Years ago, I found that creating websites around a subject really helped the optimisation process for search engine marketing. It seemed, as it does now, that just one site is often not enough. For instance, I created a site on Advanced Search Engine Marketing and another site dedicated to Search top tips and more.

Each site I developed had unique, original, distinctively different content that is related to our core business. I have always referred to this as a web of sites and was a concept I developed, tested and proved way back. It became known as a process for optimisation around Micro Sites.

As well as helping each site in the series, it helps individuals get the information that they might be looking for, as a site that is ‘tighter’ in its objectives is easier to use. It seems that you can run a series of blogs in an extremely similar way.

Social Media works quite differently to the Micro Site society. In Social Media it is more of a mix and match of technologies, you can have a core subject and then promote the blog using a range of tools. My last post discussed Feeds, readers and feed enhancers and these are one of the tools that you can employ to promote your posts.

One of the specific Social Media tools that can be used to promote your blog posts is Twitter. Twitter is a short form announcement technology – where you are limited to 140 characters. It also shortens long website addresses – URLs into the tinyurl.com system – very useful. Around Twitter there is a whole family of related software that enables you to search for other peoples posts and to ‘monitor’ the blogosphere, or in this case the twittersphere… try Twilight.com.

Bookmarking is another Social Media tool. Indeed Bookmarking has gone in a new direction since the advent of Social Media. In Social Media Bookmarking is fundamentally a method of highlighting and sharing your favourite web pages with others. To activate, all you need to do is select a button in your browser when you are visiting an interesting page. So, whereas you may be used to storing your own bookmarks on your browser (and then having to work out how to organise all of those if you can be bothered!) now you can open an account at technorati.com, simpy.com or delicious.com, there are many many more, one of the earliest that I used to enjoy was furl.net.

When you have opened a free account with any – or all(!) of these, you just press the button in your browser (it will sit in your bookmarks!) when you find a page you enjoy. In some cases the bookmarking site may ask you to rate and describe the page that you bookmark – it would be nice, but is not essential for you to do this. Nice because, if you do, you can advise others as to what they might find useful on the page – and of course you build up your reputation within the site as a good bookmarker.

An extra dimension to all of these sites that is extremely socially integrated… You are bound to find someone who has been saving things similar to you. As a result you can send an email, ‘shout at’ or ‘poke’ people (the mechanics varies from site to site) who share similar interests and build and expand your human network online.

Which leads us directly to the human networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, of course again there are many others. But these two are locked in communities – you invite your friend and give only your friends access to your information so that they can see what you are doing, they can contact you and you can contact them – it is just so much faster and an extremely social way of keeping in touch and doing business.

To my mind, Social Media is a success because it is hard for people to abuse. Partly because you will be caught with your hands in the till if you do, the people you share information with are your friends. So ultimately, it seems that this is leading to an extremely well balanced and integrated society. No bad thing.

There are many more tools, sites, technology, blogs, video, audio and web rating systems out there that are too many to mention – you can Share and Enjoy some of those below…

I find that I am still learning – and this is a great sign for me. It means that it is extremely likely that you will meet new and interesting people who can offer all types of advice, tips and help.