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Many people hope that after starting their website off it will eventually sell itself. This is possible, but can be a bit difficult for webmasters to grasp. Then, even after the concept is grasped the goal is still pretty hard to achieve. This method will involve a lot of skills when it comes to social networking, and social marketing. So without delving into an elaborate guide without any prior knowledge of social networking, check out these great guides from some of my favorite sites.

1. It Takes a Gathering to Build a Crowd | ProBlogger
   Learn how to get a following on social networking sites like digg.
2. Relationships and Online Social Networks | DoshDosh
   Learn about getting to know your contacts on social networking sites like Twitter and Plurk.
3. These guides don’t cover everything there is to know about social networking, but if you’d like to learn more then you’re only a google search away. Try “how to market using social networking“.

The theory is, that if you have quite a few followers on quite a few social networking websites, and you can figure out how to interlink them all together then you’ll have a self marketing site. Articles will get to the front page of multiple social networking sites, and you will only need to submit to one of them in order to do that. For Example: If you were to submit to Digg, your activity would be updated on your Jaiku profile, and you would get visitors from there as well. A marketing guru I know is putting this theory to the test, and trying to maximize on its effect with his new site Badoozie. With his viral content, and loads of much-needed experience in marketing I’m sure that this site will be successful.

The same goes with your blog posts, you can set things up so whenever you post it automatically notifies social networking sites you are a member of. Sites like Technorati, and other pinging sites are the most basic of information sharing websites. The biggest difference between Technorati and Digg is that Technorati is a search engine for blog posts, where Digg is a place in which the most popular article succeeds (with the right push).

This is the subscribe box at badoozie, optimized so that readers who use social networking sites realize it is easy to submit his articles. One flaw I see is the text Subscribe, which many people still associate with paying for a membership. According to CopyBlogger, you can increase your subscription rate by quite a bit just by altering that text. Try changing the text from Subscribe to something like “Get News from Us By Email“.

The key to social marketing is how you use your words. If you were to do everything in uniform and never do anything new, or say anything new, then what reason would someone have for reading your blog. Even more important, why would they want to share your content with their friends?

A blog without viral content, or proper grammar and punctuation is more than likely never going to get popular. Also, a blog without any content at all is obviously not going to be a good product to market. Wait till you get at least 20-30 posts or so before you start marketing your website. If your first article gets to the front page of digg, most users will think of your site as a probable one-hit-wonder and not subscribe to your RSS.

Once you’ve set your site up to market itself and developed a stable following of loyal readers you won’t need to submit your own articles any more. Your own readers, and friends from the social networking sites your blog is pinging will submit the articles for you. Plus, since you’re automatically pinging sites with the new content on your blogs, you’ll notice a fluctuation of traffic every time you publish a new post.

If you examine some of the sites that are constantly on the front page of digg, and other social networking sites, you’ll see that they’ve put this method to work. Then, you can decide whether or not that type of marketing is write for you and figure out how to do it for your own website!

In a perfect world, only the websites people like would be at the top of the search engine results. In a perfect world, webmasters would focus only on building up their content so that people wanted to read it. In a perfect world, Search Engine Optimization Does. Not. Exist. Google is trying harder and harder to stop webmasters from gaming their websites to the top of the search engines. I’m assuming that they’ll never be able to completely end webmaster’s ability to purchase success.

A friend brought this to my attention when he told me that most webmaster’s were spammers. Buying, selling, and trading links are all against google’s wishes. Though Google is not the law of the internet, they’re plenty powerful to make it seem so. As far as I’m concerned, Google is right to deem the actions of certain webmasters’ wrong, or right.

Think about it, if the websites with the best content were at the top of all your search results, you and everyone else would get the information they really wanted. Unfortunately for your search for greater knowledge, depending on a webmaster’s ability to get people to link to him, he’s able to put any site he wants at the top of the search results. To me, it’s spam when you put a link on your site just because you were paid to.

Don’t get me wrong though, I have no problem profiting from people advertising on my website. Google does it with their contextual advertising company, Text-Link-Ads does it, Kontera does it, John Chow Does it, and so do many other websites. I feel so redundant right now I think I should end this post, but I’m ending it knowing you’ll see SEO in a new light. If you see the flaws of your old disgusting SEO habits, then repent, and try social networking. Since only the good stuff really gets popular, it’s not as spammy as Search Engine Optimization.