Social Media isn't Marketing - it's a Conversation

Even when I'm dense, I get pretty close to the mark.

People don't use social media to buy things, or sell things. (That's eBay's community.) People use social media to discuss things. They are seeking meaning in their lives by examining others' views about things. That's why people like stories, that's why people like to talk about things.

Social Media Marketing doesn't actually exist.

True, marketing is a conversation, and there are tons of conversations going on in these social media. But that doesn't mean they translate to sales. So get over it. People like to have conversations because they are fun. That's right - fun.

If you're trying to convert people to subscribers, you're way, way off the beam. Go back to article marketing. Go back to affiliate marketing. Go back to forum marketing.

Social Media is like the insurance salesman who joins half a dozen social groups. Meeting people is a way to find potential leads. Simple. But the sales talks take place waaay after that group meeting is over. They come to that salesman because they need some insurance and they know he deals in it. But as a salesman, he can contact them at their workplace and ask if they need some more insurance...

You don't try to spam social media - it doesn't work. Same way link-farms don't work.

There are lots of reasons to participate in social media. One is to make your research easier - you match up with people who have the same interests and find what they've already studied up on. The below selection from Ann Smarty says all I've been trying to find out today.

I spend hours looking up one blogger who had won all these awards and was so hot, only to find out that he was trying to market through Stumbleupon and others and by the end of it (nearly 180 scraped pages later), reversed himself thoroughly.

It's true that you can get search engine traffic easily through social media. But you can also get this by simply posting Slidecasts or posting to Internet Archives.

Look - search engines are after new, quality content. Period. Because that's what people want. Social media are another way for people to find new content - find what their friends are looking at.

You want people to find your site interesting - create great content. Period.

If you have something worth subscribing to, they will. Provide great content regularly through that subscription and you'll keep them.

I spent today double-checking my work on marketing ideas through social media, and found that I was right and wrong at the same time.

And found that where I should really be spending my time in selling stuff is on that great community - eBay. They've got blogs there and shops and all sorts of ways to send traffic to your site - who want to buy stuff.

However, the real key - as Ann covers below - is to be social on the social networks, and then you can get people interested in what you do and who need your product.

(I edit and publish self help books, so should socialize around self improvement groups and so on, eh? A book on marketing would be best sold to marketers - and so I should become part of marketing social groups, right? That is, if my analogy of the insurance salesman above works out...)

Social Media Marketing - Think Long-Term:

"Web marketers who view social media as a promotional tool can be roughly divided into three categories:

1) Those who blatantly spam (in a hope to get quick traffic). They usually have no valuable content to offer the community and their main goal is to get people click on an ad.
2) Those who link bait (hoping that their article will generate some links from other bloggers). These webmasters usually focus on a catchy scandalous headlines with no truly valuable post following it;
3) Those who strive to become a part of the community and establish business or friendly connections with niche webmasters."

Creating the Optimal Social Media Magnet Site

You should be able to create an optimal social media magnet site, using what you know from SEO and Viral Marketing

Value is the real underlying scene. If you have great stuff, and have bookmarked it yourself, and made plenty of friends out there in social media land - plus consistently participate in making their blogs filled out with comments - and have all the easy social bookmark buttons available at the bottom of very blog post, as well as on the top or whereever they can find them easily,  then you should be able to make a real resource site that draws attention.

Relevance is the next key word. Your site has to contribute to what's going on.

Timely and Consistent come up next. You are going to have to have regular new data, and this should really be of a social media value, meaning podcasting, video, unique images from Flickr, etc.  Definately Slideshare's. Lots of content, regularly posted and valuable.

One approach to this I've recently heard of is to post a snippet to your blog, which links you your website for the full data. So you keep the blog-readers happy and also get traffic to your web. RSS readers should be able to get the whole thing quickly.

The world has gone social - get on board...

So, the question, “Should you pay any attention to social bookmarking?” becomes “How do I take advantage of social bookmarking?” And the answer is, make your site worthy of bookmarking. Bookmarks appear to web crawlers as links to your page, and that makes them very valuable SEO tools. For some search engines, the more bookmarks that lead back to your site, the more “votes” you have on their popularity scale.

So, visit some of the social bookmarking sites on the Internet. Learn how they work. And set up your own account. Then, create your own list of links that includes your web sites, as well as other web sites that users might find relevant or useful.

On the web-site side, be sure to include the code snippets provided by social bookmarking organizations that allow users to tag your site easily. Then, maintain it all. Don’t just forget your account completely. If you do, eventually it will disappear and all the advantage of having one will go as well. Instead, continue using social bookmarking. Over time, the rewards will be increased traffic to your web site.

SEO & Marketing Tips

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Clues to Social Media Marketing

Here's the clue to marketing via social media:

Social media can help increase awareness by:

a. generating links to content, and typically the more links, and the more links from authority sites, the more people view the linked to author’s content as authoritative. At the same time, increased links lead to increased positioning in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and many people take high rankings in search engines to mean that the omnipotent Google itself has decided that the site is an authority. Don’t underestimate this ‘omnipotence power’! Search has higher conversion rates than most other media, which means it is viewed less as advertising and more as trusted referrals.

b. helping forge more online friends through outright networking, than necessarily via content. Once again, the more friends/fans someone has, the more they are viewed as an authority, and the more likely they are to have others view their work and musings as authoritative.

Using Social Media to Build Authority

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SEOmoz | Identifying the Linkerati

This nice post from way back in March 06, lays out some important clues as to who will be/is running and "guiding" our social media (more like trying to head cats - anyone who's worked with livestock knows that they lead better than they "herd".)

I don't hold this to be a sacrosanct list, nor are the importances the same they were in '06 - but this is a starting/jumping off point...

Oftentimes, when I describe the concept of linkbait to clients, it's critical to also describe those folks who are the targets of linkbait - I'll call them the "Linkerati". Let's explore the culture of these most valued of web-dwelling souls:
 * Bloggers - probably the most targetable and directly influenced folks, bloggers are an excellent source of traffic, links and the spread of your content's idea virus.
_ * Forum posters - although the links these folks put up don't often result in great search engine value, the traffic can be positive and the possibility that other likely linkers will come through to visit is also high.
_ * Web News Writers - a rare species, but exceptionally valuable, these folks control the news outlets on the web, including places like C|Net, Wired News, Yahoo! & MSN's online news portals, etc.
_ * Content Creators - These folks are building or beefing up websites and are seeking valuable resources to link out to. Most frequently, you'll find them linking to the sites they find valuable in the top 5-10 results at the search engines (another reason why "the rich get richer")
 _ * Resource Editors - Another rare breed, these folks work at government institutions, no-profit organizations and educational establishments and are looking to add content to their pages or directories.
_ * Social Taggers - These folks don't provide direct links, but if they and their friends at Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit & Furl love you, you're in for a real treat - thousands of visitors and the opportunity to be in front of hundreds of link-hungry bloggers.
_ * Viral Connectors - The viral crowd doesn't directly link to you, but by sending out a blast e-mail, posting to an IRC channel or telling their friends about your site over dinner, they're spreading the word. Some of them can be very powerful, and they're not demographically distinct - a well-connected grandmother may know people in the media, executives of businesses and other highly placed and valuable minds.
* Journalists - Online or offline creators of "news" content, these influencers are among the most valuable of all the linkerati. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or the Seattle Weekly all have reach and ability to create links to your site, although it's often in a second-hand fashion (as some sites don't directly link out, but many bloggers "pick up" news items and do).

Any others I'm forgetting about?

SEOmoz | Identifying the Linkerati

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