Yesterday, we talked about signing up for social media websites… which is a very important step to getting your name out there on the blogosphere. In order to run a successful blog, however, you cannot simply bank on traffic coming from social media to your site — you also must capitalize on the reciprocal traffic that your blog can send to your social media profiles!

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to pump traffic to their blogs is paying no attention to the traffic sent to your social media sites, only focusing on the traffic that goes from social media to your blog. The thought process is rather simple: “if I can get fast traffic to my blog by setting up a few social media accounts, why would I bother sending traffic back to my social networking profiles?”

I must admit, this is one of the harder things to do because the rewards aren’t as immediate. However, I can say without a doubt that you are literally cheating yourself out of long-term growth if you ignore your community. It is imperative that we not only have all of these social media accounts, but that we get them all interlinked with our websites so that we can form a following online… we’re talking about a business, not just a blog.

Top Three Methods to Sync a Blog to Social Media

1. Place Social Media Icons on Your Website
2. Insert Social Media Links at the End of Blog Posts
3. Hold Contests to Boost Your Social Media Exposure

1. Place Social Media Icons on Your Website
Putting strategically-placed icons to link up to your social media accounts is one of the best strategies that I know of to beef up your social media profiles. This practice has been growing in popularity, and is now the cornerstone of most websites that we see in the blogging arena. There are literally tons of different ways that you can incorporate social media icons into your website, as an example… take a look at what I have done:

You’ll want to hire a designer to make this work well for your website (if you don’t have the technical knowledge of web design), but assuming you know what you are doing… check out these links for great looking social media icons:

• The Ultimate Roundup of Amazing Free Social Media Icon Packs
• Vector Social Media Icons
• 20 Free Social Media Icon Sets for Bloggers

2. Insert Social Media Links at the End of Blog Posts
Write good content? Then it would be in your best interest to dish out a mean helping of social media every time you wrap up a blog post. This is a highly effective method of converting your readers into followers by strategically positioning links to social media sharing networks right after your blog posts.

This is one of the easiest ways to gain great additions to your social media profiles, as there are literally a ton of great WordPress plugins that can help you achieve it in an instant. I use a plugin called “SexyBookmarks” as you can see pictured below:

My favorite Social Media “In-Post” WordPress Plugins:

1. SexyBookmarks
2. AddToAny
3. ShareThis
4. Socialize This
5. Sociable

3. Hold Contests to Boost Your Social Media Exposure
Our final technique to sync your blog to your social media accounts is to simply add social networking as an entry method to any contests that you hold. Many bloggers, myself included, have used this method with great success in the past to make sure that their social media networks are alive and kicking… so the next time you are hosting a contest start to think about how you can use it to benefit your bookmarking.

One of the first and strongest attempts at this that I remember seeing was over at JohnCow.com for the “COWpetition” he held two years ago. The blog owner, Jason, added following his Twitter account & tweeting about the contest (excuse me… the cowpetition) as a method to gain entries to the event… and it worked out very well (Jason has over 12k followers).

Bottom Line: The social media tsunami has finally arrived, and as bloggers jump on board it is important to know how to stay ahead of the pack. Turn your blog into a virtual social factory with the three key techniques above… and you’ll be sure to dominate for years to come!

-Jimvesting dot com

My apologies for the delay in the Build a Blog Workshop, we will now be concluding our 30-day program and releasing our internet product soon thereafter. I have been in the thick of it with exams and a job search, but now I’m back!

By this point, you should have your blog completely set up and you should be seeing your first trickle of traffic come through the pipeline. We’ve gotten our website (almost) fully customized and even have a few ads up, so what is left now is to capitalize on alternative traffic methods and firmly plant your blog into the niche you are attempting to target.

Having a successful blog isn’t all about writing good content, but making sure that people see it! With that, we will round out the next few days with the best tricks outside of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that will turn your ordinary blog into a true industry leader.

The Social Media Bandwagon – You Should Jump On!

Social Media websites are all about networking and communicating with people on the internet, and the beauty of these networks are that they allow marketers to get highly targeted traffic and instantly tap into new subscriber bases. I’m sure that all of you have heard the buzz surrounding these social bookmarking websites, but most people still use them as a way to meet friends and hear about things they might be interested in… not to leverage their own businesses (which we will be doing). Signing up to these websites is always 100% free, and takes only a few seconds to complete simple one-step registrations. Therefore, it is in your best interest to set up as many accounts as you can muster, gaining tons of added links back to your business in the process.

I’m going to break up my list into two parts: the sites you absolutely must sign up to and make an account, and the sites that you should definitely keep in consideration and register if you have the time.

The Top Social Media Websites:
1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. StumbleUpon
4. Digg
5. Technorati

These five powerhouses top our list for good reason, they offer the best backlinking potential with the highest traffic numbers to boot. It is imperative that you sign up for an account at all of these places and put into each of them a full description of your website along with a link back.

Twitter and Facebook should be used primarily to recruit and maintain hordes of fans, your top two “community” websites. Need an example of someone doing it right? Check out Ian Fernando’s Twitter or John Chow’s Facebook Page.

Digg and StumbleUpon are going to be your “fast traffic” money makers… so when you make accounts there be sure to keep in mind that you should be Stumbling and Digging as much content as possible to boost the status of your account and make your own Diggs and Stumbles more worth while. Technorati is an old favorite that has lost momentum as of late, but is still very valuable for SEO purposes to set up an account.

More Networking Sites To Consider:
1. Mixx
2. Propeller
3. Reddit
4. Del.icio.us
5. FriendFeed

These next five websites (in no particular order) are additional ways to get your link out. I have personally seen a bit of action from Reddit and Del.icio.us in my time, but the normal kind of traffic from these second-tier names is nothing to call home about. That being said, because it takes only a minute to sign up to each of the sites, and only a few seconds to submit new blog posts to them, it is worth your time to take a shot. At the very least, you’ll have a bunch of new links floating out there that can potentially get your website indexed faster.

EXPERTS TIP: Want to submit your articles to dozens of social media websites in one click? Try OnlyWire, a completely free (ad supported) service that connects all of your accounts together for maximum efficiency.

-Jimvesting Dot Com