Web 2.0 has been the buzz word for some time. And rightly so.

Never before have we been empowered with a capability that can allow us to reach out to the vast communities out there.

To understand the sheer power of social media, we only have to look back at the successful Obama presidency campaign. A truly historic event where an African American is voted in as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world - for the first time!

Without social media as one of the marketing pillars, their campaign may not have had the far-reaching effect that it needs to secure votes.

If you are not using social media as one of your channels yet, why not start now? It's a great way to boost your web presence. And make a connection with your audience.

Here's a quick primer list of the main sites to look out for:

Video

• Youtube (Granddaddy of video sites)
• TubeMogul (Free video distribution site - automate uploading of videos)

Blogs

• WordPress (In addition, you can comment on blogs that are "do-follow" which you can reap the benefits of backlinks for search engine optimization benefits. You can get the full list here of "do-follow" blogs here: http://courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/)
• Technorati

Social networking

• Facebook

Article distribution/publishing

• Squidoo
• Hubpages
• EzineArticles

File-sharing (e.g. PDFs, PowerPoint, Pictures)

• Flickr
• Slideshare
• Docstoc
• Scribd

Twitter

Social Bookmarking

• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Google
• Yahoo
• Del.icio.us

These are many social media sites out there. But you are probably better off focusing on these few which are the main players.

Leverage on them to publish content with the right keywords and tags which are relevant to your business. The search engines will love you for it.

But that's not all. Don't stop there!

With a little bit more effort, you can scale up your social marketing efforts further.

All you have to do is to link them up!

If you blog on WordPress, install the "Twitter Poster" plug-in (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-poster/) that can help tweet every blog post your publish.

For every page you publish on sites such as article directories, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and so on....remember to bookmark them. It can bring back massive backlinks to your site. And that can only be good for your website - search engine optimization (SEO) wise.

You don't have to do it yourself either. Just plug in a social bookmarking automation tool like OnlyWire and have the work done for you. Easy.

So go forth and grab a bigger piece of the virtual real estate pie!

Yours sincerely,
Jag
www.AutomationEdge.org
www.EMoneyMarketing.com