Thankfully my social network Blog Engage will help you accomplish this.

Everything I have done to date regarding marketing or promoting has been by myself and my fellow bloggers at little or no cost to me. The only cost is my time and willingness to actively promote the site. The idea’s I share below I did for a large social network but the same can be done for your personal blog.

Be specific when you start marketing and promoting. Stay within your niche. I would like to reference an article I wrote in September 2008. It’s a nice list of suggestions you can use to market and promote successfully in any website forum.

Increase Website Traffic by using Top Webmaster Forums

Website Review Forums – Website reviews are perfect ways to jump start the traffic flow to your website. At this point you should be creating a basic template for a Website review request which can be used with little change at all the webmaster forums your sign up at. Don’t forget in this process you should include a website url to the website under review. If you want to be very specific you can ask for reviews on multiple pages which have minor differences in design and or reasoning.

Domain Name Appraisal Forums – Another great reason to post a website url. Simply ask the members to appraise the domain name and when adding a live link 99% of the time they will also visit your website! Trust me add the link these guys giving free review are deadly bored think about the service there offering for free! Use a similar script as mentioned in the above paragraph and make minor changes for each forum.

Buy, Sell or Trade Forums – The mother of all examples is this amazing forum. It’s like a free ticket to extremely exploit your website url with so many different way to do so. The best thing about the Buy, Sell or Trade Forums is they normally have about 10 other forums inside them. The sub forums you should be looking for include the following and sometimes you might have reasoning for the rest but normally these are great forums to start with,

Freebies – If you are offering any sort of free services or products (or seeking them), this is the only place those offers should be posted. Remember to always add your url when offering these services especially if it involves your website.
Content – Users buying and selling content (including databases) can conduct business here. This is another forum you should be adding your url too and again especially if it’s pertaining to your website!

Templates – Post your url when asking for custom or free template! Make sure the members know what website you are looking to replace the current template on.

Services – Offering free services on your website? This is the forum you should be posting inside. Always add the url where the free services are located allowing you to gain another back link and increased traffic.

Link Exchange – This is another great way to get a back link. Post your url and offer a link exchange with other webmaster forum members. This will generate a nice wave of website traffic as all people willing to link exchange will want to see the website there dealing with.

Link Sales -  Selling links from your website? Have an empty sidebar you don’t know what to do with? Again this is another forum for yet another back link. Post your website url and sell your link spots!

Contests – Everyone loves contests but we can’t join if we don’t know what website is offering the contest so yup, another back link opportunity! Post your website url and tell all webmaster about this awesome contest!

Take it into consideration and start implementing it! This is the way of webmaster forums and if done right you will gain traffic and new blog readers.

I also have another post to reference here on the site. This will help you decide where to market and promote your blogs using the tips I have added.

Top webmaster forums for marketing and promotion

Top Webmaster Forums List

#1. Digital Point Forums

#2. Web Talk Forums

#3. Name Pros

#4. The Admin Zone Forums

#5 UK Webmaster Forums

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Thanks,

Brian

Social Networking is more powerful than ever imagined. For years corporate businesses have underestimated the true power of social media marketing. In today’s article I would like to provide some tips on how to harness the raw power of social networking.

First we must understand; what is social networking. Social Networking allows individuals to connect easily and share idea’s, products, services and or opinions on any given topic or subject. This can be done by using large websites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, BlogEngage or other social media platforms.

Social networks are large online communities with many members that share some sort of interest. This can be news, blogging, sports, shopping or other related activities and interests. This can also be a group of people that build online relationships and bookmark important websites.

Is Social Networking a Fad?

The answer to this is no. Social Networking and Social Media Marketing is the way of the future. More and more people are joining in and engaging social networking activities daily. As you can see from the chart below social networking is growing globally and faster then ever.

Successful Social Networking Tips

Your Profile – Building the most informational and positive profile is of most importance. You want your online friends to know about you as if they had meet you in real life. Use your first name at minimum and also use a real picture. Remember like in real life first impressions mean everything.

Your Presence – Make sure you’re getting noticed. Ad friends on all the popular networks such as digg, facebook, twitter, blogengage and more. Try and find the same friends within these communities and as always try to make new ones. Creating as many connections as you can is vital to your online success.

Building Relationships – Go beyond adding people as your friend. Look into their interests talk with them and get to know them by name. I know it sounds odd but social media marketing is the new wave of meeting people. Get used to the idea of being public with your self in online communities.

Join Discussions and Interact – This can be in forums or on blogs. The important thing to remember is when you join these discussions you must bring good and accurate information. Provide quality feedback and try to help others as often as possible. Being a positive addition to the discussion is necessary so try not to be negative.

Brand Image – Everything you do will affect your brand image. Depending on what your expectations are for this brand will determine what your attitude is online. If you interact consistently with great people and communities you gain authority. As your online presence grows you will eventually create a strong and well branded Blog. Remember don’t fight with your friends try and create a positive solution to all of your issues or concerns.

Creating your online presence will take a lot of time and dedication. Work hard at it as you are technically building your brand. Let me know if you have any other Social Networking Tips for Success. Share your opinions in the comment field below.

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Brian

The goal of the challenge is simple; select a word and rank within the top 5 spots in Google for it but within 45 days. Selecting a realistic keyword to rank for is most important to achieve any type of success.

1. Write an article about the challenge on your blog.
2. In the article state the keyword you will be trying to rank for.
3. Link back to our 45 day SEO Keyword challenge in your article. (optional)
4. Post a reply here with letting us know you will be participating.
5. Join the forum discussions and share your ideas.
6. Help one another find ways to rank higher if we are having issues.

The keywords I will try ranking for is, Social Networking Tips

In no way is this meant to be a competition but if any members decide to select the same keywords to rank for you may end up seeing each other fight for top spot.

If you’re interested in joining please do go and visit the blog engage blog and let us know.

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Thanks,

Brian

Twitter: Networking with twitter has been great for me. I follow friends and friends follow me. When I update my status I provide a url link that allows my followers to visit my latest blog articles or blog engage members articles. Sometimes I don’t have enough time to visit the website so I had to find a way to update my status even if I was away from my PC.

To get more our of twitter without having to put more effort into it I suggest all users sign up with Twitter Feed. The cool thing about Twitter Feed is it’s not overwhelming and only tweets once an hour at most. Right now I have my feed set up to promote the latest published article sat blog engage. I think I’m getting an auto tweet every four hours or so.

Conclusion: I believe I am using twitter to the best of my ability and with twitter feed I should be able to increase my over all traffic. With Twitter Feed I think I’m on the right track.

Stumble Upon: I use Stumble Upon when I remember. To be honest I don’t really use it all that much but I actually should be. Stumble Upon offers amazing return when it comes to traffic. I’ve added the stumble upon to my blog posts on the blog engage social blog and it seems to be working out fine.

I plan on improving my Stumble Upon traffic by adding more friends and sharing the stories I submit to the site. Having a large list of friends will increase your overall stumbles. So if you’re on Stumble Upon make sure to dd me as a friend.

Conclusion: I have to put more effort into this money making machine. I’m sure it can be optimized to produce a higher rate ion income on my blog. Adding more friends is my personal goal.

Forum Marketing: Right now I have about two forums I use on a regular basis though I have accounts at over 4 or 5. I plan on editing my content a little and submitting it to all my favorite forums. I’m not only going to stick with the normal two. This is a great way to build more awareness and gain more traffic. if the forums is do follow this will also help build targeted back link to your blog.

Conclusion: To visit and market on more then just my two normal forums. To edit the content and make it somewhat unique for each forum. This will build more back links and generate more traffic.

Blog Engage: Adding more friends and engaging with other member articles has always been my game plan when using blog engage. This community brings me the most traffic but even more importantly the best quality of traffic. My bounce rate is extremely low and I’m assuming it’s because I have built such great relationships with most of the members.

Conclusion: Continue what I’m doing but also to comment more on the main site and to get noticed more often.

I do however plan on getting more active within the community. I normally spend all my time on the bloggers site and for the next month of so I’m going to see how the traffic is when actually commenting on the main site.

Best of luck to everyone. I hope my tips and suggestions help you gain more traffic to your blogs. I’m always open to suggestions so leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

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Thanks,

Brian

Chances are I might find many things that need to be improved upon. The challenge is actually difficult because we are the hardest on our selves now aren’t we? So I’m going to look at my website ‘SEO MKT” and determine if I’m running it to the best of my ability. I’m going to look at management, marketing, promotion, branding, SEO, traffic and other data to help make my final top to things I can do to be a better blogger.

I will be using online free web tools to analyze my SEO, Web Traffic and Branding Trends. I will look at backlinks, Page Rank, SEO Traffic using Google Analytics. The same concept can be used to analyze a website as well that isn’t specific to a blogging platforms.

Web Traffic

First I wanted to use a general statistic made available from the public be accessing alexa.com. Alexa ranks your website in comparison to all the other websites on the net and determines what your standing are based on your total word wide web traffic. According to Alexa.com my blog is in the top 202,000 websites to have the most generated traffic or visits.

Another website I like to use to analyze my web traffic is compete.com I’m a new user to the site but it seems to have very accurate information. They provide information very similar to Alexa and have been building a lot of authority over the past two years.

Now that I had a good look at some statistical information I can try to come up with a list of ten things I should try to do differently to be a better blogger.

Increase my subscriber list – right now I don’t have many blog subscribers so I’m working on my e-book in order to increase that number. This number should be much larger in the near future.

Reply to my comments – After doing much research it seems bloggers have more return visitors when they reply to comments left on their blog. I do plan on trying to accomplish this on a more frequent basis.

Targeted back links – My blog is a weak Page Rank three and I want to improve on this. Over the year I will be working on creating high quality and keyword targeted back links.

Marketing – I do a lot of marketing with my blog but perhaps it’s time to reevaluate the communities I’m spending my time in. Let’s see if I can find more productive ways to get the word out.

Social networking – Same as marketing I would like to increase the amount of social networks I’m part of. I know blog engage has a lot to offer but who’s to say I shouldn’t’ be looking other places as well.

Blog Commenting - I plan on making more comments on my friends blogs. I have been slacking in this area and plan to use blog engage as my means to find blogs to comment on. In return leaving my blog link for others to follow including the blog owner.

Time and Dedication – I’m simply not putting enough time into my blog. I find myself dedicating all my free time to blog engage so in the coming months I would like to devote some extra time to the growth of SEOMKT.

Research and Content – Perhaps my content is a little dull. I will try to do more research on my articles and come up with more interesting and exciting article to write. Information that is new, relevant and interesting.

Images and writing style - I’m going to start learning new ways to release my content. Either it be a new and nice layout blogging style or by adding exciting images. I think my articles might be a little dull and I look forward to somehow spicing them up.

Listen to my readers – I promise to start listening to my readers more often. They leave suggestions and perhaps I over look them when I should be embracing them.

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Thanks,

Brian

How does it work?

Every Wednesday I go over to Blog Engage a social network for bloggers and I comment on each and every article that is currently on the front page.

The goal is easy but will require your time and dedication. Starting right now from top to bottom I will be reading and commenting on all the articles that are currently occupying the front page our the blog engage social community.

Things to remember

• Read the content entirely before commenting

• Make notes on sections to discuss when commenting

• Make sure to ask an open ended question

• Don’t force the comment if you’re not interested

• Subscribe to the e-mail reply notifications

• Encourage conversation on the blog

If you’re interested and want to follow I’ll be doing it all day until I have commented on all the blogs within the front page of blog engage. You will most likely see my comments on all the articles so feel free to join me in the conversations.

Feel free to reply to other comments being left. Don’t get left out in the cold. Make sure to participate with us. This could be fun and will give us all an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

How does it work?

Every Wednesday I go over to Blog Engage a social network for bloggers and I comment on each and every article that is currently on the front page.

The goal is easy but will require your time and dedication. Starting right now from top to bottom I will be reading and commenting on all the articles that are currently occupying the front page our the blog engage social community.

Things to remember

• Read the content entirely before commenting

• Make notes on sections to discuss when commenting

• Make sure to ask an open ended question

• Don’t force the comment if you’re not interested

• Subscribe to the e-mail reply notifications

• Encourage conversation on the blog

If you’re interested and want to follow I’ll be doing it all day until I have commented on all the blogs within the front page of blog engage. You will most likely see my comments on all the articles so feel free to join me in the conversations.

Feel free to reply to other comments being left. Don’t get left out in the cold. Make sure to participate with us. This could be fun and will give us all an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Being the owner of a large social media marketing website I know the facts about SEO and when done cheap and cost effectively it looks bad on your companies brand image.

The Cheap SEO Firms Process

1. A Cheap out sourcing SEO firm is contacted
2. Deals are worked out (minimum amount of back links) (Guaranteed traffic hits)
3. Payments are made
4. Random websites get spammed including blogs and forum communities.

Little do the North American companies know but hiring a third party SEO company for cheap will bring your company more trouble then it’s worth. You can find these companies all over the web. Simply search in Google SEO Marketing Firms, or cheap SEO Marketing and you will see the abundance of scam SEO related sites.

How to ensure quality SEO work?

• Ask how they build your SEO

• Require examples to be shown

• Ask for referrals of past clients

• Require contracts to be signed

• Request all information regarding back links

I know it’s not easy but sit back and ask yourself was marketing your products ever easy? Is working hard to brand and market your products something new in your career?

The answer is no so don’t expect to get out of this social media marketing movement cheap either. I have seen this form of online marketing many times but until today I was never successful at reaching the company. Normally you will see this for apparel companies such as UGGZ or even pharmaceutical companies that sell Viagra or other medications.

Earlier today I contacted a company that was out sourcing their SEO efforts and I left a detailed message with their marketing department. I shared my frustration in their SEO Marketing and asked the owner to call me with the contact information to the SEO firm.

The e-mail reply I got was as follows.

Brian, I apologize, I was unaware of my SEO firms tactics and I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.  I will have them cease this, since I know full well that it’s counter productive to my business.

So perhaps a lesson was learned here today. Maybe next time this company will think twice before hiring third party SEO marketing firms and if you’re considering cheap SEO marketing I hope you get to read this before signing the pay check.

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Thanks,

Brian

I’m not even done half of it and it’s starting to get large. I wanted to keep my e-book short and to the point. I don’t want it filled with information that’s not important. I want to share the basics of starting a blog and the aspects of marketing and Promotion.

The e-book will be free of charge but will require rss subscription or something along that line. I don’t claim to be an expert nor am I qualified to charge for my knowledge at this point. Also I’m not big on selling information to my online friends I would much rather give it away.

To be honest I think charging for these types of books is a little scammy anyways. First of all they have referral links already so who’s to say they need to make more money from us. I’m not greedy all I want is to build my subscribers list and I’m sure this e-book will fix that.

Well that’s about it for now regarding the e-book. I’m working on it and unfortunately as of right now I don’t have a time line on when I expect it to be ready. Stick around and visit daily to keep updated.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

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Thanks,

Brian

One of the most important aspects is marketing and promoting your blog properly. Picking the right communities to invest your time in can become a daunting task for most of us. I’m not going to touch on how to determine where to market within this article but rather explain why blog engage is your best bet as a blogger and online marketer.

First let me explain what blog engage is.

Blog Engage allows you to submit your Blog Article(s) that will be placed in queue and promoted by our members to the front page. The ideal of Blog Engage is to promote interaction between bloggers by “Engaging” with each others blogs. Interaction that builds up quality comments and interactive discussions.

Over the past year Blog Engage has added many unique features that has helped our community grow into what it is today. We have the ability to track and add status updates. Blog Engage allows members to add each other as friends. When you add a friend you can easily track their submissions and what are voting on.

As you can see from the above picture I have added Blazingminds aka Karen as a friend. Behind the vote button you will see the little star/head indicating this this member is a friend f mine. I will always vote for these articles.

We also allow our members to create groups allowing bloggers with similar interested to see each others articles. You can submit your blog to both the main site and a group during the submissions process.

Blog Engage allows for easy access to submit stories to social networks. Under all articles you will see a share this link that will submit your blog article to your favorite social networks. The benefit is having all the options in one central location.

When adding friends to your blog engage account you also have the ability to see all of your friends activities by visiting the status update section. You will see articles they have recently submitted or commented on. You will also see random status update messaged from friends and yourself.

If you’re interested in joining our blog community please contact us with the requested information and we will be sure to send you an invitation. Our community is friendly and helpful. You will see we are unlike anything currently on the net regarding blog promotion.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

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Thanks,

Brian