Free Web How to

16. Flickr

Their pitch

"Flickr - almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world."

Our take:

As opposed to sites such as Webshots, Flickr has a more of a professional aura, catering to people who want to promote a business (such as their art work, as is pictured in the example below).

Its clean layout makes it a better place to share any photos, personal or not. However, due to its more experienced, professional population, it's a far more sensible realm in which to market something than similar sites, such as Webshots.

Certain niches, such as art, are more competitive in Flickr than others.

• Upload your interesting, relevant pictures, and then link to your website in your profile.
• Topping a search can be profitable. On a search for "art galleries washington dc", Flickr user "lil" came in first. An interested user who clicks through to lil's profile page will see that she is a former art curator who is interested in being contacted about having her work published. She also provides a link to her website.
• Definitely include such a link. There's not much point having an impressive photo gallery and not directing viewers to your website.
• Aside from displaying your product, Flickr can be used as a PR tool. Include pictures that depict you in your professional life as you'd like to be seen by the public. Although this goes for every site where you can upload photographs, manage your online persona through your pictures.

17. WikiHow

Their pitch:

"WikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual."

Our take:

People who com to WikiHow do so in order to do something that they can't do by themselves.

• On Wikihow, users create and search for "how to" information.
• If you are uploading your own services, you need to market your expertise as much as your products and services, because it's the help aspect that users are initially seeking.
• Users have fond their way onto WikiHow in order to avoid paying someone: Convincing them that they should patronize your business, rather than attempt a DIY involves providing enough useful advice to keep somebody interested, but not neglecting to provide external links and subtle promotions.

• If your company deals in SEO and your WikiHow page details the nitty-gritty of the business in its entirity, potential customers will think they have no need to follow your links or purchase your services.
• Think of WikiHow as linkbait. Get them hooked; reel them in.

18. Blue Dot

Their pitch:

"Co-founded in October 2004 by Mohit Srivastava, Blue Dot, Inc., is a Seattle-based company whose mission is to help people stay connected with their friends, wherever they are, whenever they want. Through a new type of communication described as Social Discovery®, Blue Dot’s free Web site allows users to find, save and share interesting Web content with friends and family. The company’s technology lets users quickly communicate and share information on a wide range of topics in a way that can be easily incorporated into their daily activities."

Our take:

Blue Dot appears to combine the friend-accumulating features of MySpace with the news-tagging ideals of... more sites than I care to repeat here.

• After you've created a Blue Dot account, you can write quite a lot about yourself on your profile page. Your profile page is where your bookmarks (or "dots") are displayed.
• Find people who are interested in similar things to you. This could be helpful when it comes to marketing.
• A lot of the site's bookmarked content is not promotional, but is informative, including a lot of articles. Consider contributing content like this in order to promote your business.
• This site is two years old, but doesn't have nearly the stragle-hold on either social networking or bookmarking that Digg or MySpace have.
• Optimum usage of Blue Dot would be to build a community of people in your industry and bookmark your content that they should be interested in, and that promotes what you have to offer.

19. StyleHive

Their pitch:

"The Stylehive is a collaborative shopping community. It is a place where contributors can work together to share and discover the hottest stores, designers, trends, and must have products.The Stylehive is a collection of all the best products, brands, designers and stores discovered and tagged by the Hive community. "

Our take:

From an SEO point of view, StyleHive does itself no favours by commiting the cardinal sin of having numerous duplicate pages. Searching for "leather boots" brings users to a results page with a dynamic URL... and included on the results page is a link, which elicits an identical page to the one users are already looking at, but is static.

• This site is only of use to you if your business involves cute, higher-end accessories and clothes.
• StyleHive deals mainly in fashion, not function.
• Salt and pepper shakers shaped as Lilliput characters "have magnetic feet that stick to the stainless steel base or the stem (of their holder) equally well." That will give you a pretty good idea what you'll find on StyleHive.
• The site has the typical social bookmarking features of "top today", "top this month" etc, and clicking on any of these sorting tools will reveal shoes, handbags and moonstruck light objects, slip casted and perforated. You know! Use a clear light bulb, and the flower patterns are drawn all over the walls and ceiling!
• If you are indeed dealing in something that could be considered fashionable and chic, having your product listed on StyleHive will help convince the "right" people that your products are cool enough for them. Half the time, people forget that marketers themselves can bookmark things, and that expert opinion is not involved.

Assuming you're selling something hip, interesting and vaguely usable, you'd do well to have a link on StyleHive. Try to ignore the rather horrible layout, oddly intrusive bookmarking buttons and abundance of confusing headlines. The people who shop here either have money to spend, or think they do. Market your strange balls of light to an audience that seems to appreciate it.

20. JotSpot

Their pitch:

"JotSpot was founded in 2004 as the first company to provide an application wiki."

Our take:

• This site lets you create a free wiki for your business, or pay for one that you can open to the public.
• The wiki can serve as an advertising platform or simply an office tool. For use as an advertising tool, you will have to pay for it.
• The free wiki is only accessible by people who the creator has invited.
• It's a good idea to integrate the wiki with your actual website. This creates the illusion that you're letting users edit and contribute to the site.
• The Jotspot powered eBay wiki is viewable by anybody, and is accessible on eBay's "Community" page. Its wiki appears to very popular with its audience, although its website is also a heavy-weight.
• For novelty, communication and work place environment issues, JotSpot can be a great tool.
• You can potentially integrate a personal tone to your site with such a wiki. A blog can achieve this, especially if you enable comments, but a wiki is one of the most striking forms of user interaction. This could earn you special kudos if your company is known for being stand-offish or hard to reach.
  

21. Wetpaint

Their pitch:

"Wetpaint powers websites that tap the power of collaborative thinking. The heart of the Wetpaint advantage is its ability to allow anyone — especially those without technical skill — to create and contribute to websites written for and by those who share a passion or interest. To do this, Wetpaint combines the best aspects of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks so anyone can click and type on the web."

Our take

Here's a fun game. Go to Wetpaint, find your way to a Wetpaint site with a number of external links and view its source. Now do a search on "nofollow." That's about how useful Wetpaint is for link love.

Seriously though, Wetpaint lets users create wiki pages with relatively sane URLs, using a template that is quite liberal with images, navigation and secondary pages.

• Like Jotpost, one creates a wiki on Wetpaint.
• If you have something to sell, Wetpaint can be useful for business ventures in that the pages are usually very interest-specific and people who visit a particular page are likely to become customers.
• Wetpaint wikis are available to the public and are free.
• Adsense! Everywhere! If you want it.
• You will potentially have to put up with people posting comments that you don't like. A wiki owner who intends to use the page for marketing will need to keep a close eye on the site's content, which could prove difficult if the wiki has multiple pages. Tread with care.
• Desipte its status as a wiki, you can create a reasonable page, many of which have a lot of user interaction.

22. Shadows

Their pitch:

"Shadows is the link-sharing website for people. By people. With Shadows, you have the power to discover the web's most fascinating content – the most interesting pages saved, discussed, and rated by you, your friends, and the Shadows community. Express your individuality through your links, comments, and profile. Join or start a group discussion. Let your voice be heard! Invite friends. Grow your community. In Shadows, you can have fun surfing for the web's best links or you can create an account, jump in, add your best links, and become part of our thriving community."

Our take

Unfortunately, Shadows is rendered useless by massive spam abuse. The homepage documents the ten most recent additions, and during my review of Shadows for this article, the site was undergoing some major spamming. A bot, it seemed, was uploading literally hundreds of pages about colon cleansing. Later, the topic had changed to online casinos.

If you do choose to use Shadows to list your site, here's some things to keep in mind:

• It's a social tagging site that is dominated by antisocial bots.
• It will take a long time for everything to load, but it's an easy process to get your site on Shadows. Too easy, as it turns out.
• Write a well-crafted description for your site. Your site's description will be listed next to its screenshot, as will its tags.
• You should add tags to your listing so that your page is easily found when users perform a search on one of your keywords.
• Spammers have stuffed their listings with every common keyword imaginable. Search for "dogs" and some of your results will be saris, suites and casinos.
• Like Digg, your link's rank will improve given the number of people who have bookmarked it.
• Some spammers are bookmarking their own content to the extent that it will rank well in search results.
• In the event that you have some unspammed tags, then Shadows could prove to be a useful marketing tool.

The most frustrating thing of all is that a number of the spam links do not actually link to anything. Not even a link farm. For some reason, this just adds insult to injury.

Sadly, Shadows is controlled by spammers and no one seems to be doing anything about it.

23. Yahoo! 360

Their pitch:

"A place that's all about you to share with friends and family."

Our take:

The purpose of Yahoo! 360 appears to be much like that of MySpace, but without the hideousness.

• Create a MySpace-esque page with a blog, photos, favorite quotes and links.
• This site has little to offer in the realm of marketing unless you build a community.
• Through the site's "invite a friend" feature, one could build a network. It's a little pointless to search for people because, in typical Yahoo! Messenger style, people tend to use nicknames as opposed to their real names on here.
• The only good way to get noticed on Yahoo! 360 is to be featured on the home page under "Interesting Pages."
• You can join groups that relate to your niche, although these groups aren't found on Yahoo! 360. You will need to go to Y! Groups Home where you'll be taken to the subdomain of whichever groups you choose to join.
  
  

24. Furl

Their pitch:

"Furl is a free service that saves the important items you find on the Web and enables you to quickly find them again. Furl archives a personal copy of every page you save. When you want to recall it, you can find it instantly by searching the full text your archived items. Each member has a personal archive of 5 gigabytes (GB), large enough to store tens of thousands of searchable items. Furl recommends new Web pages that may interest you, guided by the sites you've already "Furled," or saved."

Our take:

Some of Furl's features make it stand apart from other, similar sites. However, you shouldn't expect much from Furl if your content is not techy.

There are some Furl tools that really do appear to be pointless - there for the sake of adding glitter to an increasingly common idea. For example, Furl's "Ratings" system lets users assign a rank if 1 (Bad) to 5 (Excellent) to their saved items. But why would anyone would want to save items that they consider to be"bad"?

• Like many other sites, one bookmarks content and that content is voted upon by the community.
• Having your site "furled" (you know, as in "dugg") is useful, but the numbers don't rival those of Furl's competitor's.
• Some of the "most popular" items have only been furled by thirty or forty people; others are listed as "hot" popular sites, and they only have ten furls. After trying a number of times, the "top items of this month" page would not load.
• Having said this, the site is clean and easy to use. It can't hurt to be mentioned on Furl, and you're unlikely to experience the "Furl effect."
• Common phrases: Yahoo!, Google, Windows, software and Linux.
• Here, you have the opportunity to get noticed in a more streamlined world. Whereas Netscape, Newsvine and Shoutwire deal with a wide range of topics, Furl will have you noticed by a tech-minded crowd. Embrace this site for its audience's demographic, not its size.

25. Ning

Their pitch:

"Ning is a free online service for cloning, customizing and sharing Social Web Apps."

Our take:

If you're easily annoyed by the nonsensical names people often give to Web 2.0 sites, then Ning will irritate the heck out of you. Even some of the more ridiculous names out there, like Frappr, have a vaguely sensible orgin, e.g. Friend Mapper. Ning? Well, not so much.

• Sign up for a Ning account and create a whole manner of web applications.
• The most popular pages appear on Ning's home page, which would be useful if the most popular pages weren't so... useless. A sample of the most popular social websites on Ning includes the "What's Cuter?" page that pitches photographs of cute animals against other cute photographs.
• This is a great place to create a free website. Ning sites can be unique and of a good quality.
• Ning is not intrusive with advertising or self-promotion.
• You have full control over your source codes.
• Although "ning" appears in your URL, many of the pages are very well made and don't immediately jump off the screen as having been created on another site.
• Invite and alow people to join your Ning page (i.e. treat is as a group that invites participation) and use it as a community extention of your main website.

The sites that receive the most attention from viewers and admins alike tend to be relatively pointless. This is a little sad, though, because someone who really wanted to make an excellent Ning application could potentially do a really good job.

26. Frappr

Their pitch:

"Frappr was created by Brian, Kun and James at Rising Concepts, who wanted to see where all their high school and college friends went after they graduated. Frappr (Friend Mapper) lets you see the zip code where your friends live or work, letting you find out who works in the office building next door and who lives in the apartment complex across the street."

Our take:

Using Google maps, Frappr gives a rough estimate of where SEOmoz is located.

Socially, this is a fun, interesting application, However it's contentious whether users will really come to Frappr for commercial purposes.

• Signing up for a Frappr account means that you can add yourself and your location to a number of maps.
• When you add yourself to a map, add the URL of your site that will appear in the information bubble. If you do not include any contact information, your listing on the maps is pretty much there for fun, unless someone wanting to get in touch with you takes the time to Google you afterwards.
• Potentially, people could contact you as a result of your Frappr listing if they've searched for your services, but it isn't likely that consumers are going to start with Frappr. They're far more likely to turn to a search engine.
• Frappr is best used as a networking tool within a profession than it is as an advertising or marketing platform. However, as networking can be as important a task as marketing, it is not a waste of time to get onto Frappr and make contact with the people in your industry.
  

27. The Best Stuff in the World

Their pitch

"The Best Stuff in the World is an open, organic, polymorphous site which, depending on the user, could take on diverse forms and meanings. The site simply asks you to input your "best stuff" in the world: whether it be a song that inspires you, your favourite little Indian restaurant or the best explication of Kantian aesthetics ... it's up to you!"

Our take:

Each little picture in the above montage is clickable, taking you to the individual entry for whatever it is you choose to click on.

• Signing up for an account is easy, and you can immediately begin searching for / adding things that you think are "the best."
• This site is more fun than practical. If you are marketing a company that can't be packaged as chic or cute, submitting it to The Best Stuff in the World won't do you much good..
• You'll look like a silly spammer for adding things like "insurance" to the site.
• If your "thing" gets picked up by the community, which it likely won't unless you're already a big-boy, you might get some free publicity in the form of the homepage's montage

28. MySpace

Their pitch:

"MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends' friends. Create a private community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends! See who knows who, or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon."

Our take:

120,419,298. As of October 17, 2006, this was the number of profile pages that MySpace claimed to house. Is there a way to wade through MySpace's dillion fourteen year olds and use the site for your benefit?

Busy as a buzzy bumble bee: MySpace is Web 2.0's dungeon of no return.

• The granddaddy of all networking sites, MySpace's profiles are not tailored for marketing. Unless, that is, you're marketing your stellar personality and sexual availability.
• With MySpace, you are always going to be spamming when you create a regular profile for your company. Artists of various creeds have specialized profile options, but if you aren't a singer, filmmaker or comedian, you'll be creating a regular profile along with the world's fifteen year olds.
• It's impossible not to look trashy when you're faced with MySpace's profile options, such as "Who I'd like to meet" and "Heroes." Some of these options remain on your profile page, even if you do not add any content to them.
• Create a profile on MySpace for link love alone. If people add you as their friend because they have a genuine interest in your products or services, consider yourself lucky.
• DO NOT go around adding random people as your friends or inviting them to events. It's incredibly annoying and kind of invasive.
• MySpace's evil, liberal HTML code allowances can work in your favor. You can color your page similarly to your own website or company standard, but stay away from the custom layouts and glittery picture backgrounds. In case you hadn't already noticed, they're hideous.
• Use different sites to really promote your business. There are too many spammers, scammers and idiots on MySpace now, and you could easily be mistakened for one if you attempt to use all of MySpace's networking potential for marketing.
• There's no harm in repeating this: MySpace is fine for some links and for the potential that someone will contact you, but that is about it.

What follows is a what-not-to-do example of a certain MySpace page we came across:

It's as easy as pie to create a MySpace profile, and people do it with the intent of making money all the time. Promoting something like a mortgage service might be akin to spamming on the square. Certain businesses just don't seem to fit well with MySpace's culture, and mortgage brokers lose a certain amount of credibility when headed by guessing games about singers and free trips to the Olive Garden.

If you read down to "ESTABLISHED MORTGAGE BROKER," you read too far.

The above example touts its listing on an NBC list of experts by saying (in all caps) "MortgageHelpMe has earned the featured spot on NBC10's Local Experts." Sounds impressive, but on visiting the site, it becomes obvious that the company paid for the link. In addition, the company does not have a "featured spot" but is residing on an ad.doubleclick.net list.

In typical MySpace style, the folks at MortgageHelpMe.com have also added a fun song to their profile. However misguided, their choice of the Steve Miller Band's "Take the Money and Run" certainly created some chuckles around the SEOmoz office. Finally, a company who can't add a link to their own site or work out how to get rid of the "Myspace Layouts by Pimp-My-Profile.com" label in their copied-and-pasted HTML code might not be able to manage your money, either.

The sad thing is that this sort of marketing actually makes some credible companies look bad. Well-meaning business people have undoubtedly created MySpace accounts in the hope of attracting curious surfers. If they've done it correctly, a MySpace account could possibly provide some link love, but most of the 100,000,000 plus people on the site aren't looking for financial assistance. They want to be "added" by the dude in Math 107 who wears the pink Abercrombie shirt, so unless you're a really cute mortgage broker, go elsewhere to promote your business.

29. Yahoo! Answers

Their pitch

"A place where people ask each other questions on any topic, and get answers by sharing facts, opinions, and personal experiences."

Our take:

"Is it against the law," asks optimojones04, "to eat while driving?" Public opinion is divided. "Careless operation of a motor vehicle if the cops a well lets just say aint been getting any," replies Exoilfeildtrash. "Only if your fat," contends churcknorris2cool (misspelling his).

The above represents one of the more intelligent questions available on Yahoo! Answers. There is such a plethora of awful (and awfully funny) questions asked on this site that it's easy to get lost in the idiocy.

• You may be lucky enough to come across a question that you can answer in a manner that promotes a business venture, but be subtle.
• All links are nofollowed, so don't bother loading up on those babies.
• Yahoo! lets you post four questions per day and also limits the number of questions you can post without also answering other people's questions in return.
• Cleverly worded marketing pitches can pose as questions.
• Users categorize their questions by subject. There are many topics, so finding one that fits your question should not be hard.
• You can gain customers if you manage to ask clever questions or, in a more honest sense, answer people's questions with relevant, considerate responses.

30. And as a fun way to end, we showcase Rdiculous

Their pitch:

"Poking fun at web 2.0 named websites. It was inevitable, all the good domain names are taken so companies have become increasingly more creative in choosing their domain names. We started this site on a whim after noticing the growing number of sites that are emerging with random letters missing (especially the “e” before the “r”). We figured someone should catalog all of these sites so we decided to step up to the plate. Follow along with us as we document this Rdiculous trend."

Our take:

Rdiculous limits itself to commenting on sites who have commited the above offense: leaving the "e" out of words that usually end an "er". Think Frappr and Flickr. The site provides the down-low on eighteen sites, and its write-ups are quite similiar to what we've written here.

Conclusions:

Of course, there are far more Web 2.0 sites out there than we have convered in this article. There simply isn't enough time to investigate every one of them, or even a healthy portion. That, and because Rand keeps sending Jane more and more links to new Web 2.0 sites, it really is about time to wrap up this piece.

We've discovered during the course of this project that virtually every Web 2.0 site carries with it a degree of commercial usefulness. Some sites have built-in hindrances, such as nofollowed links or pages that are only accessible with passwords and therefore do not exist in the eyes of search engines. Others advertise their commercial friendliness, boasting their search engine popularity or stating in their pitches that their goal is to help people market their businesses. Although we certainly don't recommend that anyone spam these sites, we do suggest that the responsible use of social media marketing can help a business. We already knew that spam was horrible, irritating and a thorough turn-off, but certain experiences, such as the afternoon during which we encountered Shadows' immense spam problem, drove home the point that spamming is worse than not advertising at all. The MySpace mortgage encounter also exemplified how bad advertising is worse than none, as well.

And just for fun, some sites, such as the Web 2.0 Validator attempt to create categories whereby sites are scored on the "Web 2.0-ness". In this case (which is purely for the purposes of entertainment), the criteria are decided upon by users. Incidentally, this is the result if one tries to "validate" the validator:

Hopefully, what we've provided here can be of some use if you're deciding whether social media sites are right for your marketing purposes. At the very least, we hope it's marginally entertaining. It disturbs us slightly that in a short time from now, this article may be completely obsolete due to the fact that of sites such as these are popping up daily. Still, the information we've gathered is applicable to all types of online social media. Even if you can't stand the idea of Web 2.0, it isn't going away. Luckily, its very form leaves its quality in all of our hands. Don't neglect your content, and Web 2.0 will enhance your internet marketing experience.

Number of comments: 1
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