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The great thing about social networking is that it is changing how people communicate with friends, family, businesses and everyone else online, and it is even revolutionizing how people make money online as well. You can target new friends, old friends, family members and even new customers on the top ten best social networking sites.

You can also develop relationships and introduce people to what you have to offer. If you have never looked into social networking then it is time that you did. If you do not know where to start when it comes to social networking, you can look no further. Here are the top ten best social networking sites and what they can offer you.

1. MySpace (http://www.myspace.com)
   This is the biggest general social networking site, and is essential if you want to meet people and facilitate conversations online. There are millions of people using MySpace, are you one of them?
2. Facebook (http://www.facebook.com)
   This is another general social networking site that is similar in nature to MySpace. What it offers is unique in many ways, making it necessary to be a member of both for best results.
3. YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)
   YouTube is a social networking website that allows you to build a channel of self-uploaded videos that you can share with others. This is a great way to build relationships through viral video marketing.
4. LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com)
   This is a website that allows you to network with professionals in your industry and others. If you want to get to know people with similar business interests, this is the way to do it.
5. Twitter (http://www.twitter.com)
   Twitter capitalizes on micro-blogging, allowing you to follow what your friends are doing and share micro-updates with the people who want to know what you are up to as well.
6. Classmates (http://www.classmates.com)
   Classmates is a social networking website that connects you with friends from your past, allowing you to keep in touch with old schoolmates in order to rekindle friendships.
7. Xanga (http://www.xanga.com)
   Xanga is a blogging community that allows you to share blogs, photos, videos and a lot more so that you can network with people that have similar interests from all over the world.
8. Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com)
   Squidoo is becoming popular really fast, allowing people to create their own personal websites called lenses about any topic under the sun.
9. Multiply (http://multiply.com)
   Multiply is a parner of MSN that allows you to network with other people in a variety of different and unique ways to facilitate community and conversation.
10. Friendster (http://www.friendster.com)
    Friendster is one the first social networking site. It has many features provided to its users.

As you well know there are many other social networking sites out there. By understanding the terms of service for each of the above and other adult social networking sites you can become known around the globe. Not just from a social standpoint but also from an internet marketing and business standpoint.  Now it’s up to you to leverage your business and social life using the best social networking sites.

The first step to getting the most out of social network websites is to understand what they are and what they can do for you. Social network websites are designed to facilitate communities between like minded people. Some of the more popular social networking websites are Facebook and MySpace.

These social networking websites are general networking websites that are designed to facilitate the communication between people all over the world through chat mediums, messaging mediums, communities and networking, commenting, photo sharing and more. This is not where the social network website concept ends, however, as there are social network websites for every niche and interest under the sun, including social network websites for dating, business networking, investing, sharing media and news, niche interests, music, art, students and so much more.

Everyone can benefit from community social websites if they enjoy communicating with other people. Businesses can benefit from social networking by reaching out to their customers through their profiles. Individuals can benefit from social networking by meeting new people, making new friends, and developing new interests and activities by gaining exposure to a completely new world.

MySpace, Facebook and other general social networks offer exposure to videos, photos, music, blogging, commenting, groups and networks and other forms of media sharing and communication. Niche websites like Ravelry, which is a community site for knitters or Deviant Art, which is an art based social website are designed to gather people with similar interests, aspirations or goals so that they can share their creations, ideas and other communication with one another.

Social network websites are opening up new opportunities for meeting and communicating with people all over the world. Most social network websites are worldwide sites, meaning that users can join from all over the world to communicate with people that have similar interests. These community sites also provide an excellent avenue for people to reconnect with individuals from their past, such as by searching for the names of old classmates or friends from extra curricular activities and viewing their profiles in order to re establish contact.

Social network websites are exactly what the name would have you assume: They are websites that encourage networking on a social basis, though business networking is also popular through websites like these. There are hundreds of social networking websites online, including social network websites that cater to specific niches and interests, specific age groups, regions, languages, religion and many other characteristics.

It seems as if everyday new community networking sites are springing up all over the internet for a multitude of different purposes. There are social network websites for book lovers, artists, scientists, doctors, gossip hounds, people that are interested in sharing news and media, people that are interested in sharing videos, people who live in a specific country, students attending a specific school, and so many more. While some social network websites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and LiveJournal are more well known than others, the possibility when it comes to social networking is virtually limitless.

It is not necessary to recreate the wheel every time you want to start a campaign to market your products or services.  Instead, you can look to the best practices of what other online businesses have done in the past for proven online product marketing tips.  You can learn both from the mistakes and successes of other businesses, so long as you effectively incorporate those ideas into your own marketing strategy.  

Know Your Customers

How well do you know your potential clients?  You first need to understand that no matter how valuable the products and services that you offer, they will not appeal to everyone.  Instead of trying to market your products to entities who will never be interested, you should instead set your sights on those individuals who will actually be interested in what you have to offer.  

Forget about segments of the marketplace that are yet untapped.  You may be able to go back later and find ways to reach out that will be effective to your overall marketing strategy.  But until you’re achieved success with your target customer groups, you cannot spend time looking at clients that are a long shot.

Know Your Competition

What do your competitors do well?  What do they do not so well?  You should constantly be observing how your competitors deal with their businesses.  You can rely heavily upon your own observations.  In addition, you can ask trusted friends or current clients to look at the offerings and practices of your competition to find ways to emulate their successes or change practices to avoid the ways in which they have not been as successful.  Proven online product marketing tips, can come from nearly any observation you make about the businesses of your competition.  

Be an Expert

Finally, you must be an absolute expert in the field in which you do business.  How else can you expect your customers and clients to trust you, if you do not know more about what you have to offer than any of your competitors?  Learn about your products and services inside out.  

If they are products and services that you have developed on your own, you should carefully document every piece of knowledge possible about them.  

If they are third party products or services, you should read all documentation that is provided, test out the products and services so that you know how to use them inside and out, and find the appropriate experts of whom to ask questions whenever they may arise.  

Let’s face it! In today’s competitive marketplace, you the small business person need every advantage you can come up with; in order to make a fair profit. By using proven online product marketing tips, you can be well on your way to achieving success for your business.

A SEO service provider is an Internet savvy person or company who knows how to make your website be seen as often as possible when people search for your product or service. 

SEO stands for search engine optimization and the process involves proper keyword placement. Even the host you use for your website can affect how many people see your site. The more people that look at your site, the more business or reputation your site will develop.

Having keywords that people would search for when looking for things that your site has will increase the possibility of the search engine they use bringing it up. Search engines look for the closest possible match to what the person has put into it. Because of this, sometimes keywords may seem like they’d be odd or out of place when you place them in your website. Consultants who work on SEO will know how to place keywords into your text without making them look awkward to read.

Too many keywords repeated in your site may be considered as polluting the search engine results and can actually deter search engines from linking to your site. Most search engines will show a clip of the text on your website and will provide insight into how your format looks. If it looks cluttered and uninformative because it’s just repeating it self, your site could be passed over. Chances are your SEO service provider will recommend you not take that route since most providers take pride in their job.

They may also recommend not using a link system to receive more hits on your website as it can get your site ignored by some search engines. A link system is when you connect a lot of different sites to each other so that they’ll appear higher on the list the search engine provides. This is also referred to as link farms and while it can be effective it can also do more harm than good.

When you are first making your site it may be a good idea to hire a consultant or service provider to make your site for you as they can include SEO in the initial site. In some cases it may be important to have your keywords on the home page of your site since some search engines can take into account how far into your site the keyword is found. They’ll also help you find a host and name for your site that will have the maximum search results for you.

Sometimes other sites may have the same information that you’d like to have on yours, and it can be hard to know whether or not you’d be stealing their information by using it. There are writers who are skilled at rewriting articles to make them different enough that you can use them to provide the same information on your site. If you choose to hire an SEO service provider to help you, they should be able to do this service for you or find someone else who can.

If you are looking to increase the amount of traffic that is visiting your website, then the key is article marketing. Are you looking to attract additional visitors to your website? One of the most powerful ways that you can achieve this is through article marketing, which will allow you to generate a significant traffic increase to your website.

However, not all articles created the same. I’d like to show you 5 factors you should keep in mind to make this form of internet marketing works. Putting some efforts to this detail can help you attract a steady stream of potential customers and other visitors to your website effectively.

1. Write Clearly

The first important factor in article marketing is to develop a clearly written informational article. This article should provide value in some form, and should be written strongly enough that it helps to build credibility. A clearly written article is one that makes sure your readers won’t just skim it. By providing an easy read, you will be able to engage your potential customers, giving them a reason to want more.

2. Give First

In order to keep the attention of your reader, your article needs to be capable of offering some form of value. This is the basic principle behind the concept of online article marketing. One example of this concept may be to write an SEO-themed article talking about how to write effective title tags for search engine optimization. A valuable article on this subject would explain the concept and provide numerous examples, giving readers something to take away from the article.

3. Show Your Credibility

The result of a clearly written article providing value is credibility. Credibility may be a subtle concept, but it is absolutely vital if you are looking to drive large traffic numbers to your website or to your affiliate products. Some of the best ways to build credibility through your article marketing is to inject your experience into the articles that you write, provide references to findings from professional studies, offer facts, provide industry expertise and quotes and so on.

Here’s an example from my own article, where I show my readers how to get tons of free traffic using Stumble Upon

4. Show Them What’s Next

Once a compelling article has been written for this form of marketing, you can weave in some kind of reference to your products or services. It is important that you take this step in a modest way if you want your article marketing efforts to be taken seriously. You should not have to incorporate in a hard sell, because this doesn’t seem to work. Don’t tell people what to do, what to use, or force them to take your opinions. Just write a clearly written, informative article, provide something valuable to the reader, and then use your newfound credibility as a way to generate traffic to your website.

5. Search Engine Optimization

Now that you have written your article, you can implement on page optimization such as using your keywords in your article title. Your title should be 7 main words most of the time. Your keyword should also be used in most of your paragraphs, though not all are necessary. At least once in the body of your article you should bold your keyword. You may also want to emphasize or italicize your keyword at least once as well, because these text signals tell search engines which phrases are important.

In the past few years, everyone has been going on and on about marketing businesses and products online, but what exactly is the definition of internet marketing?  Is it as simple as throwing up a website and emailing a few people about it?  Well, yes and no.  So far, the definition of what constitutes internet marketing isn’t really set, but there are some things people agree on.

First, it’s not always necessary to have a website to do internet marketing.  It’s very useful, yes, and you’ll get many more customers if you have one.  

However, you can send out emails, participate in message board discussions, and even join chat rooms to market your products and services without ever making a website.

One aspect of internet marketing that doesn’t really work, despite what your email inbox might show, is spam.  Well, spamming messages and emails, anyway (there are other types that are somewhat useful).  Yes, emailing people about your products is a good marketing idea, but if the recipient doesn’t want to know about what you have to offer, he or she will simply mark your email as spam.  Be sure the people you email actually want to get your emails before you send them.

So what’s good spam, then?  It really depends on how you look at it.  One popular practice of getting your site out there is to read people’s blogs and post comments, then add your site link in either the name area or at the end of your post.  Since you’re actually responding to what they say, it’s not exactly spamming.  On the other hand, you’re writing a comment more or less just to get your site’s link on the blog, so it is spam in a way.  

Is spam even in the definition of internet marketing then?  Again, it’s really hard to say.  Certainly sending mass emails to people who don’t care about your service isn’t useful and a waste, but sometimes posting on message boards and blogs brings people to your site.  

Another dubious method of internet marketing lies with social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Starting a profile on these sites for your products or services can bring in hundreds of new customers since these sites have millions of people on them.  However, adding people to your friends list just to get your name out there is, to some, more obnoxious spamming that isn’t welcome.

What it all comes down to is that you want to get your name and website, if you have one, out to as many people online as you can, but you don’t want to be annoying about it.  That’s where internet marketing is really different from offline marketing.  Flyers, billboards, and ads in newspapers are much more easily ignored than popup ads, spam emails, and hundreds of friend requests on MySpace.  

Basically, when it comes to online marketing, a good rule to remember is that if you wouldn’t want to see it, don’t send or post it.  If you’re selling pet related products, for example, you probably shouldn’t send a friend request to someone who says they don’t like animals.  All in all, “Don’t spam” seems to be perhaps the best definition of internet marketing out there.

Article marketing is a form of online advertising that allows businesses to advertise or market themselves by writing short article content pieces that relate to the industry they are in. These articles are then made available for widespread online publication and distribution in the marketplace. Every one of these articles contains a byline and a biography box that allows businesses to include references to their company, website or contact information. By crafting well written content and releasing it for this type of free distribution, businesses gain the potential of significantly increasing their credibility within the industry as well as reaching out to new clients in the process.

Article marketing has been a popular means of marketing one’s company or website by professionals for nearly as long as mass print methods have been available. Article marketing is utilized in paper-print formats as well as online formats, especially by businesses that want to obtain free press space. By providing useful content to a newspaper free of charge, the business is getting its name and contact information out there. Because newspapers and other forms of media are aiming to present content as cost effectively as possible, this arrangement is one that can be advantageous for all involved parties.

For example, an accounting firm that is looking to market itself through article marketing may use an article like “The top 5 ways to avoid an audit”, offering this article to the local newspapers and other print forms weeks before tax season. Not only is the accounting firm providing useful information, but they are also getting their name out there when it is most important for them to do so. On that same vein of thinking, a roofing company can offer a concise article about “avoiding ice damage on your roof this year” right before the winter season begins to get some free publicity just before the busy season begins.

Article marketing has moved into the internet world as well, ever since e-commerce and online marketing became vital for the success of businesses with web presences. Online article marketing provides publishers with free content while giving free advertising to advertisers and companies. Websites that allow articles to be posted are called article directories. Article directories make their income through advertising on their website, which is why business owners and other advertisers can post their articles for free. Because the article directory sites have significant search engine popularity based on the number of articles that are posted, advertisers can take advantage of that popularity and gain some of their own popularity through posting articles.

Article marketing online has additional dimensions beyond regular print marketing with articles, including the use of particular keywords and niches for search engine optimization. Using informative content, authors are able to reach their target audiences by catering to a group of readers that is already clearly interested. Many online marketers have enjoyed such success through this means of marketing that they have published hundreds if not thousands of articles.

We are all looking for our businesses to grow.  That’s why we work so hard to get our name to the pubic.  More growth means more first-time and repeat customers.  One way to increase sales is through article submission.

Writing may scare you.  In school it was fun but do you really have any skill?  Even if you aren’t the next news correspondent, writing articles is not as bad as you might imagine.  We once learned to string nouns and verbs together and it’s time to put it to good use.

Writing articles for the Internet falls under the heading of “content”.  Content is what we use on business websites, blogs, and social networking sites.  People look for content that is informative and more than the same run-of-the-mill stuff that already exists.

There are sites all over the Internet that are looking for good article submissions.  They grade content submitted to them on creativity and popularity of the subject.  For your business, most of the content you’ll write and submit will deal with that area.  Since you are a self-proclaimed expert owing to the fact that you dare sell products or services within a certain category, writing about your business products won’t be that hard.

Article marketing makes people aware that you exist in cyberspace.  With well-written, good quality articles, you can make a name for yourself and garner a following before selling even one product.  Articles work best when tailored to your business area.  If you are into sending floral arrangements, for example, articles about flower arranging or how to take care of cut flower arrangements would be helpful to people.

Article submissions give business owners an opportunity to link to their business website.  Some article sites won’t let you include links within the article, but you can add links to your profile page and in your bio box if one is provided.  After reading these articles, people will search for your site.

The articles that you write show the level of business savvy you possess. Those who go one step further and visit your website will do so with a picture of you in mind.  They may hold your writing in high regard and are looking to see if the products or services offered by your business are of the same quality.

Submitting articles is not hard.  In fact the process has gotten easier, ranging from article submission services that are willing to submit articles for you to a number of article directories accepting mass submissions from services.  For a fee, they take all of the hard work out of the process.  Also, for non-writers, find a good ghost-writing service to write the articles.

Marketing your business through article submission is a popular strategy these days.  People are always looking for new and useful information to better their situations.  Your articles can give helpful hints and tips while driving more traffic to your online business.

It is important to have website traffic to get your business noticed.  Each day, more and more people begin Internet businesses and blogs to draw a portion of those Internet users to their place in cyberspace.  There are some things you can do to keep visitors returning to your site, including giving away buttons.

People just know when they have found a site or product that attracts them.  It could be the look of the site or the wording of your content.  Maybe they like the direct approach or content that lists bulleted or numbered points with specific actions as opposed to broader explanations.  Whatever the reason, always look for ways to improve your efforts to redirect the flow of traffic in your favor.

The home page of any website is the first page the visitor sees.  What does your home page say?  Is it grabbing the visitors with flowing graphics, repelling them with bright colors, or making them cringe?  Website design can be improved with buttons.

Buttons can get your site a second look.  Buttons come in all shapes and sizes.  They can light up when the cursor rolls over them or display an explanation of the use of the key.

Using these hot buttons makes your site more user friendly.  Visitors know immediately what they will find and where to find it on your home page.  Couple that with SEO content on each page and relevant keywords, and anyone looking for the type of product or service you provide will be linked to your website.

But, this won’t necessarily keep them coming back.  Look at your content.  Is it new and fresh?  Upload new content every couple of days.  Those seeking information from you won’t be impressed with a stagnant website.  Give them something new to view each time they visit you.

Now, let’s get back to these buttons.  Visitors love freebies.  It is not necessary to give away freebies, but they do promote website or blog loyalty.  Visitors to your website may have a website of their own.

Free merchandise or reports are nice but so is code.  Maybe your visitors would like to sample some of those beautiful buttons you purchased to adorn your site.  Use the snippets of code for the buttons as free offerings.

Let the visitors do something to earn the freebie first.  A designer website button can be the prize for signing up on the website for free email newsletters, or giving the names of others who would be interested in receiving email promotions from your site.  Give them an “Add This” button for use on their website.  Anyone with an online store will appreciate the need for such a button.  It will be useful for their customers.

Reward visitors with incentives to keep them coming back again and again.  One incentive is designer website button code for their personal websites.