance, and where they'll leave only to go complete the sale (even though they may not realize they are 'leaving'). Nevertheless, it can be done. But before you do anything, you need to structure a game plan. You need to write the plan that gives you all the potential for selling that you need.

But first, your plan

We won't go into detail about how and where to get an actual website—that's information you can find out easily enough and quite possibly already have. We'll throw out a couple of names like GoDaddy and HostGator, but also know that there are numerous hosts and website building templates ranging from the freebie that came with your ISP to being your own host. The only point you need to know is that anyone can build a workable, attractive website; and even if it's not the best looking on the block, if it's built so that traffic can come, they will.

What we want to focus on more is the structure of your website and/or websites. First off, we'll talk about the individual sites themselves.

If you will be promoting more than one product—and to make money the way the Big Dogs do you will need to—each related group of products should have their own dedicated site; out of that group, you will focus on your one most promising product most of the time. This site doesn't need to be huge, it can be just a few pages in total—say between ten and twenty, depending on the number of products you'll be selling; but it does need to incorporate all the elements that will gain you attention from the search engines, and thereby from visitors and buyers (targeted buyers with a need!).

Eventually you will want to build a master website that directs to each of your smaller, product-focused websites. This will be the website you use to "clean-up" the rest of the traffic generated by the keywords you haven't targeted—those generalities that aren't necessarily on the verge of buying anything. But that can come later. First, build the sites that will sell and start making money sooner.

So initially, your plan will look something like this:

• Target markets and keywords
• Choose specific affiliate products
• Build a website around a specific group of products
• Build more product-grouped websites for each affiliation
• Create a master website that captures traffic, then links traffic to smaller product-specific websites

Let's try to put this into perspective and give you a real-world example.

Okay; let's suppose that you are selling fitness-related products—a variety of sorts from body-building supplements to fifteen minute workout routines. The buyers who are looking for muscle-building supplements and powders could probably care less about your crunch-time workout videos. And you don't look like much of a reliable authority by just slapping up one ad next to the other. So you break down each of those product types into groups, and market five or six or so together on one website dedicated to each. So instead of having a catch-all website with fitness products, you have two dedicated websites that specifically serve the needs of the visitors ready to buy. You have

• A 10-20 page website selling body-building supplements, and
• A 10-20 page website selling workout videos for the too-busy-to-exercise crowd

Each site gives your buyers what they need—not what the other needs. After those sites are established and doing their thing, you can go back to that model of the fitness-products store, and create sections and virtual "aisles" that point to these smaller dedicated sites.

Now here we need to clarify a bit. This structure is one of the number-one things that Big Dog affiliates do, and small players do not.
What you will see many times is that small players collect a number of products, usually related, sometimes not even, and group them all on one website. They market their affiliate site as a sort of one stop-shopping storefront for everything. And they create so much confusion and competition amongst their own affiliate products that they never maximize the potential of the sales traffic that is coming in.

What the Big Dogs do in contrast is start by focusing on the small sites. They build up products in a way that clearly sells each one. They create choice for buyers by comparing their own like-products against each other, so that whatever product is chosen, the sale is theirs. Genius, yes?

Then they get the traffic going to and buying at those sites. Later on they'll build something more akin to the storefront, and link to these smaller sites when visitors click to learn more, just to clean up the rest of the lookers.

In the end, eventually anyway, both the Big Dogs and small-timers both end up with catch-all parent sites, but the Big Dogs have that added layer of sales protection that gives the customers what they need to make the sale, and also brings traffic in at both ends.

Now build it and they'll come

What you most need to know, then, is how to build that small-niche site.

To reiterate, the purpose of this site is to develop a very consumer-specific website that provides information and resources for the person who is looking to buy a product of this type. That's from the buyer's perspective. But you have search engines to please, too, so that content will need to do double-duty and also help you be found and ranked well for your target keywords and target audience.

There are two basic components to these small sites. Those are

1. Articles and buyer-centric information
2. Products

The pages of your website will be split amongst these two components. It probably should not be a straight 50/50 split. The division should be weighted more in favor of information than products. This will serve two purposes:

1. Information gives the buyer all the supporting information and details they need to decide to buy.
2. Information provides more feed for search engines so that buyers can find you.

However you decide to structure the actual website, it should have a simple division—information and products.

The product pages are simple. Create a page for each individual product that gives the specifics on the product (often the information provided by the affiliate). You need to give enough detail without overdoing it. Set up the product pages so that when the visitor performs the desired action—clicks a 'buy' button, or opts for a free sample or service—they are taken to the affiliate website, where they [hopefully] will order and purchase your product.

The informational pages require a little bit more work, but not too much. Each of these pages should host one piece of supporting information which helps your visitor decide to buy. It should be an article, product review, or product comparison. As you'll learn later, these are the things that will really draw the very specific and targeted ready to buy consumers that you want. This is the information that they are looking for just prior to purchase, and so it is the information that is most likely to net serious buyers, and not just curious visitors.

Back to our example, if we have five muscle-building supplements, we'll have five pages of products and perhaps ten pages with articles and comparisons. Use the articles to address the concerns of people in the market for supplements, and include topics important to them. They might be side-by side comparisons, reviews of specific powders, or topics such as "Five Tips for Building More Muscle."

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INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS TWITTER, ANDWHY SHOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN IT?

Why indeed? Isn’t it just another social networking site?

I think it is a little more than that. It IS a way of networking with other people, that much is true, but you could also call it a phenomenon. Sharing knowledge, advice, updates and much more in just 140 characters is a challenge that thousands of new people are taking up every single day. Twitter has hit the headlines more and more in recent times, and revealing just a few of the stories that have been published should give you an idea of just how important this site can be to you.

When the Presidential race was on, both candidates were making good use of Twitter to garner support for their campaigns. Barack Obama is still the most followed person on the whole of Twitter… although he hasn’t been tweeting much since he started running the country. He still has well over 600,000 followers at the last count however.

And celebrities are using the site more and more too – to connect with their fans, promote their careers and much more besides. Some of these have been proved to be fake, but there are plenty of real celebrity Twitter users out there too.

The British comedian, actor and writer Stephen Fry has the second biggest number of followers on the site. He often responds to messages and takes part in conversations as well. American actress Demi Moore proved that Twitter can be much more than just another social networking site by helping to prevent an apparent suicide bid by another user.

You can see how Twitter has pervaded the lives of many different people. You can make a difference with this site, and you can also use it for many different purposes, as we’re about to find out in this book. But the main thing to remember at this stage is that you can reach a huge audience. It may not be anywhere near as big as the one President Obama enjoys, but you can still end up with thousands who will read every tweet you write.

Twitter is not just for the rich and famous – although judging by the number of stories along those lines that have been hitting the headlines recently, you may wonder.

But no matter what line of business you are in; whether you are based primarily online or you have offline interests as well, you CAN benefit from having a free account on Twitter. And this book will show you exactly how you can do it.

We’ll explore everything you need to know during each section. You’ll not only know how Twitter works and how to make the best of it, you’ll also discover how you can make it work for YOU. There are certain points that you will need to bear in mind if you want to build up a huge band of followers instead of just having a few hundred, or even a few dozen. We’ll cover all of these one by one.

We’ll also cover the importance of getting set up in just the right way. Once you know what you are doing on Twitter, you will instantly be able to tell which people haven’t taken the time to get set up properly. You won’t be one of those because you will have read all the tips and techniques I am about to give you.

You’ll soon see that the book is split up into several different sections. These have been designed to be read in that order, so as to get the best out of this book. You need to have a great home page before you start learning all about the tricks of the trade that I have included in Section Four. So let’s get stuck in and go straight to Section One, so you can get started with the least of delay.

1WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’VE JOINED?

Okay, so you have gone to http://twitter.com and signed up for your free Twitter account. That is the easy bit, and it should only take a few moments to complete the process.

The first thing you need to think of when you sign up is what username you are going to use. This could depend on how long your own name is, as you only have a limited number of characters to use. Your username will then form part of your own unique home page address, i.e. http://twitter.com/username And of course you don’t need to use your own name either. You could use your business name if you wish.

The next step is to go through the five step process I am about to share with you. Now I know you are probably itching to start ‘tweeting’ – the term that is given to sending messages through Twitter – but it is essential that you make sure you get your account sorted out properly first.

As you become more and more familiar with the site, you will be able to spot those people who have jumped in without completing all the steps I am going to show you. And there is one word for what their home pages look like – unprofessional. It can’t be a coincidence that most of these people have either (a) tweeted a few times and then disappeared entirely, or (b) made sure all their messages are of a marketing kind.

There is nothing wrong with marketing on Twitter, but if you are going to heavily promote everything you have to sell, don’t expect to get many followers or much success. You’ll find out why as we go along. Incidentally all of these steps can be done by clicking on the ‘settings’ option at the top of your home page once you are logged in. So let’s get started with the first step, shall we?

Twitter is all about brevity. And when you only have 140 characters to use to create each new message, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to find that your bio only consists of one line as well.

But it isn’t much of a problem – provided you write it in the right way. You need to think about it from a certain angle to make sure you have a successful bio that draws people in. In other words, a good bio will get you more followers.

One good method to get ideas for your own bio is to have a look at what some other members have already done. Type a word into the search box – any word will do for the purpose of this example – and take a look at the results you get back. Click on a username and you will be taken into their home page, which will have their bio in the top right hand corner, underneath their little photo.

Which ones really get your attention? The best ones are generally those which describe the person and what they do without going into sales mode. Your bio is not the place for trying to sell people something. It is a place to introduce yourself, and nothing more.

You will no doubt also notice that some people don’t bother to fill in their bios at all. This is a BIG no no. If your bio is not filled in, people only really have your tweets to go on to decide whether you will be worth following or not. And if they aren’t interested in the latest few they read, you could easily lose a potential follower there.

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Why You Need to Follow Up with Your Customers

You create a digital information product, and work hard towards your product launch. You announce it to your list. You’ve even done quite a bit of legwork in advance and promoted it via email, Twitter, Facebook, article marketing and guest blogging… and maybe even a guest interview on a web radio show.

The big day comes. You’re quite pleased with the sales. But they trickle off within the first month - perhaps even the first week or two – and after that, you’re lucky if you make $100 a month on your product.

There’s something wrong with the scenario here: Most likely the lack of a follow up plan.

Your Follow Up Plan

It’s actually amazing how many people don’t realize the importance of contact or sales follow up – let alone having an actual follow up plan for every campaign. Yet this happens with a huge percentage of online entrepreneurs. They put all their emotion and energy into creating the product and launching it... and leave the sales to take care of themselves.

The truth is, even if your sales are good, there are so many more ways to maximize them, and it should all be done at the planning stage.

Here's an example of proactive launch follow up (names changed to protect the unauthorized).

Derek has his big product launch. A couple of days later, he sends out an email to his list. The subject line reads: "Hey, It's Not Too Late!" After greeting his list member by her first name, goes on to say:

"I know how busy life is, online. So if you meant to pick up a copy of my new eBook, "54 Ways to Love Your Car Without Being a Mechanic", but got distracted or even just plain forgot, here's your chance to still sneak in under the gate. For the next 3 days only (till midnight on Friday, May 13) if you click on the special link below will be able to buy it for only $14.75 - less than half of its regular $27.75 retail price.

“So if you'd love to know everything you need to about maintaining your car in perfect condition (and pay less to learn it), download "54 Ways to Love Your Car Without Being a Mechanic" right now - and get it at my special less-than-half price..."

Derek sent out that email on the advice of his copywriter - and, being a new marketer, was absolutely stunned when this follow up letter produced more sales than his initial pre-launch efforts and launch day combined!

In fact, when the dust settled, Derek was able to ascertain that this one, single follow up letter had produced 64.9% of his total sales!

The Power of Follow Up

By now you’ve probably become aware that the biggest crime of internet marketing is "leaving money on the table". What this phrase means is simply "not making the most of every single opportunity to exploit this one product". Not having a well-thought-out and implemented follow up plan is doing just that - missing opportunities for further sales, right, left and center! When you consider how many sales Derek made that were generated by that single follow up letter, it puts the power of following up into strong perspective.

Just consider these statistics, reported by the 21centurysales.com blog:

"According to the National Sales Executive Association

• 2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
• 3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
• 5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
• 10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
• 80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact"

What that really says is... anyone who expects all sales to happen based only on a couple of initial contacts is neglecting further opportunities for profit.

3 Key Ways Following Up Benefits Your Business

Taking as much care with your follow up as you do with your product creation and launch prep should be a consistent part of your marketing process. We've already taken a look at the sales stats in the previous section; and if that's not enough to really drive the point home, here are 3 more powerful benefits to consistently using well-thought-out follow up process...

1. Following up builds trust - one of the key questions we ask ourselves, when preparing a new product launch (and especially in affiliate marketing) is: "Why should Josephine Customer buy from me?"

When asked why they choose one particular marketer over another, customers frequently answer: "Because I trust so-and-so".

I'm sure you know about building up trust through solving problems - and not always through paid products. But your follow up process also helps to build trust too.
It's like being introduced to someone at a convention. You may like them, but if the contact is brief, you may also forget them. And it's not until you've met each other at least 3 times, and had a couple of conversations about your shared interests that it naturally occurs to you that your new conference buddy is the very person you should speak to about the subject you're both passionate about.

So it is with internet marketing: Your perfect potential customer "meets" you... but if all she hears is one sales pitch, with a couple of sporadic letters that don't do anything towards building up a relationship, she is likely to go elsewhere to buy a similar product - even though yours is actually far more in tune with what she originally wants!

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It’s very easy to get excited about niche marketing. After all, how can you argue with working only a few hours per week while enjoying a full week’s (or even a full month’s) income?

As awesome as the idea of online passive niche marketing income may be, achieving this reality is another thing entirely.

This book dispenses with all the hype, exaggeration, and big promises.

Instead, you get the framework you need to achieve greater success with niche marketing.

Far from learning a collection of quick hacks you can use, you learn how to build a self-sustaining and self-reinforcing system that can ultimately lead to victory.

How to Pick a Niche the Smart Way

I hope it's abundantly clear to you that a lot of people fail to make money online because they don't know how to pick niches the right way. They end up building the wrong kind of business Regardless of how much time, effort and money they put into their business, nothing seems to work. At best, they’re forced to settle for cents on the dollar; at worst, they don't make any money at all.

Picking a niche the smart way involves several filters. You have to make sure that you go through this process. You can't skip a step. You can’t assume that you know what's hot, and you can't wait to just build a website and get going. I’m telling you your impatience will ensure the early death of your business, guaranteed.

Step #1: Start with Your Personal Interest

The first thing that you need to do is to be clear about your personal interests. What kind of topics would you love to write about? What kind of topics would you like to build a business on?

What makes this difficult is that a lot of people think that there is some sort of right answer. This is personal. Some people might be excited over certain topics other people couldn’t care less. What's important is that the topic subject category is attractive to you.

Here's a shortcut. Ask yourself what would you talk about all day every day even if you were not getting paid for it? Give yourself a couple of hours to write down everything that comes to your mind. No need to edit it. Just write it down. Even if it's just half an idea or it’s just a faint glimmer of an idea, right it down.

Step #2: Filter Your Topics by Search Volume

If you don't already have an account at Google Ads, go ahead and set one up. You can access this by typing in AdWords.com. Log in with your existing Gmail account and set up an AdWords account.

Once you're set up, look at the tools section and select Keyword Planner tool. Type in the topics you're interested in. Do this one by one. When you do this you get a list of keywords related to that topic.

Look at those keywords’ average monthly search volume. This is an indirect way of getting a rough idea of the overall demandlevel for those niches. Once you’ve found the keywords for one niche and have listed their search volume numbers, move on to the next keyword and then the next one after that.

Once you have gotten the numbers for all these keywords, pick the niches that are in the middle. You don't want niches that have too much search volume because they most likely have a lot of competition. On the other hand, you don't want niches that have too little search volume.

Step #3: Filter by Commercial Value

On Google Keyword Planner Tool, next to each keyword’s expected monthly search volume is a dollar figure. This is the estimate AdWords gives you regarding how much advertisers will pay per click on ads that show that keyword. This gives you a rough idea of the commercial value of each niche.

Again, line up the CPC value of the keywords, come up with an average and then compare all the niches’ average values. You should focus on niches that have a decent search value. We’re talking at least $1 or more per click. Again, this is the average click value.

Step #4: Filter by Competition Level

By this step, you have shortened your list quite a bit. The next step is to enter each of the keywords related to the niches that are still on your list into Google's main search box.

When you do a search on Google, t will tell you how many websites ranked for that keyword. Take note of this. You will then see how many competitors you have on average per niche.

With this information, eliminate niches on your list that havetoo much competition.

Step #5: Filter Your List by Search Trends

Finally, go to Google Trends and enter the keywords related to the remaining niches on your list. Look for a trend line that is going up or at least is flat with a slight tilt up. This trend line tells you that your niche is not dying over time.

This is very important because you don't want to build your business on a niche that's actually on its way out.

Optional Filters

While the five filters above should be enough for you to develop a viable online business, if you want to turbocharge your results and increase your likelihood of success, apply the following additional filters.

Optional Filter #1: Filter by Social Visibility

Enter your keywords on major social media platforms likeFacebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. Can you tell if there are a lot of existing accounts on those places that talk about your niche? If there isn't, delete the niche from your list.

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Social Media A to Z

As promised, this section is going to introduce you to social bookmarking which is going to be one of the ways that you truly start increasing traffic to your website.

You’ll find a ton of introductory information as well as some intermediate discussion throughout this text. As I mentioned in the introduction, make sure that you read this section so that you can gain the most benefit from this book.

Social bookmarking is based on the concept of sharing information on the web, and has evolved rapidly with the growth of the internet communities and interactive sites. As more people turn to websites to learn, research, and even read the latest news, the ability to track and monitor this behavior is becoming even easier.

Collective intelligence is leading the wave of sharing information based on specific keywords and subjects, and can help marketers and business owners in many ways. Today’s social networking sites are incorporating many social bookmarking elements into the platform. This allows users to learn even more about each other, and is engaging people online by building communities, opening up new networking channels, and giving marketers and business owners a chance to track behavior.

The Wikipedia definition for social bookmarking states: "an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others. - a personal knowledge management tool."

Each social bookmarking site is designed differently, but ultimately allows users to create a profile, update their preferences, and share this information with friends and family. Since they are creating this growing network of information, a pattern of tastes and preferences is established—and made publicly available.

This profile is the key element of interest to marketers; it’s created with basic registration and in most cases, an e-mail address and login name allow complete access to the social bookmaking platform. The visitor can begin publishing their activity to share with fellow social bookmarkers, and this creates a network of categories.

Discovering and sharing information with keywords in specific topic is what allows social bookmarking networks to grow; as more information is provided, the categories of interest also develop to provide key information.

Digg.com is a perfect example of social bookmarking that is growing rapidly. Users can rate and comment on articles, video content, and podcasts on thousands of topics; the more popular items are posted on the Digg.com front page, while others are rated and logged for the community to review.

While Digg.com is primarily a news site, it is just one example of a valuable social bookmarking network that has developed into a proliferating online community. Any articles or information that is posted on Digg.com has the potential of being viewed by millions of visitors. Getting to the Digg.com front page ensures thousands of page views, all at a very low initial cost. Of course, the information that reaches this level must be valuable to Digg.com readers; since the votes are all user-generated, it allows anyone submitting information to learn about their audience from the ground up.

People Love Building Their Own Bookmarking Pages

The fundamental reason why consumers build social bookmarking profiles is to create an identity to share. After doing so, they are able to interact on social networking sites on a regular basis, and marketers can use this behavior to their advantage by:

- Monitoring their favorite brands
- Reading about new products
- Learning about competitor products
- Identifying with other users
- Seeing what friends and family find interesting
- Finding out what the latest trends are
- Identifying new products to purchase

In order to create a profile on many of today’s leading social bookmarking sites, a user simply creates a screen name, login information, and possibly uploads a picture. Depending on the theme of the site, the user will then go ahead and ‘upload’ the relevant information such as links or products to their profile pages. After that, they can become a part of a community.

Community members and leaders rise to the top ‘ranks’ of the site based on a variety of factors including:

- Level of activity
- User feedback
- Number of products reviewed or discussions created
- Popularity within the community
- Number of fans

In many ways, social bookmarking is considered to be a form of collective intelligence. Collective intelligence based on a few trends in the marketplace, news, or other information can provide very important data to a third party observer. Filtering data has become even more important today as it provides insights and information on direct experiences with many of the goods and services available in the marketplace.

Planning Social Media Into Your Site

Social media offers the latest roundup of online technologies that is based on the concept of community. Sharing opinions, posting comments, participating in discussion boards, and simply exchanging media files are all facets of social media on the web today, and social bookmarking and networking are just a couple of these online activities.