This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, but it’s looking like newspaper advertising sales are dropping, and dropping hard.  The fact is that more and more people are turning their advertising online.

The reason for this is because more people are using the web now for almost everything – if you consider it, it makes sense.  If you want to check to see when a movie’s playing, you go online.  If you want to find directions to a new address, you go online.  If you want to find the best place to buy a new set of speakers, you go online.  If you want to check your bank account, you go online.

More and more people are starting to turn towards doing everything online – it makes sense, since you can do a large variety of things in one place.  Since this is where things are going, more companies are starting to turn their marketing budgets to the online world to connect more with people.

It makes me excited to see, mainly since I feel like I have an inside scoop on what’s going on for marketing online (since I spend every day working with it).  I do think it’s going to mean more and more businesses will be turning to put their focus online.  The drop in advertising sales for newspapers means it’s a sign of the times changing, and it’ll be interesting to see where things progress from here.

As anyone who’s done any serious work with Google AdWords knows, Quality Score plays a major role in ad expense in AdWords. Understanding how it works and improving it can reduce your costs by major levels.

To start, what exactly is Quality Score?  Quality Score is a figure between 1 and 10 set by Google.  It’s set uniquely for each keyword in your AdWords account.  1 is very, very bad, and 10 is as good as it gets.

So how’s this number set and what effect does it have?  The exact way it’s set isn’t really known for sure, except by those who wrote the algorithm in Google.  But the basics of it are known.  By understanding exactly what goes into the score, you can then increase your QS (Quality Score) for any of your keywords.

The main part of the QS is based on the relevance the keyword has to the page that the ad in your ad group is sending the user to.  If you’re bidding on the keyword “dog food” and are sending them to a page about diesel engines, chances are your QS will be a 1 and you’ll have to pay at least $10/click.  Google likes relevance, because it makes visitors happier with what they’ve found.

So basically, the more relevant your landing page is to the keywords in that ad group, the higher your Quality Score will be.  Ideally, the keywords you’re bidding on actually appear somewhere on the landing page.  This will help a lot, but is not the only part of a good QS.

To get a solid QS, you need to also have a solid web SITE.  Not just the landing page, but it appears that the whole site has to meet certain needs.  I’ve actually talked directly to Google about this (through AdWords reps) to make sure of this – but there are a few things you want your site to have to get a good QS: A contact page, a privacy policy, and at least three pages of solid content.  The contact page means that there’s really someone there to talk to, that it’s not all automated.  This means, in Google’s eyes, a higher quality site.  The privacy policy is just to cover everyone’s butts and is just a good idea.  And the pages of content just shows that there is actual material on the site and it’s not a single page affiliate redirect for pure profit.

Google cares about the quality of the site – this is why the QS is called Quality Score.  So as long as you have a good, high quality site, and the page you’re sending the searcher to matches with what they’ve typed in, you can get very high QS’s.

On average, a basic QS will start at 7.  If you have the keywords you’re bidding on specifically mentioned on the page, this score begins to go up.  How this can affect cost is amazing.  I have some examples:

  • On one of my client’s AdWords campaigns I have an ad group with a mix of keywords.  In this ad group the lowest QS is 7.  The CPC for the keywords with the QS of 7 is ranged, but the higher costs are around $0.20-0.50.  I have several keywords in this ad group with a QS 10, and the highest CPC for ANY of these is… $0.01.  You can do the math on how much this can save.
  • On another client’s account I have an ad group with mixed keywords.  I’m paying a default of $0.30/click on these keywords.  For the keywords with a QS of 7, the average position is 3-3.5.  For the keywords I have the QS of 10 with, I’m paying no more, but the average position is 1.5.  This means I can drop my CPC for the QS 10 keywords and pay much less for the same position as the other keywords.
  • And for a third client who has an AdWords campaign with particularly pricey keywords, I have one ad group with a mix of keywords.  The keywords with a QS of 7 require a price of $1.50-2.50 per click to appear on the first page.  The keywords with a QS of 10 have a first page bid of $0.55-0.85.  This is about one third of the cost.

Now that you have an idea of what kind of impact a proper QS has, you should be motivated to make sure you’re sending searchers who type in certain keywords to the appropriate pages.

To check and see what the QS is for your keywords, you want to go in to customize your columns in your ad group.  In the new beta AdWords interface, you click on the button on the far right above your keywords inside of the ad group that’s labeled “Filters and views” and then click “Customize columns”.  Here you’ll activate the “Quality score” column and then arrange it to where you want it.

If you still are using the older AdWords interface, then when you’re inside the ad group, you click on the “Customize columns” text on the far right side, above the keywords.  Then click on “Show Quality Score”.  In this interface the QS column will show things like “Poor”, “OK”, or “Great”.  To get the exact figure for your QS, mouse over the icon with a magnifying glass and a triangle right by each keyword.  Then a display will come up giving you the exact figure of the QS for that word, as well as information about whether or not your ad is showing for that keyword, and why.

By properly breaking your keywords into appropriate ad groups, you can put up ads to send the visitors to appropriate pages.  This will help your conversions, reduce your cost by increasing your Quality Score, and also help you customize your ad copy appropriately to increase your CTR.  Trying to increase your QS is good for various reasons, but I’d highly recommend understanding all of this to improve your AdWords experience.

Page Rank is a vital part to any SEO done for a website.  Understanding how to increase Page Rank is a huge benefit to any SEOer, and can help make a difference between page 10 and page 1 on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

(For those that want to get picky, yes, Page Rank is actually spelled PageRank, but since a large number of people think of it as two separate words, I’ll refer to it that way in this post.)

To start – what is Page Rank?  Page Rank is not named because it’s associated with web pages, it’s actually named after one of Google’s founders, Larry Page.  The true ranking structure is something that isn’t fully available to anyone outside of Google, although you can install the Google Toolbar (for IE or Firefox) to see the Page Rank Google has publicly posted for any given web page.

So what is Page Rank?  Basically, it’s a score Google has given to a web page, between 0 and 10.  Higher is better.  It’s affected by a variety of things, although knowing how to increase Page Rank for your site will help much.  This is because Google tends to post higher Page Ranked sites higher on the SERPs, for the keywords that they are optimized for.  To Google, Page Rank is equivalent with a level of quality.  If a site has a high Page Rank, it is likely a high quality page.

To get an idea of this – most pages when they start begin with PR (Page Rank) 0.  From here, initially most sites are around 1, 2, or 3.  To reach PR 4 or above requires some qualifications, which I’ll detail in a moment.  Anything above PR 6 takes quite a bit to get to, and these are very well known, popular sites.  For some examples, these are how the following sites are currently ranked:

How do you increase Page Rank?  The primary means of increasing PR is determined by how Google scores PR: it’s all about who links to you.  This ties heavily, very heavily into basic SEO.  Off-page linking is how PR is built.

The basics of Page Rank come down to links.  It’s like a popularity contest – the more links to a given page, the more votes that are cast to this page, the higher a Page Rank that page is given.  The weight of each link is affected by the PR of the linking page.  This is where things start getting a little trickier to understand, but we’ll start with the basic formula.

PR = 0.15 + (0.85 * (PR of linking page / number of links on page))

This starts with 0.15, which is the lowest possible PR any given page can have.  If your page is crawled and has no links to it at all, that’s where you are.  The next bit of math takes 0.85 and multiplies it times the PR of the page linking to you divided by the total links from that page.  This does mean that the more links on the linking page, the more “washed out” the quality of link from the site is.  Getting a link from a page that only has three links is far better than from a page with 230 links.

Adding up multiple links into the equation makes it get quite messy, but you can see pretty clearly how getting a high quality link from a high PR site will jump your PR rather quickly.  Also realize that this equation applies to on-site linking, as well.  So by simply linking to your own pages from within your site will help your page rank.  Keep in mind that the more links you put, the less PR (the less “link juice” as it’s often termed) will be given the page being linked to.

To get to something like a PR 7 means you have to have many links, and many high quality links.  Good SEO requires finding quality relevant links, and increasing Page Rank is one reason for this.

So to increase Page Rank, you can start with doing quality on-site linking, and then from there start getting links from other pages to jump your PR further.  The higher PR the page linking to you, the higher PR you’ll get, and the better you’ll do in the search listings.

This is a question posed by various people – SEOs, internet marketers, online business owners, and even just people browsing the web: which search engine is best?

Well, this really comes down to depending on what your approach is.  If you are just browsing, it’s really a personal preference.  But if you’re in internet marketing, then it comes down to understanding the varieties of users who are using each.

To start, Google is still controlling the search engine market, with 64.2% of all searches in April (according to ComScore).  Yahoo is second with 20.4%, and Microsoft is third with 8.2%.

As most people know, the bulk of traffic can be gained through Google.  Doing SEO or AdWords can take advantage of this traffic.  It’s been seen through PPC marketing that Yahoo does not get quite the same traffic but does tend to get a higher percentage of conversions.  This varies based on market, but it’s worth noting.

So what this means for internet marketers is this – definitely use Google if you’re interested in traffic.  For SEO or PPC, it’d be good to start with a focus on Google, and follow up with adjustments for Yahoo (and with PPC, start advertising with Yahoo) after a set plan is set for Google.  Microsoft is really an extra option to take advantage of, but in some cases may not be worth too much extra time/effort unless the amount of traffic gained through them is notable.

Make sure to realize that it’s worth it to go beyond just looking at Google.  One fifth of all internet search engine users use Yahoo, so the numbers there speak for themselves.  Be sure to keep that in mind when focusing on your internet marketing endeavors.

It still surprises me how many businesses are completely unaware of Google Local.  The benefits of putting your business in Google Local are enormous, especially for businesses that run primarily a regional business.

To start – Google Local is essentially the cheap/easy way to do SEO.  It’s not exactly doing any traditional SEO, but by doing this, you’re able to rank above the rest of the organic listings (in most cases), and for quality keywords.  You can see an example of it any time you search for a business listing in a local area, or often you can simply enter a city or zip code plus a particular market keyword (such as dentist, or plumber).  When you do this, Google Local entries will show up, next to a map.

To get your business listed in this way is fairly easy to do.  Begin at http://www.google.com/local.  From here, you’ll want to click on the link that says “Put your business on Google Maps”.  This will take you to a page that lists all of the entries to put information down about your company, such as name, address, phone, and web site, plus a description.

At this point Google will search to see if you have any listings posted yet.  If you haven’t done any entries into Google Local or Google Maps, then you shouldn’t find a match.  Add the new entry, and go on.

This next page is crucial to take advantage of Google Local for the SEO benefits it has.  You can show up in organic listings by putting proper keywords into the “Categories” section.  You can have up to five categories here.  By doing some good keyword research, you can determine which keyword phrases would be best to place here to ensure you get good, quality traffic from local searchers.

The other information is good to put if you can.  In particular, placing a video or image will help you by distinguishing you from your local competitors, as these will often show up with your Local listing.

Once you’ve completed this information, you’ll have to confirm by entering a PIN code Google will give you, either by giving it to you online to enter it over the phone, or by sending it to you through mail to your business address to enter it online.  Once you’ve done this, your Google Local business listing will go live.

For extra marketing push, you can choose to add coupons to your Google Maps listing.  Simply go back to http://www.google.com/local/add, only select the “Coupons” tab at the top.  Here you can add coupons of any kind to help bring customers in.

Now that you’re set up, your business name and link will show anytime anyone within the same area as your business types in the keywords you selected, or types in these keywords next to the name of your city or a close-by zip code.  This can be very effective if you’ve selected good keywords, and even without full SEO, you’ll still appear at the top of the search results.

If you notice an increase in business from this, it may be wise to consider doing full SEO, as your customer base appears to be using the web to find business in your market.  By increasing traffic through SEO, you’ll be increasing business further – and for national or international companies, this is a must for competing on a national/international scale.  Even without SEO, this is a good start to get traffic to your business site, and to help increase profits!

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s a link on the left of the main site pages that says “AdWords Qualified Individual”.  Yes, I’ve been certified by Google as AdWords Qualified.  So what does it mean?

Well, in order to get that fancy logo, it’s more than just a cut and paste of the image.  In actuality, if I did that and Google found out about it, I’d be in very big trouble.  Legal ramifications, I’m guessing.  But I had to earn it before I could put that logo up.  How do you go about earning your own fancy logo, to put where you would like?

The first step is to set up an AdWords “My Client Center”.  This is basically a super-user level in AdWords; it allows you to have multiple AdWords accounts underneath, run by separate entities.  What this means for me is that I can have my clients’ accounts set up either by them or myself, and then I can manage each one, while they are still in complete control of their account.  As an AdWords Client Manager, you have full access over the client’s account, to optimize to your (and their) heart’s content.  Don’t break any of Google’s rules, and you’ve completed step one.

Once this is set up, you then need to have at least one client (can be yourself) in your account and manage it for a minimum of 90 days.  During these 90 days you have to build and maintain at least $1000 total ad expense for your whole My Client Center account.

Now all of this establishes that you actually have some experience with AdWords, but it’s a little more than that.  The final step is to pass the Google Advertising Professional Exam.  And this isn’t exactly super easy – it takes about an hour and a half, and has over 100 questions in it.  To pass, you have to get at least 75%.  Plus it’s $50 for each try.  I’ll tell you now – if you don’t have a lot of experience with AdWords, it’s worth your time to study a bit before trying to pass this exam.

After all that’s been done and taken care of, you’re Qualified!  Then, as long as you maintain the requirements, you can stay that way.  The nice thing is that at this point, you can use their logo on your site (as long as you say specifically how many people are qualified), and you can use it to some degree on marketing products, including business cards.  That, and Google will set up a nice page for you, so you can show off your achievement.

I realize not everyone loves playing with AdWords as much as I do, but if it’s something you really like – I’d recommend aiming to get Qualified.  It’s a very good achievement to have, especially if you want to do pay per click advertising as a service.

So what exactly is email marketing?  Well, this is a broad term that can cover a lot of material, but the basic idea of email marketing consists a method of internet marketing using a list of email addresses.

Bad email marketing is what everyone knows (and despises): spam.  This is mail that is untargeted, sent out to every email address acquired, and not always from a specific location.  Some people sell email addresses to companies who use the addresses for this purpose.  And a lot of it is sent.  More than most realize – in June of 2007, the estimated amount of spam per day was just under 100 billion messages.  That’s a lot of spam.

Why so much spam?  Because a percent of it actually converts.  Maybe not you and me, but there are people out there who see something in their spam and decide they need to buy that product.  And since the cost of spam is essentially null, the ROI is more than enough excuse to send out millions (or billions) of emails a day.

So yes, that’s BAD email marketing.  What’s good email marketing?  Good email marketing is having a highly targeted market and offering quality information through email to individuals in this market.  For example, if I had a dog food site, I might offer important information about which dog foods cause health issues in dogs, for anyone who joins my email list.

This is targeted email – the people who sign up actually WANT to receive information from me, and are happy when I give them quality information.  To do email marketing well means you should send out good information.

A lot of internet marketers use email lists as a means to sell.  While this can work, if this is the only thing they use their list for, it can turn away many customers.  If you do this, in the eyes of some people on your list, you’re becoming more like spam.  To avoid this, quality information that is FREE should be offered moderately frequently.  Consider it – if you sign up for a list, you’re not getting in because you want to be sold things, correct?  You sign up because you want information.  So give your list information!  Good information, if you want to be seen as an authoritative source.  Then, when/if you choose to market a product of some kind, they will be more open to this, as you’ve established a level of trust.

To do email marketing, one of the major techniques is by using what’s called an “autoresponder”.  This is a tool that allows several email addresses to be placed into a group, and each email can be sent individual messages, addressed to each individual (instead of an anonymous group).  In some cases, the individual’s name can be identified, to make the mails you send more friendly and personal.  The benefit is that once you’ve written your emails, they can be sent to all your list, as well as to anyone who joins your list.

With autoresponders, you can schedule each email to be sent out immediately (with a broadcast) or at set times, or you can have a number of emails that can be sent, spaced apart by a certain number of days.  So if I had five emails that I wanted sent to my list and all new list members, I could write these emails, set them to each be sent three days apart, and then not have to worry again.  When a new list member is added, they are sent the initial email, then the next three days later, and so on.

One of the best ways email marketing can be very effective is by setting up a relationship with your customers.  If you demonstrate that you truly know what you’re talking about, and that you’re just a normal person, a level of trust can be set.  From that point, it’s much easier to interact with your list members.

It’s been said that the best way to make a sale is through personal one-to-one interaction – using autoresponders comes very close doing this in an online way.  Treating your customers well will always make them value you as a merchant more than one who treats their customers just as numbers.

For me, I personally prefer using an autoresponder system called Aweber.  I’ve used them for several years, and they are a high quality system – they can handle several thousand members (if you have a list that large), but work just as well for smaller lists.  I recommend considering using email marketing for your business, if it’s applicable.  Usually there are ways you can establish a relationship with your customers doing this, and then you’ll have customers you’re happy with, as well as having customers who are happier with you.

Brad Callen is an SEO guru and a PPC guru (as well as one of my heroes).  He’s released a new product for Google AdWords.  It plugs into Firefox as a plugin and allows you to do a few things.

It works any time you do a Google search, and it affects the “Sponsored links” results.  One nice perk he’s put in is an option to show the destination URLs for the paid ads.  Now not everyone realizes this, but every time you click on one of these ads, the person/company who placed that ad has to pay a certain amount.  Hence the term “pay per click”.  The option he put in lets you check out their pages without making the advertiser pay.  This is just polite, but lets you learn from other marketers who may be bidding on your terms, when you can check their landing pages.

But the nice thing, the huge perk of this tool is a little “View Keywords” button underneath every ad.  When you click this, it displays every keyword that that advertiser is bidding on.  I’ll let that sink in a moment.  Yes, every keyword – this means that you can see all keywords that any one advertiser is bidding on.  You can use this information to add new keywords to your own PPC campaign, use those keywords to test out for conversions in a particular ad group.  There’s a good chance the keywords that experienced advertisers are bidding on are converting keywords, and you can learn quickly from this.

Yes, it’s a little sneaky.  You’re taking all the work that the other advertisers did to do their keyword research and learn what keywords convert, and you’re just jumping past all that work and getting a list of keywords.  But it’s legit – and there’s nothing illegal about it.

Brad’s decided to go ahead and give this tool away.  I’ll go ahead and forewarn you, he does do an upsell, but the basic functionality of the tool are all present in the free version.  If you have Firefox and do any PPC at all (or just want to see what kind of things PPC advertisers are bidding on), it may be something you want to check out.  The name of Brad’s new plugin is PPC Web Spy.

If you do check it out, let me know what you think, and if it gets you new conversions.  I already got it myself, and I’ll definitely be using it to try advancing my own AdWords campaigns.

So I was reading through some SEO material recently (as all good SEOs should do), and found a few interesting things out.  I knew that in the past, when the keyword meta tag was first introduced, it was the authority for ranking pages in the SERPs (search engine result pages).  You could just put your primary keyword into your keyword meta tag 300 times, and you’d rank at the top.

Of course, this is silly.  And most of the search engines realized this before too long.  The tag was introduced in 1996, and a lot of changes happened in 1998.  One particularly major change – a company named Google.  When they came into the game, they didn’t even support the tag.  Why?  Because of the blatant abuse people did with it.  And even to this day, Google doesn’t even acknowledge it.  I know this is surprising at least a few of you.  So is it even worth using?

Well, although Google doesn’t notice anything you do with your keywords meta tag, there are still search engines that do.  Primarily Yahoo and Ask.com.  However, the content placed into this tag doesn’t help your rankings much at all.  It has about as much SEO power as normal page content.

If I had to give any reason for still using the keywords meta tag, it’d be only to put words that you would never actually use in your content.  Primarily common misspellings and phrases that are impossible to use in your normal content, but that people still type when they search.  And you’ll only get potential results from those two search engines – not from Google.

So keep your SEO solid, and do some good on-site SEO with the appropriate adjustments, plus good off-site backlinking (which is really where most of the SEO power comes from).  And make sure to research as necessary, to find out what really helps (or hurts) your rankings on the SERPs, if you want to be a good SEO.

Social media is the next step in the evolution of the internet.  This is important because it closes more gaps between individuals, eliminating the old hurdles such as distance, cost of communication, age, gender, stereotyping.  The internet is slowly bringing many of these barriers down.

Whether or not this is good or bad may be argued, but in the eyes of an internet marketer (such as you and me), there is much good because of this.  Social media establishes a means of communication unlike anything else.  And the reason it differs so much is because of the personal level is introduces.  Through social media, you meet *individuals*, not companies, not groups, but specific people.  People socialize best by meeting individually, not by reading a statement another person wrote, or by listening to a recording made.  Social media is all about getting closer to specific individuals.  This allows a closer relationship, trust is endowed, many opportunities arise.

To get started with social media, there are many options.  You can set up a Twitter account, the one-line version of blogging.  You can go a longer route, set up the oldest version of what could be considered social media, a blog.  Create a Facebook account and find contacts.  Whichever way you choose, the key is to initiate a connection point.
– If it’s a blog, it should be one that has a very open invitation for comments, it should link to other blogs or other social media sites you are using.
– If it’s Twitter, find other contacts.  Find people whose tweets you are interested in, follow them, then find who they’re following.  Eventually people will start following you, as well.
– If it’s Facebook, search for people who are like-minded.  If you’re specifically wanting individuals knowledgeable in your market, search for the authorities for your market.  You’ll find a lot of people use Facebook – you should find many.

The key is to use more than just one social media source.  And it’s good to try getting into as many as possible, not just for the benefits of social media marketing, but also to establish your name in each of these sites.  If you’re a big name in internet marketing, especially, as other people will take advantage of using a well-known name in social media if you don’t do it first.

To get a good idea of what social media sites to hit, here are some of the major ones:
Facebook.com
Twitter.com
MySpace.com
LinkedIn.com
YouTube.com
Blogger.com
WordPress.com
Friendster.com
Classmates.com
LiveJournal.com
Flickr.com
Flixster.com
StumbleUpon.com
Keep in mind, some of these are very specific to market types.  You will not use Flixster in the same way you would use Classmates.com, but for internet marketing, they all have their uses.  From a marketing perspective, the key to using social media is to select the appropriate one for YOUR MARKET.  There are plenty of social networking sites, you can find many more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

And this is the best way to get a good amount of followers for any one particular website.  Use the social media site in the way it was designed.  To get a spike in followers, viral marketing is key.  To get a gradual growth, you must establish yourself as an authority figure for something specific within your market.  For example, for YouTube, for viral marketing, you would need to create something that has immediate attention capture ability, something that viewers would want to pass on.  For the gradual growth of followers, be consistent.  Put quality videos out that handle questions for that market, and do it consistently.

Realize that to get a good number of followers, you can’t be limited to just one social media network.  If you use Twitter, link to your Twitter page from your blog (Eben Pagan is a fan of this technique), from Facebook, from MySpace, from YouTube.  Put your YouTube video posts in your blog, put them on your Facebook account.  The key is cross-linking social networking sites.  This is one of the most effective ways to grow your business online.

Now in order to turn this into a money-making machine, the marketing must be done in the same way you gain followers – by using the social networking site as it was designed.  If you put up raw sales copy on Twitter, you will likely have a lot of people unfollowing you.  That is abusing the system.  For Twitter, talk about how you’re excited about your new endeavor, and the landmark accomplishments you complete as you finish them.  If your excitement is genuine, it can be contagious.  If you have anything to share related to your progress that is linkable, post it!  When you finish, share it as though you are sharing it with your FRIENDS, not with your market’s customer-base.  This can also be done on Facebook, MySpace, and even YouTube.  Use YouTube to make a video log of your progress.  Post the videos on your blog.

To cross-link different social media sites, keep your eyes out for relevant “widget” apps, or “plugins”.  In this way you can have your last tweet on Twitter show up as your status on Facebook (Twitter plugin), or have a blog entry appear on your Facebook page (using Mirror Blog).

To see how effective social marketing can be, look at any of the major internet marketers.  Jeff Walker used Twitter to follow his PLF 2.1 launch and answered questions about it on Twitter (a nice tie in with use of social proof) (http://twitter.com/JeffWalker).  Frank Kern uses his blog heavily for his product launches, and uses the comments section for social marketing nicely (http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/).

Keep in mind this is only for the internet marketing market – these techniques can be used for ANY market to make contact with individuals, and communicate directly with them.

Other resources to help your social media marketing:
Flock: The Social Web Browser – makes it easier to have the major social networking sites quick and handy
Delicious – Been around, but a quick way to see what people are looking at
Technorati – Essentially a bookmarking site for blogs
Digg – Still one of the internet authorities – shows sites that are socially approved, or “dugg”
Reddit – Similar to Digg, another social networking biggie
OnlyWire – Sends links of your choice to several well-known bookmarking sites and social networking sites
Ning – A free online service to create your own social website
Squidoo – A very powerful site to connect to several different sites/resources, either personal or business, using “lenses”

Social media marketing is still growing.  Learn to use it in the way it’s intended, and you can have social marketing grow your business in a huge way, as well as connect directly with many people involved and interested in your market.