There is a growing buzz emerging around the value of marketing your online business using social networking sites – sites that create interest around a model of allowing users to contribute content such as Youtube, Digg, and Wikipedia – among many others and continuing to grow rapidly.
I myself have had good traffic results and sales from Myspace, YouTube – enough to certainly make this a critical focus for traffic generation in the future – I would suggest you look at these techniques in the same way.
While the rumors of Search engine optimization demise are exadurated, even some of the most seasoned SEO pro’s are admitting that there will be a slow decline in the effect of SEO mainly due to the rising impact of social networking sites.
Ok, so moving beyond the generalities – how specifically can you benefit from a traffic generation strategy based on social networking sites??
In this great posting over at SEOMOZ.org, some clear advantages are presented for generating traffic using social networking sites – specifically:
– Links from these sites back into your site provide quality backlinks
– So far, most of these sites have ranked very well and quickly on the search engines, so its a good way to gain fast and quality exposure for your ideas, brand and market presence.
– Use the popularity and infrastructure of these sites to help build a rapid build-up of additional, associated user content – could be comments, additional related contributions, etc… will allow even more exposure by leveraging these social networking sites
Finally, one last very important point…
All of the traffic generation approaches you use are useless if you…
1. Don’t have a solid product or service to market that secures customers for you that you can continue to market to as time goes on – of course my preference is information products as one foundation for your online business.
2. You must have a solid message to market match that converts your traffic into buying customers. This requires not only a solid market positioning, but also a strong sales letter and proven follow up system. We spend a great deal of effort talking about what you need to setup and how to do it over at the Information Marketer’s Zone.
IF you have these two pieces in place, then make sure you are seriously considering social network sites as part of your core marketing efforts for your online marketing business.
Jeff
I agree that using social network sites is a great way to improve on backlinks and can get your site crawled quick.
However tapping into these social networks can be a challenge for getting additional exposure to your business.
In fact most of the popular social network sites have specific terms and conditions posted prior to joining outlining that you cannot use their sites for “commercial endeavors”. Otherwise they have the right to delete your profile or outright ban you from their system.
Then of course there is the “black hat” tactics of using bot software or some underground posting machine.
But once you reach these people whats the likelihood that they are targeted leads and that you will convert them into sales or build a business relationship with them? The fact is most of the users are kids, I’m not saying all, but a very large portion of them are.
So is it better to struggle and hope you slip under the “radar” for untargeted leads that most likely won’t convert and also run the risk of getting banned or sued for violating terms??
Or would it be better to access a highly targeted social network where you will never be banned for listing your business details and promoting you products/services?
Agreed Rob – you have to be careful. Interestingly the move toward building a network around a topic that is much less focused on “selling” your product and more on building large networks is the direction most marketing campaigns are headed – whether Fortune 500 or internet marketing.
Not sure if you have come across Marlon’s latest Myspace campaign where he is building a very large network of like-minded online marketers – and since then the group has gotten much larger.
http://www.myspace.com/bluemarlon
Backlinks are nice, but more important from my perspective is to build the network – then send them to a page that is not blatently selling something – say something like a forum, content site, or blog where you can move them through your funnel.
Jeff
One point I would like to make about Social Networking. While it’s true that social networking sites are mostly kids, middle-aged geezers like myself are starting to show up on them. I wrote a book about my first year of college back in 1975 called Troutman Penthouse. Kind of a cross between Animal House and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I put a site on MySpace called Troutman Penthouse and lo and behold, I got an email from a woman who lived in the same dorm, the same year, and she remembered some of the guys I mentioned in my book. She is now a part of my network and she bought the book.
Admittedly, this isn’t a flood of people. However, that’s two 49 year olds that are on MySpace and the whole idea is that, she’ll eventually add to her group, they’ll eventually join my group…
Social Networking ain’t just for kids anymore…
Bob – right you are. My own father, who rarely uses the internet has found a group of Remote Control Airplane buddies online from all over North America on Myspace – for him, finally the internet has become useful.
They really like the ability to find a friend or two and within a few weeks have a few dozen.
From a marketing perspective, social networking obviously really benefits those who are passionate participants in their niche market. Its refreshing to see so much networking going on without the in-your-face commercialization.
Jeff