Social Marketing Strategies

Picnik A simple, free, online image-editing application

Amazon Magazines Visit the magazine stand to learn what interests the world

Yahoo Groups So many groups about so many topics

Twitter Great for connecting with similar people, learning about your market, and building community

Tweetdeck Download, install, and use this terrific Twitter client

Hootsuite If you just don’t want another desktop app, Hootsuite can satisfy

Blog Catalog Search the catalog to find blogs in – or adjacent to – your niche

Google Alerts Have Google tell you when something of interest hits the web

Google Reader Save time by having Google consolidate and summarize information from everywhere

Google Adwords tool Google will help identify key phrases that you could use to get “organic” traffic.

Hostgator is a very affordable and reliable hosting service with plans that let you install as many web sites as you want at a fixed price. Click the ad to the right to get started.

Blogger is a free blogging platform that provides limited ability to customize and employ plugins.

WordPress.com lets you create a WordPress blog free of charge, but with a very limited set of plugins.

WordPress.org where to download WordPress software to install on your own domain.

Market Samurai offers a 12-day free trial; that’s perfect for finding the perfect keyphrases to start your business blog. Visit the Market Samurai Dojo for training on the software and for more information about the stuff we do in class. Please get in touch with me if you have questions. Click the Market Samurai logo/button to the left to get to their web site and download the software for you free trial.

Google Webmasters Tools Google can provide information to help improve the “authority” of your web site.

DIGG social bookmarking Bookmark your blog post to get attention from surfers and search engines.

delicious social bookmarking Bookmark your blog post to get attention from surfers and search engines.

stumbleupon social bookmarking Stumble your blog post to get attention from surfers and search engines.

social marker: quick social bookmarking Socialmarker speeds your social bookmarking efforts.

WordPress Plugins

When you install a WordPress blog on your own domain, you should also install plugins designed to optimize the blog for search engines. The following plugins help with various aspects of SEO (some may come with the WordPress install):

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (drop-down) – http://www.addthis.com/

AdSense Manager – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adsense-manager/

AdServe – http://www.irisco.it/?page_id=40

Akismet – http://akismet.com/

All in One SEO Pack – http://semperfiwebdesign.com/

Category Posts Widget – http://jameslao.com/2008/04/18/category-posts-widget-13/

cforms – http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

Google XML Sitemaps – http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/

Ultimate Google Analytics – http://www.oratransplant.nl/uga

WordPress Duplicate Content Cure – http://seologs.com/duplicate-content-cure/

WordPress Video Plugin – http://www.daburna.de/blog/2006/12/13/wordpress-video-plugin/

WP-Sticky – http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/

WP-admanager – http://www.ds-style.com/blog/

WP tags to Technorati – http://www.geekyramblings.org/plugins/wp-tags-to-technorati/

Social Marketing Bootcamp

Eventually, there will be two file links here. The first is to the social marketing blueprint document that more-or-less summarizes activities that boost your web site’s SEO and you social media presence. Remember that  social media activities that relate to your website also boost the site in Google search results. The second document link  (when it appears) is to the speaker notes I worked from as we slogged through the boot camp. Please let me know if you have questions.

Social Marketing Blueprint

Social Marketing Boot Camp Speaker Notes 5/10 and 5/11, 2011