Today’s featured free tool is Ping.fm.  This is a pinging tool that lets you update all your social services with one update.This includes many types of services like sharing sites, blogs and micro blogging tools too.

Here are some of the popular services you can update with it:

Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook, Tumblr, Hi5, Yahoo 360, Xanga, Mashable, Flicker, FriendFeed, LinkedIn. The list goes on.

The point of this type of tool is that it saves you from having to visit all those sites individually. The service can be used to update your status, add a link, talk about a project you’re working on and all your followers in those services get an update. You can’t converse with people unless you visit the sites indivdiually and you want to do that at least sometimes so you don’t appear to be a selfish social marketer but this can be a substantial time saver!

How Ping Fm Works

Sign up for all the social media sites you want to individually first and then sign in to Ping.fm. Then you can add your user name and password for each of those web 2.0 sites and begin taking advantage of Ping.fm. It does take a bit of time to set up initially but can be well worth the effort.

(PS: Update: Forgive my blunder. Yesterday I told you I’d write about making more online friends but started today’s post before reading my day planners. Tsk, tsk. Tomorrow Sean is posting so I’ll be sure to post about that topic for Thursday! Cheers, Dana)

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Do you want to have more subscribers on Twitter?  Do you want to maximise your marketing impact in the Twitterverse? Your Twitter people, a.k.a your “Tweeps” are interested in following like minded people and / or very interesting people.  If you try to sign up with the sole purpose of link baiting, you’re not going to get very far with this tool.  In order to maximise the impact of Twitter for internet marketing you have to treat it like a social marketing tool that requires both give and take.

Here are some Twitter tips:

-Don’t push out a link in every Tweet. More than 75% of your Tweets should be interesting rather than product related.

-Do reply to your followers who ask you a question or comment on one of your statuses via the replies button. If you don’t check this and ignore those trying to converse with you, you’ll get ‘un-followed’.

-Tweet unto others as you’d have Tweeted unto you.  That means that if you want people re-tweeting you, do that for them. Social bookmark for them, tell your followers that @user is a great person to follow, etc.   Social media is very much a tool built on quid pro quo.

Happy Tweeting!

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

When you use social media tools to try to increase your chances of making more sales, you can take informration in these tools and use them to your advantage. A lot of hype is spread around about monetizing Facebook, MySpace and Twitter but new marketers often don’t know how to mine these systems for information that can help them.  Here are some tips:

Search for keywords

Twitter Search is a tool that can help you in internet marketing if you’re using it to its full potential.  A good way to use it is to search for people you can market to. If you sell widgets, you can search for others that have tweeted about widgets or that use widgets in their profile and add them to your friend list. From there, you can establish yourself as a guru in that niche and you could develop more subscribers, clients and people who’ll buzz about you on the social marketing scene.

Search for groups

Some of these tools such as MySpace and FaceBook have common interest groups. By joining those groups, you increase your ability to find people interested in your subject matter..

Make the most of your profile

Use the profile on these sites to maximize your potential for followers and for success. You need to look like a valuable member of the community and not just another person trying to sell something.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Here at www.seanseo.com we like to tell you about tools we think you’ll find useful.  The AddThis tool is fantastic and a wonderful tool for any blog.  Not only can it help you with traffic and social bookmarking but it’s aesthetically pleasing as well.

Social marketing is important but so is blog design and this tool is clean looking and definitely an asset to any blog because it makes it simple for people to help you spread the word about your posts.

What is AddThis?

AddThis gives you a bit of code to add to your site design that allows each post to have a section at the bottom with a list of social bookmarking sites.  When visitors like your post, they can click one of their favourite social bookmarking tools directly below the post to spread the word.  Tools include: FaceBook, MySpace, Delicious, Digg and others. If you look below each of our posts here you can see that you can ad us to your Technorati Favourites, Stumble us, etc.

How Much Does it Cost?

AddThis  doesn’t cost a thing and it’s easy to install on your site. If people use a specific tool on a regular basis and see the button to manually add that on the bottom of your post, they’ll be much more likely to do so. That little logo will remind them that they can do it with just a few clicks and making it as easy as possible for people to tell the world how useful your post is will increase your exposure and your SEO value.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Wearing a black hat in SEO doesn’t put you in a very good position because eventually you’ll get caught and your losses can be significant as you’re banned from search engines.

More than ever, black hat tactics in SEO are on the decline for several reasons including knowledge about the risks and including the availability of information about how to do SEO the white hat or ethical way.

The best SEO tip you can take heed is to consider this an ongoing process of learning and of action. Doing a bit of site optimization work daily or weekly to improve your site’s rankings is what is going to help you the most.

Whether you change strategies, do things yourself, pay a search engine marketing firm to do it for you or change tactics, the important things are consistent effort and quality.

Some top SEM experts suggest the following strategy:

-Links, links and more links. Interlink on your site and get links pointing to your site through forum signature lines, guest posts and blog comments.

-Quality content so that once search engines send people your way, the people will stay and act on your call to action.

-Long tail words and phrases to increase your chance of getting results from searchers that are ready to buy.

-Submissions. Submit to article directories and search engines instead of waiting for the robots to find you

-Social media. Market and make online friends to increase SEO and chances of making sales.

With all the available free tools to help with SEO, between research and effort, the black hat tactics just aren’t necessary.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008