Lots of opinions, and questions, in my last post about the Social Marketing Checklist. I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to the discussion, and encourage others to read the comments as there’s tons of good advice offered up from other successful marketers.

I also wanted to tell you a little bit more about what the Social Marketing Checklist is, specifically. I’ve talked about it being a step-by-step guide to marketing your website on social media and Web 2.0 sites and I’ll go into a bit more detail of what I mean by “step-by-step” here.

There is a short introduction (7 pages currently) that explains the methodology behind the actions you will take in the checklist. The goal of the checklist is to produce as many backlinks and as much presence for your on as many social media sites as possible. The introduction explains why this is important as well as some basics on keyword selection and anchor text. I’ve worded it so that it is understandable to even the beginning online marketer. Seasoned marketers can likely skip this section and go straight to the actual checklist.

The Checklist itself still needs to be properly formatted, so I can’t give you a page count. Page count is really irrelevant, as it’s not a theory or long-winded explanation kind of ebook.

It is a line-by-line “To-Do” list of sites to go to and how to promote your own site on them, divided by sections. This is the To-Do list given to my employees when promoting a new site. There are sections covering:

• Promotion Basics & Beginning SEO
• Social Bookmarking and Story Submission
• Demo and Teaser Submission
• Video Sharing
• Collaborative Research
• Classifieds
• Content Contribution
• Social Networking
• “Tie it Together” – This section takes all the work you’ve done in previous sections and puts is on steroids, doubling or tripling it’s effectiveness.

The guide is not black hat nor are the methods underhanded in any way. You will not be ashamed to do any of the tasks in your own name.

One person has seen the Social Marketing Checklist in it’s current state. He wrote:

Michelle. This report is freaking awesome. If you do all of this stuff, then I’m baffled at how you can’t rank well for [edited out] keyword!

That’s precisely the goal of the Checklist. It will help you rank for your chosen keyword.

It does require work. It is not an “Easy Button.” There are tools that automate some of the processes, but tools are not required if they’re not in your budget. I explain exactly how to do things either way, with or without the tools.

I have decided on a price point. It will be free, as I originally intended.

This is going out because Web 2.0, social media and linkbuilding are my passions. I love it. I love talking about this stuff, I love sharing it. And I love watching it work for people. There are many, many guides out there that help you promote your URL on a given Web 2.0 property, such as Squidoo. I am compiling all that information into one “Bible” of Web 2.0 promotion.

None of this is rocket science. None of this is “The Untold Secrets of Marketing Geniuses Silently Raking in $8 Million/Month While Sipping Pina Coladas”. Many of the sites I tell you to work on you’ve probably heard of before (in a vague, “You should market on this site…” kind of way). Many you may have not heard of. The Guide isn’t about any particular site or loophole – it’s about using all the sites and their networking and linkbuilding opportunities in conjunction with each other to create a massive online presence in your niche.

There’s much speculation and cynacism about Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing is because of two reasons:

1. The methods people are teaching are black hat or spammy and therefore do not last long. People invest in these methods and often see little success if they’ve come too late to the game. My Checklist is not black hat and the methods contained therein are sound and have stood the test of time.
2. Many methods focus on one particular Web 2.0 property or loophole, which sets you up for failure when that site or loophole are no longer in favor with the search engines or general internet traffic trends. Instead, you should focus on creating a WEB of opportunities for surfers (and search engines) to discover your site. If you are deriving most of your traffic from any one source, you are setting yourself up for trouble. My Checklist ensures you have traffic and links coming from hundreds of sources, building upon each other and feeding off of each other as one unified promotion machine.

I am finishing formatting and editing the book and creating the download pages.

What you need before you can use the Guide: A website that you want to send traffic to. I do not recommend a MySpace page, Squidoo page, etc. I only recommend promoting your own domain name. If you are an experienced marketer, you can use the methods inside to create off-domain pages that then promote/boost PR for your main URL. But always promote your main URL first and foremost.