guide to social networking misconceptions
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Sales Velocity Partners www.salesvelocitypartners.com
Guide to Social Networking Misconceptions.
Guide To Social Networking Misconceptions.
Myth 1: Everybody is on social media.
Why it’s perpetuated: Experts will show you pretty statistics on how more than 80% of
people heard of a product through social media. This is a scare tactic to get you to hire
them. The truth is social media is not on every one’s radar–not yet, anyway.
Action plan: Even if your target demographic is not on social media, you can harness the
power of the Web by making it easier for search engines like Google to find your website
(known by geeks in the trade as “search engine optimization”). This is not hard, trust me,
but the approach takes some time to gain momentum.
First step: Pepper your website with well-trafficked key words. How to pick them? Go to
the Google Keyword Tool and enter about 20 or more generic terms that relate or
describe your product or service; look for relevant terms that get several thousand
monthly queries. But it’s not enough to find popular key words. You have to find ones
where your site can compete–that means finding words that, if typed into Google, will
spit out a page of results where your site ranks nice and high.
The key to ranking high on a search results page is to have as many high-quality sites as
possible pointing links to your site (this goes for articles, information graphics and other
forms of content, too). A high quality website is chocked with content and follows
Google’s Quality Guidelines. How many high-quality links do you have to attract?
There’s an easy way to get a feel for that number. For each key word, copy web
addresses of the top sites that pop up in Google when you search on those key words.
Then paste each of those web addresses into www.MajesticSEO.com and click “Explore.”
Instantly you will see how many other sites are pointing to each particular web site.
If the first 10 addresses you chose are each attracting tens of thousands of links, it’s
probably not worth your time to try to compete on that particular key word to get quick
exposure on search engines. However, if the third or fourth site down from the top of the
search results page is only attracting a few hundred links, you just might be able to hoist
yourself onto that top search page in a few months or less with some concerted effort.
How to increase the number of links to your site quickly? Start by courting relevant
bloggers. Find the most active scribes by searching relevant keywords on Google
Blogsearch. Send each blogger a short, not-too-sanctimonious email saying you’re a fan
of their work, and that you might have some content you think their readers would really
enjoy; include a link to your site in the message. Interested bloggers will refer to your
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Guide to Social Networking Misconceptions.
link in their articles, making it more popular in the eyes of the search engines. See? Not
so hard.
Myth 2: Social news aggregators–like Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit–are dead.
Why it’s perpetuated: Simple: These sites don’t get the same level of mainstream media
coverage that Facebook and Twitter do. Meanwhile Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit are
still great at spurring viral distribution of content. Some of the most shared content on
Facebook and Twitter is initially submitted to these social aggregation platforms. In fact,
according to StatCounter, a web-analytics provider, Stumbleupon is the social media site
that drives most online traffic in the U.S. (Believe it or not, over the course of a few days I
drove 1.3 million page views to a micro-website by initiating the push on Digg and
Stumbleupon. Upon getting posted on the popular sections of those sites, and getting
linked from mainstream websites like USA Today, the mircosite’s address was posted on
Twitter by Ashton Kutcher, which kicked in another 19,000 views.)
Action plan: Before you can take advantage of social news aggregators, first you have to
ingratiate yourself with other users. It’s an etiquette thing. Start by registering for an
account on Digg.com, if you don’t have one already. (What I’m going to say now may
sound self-serving, but the purpose of this is to demonstrate how this mechanism
works.) Write on my Facebook wall asking me to invite you into our Digg groups where
we vote on each other’s Digg links. (To be clear, all of this interaction happens within the
Facebook environment.)
Once you are in the Digg group, vote on the articles and other content that Digg users
submitted. Each time you “digg” a submission, all Digg users can see that you voted for
it. The more you vote, the more likely the content you submit later will be voted on. Any
article you submit to Digg should have a compelling title and description. (For a crash
course on social-news writing, check out 4 Ways I Compose Posts to Drive Millions of
Pageviews to Blogs through Digg.) Then share the link to your submission within the
Digg group. With any luck, the article will rack up votes and increase the chance that it
gets promoted to the “popular” section of the Digg.com platform called the Top News
page, which is seen by a big chunk of Digg’s 6 million users.
Myth 3: You can’t do it all in-house.
Why it’s perpetuated: Consultants make it appear that campaigns launched on social
media networks are the product of occult practices involving three blind witches that
play hot potato with one eye ball they all share to see. If they show you how you could
do much of it yourself, why would you hire them?
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Guide to Social Networking Misconceptions.
Action plan: Go to Google and type the following keywords: [your product or industry
keyword] social network (or instead of social network, type social media or forum). Study
the sites you find. See how many people are registered, are currently online or are
replying to conversation threads. Read and gauge the quality of the conversations. (In
your queries, you may also run into articles linking to social networks focused on your
area of expertise.) What types of articles and discussion threads garner the most
responses? Post a question to the forum or article, and use the responses to create
useful content for that community. Link not just to your own website, but also to sites of
the people or entities who inspired your own posts. Give others credit and they will be
more likely to thank you by sharing your content with their networks.
Myth 4: You have to spend hours a day on Twitter.
Why it’s perpetuated: Thousands of Tweets may spark a fun conversation with hundreds
of people, but your wallet may not be fatter for the effort. You can do better. I’ve been
able to meet people who have helped me land contracts; I’ve also been given free tickets
to events by tweeting @reply messages during Twitter chat sessions for 30 minutes to an
hour a day.
Action plan: Send your customers, your friends on Facebook, your Twitter followers, each
person on your email list, and anybody else interested in content involving your industry
a message inviting them to participate on a weekly chat on Twitter. (A tweet chat is a
series of messages directed at each other that are assigned a hashtag–a keyword that is
labeled with a # sign.) Have informative tweets ready to post with your hashtag during
the chat. End the tweet chat with some type of call-to-action–like inviting participants to
register for your email newsletter, or to visit your store or web site to try out a product or
service that you tweeted about during the chat.
Myth 5: Social media is solely a broadcast channel.
Why it’s perpetuated: At first blush, social media feels like a cheap and powerful
bullhorn. It is, but don’t be surprised when blasting messages in one direction–from you
to them–only generates a trickle of traffic. The trick is to get people involved, and keep
them involved.
Action plan: Since the dawn of retail, sweepstakes and giveaways have been a great
hook. For ideas, query [your social network of choice] + contest or sweepstakes or
giveaways on Google. Maybe you’ll read about how a computer store sold more laptops
by holding a contest for free iPads that required people to make their entry on the
store’s Facebook page. Formulate a similar marketing campaign that fits your niche. If
you have a bakery, you could hold a contest for free customized birthday cakes by
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Guide to Social Networking Misconceptions.
requiring participants to enter on your Facebook page. Voila! Not only have you scared
up more customers, you also have an instant focus group to test your cakes and other
goodies.
Myth 6: Social media can replace your website.
Why it’s perpetuated: Social media is the new shiny red apple. It’s not going anywhere,
but neither are web sites.
Action plan: Email remains one of the most powerful ways to prospect for business.
Although you can capture email addresses on social media networks, it is a lot easier to
simply add a form at multiple locations on your web site. Here’s how: Sign up for
Aweber, an email marketing service that helps you collect email addresses and blast
messages as often as you like. The basic plan costs $20 a month. Create incentives—any
kind of premium content—that you can give to email subscribers if they recruit
customers for you using their social networks. (Distribute the incentives using a free tool
like CloudFlood.) Offer new recruits the same offer, and so on. Do this right and a
virtuous cycle kicks in, expanding your email list very quickly.
Myth 7: You can’t measure your return on investment in social media.
Why it’s perpetuated: Many social media experts know how to use social networks to
socialize, but they have little to no marketing expertise–meaning they don’t know how to
turn all that socializing into cash flow.
Action plan: Track where your users are coming from; identify the actions they took on
your site (making purchases, viewing a 10-page slide show, whatever); calculate the value
of that activity. There are a few steps along the way, but they aren’t difficult, so stay with
me.
Say you want to track subscribers to your company-email list who came through social-
media channels. First, build a “Thank you for subscribing” page on your site that people
see after signing up to your email list. Then set up that page as a “Goal” in Google
Analytics (follow the instructions in Google’s Conversion University). That will let you see
the proportion of subscribers who signed up after clicking a link to your site that was
posted on a social network.
Next, also define as a second Goal the confirmation page that loads after someone buys
one of your products. The next time you link to a specific promotion in an email blast,
add tracking tags to that link using the Google Analytics URL Builder. Now, if a
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Guide to Social Networking Misconceptions.
subscriber hits the purchase-confirmation page anytime after clicking that promotional
link, you will see that tracked link as the referring source.
To calculate the return, take what you made from your list and divide by the number of
subscribers gathered through social networks. I have worked with retailers who sold
products to 10% of their email subscribers through their most effective campaigns. (By
contrast, many direct-mail campaigns yield response rates of less than 1%.) Slick, right?
Myth 8: Blogging is a waste of time.
Why it’s perpetuated: There is so much noise on the internet, why bother blogging?
Here’s why: It gives you a voice and at least a modicum of control of your brand–
especially if you really have something important to say and you say it on a consistent
basis.
Action plan: Blogging is very easy. Download the WordPress blogging platform from
WordPress.org. Install it on your server into a new directory (if you have Fantastico on
your web server, it will load up like butter). Next, find some of the best questions your
prospects have posed and write an article that responds to their inquiries. Add a
question at the end encouraging people to post their comments. Share the content with
your prospects, customers and on the social networks, and ask others in your network to
share the content. Repeat.
Myth 9: You have to be on every social network.
Why it’s perpetuated: Peer pressure. When no one knows what they’re supposed to do;
they feel the need to do everything.
Action plan: Focus your efforts. Visit search.twitter.com or Facebook and type targeted
key words into the search fields. The words should describe services, products, or other
topics in which your company is involved. Study the web pages that appear in the
search results. Do the people you see on these pages resemble your target community?
Are these the type of people who buy your products or services? If so, interact with
them; if not, don’t. Milling around other networks just for the sake of it is a waste of time.
Myth 10: Social media will replace real-life networking.
Why it’s perpetuated: New stuff keeps coming out. The Google+ Hangout feature allows
you to hold a video chat with up to 10 people. The more new gadgets there are to play
with, the more time people will spend playing with them, and the less time they will
spend talking to each other. Or least that’s how it might seem.
Sales Velocity Partners www.salesvelocitypartners.com
Guide to Social Networking Misconceptions.
Action plan: People–friends, customers, vendors–still crave face-to-face communication.
Get out and meet them, and use social media to help you do it. Example: Log on to
LinkedIn Answers and ask your network for suggestions for scintillating discussion topics
involving your industry. (It may take a week to gin up enough good responses.) Based on
that information, schedule a gathering to chat about those topics, drink a few beers or
hopefully both. (Meetup.com makes it easy to organize these shindigs.) Invite your
prospects, customers, and people on your email lists; have them test your product for
free. The goodwill will go a long way.
Neal Rodriguez is an online marketer that vlogs on how businesses can use social media
marketing to meet operational and profit objectives.