Element Fusion

One of the most effective and lowest cost ways to promote your website/product/service/self is via online social networks. Online social networks are communities of users who create, share, and digest content in an open, democratic format. Links, news, and all types of media are shared by individuals who decide what is interesting, newsworthy and worth seeing — unlike traditional media outlets where editors and producers choose the content.

Participating in social networks allows you to connect with other people and easily digest what is new and noteworthy on the web. A typical breaking news story might make the front page of your local paper the next morning, provided it breaks before the paper goes to press. A progressive paper might get the story online within minutes or hours — that’s where the social networks come in. The same news story might be grabbed from an online news source, or even broken more quickly by an on-the-scene blogger with a mobile phone and quickly spread beyond the original source’s audience in minutes. Literally millions of users can be exposed to this content; read, commented, and moved on to the next story long before it hits your local newspaper. Social network users are on the very leading edge of what is new, cool, and interesting.

Don’t think that social networks are all about news — far from it. Product announcements, humor, music videos, amazing photos, gaffes by public figures, interesting websites, and more make up a huge amount social network traffic. And traffic is the operative word. Social networks can generate massive traffic to web content that is deemed interesting by the clicking masses. So much so that the phrase, “The Slashdot Effect” was coined to describe the massive numbers of visits that websites would receive after being featured on the home page of Slashdot.org, a venerable technology-based community. Many times this traffic was so massive as to make the web site in question temporarily unavailable because the server was unable to handle so many simultaneous requests. This is traffic that any website can benefit from and represents promotion on a scale that might not even be possible with paid promotion.

There are hundreds of social networking sites, services, and tools that can be used to promote your website and drive traffic, many of which serve a niche audience. Finding the right networks on which to devote your efforts is key and the purpose of this series, but be aware that finding the right targets for your promotion is only the beginning. Being effective on a social network requires time and effort. Don’t expect to submit your link to 35 social networks and wait for the dollars to roll in. Social networks are, after all, communities of real people — your submissions won’t get much attention or respect if you aren’t an active, vital part of the community. Many social networks are self-moderated and can easily spot a blatant self-promoter who brings nothing but the links he’s shilling to the community. Furthermore, such activity is in many cases considered a violation of the terms of the social network and may result in your link being removed, or your account being suspended. So don’t just look to social networks as a way to promote your website, really dive-in, participate, and have fun. Social networks can be a great way to connect, reconnect, and find new people to share with. And with a little effort you might just be the next Tay Zonday.

Tomorrow, in the second part of this two-part series, we’ll look at some of the most popular social networking websites, tools, and services and how you can use them to promote your website.