Browsing the topic Social Web
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It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of social marketing. But before I spawn a bunch of flame mails from those who don’t know me or my methods, let me be clear that I’m not about adding spam to the social networks by any means.
My goal is never to offend or upset users on any social network, that would simply be counter-productive and a useless waste of time for me or any marketer.
I’m trying to make sales with my marketing efforts, so what I really want to do is develop customer relationships and social networks are a fantastic place for doing this.
Which brings me to this often overlooked social marketing method that I wanted to talk about today.
I was talking with a client of my web services business the other day and the conversation moved over to how new customer acquisition was way down for her lately with the weak economy. Repeat customers are still coming in, but there’s been a definite drop in search traffic and new customers even though her search rankings have remained steady and even increased for a few keywords. The simple conclusion is there’s just less people searching for the luxury items she sells.
So, she needs to go out and find new customers for herself but has to struggle with that because income is down so she doesn’t have much of a budget for marketing.
It’s the catch-22 a lot of small businesses are facing right now. Revenue is down so they need more customers, but with revenue down they can’t afford to reach out to those potential new customers via traditional means.
I asked what her social media strategy was and she looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights.
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If you follow the news or blogs talking about social media and networking online then I’m sure you’ve read terms describing the interactions between web sites and visitors as “conversations” and “discussions”.
It stems from the idea that the web has evolved from an Information Superhighway full of billboards–those static sites of old which simply allowed the site owners and webmasters to blast their brand and pitch to the masses–into a two way medium where site visitors are no longer guests but rather participants.
The idea is nice and a bit lofty in some ways, but is it true?
I talk often about how social networks are a great source of quality traffic for my niche sites, and every time I do it seems someone is waiting in the wings to jump out and challenge my claims.
The most frequent opposition I hear is “that traffic is easy, but it’s garbage that won’t convert”.
Well, that’s absolutely true if you pull in the wrong people with your efforts, and unfortunately because it’s so easy to get an instant traffic bump of the wrong people and then assume all of the traffic from social networks will be equally poor this conclusion is prevalent among Internet marketers.
But here’s the deal, there are people of all ages and all walks of life on nearly every social network you can think of. From MySpace to Facebook, from YouTube to StumbleUpon… every demographic you can imagine is there.
How can having instant free access to virtually every known demographic be anything but good?
It’s not the traffic that’s bad, it’s the methods for targeting it and the content they target that traffic with that people get wrong.
Recently I’ve been following my online friend, Caroline Middlebrook’s free course on using StumbleUpon effectively that she calls Stumble Rush with a close eye because Caroline is someone who does very well with traffic from social networks.
She does well with it because she understands the networks and how they work, she understands the traffic and she doesn’t abuse either. She gives people what they want and in the way they want it served up.
If you doubt the effectiveness of social traffic, or you’re just starting to get your feet wet with social network marketing I’d suggest checking out Caroline’s free course. It’s focused on the StumbleUpon network, but much of what she’s included (that I’ve seen so far) can be applied across other networks too. In other words, once you understand the network and traffic at one place you’ll be able to see it properly in others too.
The free course is available at www.stumblerush.com, check it out, follow through with it and then come and tell me what you think of social traffic.
A friend of mine was just telling me about how many “goofballs” she’s blocked at FriendFeed because they post what she deems to be silly or insane comments to her remarks.
That’s all well and good if FriendFeed is a purely social venue for you, who wants to hang out with goofballs after all?
But, if you’re like my friend and do business on the web, and it doesn’t matter if you make products, sell products, or self-promote your services as an expert/consultant/etc. then blocking people seems like a stupid idea in my opinion.
Those “goofballs”, no matter how silly or insane their comments may seem at times, represent a portion of the audience or marketplace you’re always talking to, so listening is just polite and getting their input and gaining perspective on why they may view certain topics in certain ways (even if you disagree or think they’re nuts) is valuable data. If you block them you lose that.
To me, social venues like FriendFeed, Twitter and the like are fun and informative. I don’t just view them as tools for my business efforts because they’re not and that would be missing the big picture, but I also don’t overlook them as resources for my business either. And by resources I mean from seeing what people of all different perspectives have to say on various topics I gain insights and understandings that can be helpful to me.
So, don’t be so quick to block that next goofball, (s)he may be your next potential employer or customer.
“Web 2.0″, it’s a buzzword that’s been around for quite a while now and if you ask ten different people what it represents you’re likely to get ten different answers.
I’ve been working on the back end of a social project for local Pittsburgher’s recently and it forced me to really look deeply into the whole idea of social networking, content sharing, social graphing and so on. From this I think I’ve formed a clearer image for myself of just what Web 2.0 represents…at-least to me.
In my mind Web 2.0 is all about sharing. I’ve come to that conclusion after examining all of the various platforms and applications which get labeled as Web 2.0 and what they each mean or offer to the end user.
Sites like MySpace or Facebook are about sharing yourself with others. Either established friends or networking with new folks, you’re sharing a little bit of you on these social sites.
Sites like YouTube are for sharing your video media, sites like Flickr are for sharing your graphic media.
Sites like Houndbite are for sharing your audio, everything from prank voice messages to teleconferences.
Digg and the like are for sharing views on current events. StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and similar are for sharing your bookmarks and favorite web sites.
Then there’s blogs for sharing your knowledge, opinions or news. Micro blogs like Twitter for sharing your moments. Sites like Scribd for sharing your documents, and on and on…
Web 2.0 is all about sharing.
And all of these sites are really good at what they do. They make it super easy for anybody to share across them.
Not very long ago if you wanted to share your video with friends you had to go register a domain name somewhere, then purchase a hosting account. Learn how to create a HTML web page and learn how to embed and stream video through it. The process of putting a video online was costly and involved a lot of work.
Today, even if you don’t have an account with YouTube you can create one and have your video online for the world to see in minutes, absolutely free.
If you want to publish a picture to the web, you can take it with your cell phone, send it as an Image message and have it online in under a minute, absolutely free.
These services are great at what each of them does, and make sharing through them more than easy, they often make it kind of fun.
So, if Web 2.0 is all about sharing, and these Web 2.0 services are so good at what they do, why is it so complicated for me to share what I want with my friends?
Let me illustrate what I mean: let’s say I’m at an event and snap a picture with my phone, then upload it to Flickr. To tell my friends to go see it I then send out an SMS Text message to those in my phone’s address book, and a Tweet to Twitter for those who stay connected to me online only. Each of those 2 messages has to have a link in them telling my friends to go open a page on Flickr to see my picture.
Let’s sum that up, I had to upload to Flickr and send 2 messages out across 2 separate services, so that’s 3 steps I had to take.
My friends received either a text message or saw my Tweet via 1 service, then had to go to another service to view the picture. That’s an additional step they had to take.
A total of 4 steps just to share a single stinking picture!
I know, none of this is hard nor really time consuming and it may seem petty of me to complain about it, but if Web 2.0 is really about sharing then shouldn’t the process be as seamless as possible?
Where’s the one service that ties it all together?
I want to see something like this tied into OpenID, where you have a single identity online which you have absolute control over and manage (you can have multiple OpenID’s and I’m in favor of that, but the minimum is one). Unlike previous attempts at single login systems, OpenID really does leave the end user in complete control of their own information, no other person or company owns it but you, so I like that a lot and that’s one of the main reasons why I’d want to see this all tied into OpenID.
Nobody would own or control your information but you, and your OpenID page is your online presence where you could pull your shares from all of those services together and say “this is me online”.
I’m thinking of the ultimate personal Mash-up here. Where my friends and associates would always know to just visit www.Scott’s OpenID URL.nut to stay on top of my life and happenings, and I could do the same with theirs.
No more joining another network, filling out my background and interests then inputting all my friends again, blah blah blah hassles.
Eventually I believe all of the Web 2.0 sites will adopt the OpenID standard anyway. All of the big guns are behind it now so it’s really just a matter of time.
And already the technology exists for sharing our media and friend networking between services with RSS and FOAF, so why can’t it all be tied together? And why not do so with our OpenID’s? It could be done in a simple manner that wouldn’t add to or degrade the OpenID standards in any way.
Since OpenID’s are free and providers are going to compete with one another for user’s accounts based on offerings, this is where I see one of them being able to really jump ahead of the pack.
Hypothetically, if Verisign (or any provider) could offer to serve up a personal Mash-up of RSS and FOAF files from all of the Web 2.0 sites you belong to on your identity page I’d stop using my personal OpenID URL and join them in a second.
I also think this would be the best way to push these closed services which currently aren’t allowing their members to export or share their own information outside of the service (look out MS and FB) into being more open and social.
If social community “A” allows RSS syndication of friend lists and daily blogs to a personal identity page, but communities “B” and “C” don’t I bet you’ll see a speedy and mass shift of active members moving over to community “A”.
Right now we’re sharing a lot of ourselves online, but everything is scattered around and compartmentalized in an unordered and schitzo frantic manner that causes us to jump through unnecessary hoops at every turn.
There’s got to be an easier and better way to handle our online shares, and I’ve just laid out my thoughts. “We have the technology. We can build him faster… stronger…”
What do you think?
