I was pricing a website the other day and actually it was a pretty in depth website, so it wasn’t really something we could give a fixed rate out on due to the complexities well when I was searching for a few things to get a few ideas on and to get more insight on this site I ran across Marketing Proofs which I have heard of it several times before I just never really paid much attention to it.

Well as I started to browse through there I was like wow this has some valuable information which granted not every one on there knows what there talking about (hopefully no one takes that personal if there reading this). I did notice though they had some very helpful articles written that has to due a lot with internet marketing, branding, blogging, and etc.

For example take a look at the following below on what exactly this site covers and how it can be educational.

1. Marketing Resources: This part of the website has a lot of articles to offer which other people submitted them, so you can’t trust everything you read, so use your best judgment, but over all this site has some valuable information for a beginner or someone in there more advanced levels. If your a blog publisher I seen some great helpful tips in there for blog publishers I would suggest checking them out.
2. Find a Post Job: If your into marketing as much as I am and you love marketing jobs there is some great listings in there for numerous locations which granted I’m not looking for a job by any means I have my company and several people that work under me, but for any one that loves marketing and might be looking for a job there is some excellent leads in there.
3. Blog: You know there blog does not look to bad, but I think it could use some improvements by every means such as writing more unique in depth post. To be quite honest with you I’m surprised it don’t have more subscribers I’m not sure how long the blog has been out, but I do know marketing Profs gets some traffic to there site thats for sure.
4. Forum: The lovely forum, this is not a bad resource at all. Ask a question and you’ll get some great answers and most generally from what I’ve noticed its from more experienced people, and there more direct with there answers which there is a lot of resources that provide educational information to such as Digital Point, V7n, Webmaster World, and etc, but I would still suggest getting into this community as well as any other communities your involved in because I got some pretty good answers back, but what really caught my eyes was the articles that was written up.

Conclusion
That should be it, but mainly the whole reason I decided to review this website and write about it was to let my readers be aware that this can be a great site for more education. To be all honest with you I’d say the best blogs to read and the best articles to read is from people that have been successful in there marketing careers, or even people that are moving forward very fast. I think forums are great to read by all means, but some of the people that hang out in the forums are more of forum junkie then anything, but when they do catch some great information they’ll pass it on and its just a matter or not if you use that information and pursue it, its called social networking :).

Building Communities, Maintaining Communities, and Leveraging communities is something that takes time and its a task. The first stage is to build the community and then maintain the community of course and there on out you can leverage the communities which of course its a pretty big process and a lot of work involved, but the outcome of it is just fabulous and nothing else can out beat it. If you read on I’ll list some tips on how to build communities, maintain communities, and how to leverage them such as for more traffic, sales, links which results in higher search engine rankings organically, and etc.

Building Communities

1. When promoting content through social networks such as Digg, Reddit and Stumble Upon make sure your content is made for users. Promote content that people will love and link to or at least bookmark it another thing is to make sure the content your creating will catch there mind set right away and draw there attention and ways of doing this would to test certain things such as your title, colors of website, and content ;).
2. Become part of communities and make friends, when you establish more friends such as associates and etc your creating a community your self basically. Let every one know where its happening at for example when you was growing up or maybe still today, or maybe in college is there certain places that you hung out at because its fun and every ones having a blast well the same thing for your blog if you offer something they like such as your friends and etc that you’ve met there going to tell there friends and there going to tell there friends take for an example look at My Space a very popular social networking site and one of the most popular that has grown very large due to the social networking through out friends, colleagues, and you name it (Its been promoted everywhere, your content should do the same).
3. Building links into your website can help gain more traffic and give you a kick start, but if your going to build links or buy links personally I would recommend promoting viral content at the same time. If your someone that hates to write just hire a great content writer and have them do research for you to promote viral content if they are a good writer and you can implement the ideas then it will work out great. The person does not necessarily have to be a viral marketer there self as long as there a great content writer they should be able to establish links for you speaking you do your part and create the ideas and what to promote.
4. Landing pages can be great, the idea behind a landing page is to create a page thats going to prove to users that your blog will help them whether its financially or just educated them in general. This can fall back under the category of building links into a landing page and then generate traffic to it from search engines whether its through PPC or Organic search or better yet both. Once the user hits the landing page make sure your e-mail subscribing list or RSS feed is very visible and from there on out take there mind over tell them who you are and etc, just test it and see what works.

Maintaining Communities

Maintaining communities is something that takes persistencey such as staying involved with then the community. After so long you should be able to set back speaking you have the community built really strong and other people are keeping the community alive such as content writers and etc, but generally if you built a strong community all on your own its probably a good idea you stay writing and participating because if not you can lose it pretty quick or at least keep it at a level pace and if you want to leverage it into something larger put that extra hard work in to make it expand.

Take a look below on just some of the things that keep the community leveled.

1. Keep creativity in mind, never forgot what your doing. This would fall back under the category of staying persistent and motivated. When you have a community try to keep it creative and every ones mind hooked such as using images, videos, free give aways, and viral content.
2. Stay communicating with people such as replying to comments, and stay active with then your communities in your niche, or at least to where you can keep your community leveraged like I mentioned above.
3. If at all possible answer your e-mails speaking its a reputable questions now you don’t have to go through there consulting people no one would do that unless you feel the need to, but consultants get paid for a living the best thing to do is reply and answer questions the best you can if it has to do with someone asking trade secrets or just plain out simple educational information tell them to stick around the blog and keep reading (its all at the blog).

The idea of maintaining communities basically is to stay persistent and on top of it like I mentioned above and keep in mind no one can build that community better then you because you’ve done did it and know the ins and outs of how it was built and how you can expand it if you needed to. Maintaining a community is not that hard now if your someone that is lazy most certainly its going to be hard, but remember three things and always keep in mind persistency, motivation, and effort is the key to success.

Leverage Communities and how they are Beneficial

I have some prospects such as clients tell me that online communities are a waste of space actually I had one guy tell me that he does not want people hanging out on his website, and I set there for a minute smiling in my head, but at the same time thinking does this guys even know anything about marketing online or just general marketing on the outside world any one thats been in the marketing game knows that building clientele and word of mouth is very important for marketing and with online communities you can do this (you can do several thing with them)

Most generally in the beginning stages of building an online community you won’t get much from it, but as time comes and you stay persistent you’ll start to establish more of an image and things will grow more gradually. As your community grows this gives you more leverage to build out through other social networks such as word of mouth marketing and the path will continue through other networks just depends on how strong the viral is.

Take a look below on a few tips on how to leverage your communities and benefit from it.

1. Remember to always think virally when building communities because when you think virally your expanding your network every day, and your content is probably getting linked to. And for any one that is famaliar with SEO we know that links produce higher search engine rankings.
2. Try to leverage your community around your products such as maybe promoting products directly through your blog post or forum what ever type of community you built process this information to them. Now don’t get to carried away with promoting your self make sure the content is still quality and there.
3. You can also leverage your community into giving you links for example have a free give away or something and tell them part of entering the contest it to link to your site with your desired anchor text if the contest is interesting enough you might have just earn 1000 unique links if not more.

There are several ways of leveraging communities once you have them established, but keep in mind like I stated earlier the idea behind building one, maintaining one, and leveraging a community is to stay persistent, motivated and use effort. Another great thing about a online community is that generally when you have it built strong enough you don’t have to do any advertising on other sites I mean you community is built so strong and so big you can control it any way you want and advertise any way you like.

Related Articles and Content

O’Reilly Network - Building Online Communities (Great Article!)

Bruce Clay Building an Online Community

Tips for Building Online Communities (ProBlogger)

The Secret To getting a popular blog and getting Tons of Readers (Dosh Dosh)

Heres a great list of sites I would recommend any one checking out whether new or old. If your someone new this will be very helpful for you. You can join these communities and get to know the people a little bit better, and learn more about seo and web development. Now don’t believe everything you learn at these forums, but just use good sense and you’ll learn a lot specially from other well known SEOS.

Forums

V7n

Jhon Scott’s V7n.com which was started about 7 years ago its a great community I use to hang out over there a lot and have talked with John a quite of few times and got a job offer in Tokyo, but had to worry about my company. Johns forums are very educational and generally hes pretty helpful with people. Now if your someone trying to promote your self or build your brand this would not be a place to hang out at if you ask me well I can’t say that, but I can say John and his crew are a bit more stricter on things over there compared to Digital Point but don’t take me wrong its still a clean driven forum.

Anyways check it out and get to know people, its a great all around forum.

Digital Point

Digital Point every one knows about DP this place is traffic zone city. This is probably the largest active forum on the web (for web dev). The Link Sales part of the forum is crazy people are selling links like there is no tommorow. I’d say every part of the site is getting hammered with traffic such as forum categories you can get away with a lot more self promotion at Digital Point. Just make sure if your going to promote your content through the forum to make sure its quality content if not someone will probably get mad and then give you bad reputation.

Webmaster Talk

Web master talk is not bad, you know the thing is I think webmaster talk and v7n has about the same activity such as members, but v7n.com seems to be a lot more active then webmaster talk. I use to go over to webmaster talk awhile back to check things out and see what was going on, but never really drew my attention to much over there. Which don’t take me wrong its still a great forum, but I’ve never really seen to many well known SEO’s hanging out there.

Search Engine Watch

Search engine watch officially sold to Clickz I think I could be wrong, but I think it was clickz. You think I would know this, but anyways search engine watch is not a forum that is super active, but it has some great SEOS that hang out over there such as Chris Boggs, and etc. They have an excellent article section where some very popular SEOS write daily. This would be a great place for any one to hang out at.

Webmaster World

To be quite honest with you I haven’t even been over to webmaster world yet or I should say have not signed up for a membership yet, but from what I hear there is some valuable information offered there I’m not sure who all hangs out over there such as SEO’s, but I do know its pretty well maintained and etc. I would definitely recommend anyone to get a membership there and check it out even though I haven’t been there yet, but I have heard a lot of positives about it.

Site Point

Site point don’t seem to be a bad forum I have went over there a few times, but I haven’t got to much into the whole thing to be honest with you. They also have sections where you can advertise on the site, now the writers that do the content writing such as articles have some valuable information to offer which like I said I haven’t been to much into the community over there, but from what I have seen its mainly based around programming and etc, but its a great forum with some highly educational information for sure.

There is several great forums out there and quite honestly its just where ever you like to hang out at. Some people might like V7n.com better then Digital Point while others like Digital Point better then v7n.com. The best thing to do is just get into the community and meet the people and see what ones you like the most. There all great forums.

Blogs

Jim Boykin SEO Blog

Jim’s a pretty cool a great guy. He was the first person I ever talked to about SEO before I actually got started, but anyways Jim’s got some great information on his blog he don’t blog as much as he use to, but he does make some great post. What I like about his blog is that he keeps it simple, but clear and direct hard to explain.

SEOMOZ

Oh Mighty lord seomoz who don’t know about SEOMOZ I remember when there blog was small it has got pretty large since the first time I been to there site such as subscribers. When I first checked out seomoz it was years ago when I was doing some research on SEO before I even really messed with it I played with it from time to time, but there site was for sure in the beginning stages, but Rand has come quite far from now.

He has a lot of valuable information on his blog such as building social networking, link building, and etc. Rand is a viral marketing type guy, he believes in strong content that will draw links, but anyways its a great blog check it out.

SEO Book

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, not a bad blog lot of traffic I notice Aaron has been changing a lot of things around on his website lately such as more tools, and etc. Aaron covers a lot of topics such as link building, viral marketing, and the whole 9 yards. Aaron’s blog don’t go into detail like SEOMoz and these other blogs out here, but its still a great blog.

Conclusion

There are a lot of community driven websites out there that are great, but these are some of the main ones I check out time to time. Just check them out and they’ll lead you other places.

You know I probably shouldn’t be telling people how to do this cause I don’t know if Digg would appreciate it, but then again I see nothing wrong with it as long as its done in a ethical manner. Ok lets get to it are you wanting to hit Digg home page? No problem this is probably beyond the average persons thinking. Anyways what you do is write an extremely interesting article up, make it the content of your life.

Now run a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign to that one page that your wrote the article up. Bid on as many as keywords as possible and drive as much traffic as possible to that page. For example drive 1000 unique visitors with then one hour just imagine the results of that, if done right it will work every time. Once again I’ m not encouraging you to do this, but if you do make sure you do it in a ethical way and don’t get carried away with it and make sure the article is worth it. If you write a good enough article people will Digg it.

I won’t go any deeper into this article and there is a ways of generating 1000’s of keywords with then a few minutes  that will work. Stick around the blog and make sure your subscribed and you’ll get my drift on what needs to be done. By the way think, I have written on this blog 100’s of times on how to generate large list of keywords that will drive traffic plus they are low paying keywords :).

You know sometimes online communities can just seem like a rift raft of people, and your just thinking this sucks. But then again its not a waste of time generally when people start out on the web they hang out at a lot of community driven websites educating there mind. Another great thing about hanging out at online community driven websites is that you can meet a lot of people such as other popular online marketers and etc.

(more…)

I have a interview with Kevin Rose, I’m not sure when I’ll do it, but I’m writing up a list of questions. I will do it asap thought I know that. If I could grab every ones attention maybe you guys could create some ideas for me, or maybe there is something you guys want to ask that I can take you up on. Just comment below and I’ll be sure to review the question.

There are many ways to build social networks such as joining forums, participating in other blogs, making friends of course, and many other things. The thing is though when you are building social networks make sure your focusing exactly on the network you wanting to build, such as a professional profitable network, a free education network, or anything to that nature. I’m sure you get my drift anyways I have listed some tips on building social networks and where to start at.

(more…)

Managing online communities is a wonderful process, well I like it. Everyday I work with numerous people on the web, but anyways lets talk about managing communities through weblogs, and forums. The thing is once you get a nice feed going around 100-200 subscribers you have leverage to work with, depending on the subscribers any ways. So hopefully you can viral out more subscribers with these 100 and turn them into 300 which can be done, but with time and patience speaking you can keep your current subscribers. Anyways Read the tips below on what to do when you have built a community based driven website and how to expand it.

(more…)

Marketing in web 2.0 has had major impact on all websites. Now days every one has a blog, when I say every one I mean every one and there brother pratically. Building online communities can be way more profitable whether people believe it or not. I still hear some people saying blogs are a waste of space, well I’d have to say there most certainly wrong. The power of blogs is just crazy if you have a blog and you create pathways to your products it can really fire your sales up, thats if you do it effectively. Below I have listed some tips and ideas about web 2.0 marketing, so take some time out and read them and study them. If you start to play around with the tips below you will find out you can use these to leverage your self and increase your sales dramatically.

(more…)

Thats right build the networks, if you don’t know what I’m talking about then start doing your research. I get people all the time asking me how do I build a social network the question is quite easy. Its pretty simplified. It just depends on how bad you want it. Building a network through out your weblog / website takes more then just making post all the time, unless your a viral king and can write something up that will catch peoples attention but reguardless it takes a hook to catch the fishes. Take a look at some of the examples below.

(more…)