Social media sites can be powerful internet marketing tools. Facebook started out in the early part of the decade as a way for college students to connect and since then it has grown to be the number one social networking site – with more than 500 million members in almost all of the countries on the globe. (Interesting fact: if all Facebook members were their own nation, it would be the 3rd most populated country on the globe.) MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and other sites let people who have the same interests form communities and expand their contact base.

If you have a business on the internet, you need to become involved with social media sites. If you choose not to you will be missing out on a vast number of potential customers. Wix makes it easy to not only make a free website, but to use social media sites to increase your exposure and sales. King of the Jungle: Facebook Let’s take Facebook, the power-house of social media, as an example. It was founded in February of 2004.

There are over half a billion users on the network to date. You can create a personal page and/or a business page for free. Facebook offers pay-per-click advertising that is targeted to specific audiences and geographic areas based on member profiles. These ads appear on the right hand side of each screen on Facebook. As your business page gains fans, these new fans refer their friends and so on. In a very short time you can have a large number of followers and a vast amount of exposure for your website.

Another facet of social media is the popularity of bookmarking sites. These sites allow members to post the URLs of their favorite sites onto their pages. If you publish an article that someone finds interesting, they can post the URL to this article on their bookmarking account. The major bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller, and Delicious. Each and every article that you post on article directories should be bookmarked to each of these sites. They offer their services free of charge and have become very powerful social media sites.

Not only does this create traffic to your article and eventually to your site, but it also creates a network of links that lead back to your site. This is important because active links are recognized and rewarded by search engines; meaning your site will rise in the rankings and appear closer to the top of search engine results pages. How to “Socialize” Your Free Website When you make a free website on Wix you can connect it easily to a Facebook page. While in the Edit mode, click on the Clip Art button on the left side of the screen and choose Icons. You can then select the Facebook icon that matches your website’s design and place it on your page. Next click on the icon and choose Edit.

Once the Edit menu appears, click on Link and paste the URL to your business’ Facebook page. Now when visitors click on this icon they will be taken to your Facebook page and can become fans. You can do this same procedure for MySpace, the major bookmarking sites, and many other social media sites. The more connected your website is, the more exposure it gets and the more visitors that come to it and convert to customers. Not only that but connecting to social media sites increases your site’s SEO.

By linking to your social media pages you create a network of interconnected links that Google and the other major search engines recognize and deem your site interesting and well maintained. Keep the Lights On Once you have a Facebook and MySpace page, don’t just let it sit there. Post something everyday if you can. It can be something as simple as a sales announcement, contest, and interesting tidbits about the industry or niche you are involved in.

Polls and interactive questions are also good ideas to keep your fans interested and involved. The worst thing you can do with social media is to set up your accounts and pages and let them just sit there. You know how frustrating it is to go to a site and find that no one has touched it for a while. People will forget about you. The old saying, out of sight out of mind, was never truer than for internet marketing.

Be careful not to post just any old thing to get their attention. If you post too much people will just ignore you, keep your posts informative, entertaining and interesting. Once you make a free website on Wix, connect it to social media. Regular updates and consistent bookmarking will pay off in the form of more visitors and customers to your internet business.

Author Bio: Maria Free Website Builder I have been in the online marketing industry for over two years and love all things related to e-marketing, writing for the web, SEO and SEM. I’ve been working for a large company that specializes in web design, and love how dynamic this field is – I am constantly learning new strategies and concepts as the world of online marketing evolves.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: domain name, website creation, basic steps, search engines, website design, website builder, SEO