Welcome back!

Promote Your Blog Through Social Networking

Most of us want to generate traffic to our blogs. Unless you’re blogging solely for your friends and family, you’ll want to attract as many readers as possible. The more traffic you generate, the more success you’ll have in generating income from your blog.

Today, I’m going to explain how you can promote your blog through the top social networking sites. These sites give people a chance to meet and interact with others who share their interests. Keep in mind social networking sites are not all created equal; some of them hold far more potential to drive traffic than others.

Promoting Your Blog On Facebook

As you probably know, Facebook is the 800 lb. gorilla of social networking. Not only do millions of people connect daily with their friends on the site, but constant media coverage ensures it remains in the public eye. Their popularity works to your advantage.

There are several ways to promote your blog on Facebook. For example, you can create a Facebook Page. Attract “fans” to your Page by updating it with articles, short posts, and pictures. Each time you update your Page, your fans are notified. You can include links to your blog in each segment that you post.

You can also create a Facebook Group that focuses on your blog’s topic. A lot of Facebook members search for Groups that discuss the topics they’re interested in. As a community builds around your Group, new and returning members will see a link to your blog positioned prominently at the top.

Driving Traffic From Other Social Networking Sites

So far, we’ve focused on Facebook because of its enormous popularity. There are several social networking sites that you should use to promote your blog. They work on the same general principle: people with the same interests interacting with each other.

StumbleUpon generates a lot of traffic to blogs by encouraging their members to “Stumble!” them. When members view a page they enjoy, they submit it to StumbleUpon to share it with other members. This site is powerful enough that Firefox created a browser extension that lets members “Stumble!” sites with a single click.

BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog are social networking sites which are specifically focused on helping bloggers promote their blogs. You can form groups with people who are interested in your blog’s subject matter and encourage them to tell others in their network. The more readers you attract to your profile and group, the more traffic you can send to your blog.

Other powerful social networking sites include MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, and Twitter. Even though Facebook has become more popular, MySpace still has an enormous community. By creating a profile and linking to your blog, you can generate a steady stream of traffic. Twitter is one of the newer social networking sites. You can post short “tweets” for your followers, whet their appetite for more, and send them to your latest blog post.

Set Aside Time To Socialize

One of the keys to promoting your blog successfully on any of the social networking sites is to get involved within your communities. For example, if you’re using Facebook for blog promotion, update your Page often and interact with members of your Group. Ideally, you should set aside time to socialize every day. The more you interact with others in the communities you establish, the more likely they’ll be to visit your blog.

Don’t think of social networking as your primary blog promotion strategy. Instead, consider it one of many effective internet marketing techniques. You should also be using search engine optimization strategies to drive traffic. As an added bonus, most of the social networking sites I’ve described above allow you to link directly to your blog. There’s no redirect which siphons the link juice.

If you haven’t gotten involved yet, take a few minutes to explore social networking. You may be surprised by the traffic it can send.

If you’re a business owner, an online entrepreneur, or you’ve just been laid off because of the global economic crisis and you are wondering whether or not to spend your time pimping your resume to employment agencies or starting a business of your own, then here are ten very good reasons why you should consider starting your own social networking site:

1) Social Networking Is A Growing Trend!

While millions of people all over the world are sharing photos on social networking sites like Facebook.com and MySpace.com, posting messages on Twitter, or just watching and waiting to see where all of this is going, many businesses are staking their claim to untapped niche markets by starting to plant seeds for their future in the form of community sites based around a particular topic. One recent example I have seen of this, is a social networking site for beading enthusiasts called BeadHuddle.com. This social network is completely centered around the craft of beading, and growing very rapidly with people who have a passion for beads.

Here’s a promotional video that the owners of the beading site created and posted on YouTube that explains the benefits of becoming a member of their online beading community:

Think about the business you are in, or a hobby or interest you feel passionate about. Could you turn this into an online social network?

2) A Social Networking Site Is A Great Place To Develop Your Entrepreneurial Skills

Someone once said that an entrepreneur is a person who creates events so they can sell tickets to those who like to attend events. A community or social networking site is an event that more and more people are participating in. One way to create an exciting event is to simply introduce people who share a similar passion or interest to one another. This is exactly what a community site allows you to do.

3) A Social Networking Site Can Be Scaled Down Or Up

An individual, company, church, club, association or local community can choose to set up a social networking site to allow just the members of its community to join and interact with each other online … or open the site to allow anyone to join and grow it to a global level.

4) A Social Community Site Can Inject New Life Into An Organization

By adding a new dimension of interactivity online, many organizations, businesses and special interest communities can become more dynamic and lively, and offer a great and exciting new way for its members to interact socially.

5) A Social Networking Site Offers A Whole Lot More Than Just A Member’s Forum

In a social network site, members can share articles, videos, pictures, create groups, post announcements and events to selected members of their group, run classifieds, auctions, directories, chat live or instant message one another, as well as post messages and engage in discussions in a forum.

6) A Social Networking Site Can Become A Profitable Online Business

If you have ever tried to run your own website or a blog, then you know that most of the site’s content has to either come from your own labor, or from someone you will probably have to pay money to outsource the work to. In a community site, provided you set it up properly and get it going following certain simple guidelines, your members will create most of the site’s content for you, leaving you free to manage and promote the site. Once you have built a significant community membership, there are many options you can look into as a way of “monetizing” your site and turning it into a profitable business online.

7) A Community Site Can Help You Create Your Own Database Of Potential Customers

Let’s say you own a travel-related business. Can you imagine being the owner of a growing community site dedicated exclusively to a niche topic in this industry? How hard would it be to access, inform and educate members of your community about your products and services and promote the benefits of your business to them?

A Social Networking Site Can Help You Discover New Business Opportunities

If you have ever been a member of an online forum, or a networking group, you will probably agree that many people generally frequent forums and discussion groups as a way to find solutions to specific problems or challenges they may be experiencing. By simply keeping your eyes open and studying forum threads in your own social network, you will begin to recognize new opportunities for creating new products, services and solutions to address common problems that your members are experiencing.

9) A Social Networking Site Can Turn Your Site Into An Online Authority Hub

Imagine having hundreds, even thousands of new members in a niche-specific community site (e.g. a site for owners of rare, tropical aquarium fish) regularly posting fresh, new content that is completely relevant to the topic of your site, and having search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others slurping it up and serving up pages of your site to its visitors, or blog owners publishing your links on their sites via RSS feeds. By leveraging the efforts of your community members, you can quickly begin to turn you site into an authority hub for whatever topic you choose to build a social networking community around.

10) A Social Networking Site Can Become A Growing Asset For You

Imagine owning an online community site which, after a couple of years, has become a “hub”, or authority site for your particular niche, because you have cultivated and helped it grow to 30,000+ active members, all focused around a specific area of interest. I don’t know about you, but in my experience, there are many companies, advertisers and competing business owners in your field that would view your site as an enviable asset which they would probably like to own or derive a greater benefit from.

So … are you starting to see the bigger picture now? The Social Networking phenomenon is now growing beyond sites like Facebook,com, MySpace.com and the other larger and more well known sites. More and more enterprising individuals and business owners are starting to see the benefit of setting up their own community sites, and discovering much to their surprise, that owning your own social networking site doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, or even require much technical skill to run.

If owning your own social networking site interests you and you would like to know more but don’t know where to begin, then the best resource I recommend you start with, is a FREE report entitled “How To Profit With Your Own Social Networking Site”, which you can download at no cost by clicking on this link:

How To Profit With Your Own Social Network Site

Social Marketing for Beginners

People have been talking about social marketing for about two years. There’s so much involved with social marketing that if you’re a beginner, you may be overwhelmed. These ideas will help get you up to speed on social marketing and tell you how you can use it for your own online business.

Instead of trying to use all of these tips at once, take one or two and master them before trying to add another. By taking your time in adding additional social marketing areas, you will be able to tell if your efforts in the two you’ve chosen are actually generating more traffic to your website or more sales for your business.

1. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media outlets on the internet. If you’re not familiar with it, you’ll want to get familiar. This is a micro-blogging platform that allows you to type 140 characters at a time which is seen by everyone who “follows” you. You can use Twitter in any number of ways including sending people URLs for your website or with your affiliate link.

2. Squidoo Lenses are another great way to get traffic to your website. The format is easy to learn so there’s really no reason not to give it a try. Read the tutorial for Squidoo and then browse around the various pages; you’ll be amazed at what you can do with them.

3. Create a blog and update it regularly. Make it easy for your visitors to contact you or leave comments. In this way, you allow them to ask questions, comment on your blog post, or reach you if they have suggestions.

4. Concentrate on helping others rather than merely driving traffic to your own website. Be sure you provide something of value no matter what social marketing platform you use. You may even want to offer a free ebook or product that will meet your target market’s needs and you’ll benefit in the process.

5. Visit other people’s blogs and leave comments, particularly if they’re in your niche. Be sure to be polite and sincere in what you say and that you’re adding something of value rather than commenting on how nice their blog looks.

6. When you set up your own blog, be sure to include tools so visitors can Digg what you have to say, vote for the post being Del.icio.us, or telling others they Reddit. Use plug-ins that you add to your blog that will include buttons for all of these, as well as many other, social bookmarking sites.

7. Share the love. Don’t be afraid to let others know about blogs or websites that you frequent without worrying about getting something in return.

8. Join micro-communities as long as they pertain to your business. Online forums can be considered micro-communities as well as these examples: gardenweb.com, care2.com, and education.com. Be sure to offer relevant comments and pay attention to what others on these sites are talking about.

9. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Ask visitors what they would like to see on your site or how you can improve it. Try something new and then ask for opinions. If someone gives a suggestion or comment, be sure to thank them and seriously consider their suggestion.

10. Include links to all of your social networking profiles on your website. For example, if you have a Facebook and a Twitter page, provide links to your profiles on your website so web visitors can follow you.

Social networking is an effective tool to build a community, and in this day and age that’s the key to building a sustainable and profitable business. Social marketing can be time consuming and addictive. Don’t forget to spend time doing what brings income to you rather than merely spending time with social marketing. However, that being said, do give it a try. It can do your business a world of good!

As Facebook works to make itself more relevant and timely for its growing member base with a profile page makeover, attackers seem to be working overtime to steal the identities of the friends, fans and brands that connect though the social-networking site.

see source:  yahoo tech

Indeed, Facebook has seen five different security threats in the past week. According to Trend Micro, four new hoax applications are attempting to trick members into divulging their usernames and passwords. And a new variant of the Koobface worm is running wild on the site, installing malware on the computers of victims who click on a link to a fake YouTube video.

The Koobface worm is dangerous. It can be dropped by other malware and downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web sites, Trend Micro reports. When attackers execute the malware, it searches for cookies created by online social networks. The latest variant is targeting Facebook, but earlier variants have also plagued MySpace.

Koobface’s Wicked Agenda

Once Koobface finds the social-networking cookies, it makes a DNS query to check IP addresses that correspond to remote domains. Trend Micro explains that those servers can send and receive information about the affected machine. Once connected, the malicious user can remotely perform commands on the victim’s machine.

“Once cookies related to the monitored social-networking Web sites are located, it connects to these Web sites using the user log-in session stored in the cookies. It then navigates through pages to search for the user’s friends. If a friend has been located, it sends an HTTP POST request to the server,” Trend Micro reports.

Ultimately, the worm’s agenda is to transform the victim’s computer into a zombie and form botnets for malicious purposes. Koobface attempts to do this by composing a message and sending it to the user’s friends. The message contains a link to a Web site where a copy of the worm can be downloaded by unsuspecting friends. And the cycle repeats itself.

An Attractive Face(book)

Malware authors are investing more energy in Facebook and other social-networking sites because that effort pays off, according to Michael Argast, a security analyst at Sophos. Facebook alone has more than 175 million users, which makes it an attractive target.

“Many computer users have been conditioned not to open an attachment from an e-mail or click a link found within, but won’t think twice about checking out a hot new video linked to by a trusted friend on Facebook,” Argast said.

Argast called the Koobface worm a mix of something old and something new. The new is using social networks as a method to spread malware. The old is using fake codec Trojans linked to a saucy video to induce the user to install the malware.

Argast said people can protect themselves by running up-to-date antivirus software, restricting which Facebook applications they install, thinking twice before clicking on links from friends and never, never installing a codec from some random Web site in the hopes of catching some celebrity in a compromised situation.

“I would expect to see more attacks on Facebook,” Argast said. “As long as this is a successful propagation method, the bad guys will double down and invest more. They are entirely motivated by financial gain. If it pays, they’ll continue to romp in your social playgrounds.”

Original post from yahoo tech