Social Marketing Made Simple - Beer Parties and Caterers

A review of The Social Marketing Blueprint Formula:

Thumbs down. The language (see quote below) doesn't get any better when you get inside the book. Thick as molasses in winter.

Look, you're trying to boost four things:
* Viewers (Traffic)
* Conversions to subscribers (They opt-in to your mail list.)
* Conversions to buyers (They buy something from you.)
* Upsells and Cross-sells ("Super-size?" and "Fries with that?")

Social media doesn't work the way marketers think it should. But they're stuck in an old world.

This guy has done a great job on figuring it out. But he never gets over being complex. And his "testimonials" are just more of the same. Lingo club practice meeting. Useless.

Think of his system as this:

Two circles, one inside the other. Inner circle is a roaring party going on. Outside that is caterers, selling chairs, tables, and beer to those inside. You don't go inside that party to try to pitch them buying more stuff from you. They'll throw you out on your ear. They have to come out because they're thirsty or have run out of things to sit on or put their beer bottles on.

That's the marketing problem with social media/networks, as faced by our current set-up. Old style marketing are the caterers. They're trying to sell to the party-animals inside, but aren't invited to the party.

Two approaches:
1) Be a "good old boy", take off your tie and jacket, and then join the party, sending in some free beer from time to time. You know, different varieties from what they're drinking. (Educate them that there are many better-tasting beers than that one which they buy all the time.)
2) Have some friends on the inside who are in charge of ordering beer - and need chairs and tables. Means finding and building relationships.

So in marketing to social networks, either get on the inside or develop connections.

Like I said before, you have to copy life insurance salesmen who joined a dozen social clubs and got their sales on the side - after the meetings and other functions.

You really, really, really have to get over the idea that you can just spam your way to sales inside these social media. They will shut you down faster than the door to an out-house in summer.

You have to work like a salesman with clients - not consumers - CLIENTS. Their success is your success.

Marketing is a true conversation. Creating a buzz isn't like buying an ad to "Buy Beanos!". You don't work the numbers as a percentage of exposures people see. You don't have the numbers like spammers do, where 2-3% will buy anything you put in front of them - where it's just a numbers scene.

No, if you don't give them quality, you're out on your keister. If you do, then you'll get upwards of 40 or 50% or more using and re-using your stuff. And to boot, they'll tell you how you can improve it to sell more of it.

So, read this guy's report - several times through. It actually starts making sense when you get the jargon-osis (swelling of jargon) out of your system.

But the starting point is to get over the basic premise of this report, that you're a standard old fuddy-duddy advertiser trying to pitch your "Buy Beanos!" campaign by finding more places to put your ads.

Join the conversation. Bring some beer samples. And tell them that there's much more comfortable chairs and sturdier tables - if they want you to get them some. And isn't that band just great?

The Social Marketing Blueprint Formula:

"The report above introduces a formula for neatly categorizing all of the various functions of thousands of social networks into an easy to understand system (formula) that (when implemented to create a blueprint) will yield an exponential traffic effect. In other words, by using the social networks in a systematic (and planned) way, you achieve a significant amount of traffic leverage on the back end for a little bit of effort on the front end."