But in this case, Where the Wild Things Are has world class director Spike Jonze going for it as well as the explicit blessing and accolades of the author Maurice Sendak. It also has a very plugged-in and intelligent social media campaign going on to promote the film.

Case in point, a creative iPhone app (warning: iTunes link) and Facebook page that’s seen impressive growth up to at current count over 1.6 million fans.

In the iPhone app you can watch trailers and view photos of the film as well as hear the soundtrack. But most notably, the creative and delightful part of the app sees the Carol monster as a creature kids (and adults!) can interact with. If put to sleep at night he’ll gobble up your contacts’ photos from your phone — a playful and yet appropriately modern element that’s true to the spirit of the Where the Wild Things Are universe.

The Facebook page is also done well, with a continuous stream of updates featuring behind the scenes information, videos, media coverage, interviews and more. It also features a custom app where users can upload images of themselves to be inserted in place of Max’s face in one of the film’s promotional images.

It’s certainly not the first example of a mainstream film taking advantage of social media promotion tools, but it’s definitely an example of one done well. Did you hear about the film via its social media promotions or its more mainstream publicity campaigns?

Joomla

In addition to driving traffic to your site, integrating your Joomla! site with social media applications shows your readers you value them and want them to return. It also shows your readers that your content is valuable (or you think it is) and it’s worth sharing. Here are eight of the best social media extensions for Joomla!

1. Joomla! AddThis

This module inserts an AddThis button wherever you want it. You can edit the parameters of the button like your account information. If you are not familiar with the AddThis button, it is a single method of including all the major social media bookmarking and sharing applications such as Stumbleupon , Digg , Twitter, Facebook and Delicious . This is a great option if space is tight, or if you just like the uncluttered look.

2. Ultimate Social Bookmarking Plugin

This plugin adds small, uniform links below your article. If you’re looking for a full-featured plugin to incorporate all the major social media bookmarking and sharing applications, this is it. Take your pick of 60 different applications and styles.

3. DiggIt Plugin

As one of the most popular social bookmarking options, the easily recognized “Digg It” button is a must have. Sometimes the plethora of options isn’t the best if you want to emphasize major services like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.

4. Sociable Plugin

If you’re looking for fast, easy, out-of-the-box functionality, the Sociable Plugin is for you. It automatically inserts small social media bookmarking and sharing links at the bottom of the article. All the major social media sites are available and even some obscure ones. You can pick and choose which ones show up and even use your own CSS.

5. Digg Module

Sometimes showing off your popularity is a good thing, and may even increase your conversion rate because it shows first time visitors you offer something valuable. This module integrates with Digg, letting you display your stats like “Most Diggs, Newly Dugg and Oldest Dugg.”

6. Twitter Module

This plugin displays tweets from an account you identify in a module. This is great for anyone who wants to headline their own tweets or perhaps a friend’s. A lot of Tweeters are using Twitter as a mechanism for introducing original content that doesn’t appear on their own website, which may encourage Twitter followers.

7. Twitter Plugin

This plugin sends a preformatted tweet to your Twitter account with each new article. This can be handy when you want to keep your followers updated but don’t have a lot of time. One note: it will not send a tweet if you save a post as unpublished, then publish it later.

8. Article Footer Plugin

Create your own social media plugin! Use the “Add Article Footer” plugin to insert any code in the footer of every article. This way you can pick and choose your favorite social media sites, select your own images and build your own links.

You May also like : Tweet Your WordPress Posts Automatically With Publicize

Traffic is the life blood for any site or blog. Many people think that having a good website is all you need to get tons of visitors. Wrong answer. Getting traffic to your site takes hard work and diligence and is not accomplished overnight. Think about it this way – how are people supposed to know where to find your site if you don’t tell them? You must market & advertise your site. Here are some proven ways to get more traffic to your site without spending any money.

101 Ways to Get More Traffic

1.Write and submit articles. It is a classic, but it works. This will be indefinite traffic stuck in the search engines for you. Write quality unique articles, not articles that are rehashed or provide no insight to readers, which is a huge problem these days.
2. Write and submit press releases, think prweb after you do one.
3. Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have they all linked back to one main site. Also See Why Google Analytics should be Used on your Blog ?
4. Make sure your website is listed in DMOZ: dmoz.org.
5. Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.
6. If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website url in there.
7. Make sure to view related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors here by providing your own url if the product is similar.
8. Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.
9. Review some related products on opinion.
10. If you purchase a product that you actually like, then feel free to give an individual respect when respect is due and leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a url.
11. Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.
12. Keep updating content on your websites/blogs… try at least once per week.
13. Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at del.icio.us.
14. Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.
15. Tag blog photos at Flickr.
16. Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds.
17. Try coining your own term. Might want to trademark it if you smell that it will become popular.
18. Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.
19. Include translation for your websites/blogs, especially in Chinese.
20. Do not be boring; write about something that a wide select of people would want to know about.
21. Make sure to edit your writing (unlike what I m doing ).
22. Comment on other related blogs. See Things to Do when Not Blogging Instead of Snoozing
23. Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.
24. Sponsor a charity, most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed.
25. Sell an item on eBay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.
26. Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.
27. Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase. Think IBM. See : Importance of Blog Design for Traffic & Readership
28. Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.
29. Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.
30. Contact small newsletters sources offline and submit articles to them.
31. Become friends with editors of an offline publication.
32. Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, do not forget to participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.
33 .Have a GREAT product, All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is subpar.
34. Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore, Barnes and noble or even eBay for that matter?
35. Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?
36. Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?
37. Write good content, if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your article, or at least they should.
38. Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it.
39. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.
40. Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like a golden asset to you if utilized correctly.
41. Write tip articles, such as “Ten easy tips to blank-blank-blank.”
42. Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing one of their PPC campaigns.
43. Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them. Do not spam people, myspace is cracking down on spammers and are starting to sue people.
44. Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.
45. Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.
46. Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.
47. Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.
48. Use keywords in your image alt tags.
49.Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag, search engines show more prominence or importance to keywords here.
50. Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.
51. If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.
52. Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). Some the more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have a higher search results in Google. It is a no brainier that if you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have enough traffic that you can handle… oh by the way it’s all free targeted traffic to remind you.
53. Outsource grunt work. Time is in essence money…. you can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, request JV proposals, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.
54. Offer something for FREE. Abracadabra is not the magic word, FREE is. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…. its bait! Offer a free mini course or free eBook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize on this opportunity, such as an affiliate product for example.
55. After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, if I offered a traffic eBook, then after the individual purchase it would make sense for me to offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.
56. Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. However, you must give people a reason to talk about you, and being like everyone else is not one.
57. Do your research and find expensive niches to tap into. A good way to do this is to find how expensive someone is paying for a keyword on a PPC search engine, if you can sell items that are more expensive more often than it is a quicker way to get rich.
58. Become an active respected member of niche related forums. You can do this by offering quality posts. Hint, it is not the number of posts you make, it is the quality. Remember, quality or quantity. Many useless or negative posts will have people looking at you funny.
59. Test, test, test. Your flushing money down the toilet if you’re not testing to see what campaigns are bringing you in the most money compared to which ones are costing you money. When you test, you can eliminate the campaigns that are costing you dollars so that you can properly maximize your marketing efforts. Without proper testing, you are pretty much lost and can’t improve. You can only guess to what has or what is working. With proper testing, you do not guess, you know.
60. Stay up to date on what is going on in the world, you can monetize off hot topic trends.
61. Network, when you know more people you can find people that can help you get what you need.
62. Offer an affiliate program for your product or service. Make sure to let your satisfied customers know that you have one, if they like your product then they will be even more delighted to know that they will get money for referring you.
63. Write and give away a free ebook or report. It does not have to be long as long as its quality information neatly formatted and put together. You can also make a brandable ebook or report and allow affiliates the opportunity to brand their affiliate links in there to pass on to the next individual. You can then send this ebook to your subscribers or submit it to ebook directories. Also See : Top 10 Blog Directories to Submit & Get Traffic, Backlinks
64. Add viral components to your blog such as social bookmarking options, and refer a friend option.
65. Be funny, people like something that will make them laugh and they will spread it for you if it is a genius idea.
66. Syndicate your content by using an RSS feeds on your website.
67. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! answers with a link to your website in the sources area.
68. Put a link in the “about me” section of your eBay profile.
69. Make and upload a viral video to you tube. Use appropriate keywords in the video description for your target audience.
70. Record an informative podcast and submit them to poplar podcast directories.
71. Provide helpful answers for Google adsense on their help forum with a link back to your website. Go here to check it out:groups.google.com/group/adsense-help
72.Get people to comment and add content to your site. When they do this, they will provide you unique content, no need to pay for ghostwritten articles.
73. If you cannot get JVs, then try to bribe webmasters for sponsored advertising space on their newsletters.
74. Include a media section on your website so that you will give the media an easy way to stay up to date on what your company is doing.
75. Try to teach a class at your local community college or university. The more exposure you get in the public, the more credibility you will receive.
76. Make a screensaver and make it easy for individuals in your niche to download it. Have eye candy graphics combined with your company logo to brand yourself.
77. Write something controversial and spread it freely to your target market. It can be something as idiotic as the Da Vinci code, but as long people talk about it, it’s a successful campaign. A few hints, something controversial is something that goes against established beliefs in your market.
78. Write and publish a book. Having your own book is a quick way to gain credibility.
79. Take a guru in your niche out to lunch, and pay for it.
80. Start an organization or club about something. This can be done online through Yahoo! or Google groups.
81. Volunteer. Donate your time to a good clause…you can always network with people and form connections at the same time.
82. Get involved in your community and try to run some type of outreach program.
83. Offer good customer service, you may be surprised on how many referrals you get just be having a reliable one.
84. Consider adding a direct mail marketing campaign to your marketing ****nal.
85. Put an ad in your local yellow pages to get some local customers. Yellow pages tend to be more successful then newspaper ads because individuals are looking for a particular service when they are browsing through the yellow pages as opposed to newspapers.
86. Post bulletins in your local supermarket. However, since not everyone may carry a pen or pencil, place your contact information and url on strips on the bottom so that individuals can rip it off and take it with them.
87. Host your own commercial so you can put “as seen on TV” on your products.
88. Conduct surveys and publish them. These make you appear as an expert in your field of study.
89. Break a record or shoot to be in the Guinness world records for something.
90. Make a sitemap for your website.
91. Use a favicon for your site.
92. Make your visitors more involved in your website. You can help accomplish this by adding CGI scripts to your site.
93. Make sure you have no broken links on your site, and make sure that your website shows clearly in all browsers.
94. Find domain names that get traffic, purchase them, and have them redirect to your website.
95. Spell correctly whenever using keywords in writing.
96. Look at sites related to your niche to try to figure out how they get their traffic.
97. Properly optimize your website for the right keywords.
98. Try to avoid java scripts on your website as much as possible.
99. Do not use frames on your website.
100. If your website becomes popular and starts getting lots of traffic, try switching to a dedicated server. The longer you site is down equals the more lost visitors you will have.
101. Write a quality 101 article about a steamy topic that people want to know more about in your niche.

Today the Publicize feature gets a major addition: the ability to send your posts to Twitter. You can go with the default tweet or customize the message, and override the automatic settings on a per post basis as well.

To enable the new feature, head over to your Dashboard: My Blogs admin page. In the Publicize column, check off the Twitter column for each of the blogs you’d like to enable to auto-tweet. You’ll be asked to authenticate each blog via OAuth, after which you’ll see a “Publicize” section at the bottom of the Publish box each time you write a new post.

To override any of the settings for an individual post, just click the Edit link in the Publicize section. You can edit the text of the tweet or turn it off altogether for that post. Note also that the connection settings are per blog and per user, so if you run a multi-author blog each individual writer will have to authenticate to their own Twitter account (or to whatever account is preferred).

If you’re a Wordpress.com user, will you be implementing the automatic Twitter posting?

The increase in Alexa Ranking is important only as a commercial vehicle. Networks and many webmasters are concerned about the Alexa ranking of pages in that they use it as an indicator of the value and relevance of a given page.

5 Powerful Ways to Improve your Alexa Ranking for Newer Blogs

Probably some of the ways and techniques to improve the Alexa ranking has been described in this first article. Only in this way is that you will attract readers and users interested in learning it. Increasing or improving the rankings is important, but never forget that more important than that is your audience. Work with her and for her, with quality and dedication. The rankings are the work of background.

Install the Alexa toolbar – As already mentioned, install the Alexa toolbar will help you increase your own ranking Alexa. Set as your home page, because that will make you also add a few extra points.

Place the widget on the Blog Sidebar – Placing the widget helps Alexa by the promotion of the service and increase your ranking. Every page view is counted by the widget making Alexa update your blog’s rankings more quickly.

Use Alexa redirection – Try putting this link on your websites http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http://www.techguruhere.com , by replacing the address of your website or blog. You can place the link or hidden at the end of each post for example. Each click will be counted as a visit and is told only 1 visit per IP.

Optimizing posts old – If you have any post older, receiving tens or hundreds of visitors every day, because it is well positioned in search engines, enjoy it by putting a widget or a link to the Alexa ranking.

Talk to the administrators of local cybercafes – and propose a monthly or annual plan to install the Alexa toolbar on all computers, and set your blog as homepage. Although this type of agreement is not as easy to achieve, results are very interesting and positive.

What do you think of improving Alexa ranking ?

That’s the subject of a new study by ad network Chitika, who analyzed the browsing habits of 33 million unique users over the course of September.

According to their findings, Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

In the realm of search engines, Yahoo provides the most loyal visitors at 15%, followed by Google and Bing with around 12% each.

The finding that social sites provide stickier traffic isn’t surprising, but what implications do the loyalty rankings for Facebook, Digg, and Twitter have, if any? Perhaps that in the long-run, encouraging your visitors to share on Facebook might have the most value, even if it doesn’t provide the most short-term traffic.

That said, it’s easy enough to provide sharing options for a multitude of social media sites (case in point, this post!), so you can probably file this under the “nice to know” category of statistics and use your own analytics to gauge what is and isn’t working.

Free eBooks to improve Blogging

1. SEO for WordPress blogs
2. Google Adwords Secrets
3. Get Viral Get Visitors
4. Social Web Analytics
5. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter
6. The Zen of Blogging
7. What is Social Media
8. A Primer in Social Media
9. Effective Internet Presence
10. Introduction to Good Usability
11. Have a Website. Now What?
12. Blogs & Social Media
13. Masters of Marketing
14. The New Rules of Viral Marketing
15. Podcast Marketing eBook

Blogs and
Social Media really brought great changes in human relations. Research Book on
Social Media is really useful to know how this phenomenon of blogging and other aspects are potential to bring dramatic changes in many other aspects of social & public relations. The Google’s Adwords Secrets also very useful book for the one who wants to get more benefit using Google as Marketing media.

Have any more that you’ve found online that you like ? Share with us in Comments.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of putting together a website or social media campaign is the copy. Many people assume that the same words that work for print campaigns or materials can just be copied and pasted for the web, but that’s just not true. The web is an entirely different medium, and copy needs to be treated with the same respect that design and user interface elements get.

Text is a very important part of user experience on the web, so it needs and deserves the same sort of design consideration. You must make your text usable in the same manner that you do the rest of your website or social media campaign materials. In short: text is user interface. Here are five rules for writing better for the web.

1. Know Your Objective

This actually applies to any sort of copywriting. Unless you have a clear picture of the end result, your writing won’t be as clear as it could be. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with each bit of text you write. Once you know the objective, you’ll be able to more clearly articulate what you need to get across to your customers in your copy, and you’ll be able to identify any superfluous text that you can throw out.

2. Know Your Audience

The web is unique as a marketing platform because it can be so hyper-targeted. You can theoretically know exactly who your audience is and target your writing accordingly. Further, depending on where you’re writing, your audience will be different. Any time your audience changes, you may need to make changes in your copy as well. Obviously writing for Twitter is different than writing for your blog, but writing for your blog is different than writing for email, which is different than writing for Facebook, which is different than writing for MySpace , and so on. Before you lay any words down on the page, figure out who you’re speaking to, and write with them in mind.

3. Keep it Short

Studies have found that the more words you add to a web page the less time people spend reading it. Attention spans are shorter on the web, so your writing will be more effective if it is also kept shorter. One study found that users only spend about 4.4 seconds on a page for every 100 words of content. When you factor in average reading speeds, that means users generally only read about 18% of the text on a page (perhaps less — since at least some portion of that 4.4 seconds is probably spent doing things other than reading page copy). That suggests that if you keep your copy as concise as possible, it will be more likely that your website visitors will actually read more of your text. Of course, you can adjust this rule based on your audience — some audiences might be more likely to read long articles than others.

4. Make it Scannable

Because only a portion of your text is actually likely to be read by your audience, it’s also important to write with scannability in mind. That means readers should be able to get the main gist of your copy even if they just scan it. When it comes to scannability, large blocks of text are your enemy. It is nearly impossible to quickly draw out the key points from a long paragraph, so when presented with one, many readers will just skip over it automatically. Make it easier for them to pull out the central topic points by using descriptive headers and sub-headers (like the ones in this article), bulleted lists, highlighting of key points, and images or diagrams, which can both break up the monotony of text and present the same information in a different way.

5. Embrace Constraints

Every platform has its own set of constraints when it comes to writing copy. The most obvious example right now is Twitter , which enforces a 140 character limit on every message you send, but every platform has limitations (for example, messages on Facebook can only have very limited formatting). These limits can be seen as a burden, or they can force you to think creatively about your content. If you only have 140 characters to work with, for example, you have to work extra hard to pack as much information as you can into each tweet while maintaining a voice consistent with your brand’s other copy.

You May Also Like : To 5 Blogging Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Creating a blog for your small business isn’t easy; it requires hard work and the ability to think creatively about your work. But if you avoid the five big mistakes laid out in this post, your chances of building a successful business blog will be much better.

Mistake #1: Treating Your Blog Like a Press Center

The number one mistake that business bloggers make is to treat their blog as an extension of their current press center. Repeat after me: Your blog is not the place for press releases. Blogging is a conversation and it offers a way for your customers to connect with your business on a completely new level. Press releases, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They’re impersonal, they’re self promotional, and most readers don’t trust them. If you use your blog to republish press releases your customers will have no reason to keep reading and they’ll also likely not trust your content.

How to Avoid: First, don’t ever put out a press release on your blog. You can use your blog to make product or other business announcements, but do so with original writing and in a more casual voice. Second, do use your blog to write about things other than your core business. Share your thoughts on your industry, share insights into the day-to-day work life and processes at your company, and provide tips and tricks you have learned during your time in business.

Mistake #2: Not Blogging Regularly

Think about the blogs you read on a regular basis — how many of them publish only sporadically? Most successful blogs put out new content at least a couple of times per week and try to stick to a regular schedule. Consistently putting out quality content will keep readers returning and over time it will help you build a community and turn your customers into fans.

How to Avoid: Blogging regularly isn’t easy, so to avoid burning out, brainstorm editorial ideas ahead of time. If you plan to put out new posts every Tuesday and Friday, for example, try not to start writing Tuesday’s post on Tuesday morning. Get other people at your company involved so that one person isn’t shouldering the entire blogging load, and even consider sourcing content from your customers. Remember that anything can provide fodder for a good blog post, so pay attention to the things you read or see on other blogs, newspapers, magazines, or television.

Mistake #3: Not Enabling Conversation

As I already said, blogging is a conversation, and not allowing it to occur on your blog is a mistake. It’s true that blog comments can open you up to criticism, but blogging is an unparalleled opportunity to connect with your customers. You’ll get a lot more out of blogging if you enable — and even encourage — your customers to respond to what you write.

How to Avoid: Obviously the first thing you need to do is enable commenting on your business blog. But beyond that, you need to remember that the conversation is two-way. Get in there and respond to the comments readers leave on your blog and you’ll be more likely to develop a community around your writing that can help turn your customers into fans who will evangelize your products and services and provide you with quality feedback. You should also participate in the conversation on other blogs in your industry by leaving comments on posts elsewhere around the blogosphere. That will help you to establish your “blogging brand” and bring new readers your way.

Mistake #4: Making New Content Hard to Discover

Your blog won’t be very helpful to readers if they aren’t able to easily find new content. You need to make your blog discoverable and you need to make sure that when you add new content, your regular readers will be able to find it.

How to Avoid: There are a few ways to make sure your blog content is more easily discovered.

- Make your blog easy to find by linking to it prominently from your company’s web site and including your blog’s URL in your email signature, on your business cards, and in sales and marketing collateral.

- Use a full RSS feed (because the goal with most business blogs should be to get read, not boost page views) and make it easy for your readers to find and subscribe to.

- Embrace social media technologies like Twitter and Facebook as a way to notify your fans and followers of new blog content, and make it easy for your readers to share content with each other through social media channels and via email.

- Optimize for search engines by putting relevant keywords in post titles and URL slugs and write about the things that your customers are most likely to be searching for — but avoid sounding artificial simply so you can stuff some more keywords into a post.

Mistake #5: Expecting Too Much, Too Soon

Blogging isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Your blog won’t be an overnight success, and for the first few months it might feel like you’re writing for no one. It can take time to build up your readership and have a regular community of people who participate on your blog. Don’t expect immediate returns from your blog and do expect to put in a lot of hard work.

How to Avoid: Set attainable goals and realize that you’re in it for the long haul. Don’t cancel your blogging efforts after three months — give it at least a year of regularly putting out quality, original content. And make sure that your blog is easy to find, and that your readers are able to easily comment and share posts with others.

You can Read this also : Top 10 wordpress Plugin to promote you Social Media profiles

While it’s important promote your blog posts with social bookmarking, it is equally important to promote and link to your actual profiles, as well. The following WordPress plugins are just a few of the options available to help you accomplish this. If we haven’t covered your favorite WordPress social media plugins, please leave links to them in the comments.

Your Social Profiles

The most basic way to promote your social media profiles is through the use of simple text or image links pointing to your most frequently used social networks. Of course, you can do this manually with some basic HTML, but there are many plugins that will help automate the process for you, and more easily keep things up-to-date if you add, remove, or change profile information.

1. DandyID Services – With approximately 330 social networks supported, the DandyID Services plugin is one of the most extensive available. If you’re a social butterfly, you can bet that you’ll find just about any social network imaginable available through the plugin. You’ll first need to create a free account with DandyID, then configure the sidebar widget which gives you several options, such as whether to display favicons only, text links only, or a combination of both.

2. Social Media Page – Rather than just including all your social media links in the sidebar by default, the Social Media Page plugin, which supports approximately 140 social networks, allows you to include your social profiles on any page or post with a simple line of code. This is ideal if you want to link out to your profiles, without cluttering up your sidebar with lots of icons.

3. Social Profilr – With only 14 social networks to choose from, the Social Profilr plugin is far from all inclusive, however it has a nice twist. Most of these plugins only allow for the actual profile links. Social Profilr steps it up a notch by also letting you include a line of text (with or without HTML) as a brief introduction. In essence, you can turn this into a brief “About Me” or “About the Blog blurb with a link to your full WordPress “About” page. This appears above your social profile icons, which can be displayed in either vertical, horizontal or dropdown format.

Your Lifestream

Lifestreaming takes the basic social media profile links a step further by displaying your social activity right on your web site. The plugins below all have about the same total number of available social networks to choose from – approximately 60, give or take a few – so your best bet would be to look at the specific services offered to be sure your favorites are included.

4. FriendFeed Activity Widget – FriendFeed is perhaps the most popular lifestreaming service around today, which makes their plugin a convenient one to use! All you need is a FriendFeed account in order to use this sidebar widget, which is set up by simply entering in your login information and selecting the number of events to display. What’s particularly nice about this plugin is that you are given the option to hide Twitter @replies, which can be confusing when seen out of context. This plugin also offers the most minimalistic design, which is a benefit, considering the amount of information being streamed onto your sidebar.

5. Lifestream – More independent than the other options listed here, the Lifestream plugin doesn’t require a third party account in order to stream your social activity. Although out of the box, this plugin doesn’t have the best design (it’s more cluttered than the other two), its biggest benefit is that it gives you the option of being utilized as either a sidebar widget, or on a separate page/post of its own. Like the FriendFeed widget, it gives you the option of hiding Twitter @replies from your stream, too.

6. Lifestream.fm – Of the plugins listed here, Lifestream.fm currently offers the largest number of social networking services that you can stream onto your site. It does require an account with Lifestream.fm, but once you’ve signed up, setting up the sidebar widget is a simple task. The design is nicer than that of the Lifestream plugin, but the downside to this one is that it displays all of your Tweets, including @replies.

Your Commenters

And let’s not forget your blog commenters. While you obviously want to promote your own social profiles, you can share the love by helping your commenters promote their profiles, as well. Of course, you’ll also receive the benefits when you respond to comments on your blog, too.

7. Retaggr – With more than 180 social networks to choose from, Retaggr is another great option for promoting your social profiles. This particular plugin is somewhat limiting, in that commenters need to have a Retaggr account in order for them to receive the extra link love from your site. But if they do, the plugin places a tiny icon next to their comment. Rolling your mouse over the icon pops up their profile information including their name and social media links.

8. Social Profiles – The Social Profiles plugin is ideal for sites with registered users and/or multi-authored blogs. It serves as an incentive for people to register or write for your blog, by promoting their social profiles along with their comments. This plugin adds fields for users to enter their usernames for up to 10 social networks. If you happen to know your way around PHP , you can add additional networks to the list, as well. When registered users comment on your blog, it displays links to their profiles as either text or image links, helping their comments to stand out from those of non-registered commenters.

9. WP Twitip ID – The WP Twitip ID is a Twitter specific plugin, but with the service’s popularity, this is likely the most universal plugin to include with your comment form. It doesn’t require anything from your commenters, other than an existing Twitter account. With an extra line of code in your comments template file, this plugin adds a field for users to enter their Twitter username, which is automatically linked to their Twitter URL, alongside their name and comment.

Dual Purpose

While most social networking plugins either help you promote your blog posts OR your social media profiles, the following plugin does both.

10. Tweetmeme – Similar to the Digg style “vote” buttons, the Tweetmeme plugin creates a button that lets readers easily retweet your blog posts. By default, it begins tweets with “RT @tweetmeme …” along with your post title and URL. However, you can update the settings to list your Twitter username, changing the tweet to “RT @YourTwitterIDHere … (via @tweetmeme)” – letting people on Twitter not only view your post, but see your Twitter ID, as well. Additional options for this plugin let you select the position and size of the button, as well as giving you the ability to display it on your RSS feed.