Archive for Social Media
8 Rules of Social Media Marketing
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The idea behind the social media marketing is quite simple. It executes the changes to the website thus it would be linked more easily, more visible in the searches and also quite frequently get included in various posts on the blogs. It helps us to promote business to the prospective customer directly.
1. Increase the link-ability
2. Make bookmarking and tagging easy
3. Reward the inbound links
4. Social Media Content
5. Give value to the users
6. Reward the valuable users
7. Participate in Social Media Conversations
8. How to target the audience
Another great resource for social media articles.
The DEMO Experience and the 3 reasons there aren’t many SEO experts
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I made it to Palm Desert with little fanfare in anticipation of DEMO Spring 2010. During the flight from SFO to LAX I was half in and out of sleep with moderate neck-lash because I don’t own a neck inner tube (amazing invention that someone no-doubt ably got rich with – and good on ‘em too).
During my head-bobbing experience which wouldn’t allow me to sleep much I was thinking about my last blog post regarding Social Media Experts/Gurus and how they seem to be popping up everywhere. The thought that kept me ruminating on the post was that there aren’t many professed SEO experts or guru’s that have only been around a few months. Why?, Check it out;
- SEO isn’t something you learn overnight. SEO is continually changing and it’s not something you “jump into” and call yourself an expert. There is On-Page SEO (an art in itself) with no-follow rules, internal page linking strategies and all of the associated tags. There is Off-Page SEO (which includes Social Media) requiring back link strategies, bookmarking, authority acquisition and content development strategies to support your On-page SEO. Most importantly, you actually have to prove that you can get results.
- SEO is more science than marketing. You can’t wave your arms extolling the benefits of transparency with fancy terms such as “media assets can be created on various platforms to increase your reach and interaction”. SEO is working with raw data, interpreting the effects, testing and implementing additional strategies to get results – lather, rinse, repeat. Social Media will be a contributor, however, I haven’t seen Social Media lower an average site Alexa rank 25,000 spots within a couple of months.
- SEO isn’t for the weak or timid. You charge a client money and you better get results – more traffic, more visitors, more conversions and have the numbers and knowledge to back it up and adjust to get predictable outcomes. Social Media is engagement and testing messages but rarely do you see intensive backend tracking for social media campaigns – unless they were truly a social media expert/guru.
Tracking and numbers are everything and social media, to me, is very much a part of the overall plan for a company or a client; however, it must be measured for it’s overall effectiveness based on the client’s needs, products and audience.
I think a better term for anyone in the industry would be to stay away from being a Social Media Expert/Guru and become an Online Marketing student working to become an expert. Learn all of the various ways to get a client tangible results that bring traffic, conversions and revenues that can be tracked back to all of your online campaigns. Learn how to adjust a complete campaign not just one aspect of the campaign (i.e. Social Media). Those who take this approach and get extremely good at it will be the ones who will be revered as the complete package in the online world and will never have to look for work even in a recession.
A good article by Shoemoney – SEO vs Social Media
Oh yeah, and I will blog about DEMO too which was an incredible experience!
Another 9 month “Social Media Guru”
Posted by: | CommentsUPDATE 3/20/10: This post “struck a cord”, and not a good one, with some folks. I stumbled across a post on Michael Brito’s Facebook wall that spoke to the exact sentiment I had in my post. Ok, albeit it was more diplomatic – See Aaron Lewis’ blog link (and go check out his blog click here) and video at the bottom of this post to get the skinny…..
I attended Alex Mandossian’s reunion this past weekend at the Marriott in Millbrae.
A great event and Alex is a fantastic speaker. There were numerous take-aways such as productivity, mental strengthening and much more. The disappointment I experienced was from a standpoint of expectation. I thought there would be much more about the “nuts and bolts” and how to get various aspects of systems in place to get traction in your business and on the internet.
I do agree though, you need the mental piece because without it, the “how-to’s” don’t matter.
The experiential nature of the event was good, however, it was very much geared to gratuitous networking and self-promotion. Not that I’m opposed to it, but being a first timer I was a little taken aback and definitely not prepared to have 150 business cards to hand out and have my “pitch” honed to attract buyers (previous attendees were well prepared with special cards designed for the event).
The most interesting thing I am finding at events, like Alex’s, today are the number of “social media experts”. I’m tired of hearing of another social media guru. Anyone who has been on Facebook for the past 9 months is now a social media expert, anyone who has been able to build their way to a 10,000 or greater following on twitter (which can be gamed extensively) is now a social media guru, anyone who lost their job in the past year is now a social media expert/guru.
I’m excited about the future of where we are going but social media experts should understand that social media is more than just Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and various other places online to attack users with bad marketing messages. I recently met a 9 month social media guru who was giving talks, booking speaking engagements and teaching groups how to “find their voice” online and in social media circles without having any idea of how to actually engage their audience to get traction and achieve results.
Social media is going to need some major overhauls to clear out the experts, gurus and riff-raff that might know something about social media but have no idea how to develop an overall online strategy to use all aspects of marketing, message development, traffic development, on-page/off-page SEO, website development and a comprehensive plan to fully engage their audience beyond just social media. Social media is a place for transparent, interactive and engaging relationships and conversations but it should not be treated as the final frontier for monetization.
I look forward to the day I can go to a seminar and the social media guru’s I meet are really social media guru’s.
Here is a link to Aaron’s blog/video post – http://www.theaaronist.com/regarding-social-media-experts/
And here is the video – good stuff!!
