These are both questions that many website owners and businesses ask, and determining the effectiveness of social media will be a part of your internet marketing strategy.

Social media is quickly becoming one of the web’s fastest growing online activities, a place for customers in a variety of markets and niche communities to learn, educate others, and interact with other buyers. As a result, it is in your best interest to track and gauge different patterns. Consider social media just one channel to accurately gauge your customer’s interests, tastes, and preferences.

Each contributor is essentially volunteering testimonials on products, likes, dislikes, and other information that was once only available from direct market surveys or interviews. Social media platforms offer you some insight on what the customer truly wants at any given time.

Developing your website so that it uses at least two to three of today’s leading social media technologies can help boost traffic with less and less direct marketing efforts. Consider the value for social media activities such as:

• Wikipedia
• Social networking communities
• Video sharing
• Virtual reality and events
• Online audio episodes
• Livecasting
• Media sharing

To understand just what some of the music social networking organizations are offering to unsigned artists it is important to know what the major markets are for listening and purchasing music today. Let’s look at two such places — iTunes and Amazon. These two retailers have radically changed the way people listen to and purchase music. With these two powerhouses leading the way in music sales, any artist that can have their music heard or have their music available for purchases on these two sites are majorly cool. While these sites use to be exclusive to only major label recording artists, many music social networking organizations have made a concerted effort to bring their unsigned artists to major music retailers, and their efforts have begun to pay off.

Many music social networking groups like Pure Play Music have reached agreements with some of the largest online music retailers. Agreements that will bring thousands of unsigned artists and bands and their music to the forefront of the music retail business and allow the artist music to be purchased by anyone who hears it and likes it.

While the recording business is as strong as ever, it is also in a state of flux. In the past, being able to go down to your local record shop and buy a record, tape or CD largely depended on what the record companies deemed worthy of listening. Today, with some many ways to get music to the public, and so many artists producing purchasable music, listening and buying music really depends on what you like and not what the record company tells you to like.

Web 2.0 applications are essentially doing what market research departments have been working on for decades; filtering information on consumers, and segmenting the market. Market segmentation is an essential part of consolidating demographic information, and has often been compiled through surveys, focus groups, and other market research initiatives. Web 2.0 applications allow many marketers to simply skip these steps; if your consumer market is voluntarily sharing information about their tastes, preferences, and other ideas through social bookmarking channels, it becomes much easier to learn and develop new tactics to keep them engaged.

Many industries can gain significant insights and information from experimenting with social bookmarking and networking tools. This concept of creating a knowledge economy is growing rapidly in areas such as:

Retail banking
Pharmaceuticals
Education
Research and Development
Communications
Retail and Shopping
Music and Entertainment

You know how important Web 2.0 marketing is in your business as well as why it’s so important for you to use. You also know the biggest and baddest Social Networking sites and also the pitfalls that go with using these top Web 2.0 sites.

Now you are probably hoping for a solution to the overcrowded Web 2.0 web sites that are out there.

We’re happy to announce something that is going to change your Web 2.0 outlook forever.

It’s called the Social Networking Yellow Pages and it’s jam packed with every Web 2.0 property that other marketers don’t know about!

These are the sites that are red hot but not known by other marketers who are trying to exploit Web 2.0 for web traffic.

You can generate tons of web traffic with low to no competition while spending less time working for it!

There’s no doubt that this directory is worth thousands of dollars and we are willing to bet you can
use it starting today.

Simply drop by this web page and check out the letter that we just finished writing for you…

Well, you now know how important Web 2.0 is to your business success as well as the big dogs of the
market. Now you need to know why you may actually be hurting yourself by trying to use these sites for traffic.

You might be thinking, “What? I thought those were the best Web 2.0 sites that everyone uses,” and you’re right.

But that’s just the PROBLEM! There are too many “marketers” using these sites to try and get traffic
from them. That means extremely high competition for you which make it nearly impossible to get any traffic.

Combine that with the companies trying to combat “marketers” and prevent them from exploiting their
site, and you’re in trouble. This is why you may put in tons of effort and actually get little to NO traffic as a result.

Can you imagine how that would feel after spending hundreds of hours and tons of effort on working these sites? It would be a nightmare.

Luckily, there’s a solution to those big sites and we are going to share it with you in another post.

1) MySpace.com – You probably have an account here. This site allows you to blog, communicate, IM, join groups and generally network.

2) Digg.com – This site allows you to save all of your favorite bookmarks on the Internet and share them.

3) YouTube.com – This is the biggest video site on the Internet and allows people to comment, subscribe to and share videos.

4) StumbleUpon.com – This site allows you to mark your favorite sites and create a customized surfing experience while rating sites to share with others.

5) FaceBook.com – This is a site much like MySpace with the added function of being able to develop, test and release software applications!

These are the “big dogs” when it comes to Web 2.0 and Social Networking sites that are extremely popular online.

Next time, we are going to go over why you may NOT want to use these sites. Trust me, you don’t want to miss out on this upcoming blog post.

Now that you are armed with some Web 2.0 information, you are on your way to getting “with the times.” Next, let’s find out why Web 2.0 so popular and why is it laying the foundation for the new direction the Internet is heading.

The simple answer to our question can be broken down into two easily understandable words … Social Networking.

You see, Web 2.0 websites allow you to network and socialize with all of your friends and associates. It also allows you to create new friends, associates and contacts that are in the same business as you.

The benefits from expanding your network are obvious and can really help you to increase your business profits.

Social Networking is the way of the future and nearly every new site that comes out is based on this format. This is because the new Internet users want to communicate, interact and socialize.

If you hope to make any real income online, you’ll heed the trend and get on the Web 2.0 bandwagon.