Social Media Marketing; 108 Sites that don't suck

A while ago as part of my research into Social Media Marketing, I rooted through some lists of various social sites to really see what there was out there. If you remember the recent, Value of SMM post, one of my concerns is the ability of SMM to be universal in it's application. Now there are obviously thousands of social sites out there of all shapes and sizes... problem is that many are sparsely populated and unlikely to be of much value to user and marketer alike.

So I decided to start a master list of Social Media/Networking type sites that seemed to have some life happening. Once I was looking at it I thought I might as well share it with ya'll, (isn't sharing the best part about being social?) ..... This list is by no means exhaustive, but I had to go through lists containing 100’s to get to the real meat. So enjoy and come back often as I shall do my best to keep it relevant.

If you’d like to suggest one, (leave a comment) - make sure it actually has a few members or is on the rise… a list with garbage is useless. Also, if there is a site on this list you feel should be nuked, let me know as well…

Without further ado, here are some locales to suit almost any occasion in your programs;

A Quest to find meaning in a world of warm and fuzzy….

(be sure to catch Part II in the series)

There is one thing that can be said of me when it comes to Social Media Marketing (SMM); I am unconvinced. While it is fun and there is a certain level of glamour to it, ( 15 minutes of fame and all) I have been hard pressed to embrace it as a method of marketing that is appropriate for every situation. When it comes to Small and Medium Sized Businesses, (SMBs) there is often a need to have the marketing dollars return a positive cash flow in a timely manner.

Considering much of SMM is a branding exercise, that a strong social media profile can take time to develop and show any sort of potential return, often it is not an ideal match. The same can be said of budgetary constraints that mean attaining maximum ROI on the marketing dollar is paramount. Most small businesses have a limited if not nonexistent budget for branding activities. These concepts have fallen on deaf ears with some SMM people I know until only recently (yes, one actually conceded it “isn’t for everyone”).

 Along this path you will notice more often than not post after post about How to do your social media marketing. You will find plenty of SMM bloggers that sing the praises and give us little tidbits of goodiness to enable us to attract reams of (poorly converting) visitors to our websites and bask in the glow of a crashed server. But there is not enough information on;

Young Guns of SEO – Jordan Kasteler

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jordan Kasteler also known as Utah SEO Pro. My background is in organic search engine optimization, which I’ve been doing professionally for 4 years now, and I’ve stayed pretty focused on that and haven’t delved much into paid search at all. But as of late, I’ve been playing a lot lately in social media and there’s quite a few things I’ve learned and quite a few things  I’ve historically done I wish I could erase. 

This post is probably going to make me look like an idiot, especially to the SMOs, but hopefully it can save a few headaches for people getting into social media. I’m going to focus primarily on Digg because, in my experience, it seems to be the most complex social media site out there due to its sophisticated algorithm.

Mistake #1: Abusing self-promotion

For the past year and a half to two years I’ve had social media accounts but I never used them. If I did ever use them it was just to submit some of my own blog posts or my company’s blog posts too.

Let me note that self-promotion isn’t bad all the time. If you’ve established an authoritative status in a community or are a power-user then you are more likely to get away with it if you do so sparingly. Nobody likes a self-promoter or person who is greedy. It is essential to contribute to other people and help them promote their stories. Karma comes full-circle when it comes to social networking.

It is always nice when some one links to your site or says something nice about you and showing some love back is always a good idea. From time to time I have done some thank you posts but always wanted more time to acknowledge them… I think I have found an interesting way to go about it; MyBuzzMonitor

Added to my blog home page is a widget in the left hand column titled, ‘ FireHorse Friends’ which will monitor the Blog-o-shpere and list links to posts that are showing some love. Of course there is much more you could do with the system, so let’s have a quick look

 
The ‘MyBuzzMonitor’ service is a free widget (no registration required) that can be used to track the buzz on specified domains or keywords. So you need not be limited to using it as I have to show a little link love to those kind enough to mention us… you can use it to track the latest Buzz on just about any topic, website or combination of both.

They supply code so that you can add it to your website or blog as well as the ability to add the widget to a wide variety of services including;

• My Yahoo
• Bloglines
• NewsGator
• Blogger
• TypePad
• Google HomePage or Reader