Collective Thoughts

Social Media Marketing is Similar to a Fishing Tournament

Today I would like to address the similarities of how social media marketing is like a fishing tournament with an emphasis on the social voting sites. Many of you already know that I am somewhat of a fishing fanatic. Everything I do has some relation to catching the fish of my dreams!

First let’s look at who the players are and what they compared to, starting with the main prize winner. If you want fame and fortune in the fishing world you want to land the monster Blue Marlin. The winner of a Blue Marlin tournament will often bring TV and newspaper coverage; if you’re lucky enough to catch that tournament winner you will also qualify for many endorsements with offshore fishing equipment companies.

If you’re looking for the same effect online, what site do you want linking to you that compares to winning a Blue Marlin tournament? Digg! Getting an article on the home page of Digg can make your server scream just like the drag screams when line peels off your reel from an acrobatic Blue Marlin racing off toward the horizon. Everyday I see sites go down from the “Digg Effect.”

They’re many fish in the ocean that I can compare to social media related sites; of which we have the major offshore pelagic species. The “pelagic” species live in midwater or close to the surface and commonly the top of their food chain. They include swordfish, tuna, dolphin wahoo, swordfish and many others. These compare to the larger social media sites that are all the rage recently. These social media sites include Digg, Propeller, StumbleUpon and Mixx just to name a few.

Breaking down the list of species and what sites they compare to, starting with Digg. I like to compare Digg to Blue Marlin. Blue Marlin are often very elusive to reach, but worth the effort to seek out. One Digg home page post may bring ten’s of thousands of visitors to your site, but the main prize is the all important backlinks created when other bloggers review your post.

Next up is the newly updated Propeller.com. Until recently you could find them on the Netscape.com domain. They have been renamed their social news voting site to Propeller and are steadily creating a quality traffic stream. Propeller is the Sailfish of the internet. Sailfish are a highly prized fish that produce spectacular runs, just like Propeller can produce spikes in traffic which make them a popular social media site to marketers.

StumbleUpon is the Dolphin that are everywhere offshore. Dolphin, also known as Mahi Mahi, are favored by the weekend warriors because they can catch them with limited fishing experience. Dolphin grow fast but have a limited lifespan so they do not reach the size of Marlin or Sailfish. StumbleUpon creates sustained traffic for up to a week from just one good Stumble. Although this traffic is not as heavy as Digg StumbleUpon traffic is easier to achieve.

New to the scene is Mixx. Mixx is the Snapper of the internet. Mixx is a new social voting site that looks like it will grow into a valuable community with lots of potential. With a little research users can obtain some nice backlinks and targeted traffic. Snapper are one of my favorite species to fish for in a tournament. They can vary in size from small Mangrove Snapper to the very large Cubera snapper that can reach over 100 pounds. If you are looking for a site to market a variety of niches, Mixx is the one to use.

Once you see the similarities of how social media marketing is like a fishing tournament you can start looking at how to approach them to gain the most benefit. For the newbie to social media marketing I recommend you begin with the smaller social media sites. Once you are familiar with how they work you will progress up to StumbleUpon and then finally on to Digg.

Posted in Social Media | 14 Comments »

Gilded Crown of the Hypocritical Social Media Czar

<rant> The sheer propensity of mainstream humans to congregate in targetable, virulent, and roaming electronic social packs has resulted in spawning a beautiful new breed of working class public relations heroes: “The Social Media Czars.”

A social media Czar is a true, brilliant, and presumably selfless influencer whose authority was born out of peoples’ revolt, acute intuition, and holistic intent. Nobody questions him or her. Nobody would dare question them. The problem is that some (not all) social media power brokers are mob-bred mercenaries who are at least partially full of shit. (more…)

Posted in Rants, Social Media | 12 Comments »

10 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Sucks…

…or more importantly, the way most people seem to be going about it, including me at times.

Lets take a look at some of the things you need to think about before you even contemplate a social media marketing strategy.

1. Undefined Goals vs Specific Goals

   I would regard the following as fairly undefined goals:-

   • I want more customers for my business
   • I want to launch this new product with a boom!
   • I want more people to read my blog
   • I need more links to rank higher

   With social media marketing, whilst many items are difficult to determine, if you start out without specific goals, you may well be wasting resources.

   Here are some ideas for more specific goals:-

   • My business is mainly local, thus I need to target regional specific venues, or vertical venues that might broaden my reach locally.
   • My product has a niche focus thus I will target venues frequented by media within my niche aimed at bringing in 20 media mentions in the first wave of my viral marketing campaign.
   • I want Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Robert Scoble to subscribe to my blog – obviously I need to target people in my niche – specific linkerati and influencers.

Aim for targets within your reach, thus if you don’t have a strong enough hook, don’t try to land a big fish.

2. Random Activity vs Planned Method of Attack

Whilst it is possible to become a bridge between online social circles and to target multiple niches simultaneously, it is certainly a lot more time consuming to do successfully.

Defining a single core audience and becoming a thought leader in that single marketplace is ultimately a better long-term strategy than trying to become “all things to all men”.

3. Random Stats vs Accountable Statistical Measures

This one is a hard one to pin down – lots of aspects of social media are extremely difficult to track accurately, especially things like RSS Subscriptions or votes on social voting buttons.

Try monitoring things like open rate in your feed stats, compared to number of comments and the number of links your receive on your blog. Surprisingly they do not always correlate.

One of my most read posts in my RSS Feed on Andybeard.eu has but 2 comments – it is actually quite recent. Conversely my discussions relating to Google’s PageRank updates in October are poor performers in my RSS stats, but bring in a lot of links and traffic.

4. Random Content vs Planned Content Strategy

Plan your content strategy around your previously defined goals, not what is happening in the blogosphere. Look on discussions and events happening outside of your niches as opportunities if they are related to your goals, or can be leveraged.

5. Random Encounters vs Optimized Role Management

This is more on the corporate front. When you enter social media marketing channels, there will be a need for 2-way conversation – with customers and clients, members of the press and bloggers, raving fans and detractors in the public eye.
A decision needs to be made on how you will react to different instances, preferably in advance with multiple options and a “plan B”. People do go on holiday, and things will not always go as you plan.

6. Random Pathways vs Defined Traffic Funnel

Again an enigma – traffic will be coming in from multiple sources and often they will have different preferences in how they can be treated whilst visiting your website.
If you have ever done PPC advertising with multiple landing pages, think of how that can be applied to Social Media Marketing by offering a different landing page to traffic from different sources.

7. Traffic vs Targeted Traffic

Ultimately you are looking for people visiting your site who have some value, though that doesn’t necessarily mean direct financial value. A popular stumbler or digg user who likes your content but would not be looking to buy from you would be a good example, or possibly potential link partners in a similar niche.
Even people visiting your site who ultimately just click away on some advertising are valuable, not just with PayPerClick advertising but things like site sponsorships. Bringing value to your site sponsors is also important in brand recognition and traffic.

8. Topical Linking vs Strategic Linking
   • Link to a regular reader in your niche who doesn’t get much traffic
   • Link to someone in your niche who has never read your blog
   • Promote someone’s niche ranking list to get included
   • Included someone in your niche ranking list to get traffic
   • Link to like minded dofollow blogs because you get a link from their trackbacks

Think out of the box with your linking

Use tools such as Technorati, Google Blogsearch, Techmeme & Megite to your advantage – use them strategically.

9. Reporter vs News Epicentre

If there is a large conversation about a topic related to your niche, do you want to be a spoke on the wheel or the hub of conversation?
Whilst it might not initially be possible to become a source for explosive stories, it is possible to become an acknowledge filter of the conversation.
Services such as Techmeme and Megite allow you to identify hubs of conversation, and also to identify other bloggers who are also hubs of the conversation. Hubs of conversation are more likely to write followup articles on the same subject, and in general are link friendly, thus if you offer insight along with links to other sources of information, the chances of being brought into the conversation increase.
Techmeme is itself a hub, but has the disadvantage of not offering commentary, and does get criticism for not covering niche bloggers as well as a human.

10. Self Orientated vs Customer Orientated

Social media is just that… social – if your motive for getting involved is purely for personal gain, you are wasting your time.
Social media site users are smart, and opinionated. If they feel they are being manipulated or gamed, they are going to call you out on it, and there can be negative ramifications.
The best way to demonstrate to future subscribers and hopefully customers why they should be reading your content, or doing business with you is to interact with them.
In some lines of work you must be prepared to “move the free line” thus you will be giving far more of yourself than you might initially receive in return.

I will be addressing each of these topics in much greater detail in future posts, but I would love to ask you which aspect of your social media marketing strategy you find most difficult to pin down?

Posted in Social Media | 68 Comments »