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Social Media And The Motrin Controversy: Or, Will Social Media Kill Advertising Creativity?

By Catharine P. Taylor in Featured

PERHAPS, EVEN IF YOUR BRAND preference is Advil, you spent the early part of the week mired in the Motrin controversy. If not, I’ll recap, and then we can turn to my big question of the day.

So, Motrin releases an ad online, that puts the “me” back in Mom-my by explaining, in a tone smothered in snark, that carrying your baby can hurt, and that Motrin can help with the pain you’re feeling. (If you want to see it, click here. Take note of the unforgettable term “baby-wearing.”)

President-Elect Obama, Don’t Let Your Social Media Channels Grow Cold

By Catharine P. Taylor in Featured

Dust has settled on last week’s historic election, it’s time to contemplate how president-elect Obama will translate the communications channels he honed during the campaign into ones that serve his presidency.

I’m certainly not the first person to write about this, but as the alleged Social Media Insider, I’m fascinated by how he might use social media going forward.

Drinking In The New Pepsi’s Social Media Strategy

By Catharine P. Taylor in Featured

EVER SINCE THE FAILURE OF new Coke several decades ago, I’ve been fascinated by how much time and brain cells people are willing to invest in their choice of soda.

So my curiosity was piqued when Edelman’s Steve Rubel let it be known to his Twitter-verse the other day that one of the agency’s clients, Pepsi, had set up a room on Friendfeed called the Pepsi Cooler, which asks consumers to “Join us as together we shape Pepsi’s social media future. We’re changing the way we do things and want to have you along for the ride.” (Friendfeed, if you’re not familiar, is a social site that aggregates members’ social activity into a feed, so, for example, one’s tweets, blog postings and so forth can all be accessed in one place.)

Here’s your best chance to get them to buy from your website. It’s Social Media Marketing.

By Dan Dimit in Featured

We’re going to share your best chance of people visiting your site and eventually buying from you. What do think the chances are that people that click off your site will return at all…let alone make a purchase? Not good at all.

Need More Prospects For Your Business? Try This Social Method

By Jaz Lai in Featured

Anyone who claims to surf the net all the time but do not know what social networking is all about is probably living in a cave somewhere. The Internet has completely changed how network marketing is done and you will need to learn to adapt to the latest trends before your prospecting methods become obsolete.

If you seriously desire to build a huge network marketing downline, there is no reason why you should not harness the power of Facebook for your network marketing business because Facebook is ranked as one of the most visited sites on the planet!

Here are a couple of benefits for using Facebook:

• You get the pleasure of adding your targeted friends (and prospects) to your profile. The people you add might reciprocate because Facebook sends an email notifying that you’ve added them to your list of friends. However, don’t just add any friends… always target friends in a network marketing group, home business group, networking group and so on. These people are your target market and you should add these people into your sales funnel.
• You can also create your own Facebook group and invite your new friends to join. You can call that group an ‘Network Marketing Millionaire’ or ‘Online MLM’ group to get like minded people to participate. You can use this group that I created as an example: <a href=” http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19217593800” target=”_blank”></b>Internet Network Marketing</b></a>
• Besides just creating a group, it will be to your advantage if you create a weekly plan and post useful content to your group. You can contribute stuff like articles, blog posts and even videos! You aim is to product value so that they will sign up for your own network marketing newsletter online,
• Send email blasts or broadcasts to your network marketing group and make sure you give them quality content so that they will trust you and treat you as their leader. Once you have developed sufficient trust and respect from your group, you may safely recommend your business opportunity to them. Do it well and they may even beg you to sign them up without you selling them anything at all!
• You can also broadcast your content on your friend’s Funwall every few days or weekly.
• Help people, don’t ask for help immediately. When people see you as a person who is willing to go out of their way to help others, they will believe in you and take your recommendations seriously.

Facebook is definitely the way to keep in touch with your prospects and you can drive tons of traffic to your website even when people locate your site through your personal profile page.

Beside Facebook, another one of my favourite social networking site is MySpace.

MySpace offers an interactive environment facilitating a completely user-generated network of friends, personal profiles and links to blogs, groups, photos, music and videos - the perfect ground for a network marketing business!

Gone are the days of cold calling telephone books and genealogy lists. By harnessing the power of MySpace, you can drive lots of targeted traffic to your lead capture pages and build your network marketing downline very quickly.

Here are a couple of tips that you can use to drive traffic using MySpace:

• Your profile is your greatest weapon. You must create a profile that completely stands out. Don’t hard sell others but rather offer value and covey to prospects from your profile that you are a leader… someone that is important.
• Use MySpace to add as many friends as you can to your profile. You can never have too little friends. Another advantage of adding many friends is that people who view your profile will be able to perceive you as a very popular person (because you have lots of friends).
• Create your own group in MySpace. You can use it to start a network marketing community on the Internet. Network marketing is all about interacting with others and if you can use this strategy well, you can connect with people from all walks of life (you might not even meet these people through conventional means).
• Invite targeted friends - especially those who are interested in network marketing! You want to create a targeted group of friends within your network. But make sure you don’t jump the gun and offer your business opportunity to them right away. Make sure you build the relationship first.
• Post useful content to your network marketing group. Make sure you provide value to others and they will respect you as an authority on network marketing.
• You can also encourage your group members to join in the fun and contribute content. That way, your network marketing community learns to interact with one another and you don’t have to post so much content.
• Join other people’s groups and make friends with them
• Learn to use bulletin boards. When you have new content or products recommend, you can blast out the messages to the bulletin and your friends and group members will be able to view them.
• Always stay consistent and persistent. Building a network takes time and you cannot expect to get results overnight.

Both Facebook and MySpace are one of the best places to network and build your network marketing business. Learn to make friends and build a community and you will drive lots of traffic to your network marketing sites.

Jaz Lai is an online prospecting expert. Download your free white paper and audio on how to use the internet to Double or Triple your organization within the next 30 days. Available for the next 24 hours only, click below for instant access :

http://www.HowToNetworkMarketing.com

Yoo-hoo, Young People: Carriers Add Social Net Hubs

By Mark Walsh in Featured

AT&T and Verizon Wireless both announced new mobile social networking offerings this week as part of efforts to woo young consumers and boost mobile Web use.

The carriers’ new applications–powered by mobile media company Intercasting Corp.–give users a single source for accessing multiple social networks including MySpace. While both use the same platform, Verizon’s service is branded as “SocialLife,” and costs $1.49 a month, and AT&T’s, dubbed “My Communities,” is priced at $2.99 monthly.

How to Target the Right Social Media Sites

By Darren Rowse in Featured

Most bloggers recognize the incredible potential that exists with social media marketing. Many want to maximize the traffic they receive from social media, so they add a Digg button to their posts or sign up for an account at StumbleUpon. What too many bloggers overlook is that Digg and StumbleUpon are just two of the hundreds of available options, and they may not be the best fit for every blogger.

In order to get the most out of social media traffic you’ll need to put some thought into choosing the social media sites that are the most appropriate for your blog and your audience. Unfortunately, none of us have the time to be an active member on more than just a few social media sites, and trying to target too many of them by adding countless buttons and widgets to your blog will only make it cluttered and ineffective.

Among social media sites there is a huge variety of audiences, types of content that is popular, amount of traffic that is sent to popular links, etc. I think most of us would agree that quality traffic is more important than quantity of traffic. The quality of traffic that you receive from social media will be largely dependent upon finding the right fit for your blog. You’ve probably read that social media traffic is very low quality. From my experience, this is not always the case. Traffic from poorly-targeted social media sites will be low quality.

When you are evaluating social media sites pay attention to these factors. Find 2 or 3 that are a good fit for you and get the most you can out of them.

What type of audience? General or niche?

With so many different social media sites out there, the audience will vary greatly from one to another. Obviously, there are a number of general news sites, like Digg, but there are a growing number of excellent sites that focus on a specific niche. These sites typically will not send as much traffic as the major players, but the traffic will generally be of much higher quality and greater networking opportunities may be possible. If you’re looking for niche social media sites in your industry, check the categorized list of social media sites that I compiled.

What type of content does well?

One of the main things you’re going to want to study is the results of different types of content. Visit the front page every day for several days and look for patterns or habits that you can identify. Most social media sites will have an audience that generally prefers a few specific types of content. Learn whatever you can from the popular items, and try to create your own content that will have some of the same appeal to users. For example, if you see resource lists constantly on the front page, you may want to create your own resource list. Or, if you see controversial articles covering current news topics, try to go that route. Of course, whatever content you create should also appeal to your regular readers and subscribers.

What type of content does not do well?

At the same time you are looking for types of content that routinely draw results, also pay attention to what types of content you are not seeing on the front page, or what is drawing a negative response from readers. Just like each audience has its own likes, each will also have its own dislikes. Trying to promote the wrong type of content at a specific social media site is a waste of time.

Do users submit their own content?

If you are planning to target a specific social media site you will definitely want to know if there are any written or unwritten rules about submitting your own content. If so, you’ll need to rely on your readers to submit it, or ask friends to do so.

How many votes does it take to be popular?

Some sites, like Digg, can take over 100 votes (and more in recent months) to make it to the front page, whereas smaller social media sites may only require a few votes. Obviously, the larger sites also tend to have more users, so in some ways it can be easier to get votes. Still, this is something that you should consider. For my primary blog I target Design Float, a niche site for designers. One of the great things about promoting content at Design Float is that it only takes about 3 votes to get to the front page. Although it takes just 3 votes, popular submissions can easily receive a few hundred visitors in a day.

Are there tools/widgets that you can use on your site

I’m sure you’re familiar with voting buttons and widgets. The Digg button is very popular, and several others are also common. There are some widgets and plugins that allow users to vote at just about any site they want, and there are others that are specific to a particular site. If available, consider whether or not you should use voting buttons on your site. My opinion is that voting buttons can be very effective if you don’t use too many of them and if you choose social media sites that a decent number of your regular readers use themselves.

How much traffic do popular submissions typically receive?

Of course, you will want to have an idea of what type of traffic you can expect if your content becomes popular. There are so many social media sites out there that many of them send next to no traffic at all. Don’t necessarily write off a particular site because it doesn’t send thousands of visitors, but you also don’t want to waste your time chasing after 10 visitors.

Is the profile of the submitter important?

Some social media sites, especially Digg, will be impacted by who submits the link. Certain “power users” have hundreds or thousands of friends that follow their submissions and vote them up. On other sites the profile of the submitter has very little or no impact. This is important for a few reasons. First, if the profile of the submitter does play a large role in the success of the submission, you’ll need to either find influential users to submit your content or build a strong profile yourself to submit your own content (which can be frowned upon). Second, sites that don’t favor particular users will place more value on the quality of the content rather than the network of the user.

What are the demographics of the users?

Ideally, you’ll want to find a social media site that has similar demographics to your target audience. For obvious reasons this will improve the quality of traffic that you receive. Some social media sites tend to have users that are in a particular age bracket, a specific sex, or from a specific geographical location. To determine these items you may have to spend some time on the site and visit the profiles of a lot of users. See what you can find out about them.

What views prevail?

The audience of different social media sites tend to have varying views on different issues, and some audiences can be very passionate about certain things. This can either help or hurt you. Cater your content to fit in with popular opinions and you could see impressive results. Write a post that goes against the majority view and you could see some backlash, depending on the site. This really can apply to just about any topic. For example, Apple vs. Microsoft, or conservative vs. liberal views.

What formats are accepted?

Many of the major social media sites are accepting pictures and video in addition to just standard links. Some social media sites even have specific sections or categories for different types of content (Mixx does this very well). As video continues to become more and more common, more social media sites will add specific elements to accommodate video submissions. For now, you’ll want to take this into consideration to determine if your content would be a good fit for a specific site.

How can you network with other users?

One of the basic elements of social media is networking with other users. Regardless of what site you are targeting, having a strong network of other active users will be extremely valuable. Not only will it improve your chances of getting traffic, but you can also make some great connections and help others along the way. Some social media sites offer much better networking opportunities than others. StumbleUpon is one of my favorites for networking. Being able to send messages, share links, and review other users all right from the toolbar make the networking on StumbleUpon hard to beat. If one of your goals is to improve your network through social media, make sure that you spend your time on sites that will make networking easy.

Are there specific sub-groups?

Social media sites that allow you to start your own group can improve your ability to meet others that share your interests. Again, this is something that Mixx does very well. Users can start a group or join and existing one, and group members can invite other users to join. If you’re looking to do some networking with others that fit into a specific niche, this may be something to consider.

Are the users connected to other social media sites?

Almost all social media users are active at more than just one social media site. If you can identify the relationships between various social media sites you may be able to use this to your advantage. For example, many popular submissions at Digg wind up on the front page of Delicious after a bunch of Digg users have bookmarked the page. Maybe you would like to target Delicious, but only a small percentage of your readers use Delicious. If it’s easier for you to get to the Digg front page, you may be able to create something worth bookmarking and transfer that Digg traffic into a spot on the Delicious front page.

Another effective approach is to use smaller, niche sites to send a smaller rush of traffic and try to convert that traffic into Diggs, Stumbles or Delicious bookmarks. Making the front page of a niche site is typically easier than hitting the front page of the major sites. Maybe you can take a small step towards a popular submission at a niche site that will allow you to take a bigger step towards success at a major social media site. Several months ago I wrote a more detailed explanation of this approach, How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic.

How long does the traffic last?

Social media sites are notorious for sending a quick rush of traffic, and then nothing at all. With most social media sites, popularity doesn’t last long. StumbleUpon is one of the few exceptions. With SU you can still be getting trickles of traffic for several months or longer. You should consider whether or not sustained traffic to your submissions is important to you. In order to get a consistently high level of traffic from most social media sites you’ll need to be hitting the front page every couple of days, which in most cases isn’t realistic.

How many links can be generated?

Link building is a priority for many social media marketers. If you fall into this category, take some time to research how many links popular items are getting from different social media sites. You can do this by going back through items that were popular a few days ago and do a Technorati search for the specific URL of the page. This will allow you to see all of the links that Technorati is tracking to that page. One thing to remember here is that not all of the links you see will have been a result of popularity on a specific social media site. If an item was popular in one place, chances are it was popular somewhere else too. Still, if you check several different items you can get a good idea of the link building power this way.

Is there a feature/option to share submissions with friends?

If you have an established network of friends, you may want to ocassionally share some of your links with them. Each social media site has its own way of allowing this. StumbleUpon’s can be done straight from the toolbar without ever leaving the page. Digg uses the shout system to send email notifications, and many other sites have their own versions. If you want to be able to share your links and ask your friends for votes, this is important to consider. If you don’t want to share your links and you don’t want to be bothered by other users sharing links with you, these features may be more of a negative (although you can turn them off on many networks).

Is having friends important?

Social networking obviously involves being social. Most social media sites have a system that allows you to add other users as your friends, and for other users to add you as a friend. At some social media sites this is more critical than at others. The number and quality of friends can sometimes have a significant effect on the traffic that you receive. This is important to know before targeting a specific site, because it may mean that you’ll need to spend a lot of time networking and gaining friends.

Conclusion:

My opinion is that the ideal strategy will involve targeting 2 or 3 different social media sites. That is enough to get some results, but not too many to spread yourself thin. If possible, be an active user of at least one major social media site and at least one niche site, although not every niche will have an effective social media site. If you have other things that you look for, please leave a comment.

My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the guy behind ProBlogger. You can read a little more about my journey of blogging on the About ProBlogger page - but let me take a moment to give you a bit of glimpse at who I am.

Social Media: It’s More Than Facebook

By Steve Baldwin in Featured

A CONSENSUS SEEMS TO BE emerging that the real marketing significance of social media may lie beyond the opportunity to display targeted media against individuals and groups. Instead, social media’s real power lies in its ability to function as a recommendation engine in which real people praise or pillory products. These opinions may be honest, informed, and impartial –or inaccurate, biased, and vengeful — but it’s clear that they are exerting influence on shoppers as they roll through (or are derailed from) the purchase funnel. This phenomenon hasn’t escaped the attention of SEO types, who have attempted to reinvent themselves as SMO (social media optimization) specialists. Nor has it gone unnoticed by corporate America, whose efforts to “manage” conversations have occasionally resulted in spectacular PR fiascos such as those which embroiled Wal-Mart and Edelman, its PR agency, over “WalMartingAcrossAmerica.com” or Sony and its agency over “AllIWantForChristmasIsAPSP.com.” Like “black hat” SEO tricks, such tactics are risky; and while they might work very well for a while, heads will roll if you’re caught.

Fortunately, there are plenty of things that marketers can do to make better use of the growing body of opinion-based information that don’t have any risk associated with them. Here are some observations and recommendations on how this may be done:

1. Forums are where products are discussed. Too many of us in this business associate the phrase “social media” with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo et al. But these huge sites are more about socializing than exchanging information about products. Do a series of product searches on Google or the other engines and you’ll see that the majority of opinions about products occur on good old fashioned forum pages, the kind that have been up on the Web for more than a decade. Every product vertical you can think of (including photography, autos, movies, household appliances, and a ton of others) likely has several specialized sites associated with important products within these verticals. While a fair number of the people reading such opinions are regular users of such sites, many or most of the accesses to this content come through search engines, where users are conducting long-tail queries such as “Nikon D50 scope mount, “Audi transmission problem,” “koss headphones lightweight” and the like — and discussion forums often turn up in high positions for such long-tail queries.

2. Contextual is king on forum sites. A large number of these product-oriented forums are AdSense or other contextual network publishers, which means that you might consider reaching their users through targeted contextual ads, instead of duking it out with deep-pocketed competitors vying for space on SERPS. Google and the other engines have taken steps to make their contextual networks more attractive by rolling out more precise targeting criteria (including demographic targeting), and just last week Google announced that it will be serving a DoubleClick cookie through this network, which adds frequency capping, plus more advanced reporting. While contextual ads are much cheaper than pure-search ads, only testing can establish whether moving budget to contextual provides similar ROI. Don’t ignore the possibility that your contextual efforts may draw a unique (and possibly more attractive) population of users who might not have responded to a similar (but more expensive) text ad placed a SERP.

3. Move your content with care. After performing a number of product-oriented long-tail searches on several popular sites with forum areas, I was struck by the number of instances in which links embedded in opinion posts yielded Error 404 (broken link) messages. Usually, the broken link pointed to a formerly active URL within a manufacturer/retailer’s site which had drifted with time. Manufacturers and retailers cannot be expected to never move or delete their product URLs, but at the very least they should install appropriate redirects — so that these clicks don’t dead-end in a 404. Just because a product may have been superseded or even discontinued doesn’t mean that people aren’t still talking about it somewhere and following links to investigate a possible purchase. Why destroy a path that may be delivering you customers (and PageRank) right now?

Bottom line: you don’t have to wait for Facebook and its brethren to come up with a new generation of ad units or targeting options to begin harnessing the power of social media. Just find out where everybody’s talking (for good or for ill) about your product, investigate how to reach such people in a cost-effective, non-intrusive, contextually sensitive manner, and do your utmost to make sure that the links that these people have already created still work.

These low-key tactics might not get you a speaking engagement at a high-profile social media conference, but they’ll sure come in handy when it comes time to justify your salary.

Steve Baldwin is editor-in-chief at Didit, an agency for search engine marketing and auctioned media management based in New York. You can reach Steve at steve.baldwin@didit.com.

Why You Should Submit to Web 2.0 Sites

By Billy Baker in Featured

We are hearing how we should promote our websites through social marketing strategies by submitting our content to web 2.0 websites. So many of us have not caught up with, nor have we found the time to get on top of how quickly social marketing changes. And it is fickle as it depends on the likes and dislikes of the communities you belong to.

Maybe you are wondering why you should succumb to the newest internet hype of social marketing. I suppose it pays to keep up with everyone else. How else are your customers going to find you? As you know, making changes to your website helped your search engine optimization. Nowadays portable files like PDFs and video files are submitted to social networking sites where the content fits in to help your content’s visibility.

Navigating the Social Media Landscape

By Leslie Russell in Featured

You know what Facebook and MySpace are. You’ve heard of people twittering. You read a couple of blogs now and then, and you must admit, you already know that your company’s firewall prevents you from watching YouTube videos at the office. What you don’t know is how these social sites might connect to your marketing plan.

Exploring social media - such as blogs, social networking sites, image hosting sites and social bookmarking sites - is becoming increasingly essential for businesses. Social media marketing (SMM) allows you to build your company’s reputation as an authority in your field while engaging your consumers in an open dialogue. Most importantly, it helps you drive up site traffic, meet conversion goals and bolster search engine marketing results via links and quality content - all while supporting your traditional marketing efforts.