With membership sites and social marketing (using sites like digg and facebook to promote your business) both being currently hot in the Internet marketing field, it’s not surprising to see the two topics being combined and membership sites springing up about social marketing.

I have to admit a healthy (but reducing) skepticism about both topics so I was initially a bit hesitant at trying them out.

However I could increasingly see that social marketing was no short-term wonder – it’s clear that the way the world communicates is changing fast and if you’re in business – especially in the marketing and communication business – you need to keep on top of it.

So being deluged with claims and hype about the floods of traffic I’d receive to my website by using social marketing, I sought a reliable source of information…

That’s when I came across Jack Humphrey’s Social Power Linking site.

At first I thought it would be just another of these big hype packages but something made me take a closer look.

I guess part of the reason was being familiar with his reputation. I’d downloaded his Authority Black Book and been impressed by the level of free information. I’d also read a bit about the success of his Authority Site Center, though had not felt it was for me. However I subscribe to his Friday Traffic Report and had picked up some useful tips.

It’s interesting to reflect on how a reputation builds up over time through various contacts and supply of free information before eventually becoming a customer.

But finally, I gave in and decided to give it a try.

My first big surprise was the price – less than $30 a month at time of writing. I’d been expecting something much higher – so my interest was sustained.

Leaving aside all the promises about floods of traffic, I decided to take a closer look and these are some of the things that membership offers:

• Step-by-step guides to using popular and lesser-known social media sites.
• Webinars and training by Jack Humphrey and other experts.
• Directories of top places to submit your blog, site RSS feed for better link popularity, rankings and traffic.
• Article marketing and press releases the new way.
• Search engine marketing and its proper place in a well-rounded marketing campaign.
• Exclusive software that helps you submit to major social news sites.
• 500 member Buzz Group to get you more votes on your content.

Who is it for?
This might be for you if you want to understand how you can use the growing range of social media options to help grow their business. While it’s important to have a website (and ideally a blog) to make full use of the opportunities, it’s by no means just for “Internet marketers”.

Good points

• Shows integrity by explaining how to be part of the social networking communities rather than simply trying to take advantage of them.
• Offers detailed guides on many of the key sites such as digg, propeller, squidoo and hub pages.
• Provides several short step-by-step videos highlighting what you need to do
• Regular flow of new information, including videos and special reports. (In fact, the guide to social marketing for newbies is worth a monthly fee on its own to get you up to speed.)
• Active and supportive community of other members.

Not-so-good points
Hard to find anything significant to be honest. Maybe there’s a slight touch of ‘change the world’ hype but only slight and I think it stems from enthusiasm! Perhaps the plentiful supply of new information is actually a downside as it’s hard to keep up. But there is a lot happening. And two key benefits of the membership are an easy introduction for newbies together with a step-by-step 60-day action plan.

Getting Started Quickly
For me one of the biggest challenges of getting into social marketing was what to do on Day 1. Even with the great 60 Day Plan, it’s quite intimidating at first.

Fortunately, Jack addressed that issue with a recent post on his Friday Traffic Report blog and here are 5 of his 10 suggestions:

1. Sign up for the major social news sites: Digg.com, Propeller.com, Mixx.com. Start by filling out your profile completely and submitting news from elsewhere on the web. Don’t push your own content. Watch the comments and votes of others and you will know how to proceed with your own site’s content from there.
2. If you don’t have a blog, install one immediately! It is an absolute necessity on today’s web. Jack and I both recommend Wordpress which you can download and install yourself but, if you’re lucky, your web host will have a quick-install option called Fantastico.
3. Join groups, make friends, and interact with other bloggers - especially the people who would be most likely to link to your blog and send you traffic, who write about similar things or have a similar audience or who’d benefit by knowing you.
4. Once you have a decent profile in each of your key sites showing that you’ve been active and involved, move on and search for networks that are geared toward your specific niche. Their membership may be warmer to your kind of information than on the bigger, more general networks.
5. Don’t freak out! This is only overwhelming if you act like someone at an all-you-can-eat buffet with no self control. You have other things to do and this needs to fit into, not dominate, your current business and marketing.

What I liked about that post by Jack was the clear and specific action points, combined with the sense of helping you be part of these communities rather than finding ways to take advantage of them, which seems more common in this field.

Read the whole post on How to Start a Social Marketing Campaign

Recommendation
If you can see the potential of social marketing in your business – or just want to find out what all the fuss is about - it’s definitely worth giving membership a try and, most important, actually putting some of the techniques to use.

www.socialpowerlinking.com

If you don’t feel ready for it yet, download the latest copy of the Authority Black Book and test out some of the ideas.

P.S. - Jimmy D Brown’s Membernaire also got through my skeptical attitude to membership sites. But more on that another day.