Here are some popular ways of celebrity promotion on Internet.

Own a Facebook page

There’s no other social networking site as powerful, as popular as Facebook. To reach out to the fans and keep them updated with the latest work a celebrity can own a page. It’s a great way to increase the fan and follower base. Just by putting a ‘like’ button the celebrity can achieve millions of followers. A celebrity can post his or her latest pictures, events to attend, achievements, recent offerings and work and all on his page, for the followers to cherish a piece of the celebrity’s life. A celebrity can also treat his fans and followers with regular status updates, reply to comments and frequent updates. It’s a great way to keep up the popularity high. One can do every bit of Facebooking from a mobile phone.

Twitter is magical

Twitter is one more platform to build up a huge base of followers. Twitter also offers high credibility by authenticating a celebrity with verified member status. Twitter is a great tool to let the world know what the celebrity is doing every moment, where he or she is heading to, what he is eating, whom he is meeting, what’s his plan for the day, whom is he dating and partying with. Such updates keep fans hooked onto Twitter, staying in touch with every bit of the celebrity. Twitter also allows celebrities to post personal pictures and upload posts immediately, even from mobile phone.

Blogging

Personal blog is one more personalized way of a celebrity to reach out to its fans and followers. Regular blog posts are a must to keep up the interest of its visitors. It’s like reflection of a celebrity where he or she can freely express his thoughts, ideas, goals, dreams – anything under the sun. Blogs are highly interactive as readers not only read actively, but also drop comments and come back regularly.

This is the month where Twitter has witnessed a negative growth of 9.4% on its September number which was 28.3 million. If we see year-on-year growth of other two social networking giants LinkedIn and MySpace than we will see a similar decline in the number of unique visitors. MySpace has recorded a negative growth of 20.5%, and it has fallen from 73 million unique visitors to 58 million, and LinkedIn has recorded a 4.7% negative growth, taking its tally from 14.6 million unique visitors to 13.8 million uniques.

Why I think Facebook is killing others?

We all have a finite 24 hours in a day, which we distribute (unevenly) on the works we do, and we have only so much time for social sites or Internet surfing. Seeing the average time spent by users on Facebook, which is in excess of 40 minutes a day, I think, people hardly get time left for other social networks.

Not only that, our habit of unevenly spreading time, also leaves us wanting for more time, which for many could mean cutting back on time spent on the Internet. And as people are more or less addicted to Facebook, time spent on other social sites drops down, which in the long term means, pulling out of these websites.

How they can survive?

For social networks like LinkedIn and twitter, which are not direct competitors of Facebook, developing a Facebook application could be a way, or may be not.

Here are tips about how to promote books online.

Use social networking sites

Social networking websites are the best choice for promoting a book. Especially when your target audience is youth, modern, educated Internet savvy bunch of people – social networking sites are ideal. Twitter and Facebook are great platforms. Publicize the book release date on Twitter and Facebook. Publish details of the event in advance including venue, time and send the invitation to all friends in your list or tag them. Who doesn’t wish to buy a book autographed by the author? Enrich your personal page with detail. Publish your day to day thoughts, photographs, achievements, goals, events, experiences. It brings author close to the readers as they come to know the author closely. It will make them even more interested to know you, respect you, admire, and follow you. Also write the thoughts that inspired you. You should include all big news channels, publishers, newspapers, journals, critics in your friend and follower list. Post book inaugural and book cover page photographs. It will hike interest among your prospective readers.

Start blogging

Start blogging. Publish small extracts from your book in your blog. Promote your blog link through social networking sites. While reader reads your blog post, put a link which will land the reader in your website, from where they can directly buy your book. Stir interest, curiosity and leave the rest to be discovered in the book.

Give online purchase offers

Put some attractive offers for online buyers like first 50 online buyers, buying from your website will be entitled to 20% discount. Publicize the same everywhere on social networking sites.

Get into email marketing

Send attractive mailers to prospective buyers, entitling them special discount. Mailers can be sent to those who subscribed for mails and newsletters on your website. Email marketing can be used not only to sell your book, but also to share news about your achievements, critic’s appraisal, launch date of the book etc.

Facebook has replaced box with application tabs, which could be a good or a bad news depending upon from where you are looking at it. My objective is not to prove one group right and another wrong, but it is to suggest you ways to apply this new feature.

3 steps to add application tabs

Step 1: Click on the profile page link and wait for the profile page to appear.

Step 2: Go to the area where wall, info, and photos are written. At the end of this line, you will find a + sign, click on that.

Step 3: In a drop-down menu you will see a series of application avaialble for you. Below that you wil find a box beneath “search application tabs”. Enter the keywords of the application tabs you want to use.

That’s it. You have added your favorite application in facebook’s application tabs.

This feature will transform Facebook into a mega pplication which will host almost all the inforamtion that you routinly seek from the web. It will become your RSS reader twitter feed agregator, blog reader, etc.

But, at presnet the choice is quite limited, so there is nothing much that you can do with it. Still, there is no harm is testing this feature.

We will take that discussion forward in this article, and we will talk here about 3 content-based contests that could help you skyrocket your blog’s readership.

2 content-heavy contests

Comment here contest

This is one of the best contests to host. The idea is quite simple. Ask your visitors to post a comment in the comment box to get a chance to win the prize. Also remind them that each comment will get one entry into a lucky draw, so they can enter more than one comment to get more than one entry. At this point, do not forget to tell them just one-line generic comments will either get filtered out by your spam filter, or will be weeded out by your staff. Remind them that the comment that will add to the discussion will only get accepted. Comment done just to get multiple entry and which does not take the discussion forward, even a bit, will automatically get disqualified.

Review me contest

This is another form of contest that you can run. Ask your readers to write a review for your website on their domain, in Facebook, or wherever they want, as long as it is written on the websites talking about topics like pornographic, abusive, racism, etc. make an e-mail ID, and ask them to send the URL to that mail ID. Promise the announcement of the result on your blog, and tell them that 3 best reviews will get the prize. To win the prize, it is important for them to include two links to your website in the review — one to the home page, and another to any other page. For deep lining, you can provide some options from your blog posts.

Guest post writing contest

The third form of content-heavy contest is guess post writing contest. Ask you readers to write guest posts for you. Announce that the best written guest post will get the prize, and the second and the third ranked guest post will also get prize. To motivate them to write a guest post, tell your visitors that each guest post will be published, and writer will get the byline for the guest post along with 2 links back to their website, Facebook page, twitter, etc.

Content-based contests are time consuming, so the prize should be good, otherwise people will not get motivated to spend time on your blog.

But, which social media is the marketers’ favorite when it comes to distributing marketing dollars?

In a study conducted by King Fish Media, Hubspot and Junta 42, it was found that LinkedIn is at the top of the chart, followed by Twitter and Facebook.

87% of the survey participant said they include LinkedIn in their social media strategy, and 12% said they are planning to add it to the equation. 84% marketers consider twitter when framing a marketing budget, while another 16% said they will add soon. As long as Facebook is concerned, only 78% use it, while 22% said they are planning to use this social media marketing tool.

Almost all the big social media websites featured in the list, but what was missing noticeably was MySpace. Well, it was not missing entirely, but seeing the success it once enjoyed, the current status is akin to disappearing for MySpace. A mere 9% people said they use MySpace, and same percentage of people said they will use it in future (See image for the complete survey data).

In January 2009, 11.8 million mobile users used their cell phone to access Facebook.com, which increased to become 25.1 million by January 2010. In the same period, Twitter user base grew from 1.05 million to 4.7 million mobile users.

The growth rates of these two social networking sites have exploded, but MySpace’s shrunk. The user base of MySpace fell short by 7% of its previous years mark. (See image).

Facebook’s  user-base was evenly split between users who are younger and older than 35 years of age n 2009. 23% of Facebook users are between 24 and 34 which is an increase of 18.8% over December 2008. See image for complete demographic divisions.

Now internet advertising consists of making a social networking presence.  You need to have a blog, Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter account, to really make your company known.  So first things first, set up a company blog.  This will be a resource to write about the goings on with your corporation, and provide insightful social commentary on culturally relevant news.  So you want a decent writer who can write regular, engaging content.

Now you need Myspace and Facebook accounts.  Both are essentially the same, just with minor differences.  Keep the page professional, and a resource to sell products and ideas as well as provide news.  Myspace has been in decline, so that doesn’t have to be as big of a priority.  But at the moment Facebook has been holding strong, and could end up being a great interface with your customers.  Listen to them, and communicate with them.  This way you can learn what selling tactics will work, and what your customers expect from you.

Finally, the Twitter account.  This will probably be the most important, because here is where the most people are going to turn for news and information regarding your company.  Linking a blog with your Twitter and Facebook accounts will create a wealth of resources to contact your customer base, and do your own free research into what they expect.  You grow name recognition, and also get a great customer data tool, all rolled into a few easy to use websites.

By making ourselves so incredibly easily available on the internet, you may not even realize how these things can come back to haunt you in unexpected ways.  Which is exactly why everyone should realize that with every resume, you almost need to prepare a web 2.0 resume alongside.  Of course I’m not referring to an actual document you should write, but instead make sure that the internet smiles kindly upon you to anyone doing a search.

Google yourself and see what comes up, make sure you like what you see, or else strive to change the negative points.  Nothing shows a good reference like going to a completely unbiased source, such as Google, and only seeing positive information.  Plus simple search engine exploration like this is faster and easier than a company trying to track down your references on the phone to get a feel for your personality.

So here are a few tips for shaping up your Web 2.0 resume:

1. Make yourself available online.  If you have a job, such as being a freelance writer, where internet recognition is very important, make sure that you’re easy enough to find.  A company looking to hire a talented blogger isn’t going to turn to you if they can’t find your alias on Google within the first few pages of results.

2. Make sure that information is positive.  You don’t want a new potential company Googling your  name and then finding a post where all you do is bash your former employer.  Nothing would turn off a new company more.

3. Create your own strictly professional web page, to act as an easy to read career resume.  Make sure you’ve got an accurate career portfolio up, and go the extra distance by having a custom email address URL related to your website where they can contact you.  Both factors will make you look informed, and prepared for what’s expected in the web 2.0 environment.

4. Social networking professionally.  Make sure that you have professional alternatives to your social networking, and that you maintain relationships through them effectively.  Keep things strictly business, to show that you are a hardworking potential employee that knows the difference between what is and isn’t appropriate.

Sometimes, instinct gives a good indication about what topic will get warm welcome from the readers, and what will be ignored as if it never existed, but instinct cannot be a reliable guide, if you have to write daily or regularly for any magazine, newspaper, online magazine or blog. You need a more reliable system then the instinct has to offer.

Before working on developing any idea into an article or a blog post, you should check how it does on the following parameter:

Do you have something new to offer?

The chances are quite high that the topic you are going to write about has already been covered by the magazine or blog you are writing for. Even if they have not covered it, their competitors must have done that. Do you have anything new to say about the weight-loss program you are going to write about? Any new development or a new angle? Even a fresh point of view can offer the required newness.

Does your writing flow?

If you want people to read what you write, your articles and blog posts need to flow. No one likes bumpy rides. Your words and sentences should help them glide through the paragraph after paragraphs. Do not use jargons, and keep the structure as simple as the writing idea permits. Always remember, your readers have limited time, and in this time, he can either read your article or do other things like, watching television, listening music, or write on Facebook walls.

How will it connect with the reader?

This is the most crucial point. You have a groundbreaking idea, and your writing style makes you hell of a charmer, but still your visitors are not falling over each other to read your piece, why? May be because you have targeted a wrong market, and the readers here are too smart or too stupid for your kind of articles. People will read only if you step up or step down (depending upon where you are) to their level. Can the reader connect with your article?

What’s the use?

Imagine this: you have come home after a long tiring day at office, and you turned on your laptop to read something, or picked a magazine to browse through. Your eyes happen to find an article that has a nice juicy headline, interesting sub-headlines, and even the first few lines are written wonderfully. You couldn’t resist but read it till the end, but here comes the bomb. The article has nothing to offer but a nice flowing style of writing. It doesn’t add even a single word, sentence or idea to your repertoire of the existing knowledge. You feel wastes. Your reader will feel the same, so make sure you are writing because you have something valuable to offer.

Will it entertain?

The entertainment value of any article should not be underrated. People do not read your article just because they feel you are going to redeem them. They do not think that way, nor are they here to get enlightened, though they will not mind it, if the redemption and enlightenment is offered sugar-coated in entertainment. You do not need to preach to send the serious message across. Do not think readers are so blunt.

Never underestimate the power of a social networking environment that facilitates other peers in your profession.  These types of sites can be incredibly influential for finding out the latest industry news, or important competitive information, like where the best jobs are currently, or which companies tend to care for their employees better.  As you can communicate with others in your professional field you’ll also find yourself making friend easier, and industry friends are always good to have, as that sells who you are to a broader audience.  Never forget, when you’re looking for a new job, you want your name out there as much as possible.

Professional social networking sites are also a great resource for any company looking to hire new talent.  Considering they give you the chance to make friends, meet new people, and really learn about them in an unbiased fashion.  From an individual’s online profile, to also participating in conversations with them, you get a real view of the person and what they could offer your company.  Opposed to the biased attitude anybody looking to get a job has in an interview.

So don’t underestimate the power of a good social networking site.  Probably something a bit more serious than Facebook or Myspace, as these aren’t exactly the best place to have a serious conversation with a stranger most times.  But something more geared towards industry professionals like yourself, or your company.