After working with many small businesses and individuals, I have learned that there are numerous misconceptions of social media that needs to mentioned here for any starters who are thinking about getting in. Some of these misconceptions exist among the average web users, where as some exist among the new webmasters. Therefore I have decided to highlight each of them to my knowledge and clarify them, so people can use social media effectively.

1. Social Media is for Younger Generations

Social media is not limited to the younger generation. The community appreciates quality resources from everyone without judging the age. So if a thirteen year old wants to contribute to the network, then they may. Or if a sixty-three year old wants to contribute, they won’t be judged either. Social media networks have all age groups with some more abundant then others, but no community has put an age limit.

2. There are Rules to use Social Media

WRONG! In reality, there is no rule that governs the use of Social Media. You can tweet however you like, and format it in whichever way you see fit. You can digg the story, or bury it as you see it. You can share the links that you think are worthy in a way you think is best.

Now there are etiquette to using social media and if you don’t follow those then you will gain a bad reputation among the community. So careless self-promotion and spamming will get you blocked, but most people are too worried about doing it right. Relax and be yourself. If you like writing about puppets then write one sentence tweets about your puppets and those who are interested will follow you.

3. Its all about Quantity

Some people would like to think that people with more friends get a lot of retweets, or alot of diggs. That is not true. Because there are real estate agents who mass add people to their list on twitter, and not even know a single person. So they end up following 33,000 people who they don’t know, and 33,000 people follow them. But the fact is that they don’t get half the amount of retweets that you can get with just 1000 good followers that actually know you.

It’s never about the quantity instead it is about the quality. Its not about how many stories you submit on digg. Its about how good your stories are. Its not about how many status updates you made on twitter. Instead it is about whether those updates were useful to others. Its always about the quality, and users that provide quality are rewarded by the community not those who prefer the quantity road.

4. You have to be Everywhere

A more common misconception that I see is that you have to be everywhere. It is completely wrong, and as a matter of fact, I can argue that one person cannot be active on all social media networks because there are just too many of them. So take it one step at a time. Try out new things, and stick with the ones that you like best.

Remember, you can be a good community member at two communities and get tons of love and benefits such as visitors to your website, or you can be a member of one hundred communities and not get third of the traffic that you can get the other way.

5. Social Media Campaigns are all about having a Facebook and Twitter Profiles

While Facebook and Twitter are two of biggest social media networks, you cannot just stop by having a profile page on these sites. There are other great sites like Digg, Delicous, Reddit and others that can also get you alot of exposure.

6. Social Media Sites Send Poor Quality Traffic

Social Media Sites actually send one of the best quality traffic because you get only related audience. Popular sites like digg have users that visit the category that they like the best, so you are getting targetted users. On twitter, your tweets will only get retweeted by those who like it, so you are always getting targetted users.

7. Getting a story popular on Social Media requires the help of Power Users

Some people believe that it is true on sites like Digg and even on twitter, but I think it is completely wrong. It doesn’t require power users for your story to hit popular. It requires a quality article and that’s all. You can become a power user yourself as long as you contribute to the community, and the community loves quality. You don’t need power users, all you need is yourself.

8. Social Media is Fast

Ever heard of a saying how social media creates the boom, and it is fast. Well no it is not. It takes time to get popular on Social Media. You can tweet a story on twitter, but in order for it to get popular, it can take weeks and months. You need to structure a base for yourself in the community. Climb the ladder one step at at a time to the top. It takes time to build a good reputation on any social media community.

Sites that are whitelisted in digg are white listed because they have earned that reputation. Same goes with sites that get retweeted alot on twitter. That is because they have earn it.

9. Social Media is Easy

Every once in a while, I get this statement that social media is easy. It has some truth to it, but for the most part it is hard. It is not easy to earn someone’s trust. That is what social media is all about. Trust of the community. You need to work hard and show the community that you are worthy enough to be trusted.

10. You can disguise the community

You can never hide from the community. At least not forever. You might not be caught the first day, the first month, but you will be caught after the first year. There is no use to manipulating the system because playing the fair game is the best way. That’s how it should be done.

In the ancient computer that serves as part of the Balkhis archives there is a folder. Its a folder that is opened hundreds of times over the course of a week and within it are projects too numerous to mention. Now this old workhorse of a computer is retiring from the Balkhis line up in [...]

Online forums are a great way to interact with experienced people in various fields from all over the world. Not only do you learn many things and promote your websites but you also make friends. Every day many forums are created, most of these forums just fail to even start properly. Starting and managing a forum is way more difficult than running a blog.

Before anything you must pick the right niche for the forum, and make sure you have a lot of knowledge in that field. Then you have to pick a forum software, there are many paid and free softwares available, I recommend vBulletin as it is THE best and most popular. Then you have to pick a good design, custom made if possible and lastly some add-ons.

Now to the main stuff:

You need to get members to join. You can hold a contest, which is the best way. You can also invite your friends who can help you.

Then as an admin you yourself have to be very active and post threads which inspire and make people post. You have to post threads that not only cannot be found anywhere else but also really help people. People mainly join forums to learn new things, if you only have posts like ‘How old are you?’ it really is not going to work.

As the forum grows you have to appoint moderators, try and pick people you know. You can face many problems if you pick a bad team. You must pick friendly people who also know how to use the forum software you are using; also your moderators must contribute regularly.

Keeping the momentum going- At some point of time you will reach a stage where activity slows down. Here you just have to do something. Either you can hold contests or hire paid posters.

Now you must remember that forums are not something that you can make in a day, or a month. Successful forums take a lot of time to make. You have to keep putting in effort till the forum settles down. Promotion- Remember the more posts that take place, the more individuals will join. This is a “snowball” effect of forums, thus marketing must be done consistently and properly.

Ways of promoting your forum:

-Signature links in other forums of your niche.
-Mailing friends.
-Pay Per Click advertising.

Just like any other Internet venture, you need to take care of the hosting and maintenance of your forum. If your forum regularly has “downtime”, you will definitely lose members quickly, and a forum that has many coding mistakes will quickly frustrate all your visitors. You have to settle with a reliable host. If your forum is growing a lot, you may have to take a VPS.

You may be spending a lot on your forum. You just cannot keep spending a lot and not getting anything back in return. You have to monetize your site. But you have to keep in mind two things:
-Do not over monetize and stuff it with advertisements, as you will tick members off.
-Do not monetize it too early when you have very few members.

The best methods of advertising are private advertisements, but if your forum is new it is very tough to find advertisers. After using many alternatives, I think the best solution is Google AdSense. The rates per click is decent and you can earn even with a new forum. However, after some time people will turn blind towards these ads.

I have covered all the basics in this post and I hoped you liked it and learnt something from it.

This post was written by Farrhad A who has run many forums in the past and recently has started a new forum, Webmaster Peers. If you own a website and want to learn and interact with other website owners and developers you should join the forum.

As a blogger what do you think is your greatest skill? I think the reason what makes the top bloggers different from others is that they have the greatest blogging skill. This is one of the skills that every beginner needs to have if they want to become an expert. And you will be surprised when I tell you that it is not writing good content. It is not getting your users engaged. It is not having the convincing voice. Instead it is:

Learning From Your Yesterday’s Experience and Having a More Productive Day Today

Basically it is saying that you become a Better Blogger each day faster and faster. Technically most people learn over the course of the days and months. That is because they analyze the site over the six month period. I am telling you to analyze your blogs daily.

Every night before I sleep, I try to do this. It is something that I learnt from Benjamin Franklin’s Biography. He used to look over his day before he sleep and put himself as an outsider which led him to learn more about himself. He improved his mistakes and now we see him on the 100 Dollar Bill.

Before you are ready to go to bed, check your stats for that day. See what you did which made you either gain or lose traffic. Think of ways what you can do tomorrow to improve, and then do those tricks. And repeat the process every day. And I will guarantee that it will work.

Think of it from the perspective of a production company. Think of yourself as a shoe production company. You started off along with two others company with the same resources.

Company #1 – Starts out producing 15 shoes a day and kept this production rate. (No Improvement)

Company #2 – Starts out producing 15 shoes a day and increase their daily rate by 5 shoes. (Improvement Skill is Present – Most Bloggers are in this category)

Company #3 – Starts out producing 15 shoes a day and increase their production by 5 on the first day, then move it to second the next day, and then fifteen on the third day and so on. (Greatest Improvement – This is what you want to be)

Now I am sure you like the idea of #3, but how can you do this as a blogger? I have mentioned above what you I do, but there are three personality traits that you need to adapt before you can achieve this skill.

3 Personality Traits to Achieve the Greatest Skill of Blogging

Stay Focused – There are many things that can be improved in your blogging. But you can’t do it all at once. So start with one aspect and work your way up. When you try to do it all at once, you either get distracted, or unmotivated. Which is a reason why most bloggers quit. If you don’t make blogging a chore, then you will stay motivated. And in order to do that you need to stay focused. Take a week to improve, your design, then one week to old posts, then one week to improve your SEO. Make as many categories that needs improvement, and then rotate them in cyclical manner weekly, daily, however you like it.

Never Give Up – Don’t ever give up this method. It might seem hard, and you might think that you are stressing yourself. But remember that this is the best way to improve faster and take the competitive edge over your peers.

Don’t Be Arrogant – No matter how much you know, you will never know enough. This is one trait that you must have in order to be a fast improver. Try to learn new things every day. Push yourself beyond your limits.

I can tell you that this technique is not easy. But those who adapt to this style usually become better bloggers. I know I have improved alot, and I am still no where close to my full potential. This technique not only works with blogging, but it works with entrepreneurship, and daily life as well.

Just remember don’t give up and try to improve at a faster rate than constant improvement rate. This way you will achieve success faster.

When advertisers are looking to buy ads on your site, they consider the page views. Because that is how they determine whether the cost of the banner is fair or not. With the page views they can calculate the impressions. Higher impression results into higher advertising spot value.

Now what others might tell you is that to increase traffic on your website because that will obviously increase your pageviews. For some people it gets really hard because they are either out of budget, or don’t want to advertise their site. Well in this post I am going to show you some ways which you can take within your website to increase the pageviews.

1. Interlinking

Interlinking between posts increase your pageviews. This is a trick that alot of top bloggers use. When you are writing a post, it often has terms or ideas that you have probably explained in details previously. Well then why don’t you link that post. Because someone reading this post, will eventually open that link, so they can understand the guidelines correctly.

I have read multiple posts that has links and links. These articles are so interesting, that I check out each of the other links, and I end up reading for hours due to this. I suggest you should try to interlink your posts as much as you can because it is going to help you.

2. Use Your Sidebar Effectively

Aside from your blog post, sidebar is you second major tool to increase page views. Add some popular posts on your sidebar, so your other users can see the top notch posts of your blog. This way when a user sees your post, they will head over to your other posts that they find interesting. This also decreases your bounce rate, so I suggest you implement this trick.

3. Multi-Page Posts

Have you ever seen forbes creating long lists. They use multi-page posts idea. It might be annoying when you are browsing, but it is a smart technique because thsi way you will get more pageviews. If you have a long list post, then just divide it into more pages. So people will open other pages, and this way you are increasing the value of your ad spots.

You might be thinking how you would do this. There is a plugin that is available for download called Multi-Page Toolkit

By implementing these 3 quick and simple tricks you will seriously increase your page views without increasing your budget. Implement these tricks on your website and increase your ad revenue.