Are you involved in social media at all? When I refer to this, I mean blogs, social news and bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon), and other niche communities. What do you think about their value for marketing? Do you find any better than others?

I'd love to hear your insights.

While I wouldn't really consider myself a member of the blogosphere (I don't really visit any of the social news / bookmarking sites), I definitely think that social media sites have a big role in the world of Internet marketing and building website traffic. They are, after all, the driving force behind viral marketing, which, aside from the SERPS, is one of the few ways for websites to gain free traffic.

We do it here, and I strongly encourage all forums and blogs to include RSS and Bookmark This buttons. Not only is the traffic gained from such sites (think the Slashdot effect, the Digg effect, etc) pretty impressive, but it leads to word of mouth, being mentioned on both small blogs and large news sites alike, etc. All of these links then increase SEO ranking which leads to traffic from the SERPS, and it's definitely circular.

They do help to increase your visibility.. It is good for SEO too..

Thanks

Not really just for "SEO," more for SEM -- you have a good presence on social media sites, and your brand gets more recognized.

Do you use it, Troy? I feel like I'm one of the only ones here who do.

I don't think I would consider branding a part of SEM. I think that it falls more under the heading of viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing.

I agree. It is a part of it though. The SEM umbrella covers SEO, viral marketing, PPC, and everything in-between.

SEO is more about on-site optimization. I think that the definition is a bit blurred and I also was confused myself until recently.

The easiest way to think of it (aka the way that I think of it) is that search engine optimization means optimizing your site for the search engines via on-page and off-page optimization. On page optimization means having clean code, using good title, h1, etc tags, and having a good keyword density throughout your copy. Off page optimization is mostly lots of links from lots of different sources.

Search engine optimization is a subset of search engine marketing which includes the free stuff you can do optimizing your site, in addition to pay-per-click advertising with AdWords, etc.

I used to do a lot of blogging. I am not really sure if I would exactly say it has had a lot of effect on any marketing experiences I have had....but then again...I haven't really paid that much attention. Anyways...I don't do much blogging anymore so I guess my post wasn't really that big of a help after all. Sorry!!

That's okay. Still nice to know you're a blogger We need more bloggers on DaniWeb.

I use social bookmarking, i've used Digg, stumbleupon, and delicious as well. I use them just to get more exposure and traffic for my website.

Digg has given me most success in terms of traffic (after google that is), but if it fails to get 'popular' which is usually the case you get something like under 10 visitors for each link you submit, i've been told stumbleupon gives good traffic even after a long time, i'm yet to have success though, there are dozen's of lengthy articles on popular blogs (like problogger) emphasizing on the importance of social bookmarking, just google something like 'using social bookmarking to increase traffic' or try referring directly to a social bookmarking website googling something like 'stumbleupon increase traffic'...hope this helps