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It's official. The Web 2.0 is here. If you have no idea at all that it is already here or what it is in the first place, then you must have been living in the cave for the past 5 years.

Face it. If you're still using some of the outdated Web 1.0 methods to increase traffic to your website, you may still get some results out of your marketing efforts but you will eventually lose out to the newer guys who go Web 2.0.

Now let me share with you 3 tips on how to increase traffic to your website, the Web 2.0 way.

1. Think viral. The concept of viral marketing will never die out. The Viral meme is what defined and made Life in the first place. For as long as there is Life, the concept of the Virus (biological, marketing, electronic, etc) will still continue to haunt us - for good or ill.

There are 2 basic elements that determine the success of your marketing virus:-

I) The strength of your viral marketing message, or in the words of Mark Joyner, its "Buzz-worthiness", that is, its merit or quality that makes people want to tell others about it because it is so good.

II) The mechanism by which the virus must spread. Is it easy to spread the message? Must your referrers go through an elaborate and troublesome process to spread the message? Or need they only do what they've always been easily doing in order to spread your viral message?

From the above 2 elements, you already have an action plan formulated for you that can be condensed into one sentence:- create a message that promotes your website, be it in the form of a video, audio, multimedia, text, blog or a whacky buzzword, that is truly "buzz-worthy" and at the same time easy to spread via existing networks.

2. Attack the Social Networks. Either exploit the existing social networks such as MySpace, Friendster, Squidoo, etc, or create one of your own that is built around your niche.

There are many Friendster or MySpace clones out there available for download (for a fee of course) which you can use, tweak or get a programming expert friend of yours to develop a Social Network of your own that is built around the niche that you're involved with.

A good way to market through Social Networks is by having an interesting profile that offers consistently updated information about yourself and your business or your website. Duplicate your blog in your MySpace or Friendster blog as any updates to your profile or blog will be reflected to the friends in your network.

Browse the Social Networks for friends who share the same interests and passions as you and add them as friends. Send private messages to them and work something out. Say you're starting a private group of like-minded people who are passionate about whatever it is your niche is about. Mention incentives such as money, exclusivity, fame, etc.

Place a limit to the number of people who can join this private club of yours and be sure to include only those people who have lots of friends in their network, perhaps ranging in the hundreds.

3. Blogging, of course, is one of those defining elements of Web 2.0.

There are different approaches to exploiting the Blogging phenomenon to market your website. One is to have a blog of your own. The other is to somehow enable others to have blogs hosted by you. But if you go the second route, you'll face tough competition from Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc.

The trick is to create a service or software which has something the others do not have. Or you can create a service, software, tool or tip page that complements your so-called competition by giving something of benefit to users of such blogging services.

One way is to offer RSS feeds tools that enable other bloggers to syndicate their content to other websites or deliver their feeds to their readers' desktops or emails.

Another way is to give other bloggers the opportunity to include "Bookmark" links on their blogs. Websites such as http://Del.Icio.Us or Digg offers users the ability to share their favourite websites with other people.

You can exploit this phenomenon by creating an account with the various social bookmarking sites and sharing links to your websites or you can create cool-looking "Bookmark This" icons for other bloggers and get them to link to your website in return.

If you write a blog of your own, you can market your blog by visiting other people's blogs and leaving useful and beneficial comments on them. Most of the time their comments forms enable you to include a link back to you in their comments page.

Browse the blogs around your niche and most of the time they have a link saying "Links to this Post". This enables you to link to their posts in your blog if you happen to like their blog posts. Give and take. Blog about another person's blog and a link to your website may appear in that person's blog in return. This process is automatic.

There you have it - 3 new Web 2.0 ways to increase traffic to your website. In truth, there are literally hundreds of other ways to improve your website marketing the Web 2.0 way that are not covered here in this article. Now it is up to you to apply what you have learned here and come up with something that is even better.