By Jack Humphrey
It is really hard to convey how different marketing on the web is today compared to years ago.
If you weren't online "back in the day" having to wait for Google for months(instead of as little as moments today)to index and rank pages, you just don't know.
If you have no idea that we used to have to practically live in forums to get a few visitors here and there as our only social marketing outlet, you just don't know how great marketing on the web today is.
If you don't remember a time when the only way to get a massive amount of traffic to a new site or product was through joint ventures with people with huge lists (like that's going to happen for the average site owner anyway) you don't have the trail of tears behind you to appreciate how easy marketing today is.
If you've never paid through the nose for banner advertising (before Adwords) which, more often than not, produced nothing more than a hole in your wallet, then you just can't understand how cool the new web is.
Free traffic is one thing. Free traffic while building extreme customer loyalty through community building and interaction is a whole different ball game.
With a 10 year perspective on web marketing, all I can tell you is that social marketing is the coolest way I've ever generated traffic, links, and search engine rankings for thousands of keywords.
Virtually no one, including the supposed experts in social marketing, gets where the web is really going and how you can pull traffic, sales, and solid, measurable return on investment out of the social web.
Many SEOs are fighting the change tooth and nail by asking "Where's the ROI?" "Where are the metrics of social marketing?"
They just don't get it. When web 2.0 started the SEO industry had honed a system of measurements that suited their brand of marketing. They learned how to pull out impressive stats to prove they were worth hiring. They learned how to track the effectiveness of link building and search engine positioning with hard numbers.
It took them a decade to get good at it. And because of their sacrifice, they are not willing to throw away search marketing as the first goal of a marketing campaign and replace it with social marketing where search engine rankings are simply a byproduct of good marketing.
Since they don't understand how the social web really works, they've no idea what to do with the measurement tools they created to make them look like "kind of a big deal" for the last 10 years.
Now all of the sudden they aren't such a big deal. The web is passing them by and they want back in the spotlight so bad that they are adding social marketing services to their lineup of products that are nothing more than superficial additions with no substance whatsoever for the consumer.
They're lost. And so are marketers. No one seems to know how to measure the effectiveness of going social. No one seems to know how to properly BE social in order to fit in with the crowd and market at the same time.
"Marketer" and "SEO" are synonymous with "spammer" on social networks because of the massive, collective misunderstanding of what social media is, how it works, and how a precious few are using it to legitimately grow relationships, branding, and profits all while playing by the rules.
This confusion has been voiced by the loudest marketing voices on their blogs and readers take this confusion to mean that social marketing isn't viable.
I say they just haven't run into the right people yet.
People who are making an absolute killing in new subscribers, members, customers, rankings, and attention are using the same social media sites as the people who are convinced the world would be a better place if we could all just go back to "in your face" marketing and search engine manipulation.
About the author:
Jack Humphrey teaches social marketing from beginner through pro levels. To learn more about his tactics at www.socialpowerlinking.com. from http://www.FreeArticlesAndContent.com
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Social Media Marketing Part Two
By Jack Humphrey
Since 2006 I've been teaching students and clients how to fit in socially on the web. How to market without marketing. How to gain attention that would formerly cost tens of thousands of dollars in paid advertising without lifting a penny.
I've been telling people that they must first become a true member of social sites with their ideal customers as fellow members before they storm the gates with their direct, pushy sales letters.
There is a way to make social marketing pay off big and the key to it all is fitting in. Just like you did in high school when you wanted to be in a "group" whether it was the rat-toting DND nerds or the cheerleading squad.
A cheerleader wouldn't be welcome in the DND group if she waltzed in with her pom poms and uniform. But a cheerleader could dress down and buy a rat and some funky dice and get in without a second look.
Then, if she wanted to change attitudes within the DND group about the snarky, stuck up cheerleading squad (her product) she would be listened to and taken more seriously as part of the group than as "one of them."
The key is to not be seen as "one of those" marketers. You are, first and foremost, a person with interests, hobbies, a personal history, and hopefully something more to say than "my weight loss pills will have you looking like Hillary Duff in just 6 weeks!"
There's much more to social marketing than just fitting in, but that's the core value a professional social marketer adheres to above all else.
We don't sell weight loss pills. We do stories on people who are fit, attractive, happy and healthy. We circulate among the unfit and unhealthy and give them positive stories of success over disease. They then very naturally ask us how this person or that person accomplished such great things and we point them in the right direction.
And since we have a relationship with them, we don't point them to weight loss pills and other snake oil that doesn't work. We point them to things we'd recommend to people who can come back and find us and flame us if we steer them wrong. Social marketing means being genuine in every part of your business because you can be called on your bullshit and completely ruined by the masses if you're caught screwing people over.
That's why many marketers are up in arms over social marketing. They see that the entire process they are using to make money online is seen as evil to the people and they have no idea how to turn it around and make an honest, and far more lucrative, living on today's web by being genuine and selling things that actually help people.
Take it from someone who has done it all over the last decade. Social marketing, once you catch the bug and learn to do it right, is the most freeing feeling a marketer can have on the web. It is very Zen-like. Especially for marketers who've had to do marketing the old fashioned way with traditional SEO and in-your-face direct sales.
There's absolutely nothing like it out there. Its measurable (if you know what to measure), highly effective, and exacts far less pressure on both the marketer and the consumer. And what it creates is bigger profits, more interest, and the kind of attention, branding, and respect you simply cannot get with any other form of marketing.
About the author:
Jack Humphrey teaches social marketing from beginner through pro levels. To learn more about his tactics at www.socialpowerlinking.com. from http://www.FreeArticlesAndContent.com
Since 2006 I've been teaching students and clients how to fit in socially on the web. How to market without marketing. How to gain attention that would formerly cost tens of thousands of dollars in paid advertising without lifting a penny.
I've been telling people that they must first become a true member of social sites with their ideal customers as fellow members before they storm the gates with their direct, pushy sales letters.
There is a way to make social marketing pay off big and the key to it all is fitting in. Just like you did in high school when you wanted to be in a "group" whether it was the rat-toting DND nerds or the cheerleading squad.
A cheerleader wouldn't be welcome in the DND group if she waltzed in with her pom poms and uniform. But a cheerleader could dress down and buy a rat and some funky dice and get in without a second look.
Then, if she wanted to change attitudes within the DND group about the snarky, stuck up cheerleading squad (her product) she would be listened to and taken more seriously as part of the group than as "one of them."
The key is to not be seen as "one of those" marketers. You are, first and foremost, a person with interests, hobbies, a personal history, and hopefully something more to say than "my weight loss pills will have you looking like Hillary Duff in just 6 weeks!"
There's much more to social marketing than just fitting in, but that's the core value a professional social marketer adheres to above all else.
We don't sell weight loss pills. We do stories on people who are fit, attractive, happy and healthy. We circulate among the unfit and unhealthy and give them positive stories of success over disease. They then very naturally ask us how this person or that person accomplished such great things and we point them in the right direction.
And since we have a relationship with them, we don't point them to weight loss pills and other snake oil that doesn't work. We point them to things we'd recommend to people who can come back and find us and flame us if we steer them wrong. Social marketing means being genuine in every part of your business because you can be called on your bullshit and completely ruined by the masses if you're caught screwing people over.
That's why many marketers are up in arms over social marketing. They see that the entire process they are using to make money online is seen as evil to the people and they have no idea how to turn it around and make an honest, and far more lucrative, living on today's web by being genuine and selling things that actually help people.
Take it from someone who has done it all over the last decade. Social marketing, once you catch the bug and learn to do it right, is the most freeing feeling a marketer can have on the web. It is very Zen-like. Especially for marketers who've had to do marketing the old fashioned way with traditional SEO and in-your-face direct sales.
There's absolutely nothing like it out there. Its measurable (if you know what to measure), highly effective, and exacts far less pressure on both the marketer and the consumer. And what it creates is bigger profits, more interest, and the kind of attention, branding, and respect you simply cannot get with any other form of marketing.
About the author:
Jack Humphrey teaches social marketing from beginner through pro levels. To learn more about his tactics at www.socialpowerlinking.com. from http://www.FreeArticlesAndContent.com
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