My Top 10 Social Media Sites
There are literally hundreds of Web 2.0 and Social Media sites out there and more are being developed every day. These sites are interactive and let the users and the communities within in them contribute and publish content for the world to see. Most of the sites offer you the ability to rate, share and discuss the content with other users giving it the ability to make content “go viral” across the web when you have tons of people all raving about a particular piece of content and sharing it with others.
And with all of these sites content is grouped and categorized by popular interests such as “health & fitness” or finance allowing users to easily find content that is specific to their search. Why is this important…well if you are trying to drive traffic around a specific group of keywords, these social media sites are highly regarded and have the “google juice” necessary to get you some high quality back links and push you further up in the search rankings.
#1 YouTube
Nothing beats video. I recently saw a statistic that boasted that over 50% of all the content on the web is now video. That is an amazing statistic. There are a lot of people that shy away from video as part of their marketing and SEO efforts. So that means its an opportunity and something you can use to your advantage. So get out there and make a short video of whatever it is you are doing and get it online. Stats: 72M visitors per month. Page Rank: 6.
#2 Blogger
Blogger.com has quickly become the free blogging platform of choice. Google owns it (no surprise there). Its free to sign up and start creating content that quickly gets indexed and viewed on the web. Want to be seen…put your content on blogger. Stats: 20.1M people per month. Page Rank: 32
#3 Twitter
If you haven’t heard of twitter then please continue to stay under that rock that you’ve been living under. Yes, everyone uses twitter from politicians to pop stars and athletes. For a low-cal diet of micro blogging and pointing people to more substantial content this is the place to be. Stats: 26.5M people per month. Page Rank 25.
#4 WordPress.com
This is a free blogging platform that is a favorite amongst the people. Made for the people, by the people. This open source platform has tons of great functionality and content from the WordPress network of blogs is picked up all over the web from other sites such as Google and Facebook. Stats: 188.6M people per month (across all published blogs). Page Rank 11.
#5 DIGG
Digg is the social media and bookmarking site on the web. Its a great place to be seen and heard. The site lets users share and promote content from anywhere on the web and Google loves it…need I say more. Stats: 28.2M people per month. Page Rank: 53.
#6 Hubpages
Hubpages is a leading online publishing platform with an active community and easy to use tools for content creation. They also like to make it easy for you to monetize your content. This one is a “must” as part of your overall social media strategy. Stats: 13M people per month. Page Rank 125.
#7 Squidoo
Basically the same as Hubpages. If your an expert then you can place your content HERE. Squidoo lets you create a “lens” (there term for an article of piece of content) for the world to see. They have a user friendly format for building a lens using different types of content such as text, video and graphics and pulling it all together. And of course the more positive reviews you get the higher your rankings. Stats: 10.2M people per month. Page Rank: 166.
#8 Zimbio
Zimbio is one of the fastest growing online magazines and social media sites. They boast over 18M readers per month. The site tends to focus on the hyper-active pop culture segment which includes entertainment, style and current events. However they do not limit their content to these categories and as a marketer you can submit your blog relative to your niche and they will include your content on their site, as long as it is good 😉 Stats: 18M people per month. Page Rank: 107.
#9 Wetpaint
Wetpaint is a fast growing social media site that promotes users, companies or anyone for that matter promote their brand by building community sites that are engaging and interactive. You can set up a community and let the users post content to keep them coming back for more. Stats: 6.4M people per month. Page Rank: 1,329
#10 Propeller
Propeller is AOL’s social media/news and bookmarking site. Its very easy to submit your site or article and content ranks well in the search engines. Unfortunately their traffic has been declining. Keep an eye on this one. But for now it’s a “must” use social media site for creating back links and SEM. Stats: 500K people per month. Page Rank: 3,533
The key to effectively leveraging these sites is to post consistently and cross reference all of your posts and articles to create a matrix of inter-connected content all pointing back to your main site. If you can do this on a regular basis you will increase back links and see your page rank steadily improve over time.