By now, the phrase social networking has been emblazoned on most of our minds. The problem is, not a lot of people understand how it really works or how to use it to promote their sites and their blogs. When used properly, social networking can be very beneficial and can help you pick up a lot of new readers. The key is learning how to use it effectively and learning the right techniques. Using the right social networking sites can mean the difference between a few hundred readers or a few hundred thousand.

Let’s start off with services like Twitter. Although your blog has a built in RSS feed, not everyone will subscribe to it. Twitter is a very popular new service that allows you to build your very own social network. You’ll get updates whenever someone in your Twitter circle does something, and as such, they will get updates whenever you do. Adding a Twitter module to your site allows you to reach out to your readers and adds a little more interest to your blog. This is also a very effective way of publicizing new events and building up word of mouth for your site.

Next, there are sites such as Digg.com and Technorati. Both are very popular, but they are not quite similar. Digg.com is more of a democracy, where Technorati uses a different means of indexing and promoting stories. You need to use both to cover both sides of the angle and attract the most readers. Digg.com can be pretty tough to break into and you’ll need to pay special attention to the type of content that does well on the service. For example, top ten lists are generally much more popular than simple posts on a news event. Find a way to incorporate a top ten list that is funny, interesting and related to your site and you’ll be able to do quite well on Digg.

Technorati works a bit differently. You’ll need to sign your site up for the service (it’s free) and then submit your RSS feed. Whenever you publish new content, you’ll need to use what are called “tags.” These are pretty much key words that describe your content. On the main page of technorati, you’ll see what is called a Tag Cloud. The biggest words are the words that are the most popular on the site. If you include these words in your posts, you’ll have a better chance of getting ranked better on the Technorati site. For the best results, set your blog software up to “ping” or notify Technorati whenever you publish new content.

Social networking is meant to be social and this means that you’ll need to reach out to your readers. It is all about building up relationships as well as readership. You can see great results with social networking and it can make a real difference in the popularity of your corporate blog as well as your regular site.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-09-09 05:34:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• 5 Tips to Get More People to Read Your Corporate Blog The whole point of creating a corporate blog is to be able to reach out to your customers, build up an audience and market your company. It takes time to build up an audience but there are many things that you can do to ensure that more people will start......
• Knowing When to Quit The sad reality is that every year thousands of corporate blog die a quiet death and the only one that notices is their owner. Whether it is through a lack of attention, or simply an inability to find the right audience, keeping a blog alive can be a difficult task.......
• Corporate Blogging Link Building Strategies An important part of promoting your corporate blog is making sure that you have plenty of good inbound links coming into your site. This can help increase your overall popularity, as well as how search engines rank your site. While there are some methods of building links that promise the......
• 5 Musts You Should Be Doing When You're Not Blogging Unless you are writing hundreds of posts a day, the amount of time you spend posting on your corporate blog should be minimal. In fact, that is why so many decide to start their own blogs, since everything can be automated and you can sit back and relax. However, there......
• Does Your Google Page Rank Really Affect Your Corporate Blog? Spend a few weeks reading about search engine optimization and you’ll likely become obsessed with your Google page rank score. If you’re not familiar with this, it is a system employed by Google that determines the popularity of a site and then assigns a ranking to it. Many factors are......

• Eleven Productive Hints How To Boost Web Traffic . Traffic is really the palmus of a successful business. Making web traffic greater can be quite a task if you are looking for free traffic from the search engines, or it can be costing a lot of money if you choose to pay for each visitor. These hints will help......
• MonaVie Sends a Second Cease & Desist On Friday afternoon, MonaVie sent Corey Whitlaw an "official-ish" Cease and Desist Order (CDO) to my Lazy Man and Money e-mail address on the basis of his use of their trademark in my metatag keywords. I had an idea that the CDO might be coming. MonaVie had publicly tipped their......
• The Value of Website Optimization Everybody who has a website should try and learn some basic knowledge of search engine optimization as just a small amount of time on this subject can lead to some quality results. There are a few factors that are simple to implement but that a huge number of webmasters......
• Social Media Optimization Can Make Your Social Media Campaign Successful The social media optimization, popularly referred as SMO, is a technique of bringing forth publicity and success with the help of social media indulgence, online community activation and social websites. The SMO techniques comprise of implementing social news, articles, blogs, RSS feeds and even third group social functionalities such as......
• Apple And Android Now Make Up 75 Percent Of U.S. Smartphone Web Traffic Apple And Android Now Make Up 75 Percent Of U.S. Smartphone Web Traffic Not really surprising considering web browsing on other phones sucks! When it comes to the mobile Web, increasingly there are only two mobile platforms which matter: Apple and Android. According to AdMob’s October, 2009 mobile metrics report,......

Forrester Research recently compiled a review of ninety different Fortune 500 blogs, and found most to be lacking the proper amount of stimulation. Sadly, two things of these corporate blogs barely ever received any comments, 70 % of them stuck completely to topics of their business without ever straying, and sadly, more than half of them simply regurgitated press releases and other news that was already pubic. Because of blogs like this, the general consensus on corporate blogging has been that it is not really worth the time and effort, and this is a true shame because when a corporate blog is done right, it can actually have a tremendous value to the owner. Below is a brief list of some of the corporate blogs out there that are shining examples of what this activity can do for your business because they really “get” corporate blogging.

37 Signals –

You could consider these guys to be the poster children for corporate blogging, with more than one hundred thousand RSS subscribers and a blog full of advice and insight about design and business, editorials and so much more.

Adobe –

Adobe actually offers a large collection of different employee blogs, and many of them happen to be excellent reads. Because Adobe is allowing its employees to blog, it has given them the power to evangelize the company’s products through reviews, tutorials and advice without actually forcing them to talk only about these products.

Amazon Web Services –

Amazon’s Web Services blog is one of the greatest corporate blogs in existence, because it reads like the blog of Amazon’s greatest fan. The great mind because the Amazon Web Services blog is actually an evangelist for the company, but his blog posts read like they’re from someone who is really truly amazed by the things that people are building in Amazon’s suite of different web services every single day. This blog is a true pleasure to read, which is what corporate blogging is about.

Freshbooks –

Freshbooks seems to be taking the lead from 37 Signals, utilizing their corporate blog in proactive ways by sharing insights and advice into how they do things to create true fans out of their blog users and readers.

Lenovo –

Lenovo is a computer making company that has a collection of blogs, which prove in no uncertain terms that they understand what corporate blogging is all about. They post about their products, but also musings relating to business, life, design and technology. One of their best blogs, Design matters, is a must read blog for anyone who is into design, and can be found at http://www.lenovoblogs.com.

Southwest Airlines –

The Southwest Airlines company has a “Nuts about Southwest” blog that does not take itself seriously, but rather it blogs about the airline industry and the company itself with a really important personal touch that allows the company to produce interesting and enjoyable content with only a slight hint at seriousness.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-12-29 05:47:09. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• Positive Qualities for a Corporate Blog Do you know what qualities your corporate blog should incorporate in order to get the most out of it? Do you know what people are looking at when they determine whether or not they want to keep reading a specific business blog? The following is a look at some of......
• How to Use Your Corporate Blog for Networking A corporate blog can be an incredible promotional tool, but it can also be used for networking purposes. Nearly every company can benefit from networking and much of the current internet community has been built on the back of social networking. How can you take advantage of this trend and......
• Spread your Company's Marketing Message through Corporate Blogging Creating a marketing message is a lot like building a house of cards: The building process can take a long, painstaking amount of time, however it can take mere moments to send everything tumbling. Sometimes all it takes is a single piece of thoughtless communication to completely contradict your......
• Using Corporate Blogging to Grow Your Business One of the best reasons to give corporate blogging a try is that it has the potential to really help you grow your business. If you are just establishing your online identity or if you are trying to actively increase your customer base and your sales, a corporate blog can......
• Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging by John Cass Most people have a pretty firm grasp on why we need to blog, but knowing how to blog effectively is a completely different story all together. "Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging" creates a comprehensive approach to the development of a corporate blog program. This particular book is an excellent......

• VOIP is Hot, Will it Replace the Traditional Phone? Since 1982, advanced communications company (ACC), (ACN) has been providing technical expertise of, sales professionalism and a large, diverse inventory to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Representing manufacturing leaders such as AVAYA, NEC, Nortel and Comdial (now vertical), ACC can provide his clients with reliable leading edge technology for......
• Increase Traffic to Blog, pt1 This is part one in a three part series dedicated to increasing traffic to your blog in a number of different ways. Now that you have your blog set up and you are beginning to post useful information in its pages, the next step is to start attracting useful readers......
• How to Choose a Good Telecom Consulting Company? Every business maximizes its profits by minimizing its expenses and so cost-cutting is a hotly sought after concept in every business. Expenditures are analysed and ways and means of cutting costs are determined. The telecommunication services contribute immensely to cost-savings when a micro-analysis of cost incurred is done and......
• How SEO Works? There are many SEO Companies providing the best facilities according to web sites keywords. Search Engine Optimization companies are playing with the keywords according to various search engine. SEO work is to help the web site to get enter into the various search engines with its keywords database as soon......
• Windows Phone 7 Series Demo See what happens when you push the envelope. Check out this video to get a first-hand look at the latest Windows Phone that brings your people, photos, music, and video into an unrivaled mobile experience. With a holistic design that brings together web content, applications and services into a......