Social networks are a great thing for internet marketers, especially as they can be used effectively for any level of experience as an internet marketer.  One of my first reactions when I made my first website was to send out a message to all my friends via FaceBook and used that as a source of traffic for the first couple days.  I quickly realized that since it was simply people curious what my site looked like, that it wouldn’t actually generate revenue nor would it create lasting subscribers.  This is a lesson that I still carry with me as I continue to use social networks to my advantage.

For initial traffic to this blog I utilized the sources that internet marketers and bloggers go to in order to get information, forums and marketing networks.  I have x,xxx posts on DigitalPoint and quite a few also on v7n and webmaster talk, all of which are great sources of targeted traffic as long as you use them correctly.  As for social networks, I mostly used MyBlogLog, MySpace, FriendFeed, Twitter, and BlogCatalog to get traffic and RSS subscribers, which has worked out quite well as I have noticed that quite a few of you are also submitting my articles to social bookmarking networks, which I appreciate.

When using these resources, simply realize that if you want to get the maximum use of your time you should research the audience that you wish to develop for your own niche.  In my case, it is quite easy as I am trying to help out all internet marketers and most bloggers would also consider themselves to be marketers to some extent, as everybody would like to make a few bucks off their efforts.  Obviously you won’t know thousands of people online, which is why you should search for people that have similar interests as you in public profiles, etc. and these are the people you should seek various relationships with.  The purpose of these networks in their essence, is to meet people with similar interests and discuss common issues, tap into this and you will have an interested target audience developing.

The key to balancing this relationship of network friend and your personal business interests is quite simple, don’t spam them with overbearing messages, etc. because that will scare people off, and offer good content that people want to read.  If you offer good content your business will expand by itself, it shouldn’t need too much of a push but social networks and social media are great ways to get some eyes on your content so that you can get a few people to stick and then let it spread from there.

Here’s a few of the sites I used:

• http://forums.digitalpoint.com
• http://www.webmaster-talk.com
• http://www.mybloglog.com
• http://www.blogcatalog.com
• http://www.twitter.com
• http://www.friendfeed.com

The other thing to take into consideration with any type of social media/networking/bookmarking traffic is that it won’t be overly profitable.  Don’t expect large traffic numbers to equate to conversions of any sort, as traffic typically won’t click advertisements or buy affiliate products.

One interesting thing I have been watching as a result of this web2.0 traffic is how easily I gain and lose RSS subscribers, on days that I post I average 22 new subscribers, while on days I don’t post I average 17 lost subscribers.  On that note, feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed.

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