The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Great Social Media Manager

A great social media manager is, as Ron Burgundy would say: “The balls”.

It’s an undisputed fact that every business needs to be active in social media. The ever-changing demands of the modern day consumer requires brands to think fast and adapt quickly in order to stay one step ahead.

The role of a social media manager has appealed to the mass generation of socially-active internet users. It’s hard not to. Especially when some might think that you can earn big bucks from posting Facebook updates. Hardly.

Being a social media manager is kind of like being a stand-up comedian. You have to quickly understand your audience and your engagement with them is vital. In order to accomplish this, you need to know if the audience is laughing at your jokes and you need to know this in real-time. If you can do this, then you have already won the crowd.

So, how do you become a social manager? More to the point, how do you become a great social manager?

The answer will be surprising to some. Firstly, you have to want it. Second, you have to love it. Third, you have to learn it. And even if you tick all these boxes, you should ask yourself: “Am I a social person?” If the answer is no, then becoming a social media manager is probably not for you…

So let’s take a look at the stats.

LinkedIn shows 57,910 results for “social media manager”
Social media has now overtaken porn as the number 1 activity on the web
97% of all consumers search for local businesses online
71% of consumers receiving a quick brand response on social media say they would likely recommend that brand to others
93% of marketers use social media for business
In terms of difficulty of execution, nearly half (49%) of B2B marketers put social media marketing at the top, followed by content marketing (39%), SEO (26%) and mobile (25%)
77% of B2B marketers use a blog as part of their content marketing mix
On average, 25% of marketing budgets are now spent on content development, delivery and promotion
78% of small businesses attract new customers through social sites
When asked to rank their company’s social business maturity on a scale of 1 to 10, more than half of global business executives gave their company a score of 3 or below
But the statistic that is most relevant to this article is:

Just 12% of those using social marketing feel they actually use it effectively.
Being a social media manager brings with it some key benefits within a freelance setting. The most recognisable being the fact that you are your own boss. You make the decisions and answer to no one. You send the invoices and you set the policies. Heck, you could sit in your underpants all day on the computer if you wanted to.

The other is money. It is an in-demand role, but one that companies are still struggling to come to terms with. Some companies realise and understand the value social media could bring to their enterprise and are willing to invest heavily in robust social media campaigns. Being your own boss, you can decide how to set your costs and price accordingly.

Another attractive reason is the low barriers to entry. With low start-up costs and plenty of online resources (like this one!) to rapidly decrease the learning cure, anyone can launch a freelance social management business within a short space of time.

I’ll tell you my story shortly but first, let’s explore the essential skills you’ll need to become a great social media manager..

Fundamental Skills:

Marketing Knowledge

You should have a good grasp of the basic marketing principles. Some education in marketing would be beneficial, but otherwise you can find many quality resources online.

Experience

Your experience doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to life experiences. Have you managed your own social media profiles for a while? Do you know how to effectively maintain your own social accounts and understand what clients expect?

Sociable

I touched on this at the beginning of the article. If you are not a sociable person – someone who doesn’t like communicating much and isn’t very outgoing, then becoming a social media manager just isn’t for you. Sure, you can hide behind a keyword and monitor for a while, but clients will usually want to meet, speak on the phone, or have Skype sessions at some point.

Project Management

You don’t have to have a Prince2 certificate, but you do need to be able to manage projects and your time well. It’s typical for social media manager’s to work with multiple clients at any one time. Keeping tabs on everything is important so that it doesn’t get overwhelming.

Technological

Social media exists online. Therefore, you need to have a certain degree of computer literacy. Having good knowledge of social technology will enhance your services and ensure you are keeping up to date with the latest social trends and developments.

Interpersonal Skills:

Communication

It kind of goes without saying that if you’re going to be representing a company and engaging with their customers, then you will need to have strong communication skills.

Personality

Companies tend not to want to hire people with no personality to act on behalf of their brand. It doesn’t resonate well with them, or their audiences.

Responsiveness

I’ve touched on this a few times – social media is very fast-paced. Imagine if one of your social assignments was largely focused on customer service and you didn’t respond to customer complaints or queries for weeks. People online want rapid responses. Being able to fulfil these needs can stand your client (and you!) in good stead.

Entrepreneurial

To become a social media manager in a freelance capacity, you have to be a self-starter. You should be willing to go the extra mile and take a few financial risks along the way. If you don’t land a job that pays enough in one month, how will this affect you?

Multitasking

A great social media manager must be able to effectively carry out a wide range of tasks.

Organisation

You should always be very well organised when delivering social media management services. I use all kinds of traditional tools like calendars, white boards and task lists to keep myself organised. I also use many online organisational tools, such as: Thunderbird for accessing all my email accounts in one place, Dropbox to easily share documents with clients and bookmarks to keep track of all the websites I frequently visit.

Strategic Thinking

Being able to think campaigns through before they happen and sometimes thinking outside the box when needed, are great asset to have as a social media manager. Clients tend to want to know how you will do something before letting you do it, so being able to present a clear and concise strategy is essential.

Flexible (with travel)

Contrary to popular belief, a freelance social media manager has to leave his office sometimes! If this is a problem for you, then you should think about starting another profession. Nearly every sizeable project I undertake involves multiple meetings with the client. You should have reasonable pitching skills, as you may be required to sell your services face to face too, before being hired. You may even opt to take on in-house work.

Wider Skills:

Copywriting

Every good social media manager is a great writer. Writing forms the foundations of many aspects of online marketing, be it creating ads, writing blogs, engaging with customers, scripting sales copy or writing press releases.

Graphic Design

Pretty much all social media platforms provide the functionality to customise the interface and incorporate your own branding. If you are sharp with Photoshop (or similar design software), then you are in a good position to offer these services as part of your social media package. Similarly, creating content such as infographics, banners or images is standard practise for a social media manager.

Advertising

Every social media manager should have sound knowledge of advertising. Be it Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising or banner advertising, you should know the ins and outs of each discipline and understand how to optimise each format.

PR

Public relations is closely tied to social media marketing, in the sense that both involve managing the spread of information between a business and the public. You may start out not needing to have a deep knowledge of PR, as it is typically managed by larger brands who have an interest in persuading stakeholders, investors or the public to maintain a certain point of view.

Statistical

Everything in marketing should be measured. You should periodically measure and analyse your social marketing performance and produce reports to your clients to demonstrate your value.

SEO

Understanding how social media affects search engine optimisation will ultimately improve campaign performance. In 2012, there was an average of 5,134,000,000 searches on Google every day. If you think SEO doesn’t matter to your social activities, think again.

Traditional Marketing

Even though you generally won’t be involved in traditional marketing practises while undertaking a social media management role, you should understand how both forms of marketing affect each other and how each can be best leveraged to complement the other.

Video Editing

This will probably be the least used of your wider skills, but nevertheless it can assist you in your social marketing positions. I’ve had a few clients that required presentations or demonstration videos to be edited before being used within their social media campaigns. I’m for sure no expert, but having a reasonable level of knowledge in using Windows Movie Maker (or similar video editing software) can turn that video file straight from the camera into a beautiful, YouTube-ready video.

Even if you possess all the necessary skills to become a social media manager, there is still scope to improve your services by using different social tools and software. I’ll quickly recap on two different pieces of software I use that may help you in becoming a great social media manager:

Hootsuite: I wrote an in-depth review of Hootsuite on my blog that also includes a video tutorial which should provide all the information you will need to know about Hootsuite.
BuzzBundle: This is my favourite and most valued piece of software I’ve ever used. I use it mainly to find keywords around my content subject from across a huge range of blogs, forums and social sites and stream all this information back to me in one interface. I can then see who is discussing my topic and jump straight into the conversations to add my two cents.
What You’ll Be Expected To Do…

So, what does a social media manager actually do? As you can probably tell by now, the role of a social media manager is diverse. It’s not a case of “Well, I post updates to Facebook.” Here are a few general activities that social media managers will be expected to execute:

Strategy

You will be required to formulate campaign and platform specific strategies that meet the business objectives. You will create actions plans, content calendars, set metrics and KPIs, undertake various research activities and perform different types of analysis.

Content Creation

Content creates the foundations of any marketing campaign. How you decide to execute your campaigns will depend on the different forms of content you produce. As you would have no doubt already heard from someone, content is king. Believe them.

Community Management

Managing accounts also means managing communities. You should be the go-to person when representing brands in social domains and continually reach out and engage with your audiences. You will need to constantly strengthen social relationships in order to develop long-lasting followers.

Audience Building

Marketing to the same people over and over will not widen your scope and social reach. You should be increasing readership and your level of influence within your target audiences.

Customer Service

Many companies use social media as an instant channel for customer service. You will have to be responsive and helpful in your social activities, regularly being the first point of contact. You will be representing the brand and managing their customer perceptions.

Measurement

Every effort that consumes investment will need to be measured and analysed. I’vve previously written tutorials that demonstrate how you can set up your Google Analytics account on my blog.

Reporting

Once your efforts have been measured and analysed, your clients will want to understand how their investment has performed. This can take the form of visual aids for meetings or digital reports. Reporting is a key ingredient of any social media manager in order to prove your worth and demonstrate the value you have added to the business.

How I Became A Social Media Manager

I’ve been active in social media since July 2007. This was before the time of all the latest social marketing tools and software that nowadays are ingrained into all social marketers everyday life. Resources or tutorials weren’t as widely available that could help speed up the learning curve.

I did find an online course that looked pretty good in teaching me how to turn my social skills that I had been practising on my own accounts into a fully fledged business. I invested £600 on this online course to learn the basics and now that some years have passed, I can look back and say the value wasn’t all that great, but the ideas were there. It pushed me to think outside the box and motivated me to start my trajectory towards becoming a social media manager.

So before I had decided to turn my love for social media and networking into a freelance opportunity, I attended Brunel University where I completed my BSc and MSc in Business Management. It was at this time when I jumped on board with the poker boom and started playing online cash games and tournaments. Poker really helped me to develop my own time management, money management and analysis skills. I always knew I wanted to start my own business so this was a good platform to get my feet wet. Throughout my time playing poker, I was always engaged in online social discussions and even wrote a few guest posts for poker sites.

Before I knew it, I was a fully-fledged freelance social media manager…

So to kick-start my freelance social media work, I joined a bunch of freelance sites like Elance, oDesk and Freelancer. I still use some of them today.

After a few years of freelancing on small one-off projects and developing my social marketing acumen, I was hired by an online business services company to run their social media campaigns, as well as handle all their own clients social marketing campaigns. I still work with them today, which just shows the power of forging good working relationships.

I managed to attract clients in most months for the next few years and each project ended up being pretty diverse from the next. This allowed me to develop wider skills that I have since found almost a necessity in order to provide a well-rounded social media marketing service. I mentioned some of these wider skills required to become a great social media manager towards the middle of this article.

I also kept maintaining and building my own social media profiles. It’s important to practise what you preach and showcase your expertise on your own domains. My social profiles have regularly attracted clients, which keeps work coming in and builds up my networking potential.

I have been writing on my blog for a few years, but only recently updated my site. My own social activities also serve to build traffic to my sites, where I generate passive income. I like to “listen” to the social environment and engage with people who are already looking for my content. This serves well in building and strengthening connections, as well as attracting targeted traffic.

I have also been a keen guest blogger. I believe that writing articles for other relevant blogs only serves to increase your scope and exposure. Once or twice, I have had my articles featured by online magazines and publications, which was always nice.

Keeping my ears to the ground and getting myself ‘out there’ was one of the things I promised myself I would do, even though I knew the vast majority of my time would be spent in my home office. I tried to regularly meet up with business connections and clients to make sure they could match an online persona to a real life face. The vast majority of the time, I even managed to remember my business cards!

A strategy I’ve always tried to employ while freelancing is to try and turn one client into three. What I mean by that is word of mouth is the most powerful advertising there is. People do act on solid recommendations that their friends make. I found that taking as basic an approach as asking clients at the end of projects if they knew anyone who could benefit from social media marketing, worked out surprisingly well.

As social media is such a dynamic environment with start-ups booming and busting every few months, I knew that it was essential to keep up to date with social developments. Every so often, a client would ask me to set up profiles or campaigns on sites that some social media managers would have never heard of. Keeping tuned in enabled me to have at least some knowledge and experience in using these platforms, which dramatically lowered my learning curve and ultimately lead to better performing campaigns.

Around a year and a half ago, I decided to broaden by service offerings and set up a web design company with my business partner. “Thinking Forwards” was born in the summer of 2012. Websites and social media go hand-in-hand, so this enabled me to up-sell my services both ways.

So that brings me loosely to where I am now. Just to be clear; I have never used paid advertising or SEO for my own benefit while being a social media manager. My progression came solely through content marketing and guerrilla marketing tactics.

To Summarise On How I Became A Social Media Manager:

Joined freelance sites
Practised what I preached and actively maintained my own social media profiles and blogs
Kept consistently networking and building my contact lists
Continually created my own content on my own sites
Took my content straight to prospects
Proactively kept asking if people needed my assistance
Guest blogging and featured articles
Attended networking events and met up with clients and business contacts
Tried to turn one client into three
Kept up to date with new social networks and developments
Started other initiatives where social media services were complementary
Never turned down any work or networking opportunities
Worked long hours, sometimes for small rewards, to build reputation, authority and presence
I thought I would leave you with some final advice from things I have learnt from my own experiences being a social media manager.

Remember that…

Sometimes you won’t be right for a project, even if you think you are
It’s OK to work for less than your desired amount, if the benefits warrant it
You won’t win every contract, so don’t beat yourself up if you get turned down
Things change really quickly in social media, so you will have to continually adapt
You never know as much as you think you do!
Starting a career in anything takes time and effort. If you think it’s easy to become a great social media manager, then think again…

I wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

Blog: http://www.stuartjdavidson.com

Hiring a Social Media Manager: 21 Questions to Ask

The Social Media Manager is becoming the go-to person for businesses who require assistance with their online marketing efforts. It’s no secret the impact social marketing can have on a business and the advantages its brings. And it’s also no secret that most business owners cannot handle their social marketing all on their own.

A Social Media Manager does a whole lot more than just posting status updates on profiles. Social media management encompasses figuring out the who, the what, the when and why. Who does your business want to reach? What is needed to reach them? Where are they most active? Why should we use social media as part of our marketing efforts? Many businesses are finding that outsourcing or hiring someone to manage their campaigns is becoming an important part of using social media for marketing. An outside individual can usually see the bigger picture more clearly.

Social media management is a position that has attracted a huge amount of attention and membership in recent years. I see the main reasons for its popularity as:

– Low entry barriers

– A high demand for the services

– Big rewards

But is it really for everyone? Honestly, there are now a lot of social media managers. Some very, very good. Some really, really bad. So how do you filter out the bad ones and find the good ones? Well, the good social media managers will know their stuff and they understand what it takes to be successful.

Here are 21 questions you can ask your potential social media manager and what the better answers should look like…

1. How do you define success?

The amount of followers isn’t the only sign of success in social marketing. A social media manager should be able to help you define success on a strategic and tactical level, in order to support your larger marketing goals. If a social media manager has a limited view of success, or is unable to explain performance measurement beyond the volume of audiences, they won’t be able to provide you with higher level strategic solutions.

2. What sort of results can we expect?

A good social media manager will manage your expectations and let you know what results you could achieve. Remember that social media managers are not psychics. They should act on your behalf using the best practices of the industry, but there is a lot that is out of their control. They should be able to give you a rough idea of what they bring to the table based on their previous results and experiences. If a social media manager cannot communicate this effectively to you, then they probably don’t have the level of experience you need.

3. How is ROI defined in social marketing?

Contrary to popular thinking, ROI can always be measured in social marketing. But it can be perceptual. What are your goals? Were they achieved? If so, then you had a positive ROI. Did your campaigns help your business in any way or have any positive effects? If they did, then you were successful. Social marketing ROI is not always tied to tangible business benefits. Ask the social media manager which factors can be measured and how they will be reported to demonstrate the value they bring to your business.

4. What social platforms do you specialise in? Why would these particular platforms be right for our business?

Different social networks have different audiences and practices. Not every network is right for every business or industry. For example, how could a pharmaceutical company possibly engage in drug marketing on Twitter? The reality is that most businesses can take advantage of the networks out there in some way, but if there are limitations, you want your social media manager to be aware of them.

5. Should we be on every social platform?

A social media manager who has done their research on your business should know your target audience. How this is answered is the key because it provides you with an instant understanding of their perceptions of your business. If a social media manager extends your business visibility to many networks, then your marketing efforts may spread too thin and mean some of the campaigns might suffer. They should pick where your target audience is already situated and focus on maximising performance on those platforms.

6. Would Google+ be worth using for our business?

This should highlight the extent of your potential social media managers Google+ knowledge. Google indexes Google+ content faster than content posted anywhere else. It’s a platform that has grown rapidly since its launch in 2011 and is now one of the main social platforms. A social media manager should know this and should understand whether your target audience is present there, thus viable for your business, and how Google+ can be leveraged to fulfill your wider marketing objectives.

7. Could you give us an example of a limitation on a social platform that you have experienced? How did you overcome this?

A social media manager should know that social networks come with limitations; API calls, bandwidth limitations, character limits etc… If a social manager has never run into limitations and hasn’t experienced how to overcome them, then this likely means that they are not very experienced. In fact, they will probably be completely new to the social landscape. Asking how they overcome any hurdles with their past or current clients will give you a good indication of how they respond to adversity.

8. Can we run a “Like and Share to Win” style contest on our Facebook page?

If a social media manager does not know the answer to this, then move on. Its imperative you find someone who knows the rules and guidelines of each and every social platform and who will not have your business in violation of any Terms of Service. As a heads up, on Facebook you have to use a third-party app to host the contest and cannot use the ‘Share’ button, ‘Like’ button or require a comment in order to be entered to win.

9. Have you ever had to handle a social marketing crisis? If so, could you provide an example?

Asking a social media manager to define what that ‘crisis’ means to them can highlight their level of experience. If their biggest crisis consists of miss-typing a URL on a Pinterest pin and not noticing until their client asks why there’s so many messages about broken links, then chances are they are vastly inexperienced. It’s also insightful to ask what steps they took to resolve the crisis and how the situation was handled.

10. Could you show us some of the clients or projects you are currently working with?

Any reputable social media manager will show you their client accounts. And be proud to do so. Some profiles will probably be doing better than others depending on each campaigns goals and strategies. If they dodge the question or cannot show you anything, then it should rightfully lead you to think they are hiding something. Social media managers who take pride in doing quality work should want to show you their portfolio. Imagine turning up to a sales pitch without a product sample. Clients would never even think about placing an order unless they can see what they are buying.

11. How would you allocate our social marketing advertising budget?

A social media manager should be able to describe a plan for how best to allocate your advertising budget and how they would know if it’s successful. Specific metrics and KPIs should be given, analysed and reported. The choice of advertising platform will also allow you to gauge their perception of where they think your business should be promoted, in what format and to what audiences.

12. What will our responsibilities be as a client?

A social media manager doesn’t operate in a vacuum. They will need to be in the loop with your other marketing activities. You’ll also need to provide any necessary resources and wider marketing information or materials. A social media manager should have clear guidelines for their role, and yours as a client. This should typically be communicated to you prior to establishing a working relationship.

13. What are our competitors doing in social marketing?

Any social media manager who values your work opportunity will do initial research before sitting down with you. If they doesn’t know what your competitors are doing, it should raise alarm bells. A social media manager should be able to give you insight into the way your competitors are using the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube right from the offset. This can always be researched fully later, but will give you an idea into their proactiveness and organisation.

14. How do you evaluate new social platforms? How do you stay on top of the latest updates and innovations in Social Marketing?

The social landscape is always changing. Even the most experienced social media managers need to refine their skills, update their strategies and practice new techniques. A social media manager should have experience with building engagement and showing results across multiple platforms and with several different tools. There are some platforms considered to be the juggernauts right now, but remember the days of AOL, MySpace and eBay? Would you hire a social media manager who pitched engaging your I.T customers on MySpace? I doubt it. The point is that the social landscape is dynamic and a social media manager should be constantly evaluating new platforms and making recommendations to you on whether they are suitable for you to explore.

15. Do you offer community management in your Social Marketing services?

Social engagement doesn’t end when you publish your Facebook page. In fact, creating profiles is often the ‘easiest’ part of the process. The execution of the community management strategies that follows is the more difficult (and more expensive) element. It is important to know how your social media manager approaches community management and what strategies and tactics they will use to interact with your audiences. If you don’t know this, then you will have no clue on how they will manage your brand online. You should have guidance and offer feedback into how your business is positioned and wants to be perceived online.

16. Do you have your own blog? Do you currently write content for various Social platforms?

Social media managers should practice what they preach. You can ask to see their blog in action and see if they are posting regularly. Being a social media manager is about so much more than updating Facebook and Twitter. Content should be balanced, otherwise your social streams will either be giant advertisements or lists of interesting articles that they came across. A good social media manager will be able to write effectively, allowing you to have a constant stream of interesting and engaging articles. They will also be SEO savvy and content will be optimised to have the right keywords in the right place, ultimately linking back to your business. You can ask to see what articles they have already written so you can determine whether or not their style of writing would fit your business.

17. What blogs or social sites do you regularly read?

Social marketing is always evolving and effectively marketing on social platforms can be a bit like trying to hit a moving target. Google+, for example, had become a commonly used tool for 40% of marketers within only a year of launch. That is a huge gain in such a small space of time. This is just how social marketing works. New blogs and social sites come and go within the blink of an eye. A good social media manager should stay on top of these changes, which means a lot of reading. They should be able to list multiple reputable social sites and explain why it is they follow them.

18. What is your understanding of Edgerank?

Social media managers that know their trade will be able to explain about Edgerank to you. Edgerank is basically what runs Facebook posts. Without knowledge of this, they will have little insights into how to properly optimise Facebook campaigns. Edgerank determines who sees what, when they see it and how often it’s seen. It also provides a good picture into their technical knowledge and understanding of social marketing.

19. What do you think is the most important thing a Social Media Manager should be doing?

A solid answer you should look for would be something along the lines of ‘monitoring’ and/or ‘listening’ to your audiences within your social domains. It’s quite an ambiguous question, but the answers will provide insight into their general thinking about managing your social campaigns. The key word many fail to incorporate is social. If answers are not somewhat geared towards a social dynamic, then they have missed the point completely.

20. Could you tell us a story?

These type of answers are commonly used in interview processes to see how someone reacts to a random question. In this instance, it’s actually a well-thought out question for two reasons. Firstly, if a social media manager has the ability to tell a compelling story, that will give you a huge advantage in all levels of your social marketing activities. Secondly, it puts them under pressure and you are able to gauge how they handle something unexpected.

21. Why should we hire you?

I honestly don’t like this question but I think it is fair to ask a social media manager this directly before hiring in order to see how they can sell themselves. This could have strong implications if your campaigns are tuned towards sales and lead generation. A social media manager should demonstrate how valuable they can be to you and what makes them different or valuable in your situation.

There are definitely more questions that could be asked. Some will no doubt be specific to your business or industry. Hopefully, asking questions like these will help you determine the right social media manager for your business.

What questions would you add to this list?

One final thought though… I don’t think this is a position that should be taken lightly, or seen as an entry-level position. A social media manager will speak the lifeblood of your business to an indefinite amount of customers. The skills needed to fulfill the diverse tasks of varying social marketing campaigns means both expertise and experience is crucial. Would you trust an unproven CEO to run your business in a new direction? Would you trust an unskilled social media manager to guide your brand online?

How These Semi-Automated Social Bookmarking Submitters Will Help You

Maybe you’ve heard posts about multiple social bookmarking before and in the end you spotted that they’re just listing icons and you still needed to click on each of them and typing the same URL, description, tags over and over again. This time, it’s different. I promise!

Let’s just get on with it. These are the social bookmarking tools I’m going to show you:

* Social Marker

* Social Matic

* Social Poster

Starting with my favourite, Social Marker. Social Marker works either by a bookmarklet or a widget. They even provide a WordPress plugin for your blog. Let’s say, you’re on the Social Marker’s page itself and you want to bookmark the page.

You can click the bookmarklet and it’ll bring you to Social Marker’s main page. It’ll load itself with the title and the URL of the page you’d bookmark. You can see that the Title and Link fields are pre-filled according to the page you wanted to bookmark previously. The next thing you need to do is fill the Text with the page’s description, and certain tags you’d like to associate with the page.

Then, still on the same page, you’re given options to choose which social bookmarking sites you want to use. If you click on All, it’ll submit your page to all listed social bookmarking sites you can see. Dofollow means only submitting to those excluding rel=nofollow on their link attributes.

When you’re done, click Submit just on the upper right corner and the magic starts here. The next page will automatically load each of the social bookmarking’s page you selected previously, continuously. For example, you chose Furl, BlinkList and MisterWong. The first page you’ll see is Furl’s submission page (if you’re not logged in to Furl, you’ll see a login page). But in the background, Social Marker continues to load BlinkList’s and MisterWong’s submission page (you can see it on your browser’s status bar).

You can see that almost all the fields are automatically filled by Social Marker. However, on this page, Furl’s Keywords field isn’t filled up yet. You can easily do it by clicking on the Tags field on the bottom right of the page. This field contains anything you’ve typed earlier before you start submitting your pages. Just click on it and it’ll block the entire text box. You only need to copy and paste it into Furl’s Keywords section. Click Save and Next to go to the next one (in this case, BlinkList).

Remember when I said that Social Marker continuously loads the pages? Depending on your internet connection, the BlinkList submission page should have been loaded by now. And also on the previous page (in this case, Furl’s), you don’t have to wait until the saving process is through. You can click on Save and Next in a straight line since Social Marker will finish the saving process in the background.

As you can see above, all the fields are perfect. So you can just Blink and click Next, continue to MisterWong. You can also click Back to see if previous submission went through successfully or not. When you’ve finished the last submission (MisterWong in this case), you can close the window and go for another page to bookmark. Semi-automated and no typing at all.

The second one we’re talking about is Social Matic. Social Matic is an automated social bookmarking with way less clicks than Social Marker. Only Social Matic doesn’t list as many social bookmarking sites as Social Marker. Currently Social Matic serves 13, while Social Marker does 46 in total.

To use Social Matic, you need to be registered first, and then provide your username and password of your social bookmarking accounts you and Social Matic have in common. You’ll know why, later.

Let’s get started! Social Matic uses a bookmarklet to trigger submission. Similar to Social Marker, you need to fill up the Description and Tags here, since both URL and Title section are already taken care of. Then, you need to pick up a category fits best to your bookmarked page and proceed to selecting the social bookmarking sites you’d like to use.

Do note that although you can select all 13, submission is limited only to 5 services picked randomly from your selection for every submission. And you cannot submit the same URL for the second row. After confirming Captcha, click Submit and you’re done! See now why they need your login information? You don’t need to log in for each service. They’ve automated it for you.

Your most recent submission is on the top five. What’s unique is, Social Matic submits your submissions every 30 minutes interval. It is done to avoid search engine’s suspicion to many links created at the same time since they appear like natural submissions.

The next thing is Social Poster. Social Poster has a similar interface as Social Marker, yet it claims to cater up to 77 social bookmarking services. To use Social Poster, you can use a bookmarklet, buttons or a WordPress plugin.

Now let’s see what happens when you bookmark a page using Social Poster. First, you’ll see that the main page will already be loaded with the page’s Title URL and Tag. Similar to the other two before, you will need to fill the Text box for a description. However, you may want to check on the Tag field since it is automated, maybe you want to have something altered.

Below those fields, you are given two options. You can choose to generate links for submission or to submit the page in a framed style like Social Marker does. What differs them?

Let’s say you picked Generate Links for submit. After you select your preferred social bookmarking services (say it’s Propeller) and click Start Posting. You’ll be shown the same page as before, but there’s a difference in the URL of the word Post which appears on the right side of the social bookmarking service you chose. Hover it and you’ll see on your browser’s status bar, it’s been loaded with the URL, title, description and the tags of the page you submitted. Click on the link (Post) and you’ll be taken to the Propeller’s submission page (provided that you’ve logged in before). Confirm the submission and you’re done!

How about the other one? The one works like Social Marker can be chosen through Start fast submit in a frame. Then click on Start Posting. It’s almost alike with Social Marker’s. You’ll be taken to each of the submission page and you can go forward and backward to go to another bookmark site. You can also copy-paste URL, title, tags and descriptions from the provided textbox a the bottom.

There’s a major difference with Social Marker’s, though. Remember I told you that Social Marker loads the entire social bookmarking listed in the background? Well, Social Poster doesn’t seem to do that. It’ll start loading the page only when you click on the Next and Prev link. So it’s not a very time-saving, IMHO.

Now let’s conclude those multiple social bookmarking services.

Social Marker

Pros:

* Allows selection of do-follow services (for SEO purposes)

* Loads pages continuously in the background

* Submit to up to 46 social bookmarking sites

* No typing at all

Cons:

* 10-20% of all time, the process got crashed and the window closes by itself. You’ll have to start a new one from where your last submission was.

Social Matic

Pros:

* The most automated of all three

* Requires the least user involvement

* Random timing submission to make submissions look natural

Cons:

* The least number of social bookmarking sites supported

* Only allows 5 submissions per URL

Social Poster

Pros:

* The most supportive to social bookmarking sites, 77 of them!

* Allows selection of do-follow services (for SEO purposes)

* No typing at all

Cons:

* Uses the same frame thing as Social Marker but doesn’t seem to load the sites continuously.

Therefore, it takes longer to bookmark using Social Poster instead of Social Marker.

Social Bookmarking, Pinging, Social Networking – Which One is the Best to Promote Your Site?

You have probably heard of pinging services. You may also have heard of social networking sites such as twitter or Facebook. You may also aware of the fact that these services or sites can improve the traffic to your website. Perhaps, you may even notice that these sites can be used to improve your business sales. Seriously, have you ever thought of using social bookmarking to further boost your business sales? Do want to know the biggest secret to promote a website successfully?

First of all, I have to congratulate you for landing yourself at the right article here. In this no-nonsense article, I will show you how to utilize all these pinging services, social networking sites and social bookmarking services to increase your business sales. Do not worry about the process; it is actually as easy as learning how to spell ABC. Before that, we have to look into a couple of things.

Pinging service is really great if you happened to have a blog. Blog such as WordPress will enable you to ping your post automatically. However, this may not garner you many visitors or attentions, as there are constant pings that are going around every time you ping. This will ultimately push your ping quickly to the bottom of the main page, thus lowering your probability of having your ping noticed by others. Another downside of that, you have absolutely no control over what the title or description of the ping, even if you do have a killer title, it will automatically shorten to an unattractive extend by the pinging sites.

In social networking, you may know it may only gains some attentions as not everyone who are interested will be at your friend lists. For instance, in twitter you may only tweet to your follower list, to get wider attention, you have to manually add more followers from twitter. This alone can takes up hours to do so. Plus, you have to retweet your tweets in order to gain more attentions. This same goes to the social network site such as Facebook, where you have to add more friends to gain more attentions from the target audiences.

As for social bookmarking, the best thing is that, you can always re-bookmark your site or an article with different titles and description. By doing so, you will figure out the best title that can gain the most attention and visitor to your site, which ultimately convert all the traffic to sales. Another good thing about social bookmarking is that, you do not have to add friends or find followers to gain more attentions. This alone allows you to focus on optimizing the description and title of your bookmarks.

Now, the million dollar question: How to get the most out of these services?

Assuming that you have a blog, you can easily find blog plug-in that enables you to have your ping customized according to your liking. You may specify the custom title which could be different from your post title, and have them ping accordingly. Then, you can subsequently submit your blog post to article directories such as: Goarticles.com. Goarticles.com gives you instant approval, where you can those links posted onto your social networking sites. These alone, already multiple the links that you can spread on the internet and your article will probably get indexed faster than your blog post because article directories are search engine crawlers’ favorites.

Then, you bookmark all the links to your article and blog post. With social bookmarking, you have a wider spread of your content to the potential customers over the internet. Furthermore, this can give you more link juice or link popularity as most of the social bookmarking sites have high page rank and are DO FOLLOWS! The best part is that you can have your articles or blog post bookmarked as frequently as you wish. In the long-run, it will not only give you better search engine ranking position, you will be blasted with huge amount of targeted traffic.

The downside of social bookmarking is that, it requires you to submit your bookmarks to multiple social bookmarking sites to be effective. It is really torturous to have your bookmarks submitted to multiple sites, as every internet marketer wants to capture as many potential customers as possible. I mean, you may have realized it yourself; you have to repeat the process of registration, e-mail activation and bookmark submission for every social bookmarking site. Just by thinking of it alone, you will probably scrap the idea of social bookmarking for your sites or articles.

Now, just imagine you can have a social bookmarking tool to automate all your bookmark submission process. You just have to click a button that can automate the whole process from registration to bookmark submission for multiple sites. Within minutes, the whole process will be completed. You may want to check the bookmark statistics after 24 hours and tweak your titles or tags or descriptions of the bookmarks and repeat the whole process again. With just that, you will most likely increase your traffic at least more than 200%, as you can now place more of your focus in optimizing your bookmarks or optimizing other factors of your site that can bring in more sales.

I am pretty sure you already got hold of the concept of social bookmarking. By having such knowledge, it would be a waste if you do not put them into action. You should get yourself a social bookmarking tool today. However, do aware that most of social bookmarking tools available in the market do not automate the registration and e-mail activation process. If you are serious about getting yourself a good social bookmarking tool, you should check out BookmarkWiz [http://www.bookmarkwizblog.com]. This tool is great because it is born out of the frustration of a group of internet marketers who are frustrated with all the existing bookmarking tools. It is basically internet marketers created for internet marketers.

To sum it up:

– The most effective way of promoting your site is via Social bookmarking among all the other services such as pinging and social networking. – The reason is simply because social bookmarking allows you to capture larger targeted audience. – The downside of social bookmarking which is long and tedious works can be overcome by utilizing a

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