10 Free Ways that Giving Helps You With Web 2.0 Marketing To truly understand marketing in the Web 2.0 era, the first thing to realize is that the era of hoarding information and resources is over. We're now in the age of teaching and giving. Most Web 2.0 sites that will help you market your site will Only work if you make a conscious effort to share your resources. Think of it as traditional networking amplified and assisted by web tools. Realize, though, that the technical details of how to maximize social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, collaborative tools and widgets are all useless without the new underlying first rule of the Web. "What's the new rule, Tinu?" Well, in order to receive, you'll have to start out by giving. The trick is to go beyond the golden rule of doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you, into an even higher rule of doing to others as they want to be done unto. And if you can figure out how to anticipate needs, you've got a bigger head-start than any me-centric marketer, no matter how far ahead they may be in experience. Let's look at 10 of the free ways you can use Give Marketing to enhance your entire marketing strategy. Give Marketing Tip #1- Giving Sincere and Useful Comments on Blogs. Don't make the mistake of leaving a message just so you can leave your link. Build relationships. Give Marketing Tip #2- Giving Testimonials. Send audio and a picture, along with your most sincere praise when you've found a tool you love. Even if the tool was free. Also great as a blog topic. Give Marketing Tip #3- Giving a Detailed, Helpful Answer in Forums. Don't forget to fill out the signature panel if the community allows. Even those that don't will allow you a profile. Give Marketing Tip #4- Giving a Heartfelt Compliment (Anywhere Public). Testimonials are a type of compliment, but not all compliments are testimonials. You can give a compliment without having tried a service, product, tip or tool. A compliment can be about how a site looks, ease of use, a positive experience with the owner, or the quality of the packaging the product comes in. Give Marketing Tip #5- Giving a Contact. Everyone knows someone another person would like to get next to, so make a list of who
you know, regardless of industry, and how you could help them by introducing to someone brilliant you've recently met. The gesture is never forgotten, and fortuitous unions often provide additional kickbacks. Give Marketing TIp #6- Giving up the Digg. Digg is a social bookmarking system in which the participants vote on a story. If a friend is involved in a good story, submit it at http://digg.com. Give Marketing Tip #7- Giving a BUMP. Digg's community are centered mostly around World News and several aspects of Technology. BUMPzee is the best of the blogging community tools like MyBlogLog and the social bookmarking of Digg mashed together in a yummy chocolate/vanilla swirl. You don't have to be a blogger to use it either, and if the community that your BUMP goes in doesn't exist, at http://bumpzee.com you can create it. Give Marketing Tip #8- Giving a Plug. PlugIM has already become the Internet Marketer's preferred place for marketing tips and news. It has a Digg-like interface, but it's smartly niched for the huge legions of online marketers and the online Business to Business crowd. At http://www.plugim.com you can expose news where all the right people can see it in two minutes flat. Give Marketing Tip #9- Giving Away Your IQ. Free IQ is a "market place for ideas," where you can share ebooks, video, audio and article content to a captive audience that is currently oriented largely towards the internet marketing and affiliate marketing communities, and could easily expand into every niche on the web. Who says you have to use your Free IQ juice just to promote yourself? Give away one little secret. It won't hurt, I promise. At http://freeiq.com/addarticle, you can add a quick review, ebook or article. Quick tip: after you add your article, do a search for Shawn Casey to get two free recorded training calls about the site. Give Marketing Tip #10- Giving a Trackback or Link Back Got a blog? Learn about Trackback, a method by which a remote blog can automatically like back to you when you reference a post of theirs. If you don't, give a link to a site you believe in. Everyone loves link love. Get to giving. It might even be fun in and of itself. Tinu is a website promotion specialist. The Free Traffic Tips column will teach you more about all aspects of traffic generation, including blogging, article marketing and get latebreaking search engine news.