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Whether you’ve just created a business, personal, or social presence with the Wix.com [http://www.wix.com web design] platform, or you’ve been managing your premium site for a while, below you’ll find tips to take your creation to the next level. 

In our ongoing effort to help you maximize your hard work we’ve created a 3 part series of articles filled with tips and tactics on how to effectively promote your site, increase visitors and make you all around, the talk of the town! 

In this 1st post we’ll be focusing on Social Marketing - what marketers call “Conversational Marketing tactics”. For the non-marketers out there, marketing has switched recently to talking “'''WITH'''” the audience, not “'''TO'''” them.&nbsp; 

Where traditional advertising methods such as radio, television, newspapers and magazines were about continuously broadcasting what the advertiser had to say to a very wide audience at fairly high costs, Conversational Marketing is about directly conversing and engaging with the audience. And the good news is: the cost of social marketing is the time and effort you invest in it. 

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<font color="#000000" size="5">Be Yourself. And Be Interesting</font> 

<br>A great analogy to keep in mind along the way is “social media is one big party”. If you’re the boring person at the party, you’re probably not making a whole lot of friends. You want to be the person that people want to get to know, laugh with and listen to. People identify with people, not brands. This makes understanding your audience and their online usage trends extremely important and having fun even more so. Be yourself. 

So what are the services that will build up your online notoriety, while making new friends along the way? <br> <br> 

== Blogging  ==

Blogs offer a prime opportunity to communicate with your audience. Blog platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger, MySpace Blogs and the more recently Tumblr offer a simple user-friendly interface to create an engagement. If you’re an artist, you might want to create a dialogue with other people in the arts community. If you’re in the restaurant business, why not share menu ideas with your customers? If you’re an expert on Smurfs, Smurf it up! No matter what you’re into, start the conversation and keep it rolling. (Side note: you can embed your blog feeds into your Wix creations using the RSS Widget) 

== Micro Blogging  ==

News is breaking out faster than ever before, If your short on words but still need a way to communicate, Micro Blogging is the answer. Micro blogs such as [http://www.twitter.com/wix Twitter ]“the current leading micro blog” Identi.ca, Plurk and Utterli allow you to post short messages, usually 140 characters long, updating everyone about anything you see fit. Let them know of a blog post you’ve just published, something you’ve just read or reply to any of the hundreds of other messages being posted every minute. A perfect way to find out what people are tweeting about is to search the hottest topics using the Twitter search over at: http://search.twitter.com 

No can escape the buzz Twitter has received. With members like Oprah Winfrey, Ashton Kutcher, Demi More and countless other celebs and media types, posting a peek into their lives. Here’s a great post to inspire you. 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates<br> 

== Social Networks  ==

Social Networks such as Facebook, Myspace and Hi5 enable members to stay connected, share their lives, and learn what's happening around them. One of the most powerful features to utilize on social networks is the “status” on your profile. This is where you can post links, discussions or just let everyone know what you’re up to. It’s also a smart idea to join groups that are active in your area of interest. Quick reminder, introduce yourself to others and get involved. Don’t be afraid of exploring and experimenting with new ideas. 

== Forums  ==

With the ongoing hype around social networks &amp; blogs it’s important to remember that forums are still a leading source of traffic and offer a very targeted audience for your site and/or business. For example, if you’re a musician you can seek out forums for everything from genres to instruments to home-based-studio communities. Tip: In almost all forums a signature tag can be set up in your account profile to display a link back to your site. Run a Google search for anything you’re interested in, music forums, photography forums, fans of Susan Boyle forums…whatever you’re into, there’s bound to be people online to connect with! 

== Video Sharing Sites  ==

Fact: Ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Youtube is also the 3rdmost visited online destination. If you aren’t currently creating video content, chances are you’re missing out on a lot of potential visitors that are searching for sites such as yours. Run a quick search through Youtube. Type in keywords that are relevant to your website, see what others are posting and how they’ve set up their profile page.

== Offline Socializing  ==

There’s still a real world out there and people are networking all the time. Sites like Meetup.com and the Events page on Facebook will help you find events taking place in your area. It’s extremely important to get out there and meet others in your industry. A link to your site on a business card is still a trusted way of leading people to your site. 

== Tracking conversations online  ==

So you’ve created your social presences, little homes all over the web. The question now becomes, how do you track conversations that are taking place while filtering out the noise? Great services to utilize include Google Blog Search which will return results from the blogosphere and social networks. Another easy to use service is FriendFeed which aggregates all your social profiles and activities under one rooftop. 

'''Social marketing is a two-way street''' 

With the ever increasing ease of posting content, there are a few things you should also be cautious of, or learn to make use of. Once you’ve posted content online, there’s usually no going back, links and textual content is distributed through various sites and services. So make sure that what you’re posting is legit. Also remember that competitors can follow each other, learn, share and even collaborate at times. You might find out that you’re not really competing in the same markets. In fact, you might be able to work together to increase success. Yeah, we like that idea much better.<br><br> 

Looking for more&nbsp; tips&nbsp;? you can visit the learning center and get lots more '''web design'''&nbsp; &amp; promotional tips on how to [http://www.wix.com make your own website ]with ease! <br>