There are literally dozens of ways to promote your blog but one of the best ways is to use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.
Let’s examine each one of these and why they are integral to your success.
First of all, Facebook. Facebook is a social networking site that started out as a way for college students to communicate with each other. It was available only to currently enrolled students and you could add your colleagues, send messages to them, share links and have a community of people you could be in contact with at a moment’s notice.
Facebook has since opened its doors to the public and the result is nothing short of astounding. It has already surpassed MySpace as the fastest growing social network and they’ve just released an advertising service (while a bit pricey, has been successful) for PPC marketers to cash in on the growing network.
With Facebook, you add friends in a “six degrees of separation” fashion. That is to say you can search for friends that you knew in high school or college and you can also see their friends which will give you the opportunity to add them if you hadn’t already done so.
I use Facebook to let my friends and family know what’s happening and to some extent, market goods and services I think they might benefit from. This is also one of the best ways to generate word of mouth interest in your goods and services.
Next, MySpace.
I first joined MySpace a couple years ago when I had some friends that were using it and wanted to get in touch with them as they lived quite a distance away from me. Like Facebook, MySpace is a social networking platform that allows you to add friends and family and you can keep your profile private in case you only want people who really know you to add you as a friend. This is especially important for underage users (there are many) on MySpace to protect them from would be predators.
Confused at first, I wasn’t sure what all the hype was about. I quickly realized the potential though with the bulletin tools, blogging ability and link sharing MySpace has.
Both networks are similar and both have good and bad aspects to them. Both have applications such as games and interaction applications but they also force you to send invites to your friends and the system of doing that is pretty clunky. Most apps don’t recognize the friends that are already using the same application. People also hate being spammed by the applications themselves.
Nevertheless, both of these social networks are excellent places to get your name/site/blog out there into the public eye.
Last, let’s talk about Twitter.
Twitter is in a word, Microblogging.
In 140 characters or less you can post a “tweet” to your profile that anyone who “follows” you can see. What I like about Twitter is the informality of it all. Well known bloggers like John Chow and Timothy Sykes use Twitter and you can follow them. Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador are both using Twitter to microblog their daily activities.
You see, people are fascinated by other people. It’s the reason we watch movies and television or pay attention to those sensational headlines. With Twitter, the gap between the very well known and the near invisible is nonexistant.
Lance Armstrong can post a link to a photo he snapped on his training route and I can @ reply directly to him and know that he gets that reply and may even respond to it. It’s a really great way of promoting yourself and getting instant feedback and it’s free!
If you haven’t investigated using these social networks to expand your blogging horizons, to promote products you think friends and family find useful and to try and get your piece of the social networking pie, then start today. Start right now and register accounts on these sites. Then get cracking on promoting yourself shamelessly. How else is anyone going to know what you do?
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