13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Worth Your Time

January 24, 2012 under Marketng, News, Social Media

When comparing social media traffic to other forms of traffic, such as search engine, the numbers typically are going to look rather bleak. While you’ll hopefully see a spike in number of visitors and pageviews, that will often be accompanied by higher bounce rates, lower pageviews per visitor, and a lower average time on the site. With stats like this many bloggers wonder if social media traffic is even worth the time and effort.

Despite the tendency of many social media visitors to quickly exit your site and move on to the next one, there are still some very convincing reasons why you should care about social media and why it is worth your time.

1. It’s Free

Unless you’re paying for a consultant or a link bait specialist (both can be good options), marketing your website with social media is free. It will cost you some time, but that pales in comparison to the value of the traffic that you can get in return. There are countless ways to market a website or blog. Just about all of them involve spending money (which isn’t a bad thing), and of the ones that don’t involve money, the vast majority of them are a complete waste of time. I’ve never tried any other type of free marketing that brought even 1% of the results I’ve gotten with social media at my primary blog. Most bloggers are on a tight, or non-existent, budget when it comes to marketing. If this is the case, social media is for you.

2. Quick Results

Building a successful website takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Search engine rankings, for instance, can take years to build in a competitive niche. On the other hand, with social media you can develop content and be seen by thousands of visitors within the same day. For this reason, social media is a great option for getting a new website or blog noticed right away .

3. It’s Flexible

There are so many different social media websites that just about every imaginable niche is covered in one way or another. There are social news sites, bookmarking sites, and general networking sites. Whatever your needs and your audience, there should be an option to use social media for your benefit.

Also, you’re not stuck to using the same social media sites over and over. If you’re not getting results in one place there’s usually other options that you can try out.

4. It Gets Easier with Time

If you’re new to blogging and social media and you feel like everyone else is getting traffic but you, understand that it takes some time and effort, but it will get easier. Once you have established a bit of a reader base and you’ve hopefully attracted some social media users to your blog, it will be much easier for you to get votes and ultimately get more exposure. The more you use social media the more you will understand about how it works and how users will respond.

5. It Will Lead to Other Valuable Sources of Traffic

Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive. Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources.

6. Building Links with Social Media is Safer than Buying Links

If you plan to cut out the need for social media by purchasing links from other sites, you’re running the risk of being penalized or banned by Google. For some, this is a risk worth taking, but in most cases I would strongly discourage taking this chance. Personally, I focus on building links for my primary blog through the combination of content and social media.

7. Social Media Users are Predictable

The whole concept or link bait or Digg bait wouldn’t even be possible if social media users were unpredictable. But the truth is you can usually have a good idea of what is likely to draw a response and what is not. This will come with time, and of course there is no 100% guarantee. However, once you know a social media audience pretty well, you can cater content to their preferences with a pretty high success rate. What you learn about social media can easily be duplicated to your other blogs or to serving clients.

8. It Doesn’t Require as Much Time as You Might Think

Personally, I use social media every day, but on a very limited basis. If you think that you have to spend all day on Digg or Stumbling pages to get some results of your own, you may be surprised. With the right approach you canget fantastic results with just a few hours per week on social media sites. To be a top Digg user you’ll need more time than that, but being a top Digg user isn’t necessary to draw social media traffic.

9. Branding Through Social Media is Possible

One of the great benefits to the exposure that you can get through social media is the result it has on the branding of your blog. Branding is key to building a success blog in the long-term, and social media is an excellent, free option for helping visitors to see your blog in a particular light. (For more, see my post at ProBlogger A Blogger’s Guide to Branding with Social Media.)

10. Links Can Help Your Search Engine Rankings Rise Quickly

Earlier I mentioned to social media can provide instant results. Well, in addition to sending loads of traffic directly, the links that result from social media success can get your new posts ranking very well with search engines almost immediately. It’s not uncommon for me to see a very respectable number of visitors from Google searches to a brand new post that just drew a lot of links through social media. While it will take a while to build search engine rankings as a whole, it is possible to create specific posts to rank well right away.

11. It Allows You to Leverage Your Existing Traffic

Do you already have a solid blog with a steady flow of traffic? If so, chances are you could leverage that traffic to draw even more visitors with social media. You may want to use voting buttons on your posts or ask some of your readers and friends to give you a vote occasionally.

12. Some Visitors Will Be Targeted

The biggest knock on social media traffic is that it’s not targeted, and that is typically true. However, visitors from niche social media sites can be very highly targeted, and on top of that, a portion of visitors from general news sites will be targeted as well. For example, if you get 25,000 visitors from a post on the Digg front page, maybe only 5,000 of them will have much of an interest in your site. Still, that’s a quick 5,000 visitors that you wouldn’t have had without social media. Just because a smaller percentage of the visitors will stick doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant.

13. The Future of the Internet is Social

Social media and social networking aren’t going away any time soon. The major players and the types of social sites may change of the course of time, but this is a trend that online marketers need to adjust to. Without finding ways to build a website or blog through social media you could be left behind by your competitors.

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Social media. tools or just websites ?

October 13, 2011 under News, Social Media

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when will coffee shops get a big blue like button

September 19, 2011 under Cyber Culture, Leeds, Marketng, News, Social Media, Technology

In the world of the web and business, people are always buzzing around thinking about what the next big thing could be. The difference between these people is they they talk about it and some others help make the dream a reality. Ever since the dawn of cyber-punk we have managed to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where society gains the new products and designs that we are told are new.

The reality is that there is a lot of technology that is based on peoples ideas of the future. Rather than building new products we are handed the vision from ‘Space Odyssey” or given phones with touch screens that have already been designed and thought through by science fiction. The future supposedly will come to and end and when it does we will have to go back and live amongst the trees.

With this mentality of looking back on our roots and the things that have worked for us in the past, I have a new idea. We as children are taught to play but when we are older we do not recognise that we do still play, its just that we do it in different ways. Whilst we move through the urban cities to and from work, we all interact by moving around the city, and absorb the marketing artwork before us. My suggestion is quiet simple. What if we could now actually be tagged and use the marketing or objects around us to connect to digital media, weather it is social media or event visiting a site.

Once upon a time people complained about the files in their cabinet, and now we have hard drives to condense the space. By using technology we may have answered certain questions that allow us to live in more space and gain access to things more instantly, but why has nobody thought of complaining. Technology seems to have kept its shine despite the physical nature is still the same and the manual labour of the real world and the digital work is the same, only less strenuous.

If we continue to need our bodies for certain things and we increase the use of technology, how on earth do we actually have time to live online and use facebook? The answer for that is really quite simple. Whilst going to your local shop to buy a magazine, in the future, you have the chance to press the ‘like’ button and actually comment if you wish. Cameras could also start to track your eye movement so that marketing companies an talk to you directly each time you look at one of their products. This doesn’t mean up selling, it means that the digital cloud technology behind it will be able to tell you if your choice could be a good or bad one based on your income.

As a red blooded male its typical that I only want to go into a shop to but what I want, but all that can now change. If i see something I need at home, the voice from above may then remind me that I have been in the shop 17 times before and I liked this on facebook so much I tweeted about it and I also need to buy it because ive run out of it and need a top up!

What if we are now living at a point in time where we are actually at the tip of using technology manually and now we just need to find ways to make the cloud part of the real world. In being human, surely the point of living is to live. So when will we be able to live the life we want and share it effortlessly at the same time, seamlessly as part of the real world. My final question about the unknown future is; when will coffee shops get a big blue like button where people can just hit the button to vote, thus avoiding the need to spend time getting their device out, find the site, login, find the online coffee shop, find the like button, and like it !

 

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Do we need social media or does it need us

September 4, 2011 under Cyber Culture, Leeds, News, Social Media, Technology

This is a slightly stranger post that asks the question, do we need social media or does it need us. I think this is a stranger post than my usual because I have had time to reflect back on my real practises.

In getting busier I have found that I have been a little unhappy. Not because im over worked but instead that I am finding that I am too busy in the real world to tweet and facebook and generally get digitally social. Instead of spending time digitally mixing with people, im doing this in real terms. This is the fun stuff and it does not make me sad. What has made me sad is that as a consequence of me living my life, my klout score has dropped and some twitter folk have stopped following me. At the same time I feel im getting more responses because my less frequent tweets are fully loaded. So now im left bitter about life and how I need to manage digital life.

My reality is, and possibly your reality too, that I am actually good at being social and it does not matter about where or how this happens. In recent years I have had my own choices and feel that I can choose my own path about the things I like ands dislike. So the question then arrives to me at this point. Do I need to be digitally social? Well, it all depends on your field or work and how busy your personal life is. It doesn’t really matter, but it can make a huge difference to someone who needs to engage directly and feel confident.

In my busy period of neglecting some social media it seems that I have also missed adding photo albums of things I have been doing on Facebook. After a week or two my partner then decided to post those pictures on her Facebook albums. All I was left with was a buch photos that I was tagged in. Its almost like the digital world had began to remind me how rubbish I am being at keeping in touch. Having taken a brief look at my partners pictures I found that she had oddly become more social.

Here is the interesting bit. Not only did she seem more interesting and popular than me but she also had a full stream of information about “Big Brother” other TV programmes and was also following bands and festivals like Leeds Festival.

I seem to be happy, and so does she, so I guess social media does have a place in our world. But in all honesty I really believe that I do not need to communicate in that way, I just choose to. Having social media is a digital add on. To answer the second half, does social media need us..? Yes, of course it does. Without us the social media sites would be charging money. So the idea of it being a free social medium is non-elitist. This sits really well with a utopian vision and it also tricks us to into the feeling that we are all together when really we are not. I still have a lot of people to meet.

By engaging in social media I am only continuing my level of instant gratification onto a much more grown up platform. Not only am I becoming dumbed down but social media makes me feel stronger and more powerful about being dumbed down. How odd! To make matters worse, companies like Facebook are making money form me. Okay so thats not a bad thing, but its terrible if you consider that by wasting time in voyeuristic behaviour I am not actually learning in the way that I should be. The right way would be to get my hands dirty and engage with reality.

I hope that you have come to the conclusion, like me, that social media is a dumbing down tool that equals additions like drugs at times and that we do not need it! Social media most certainly needs us.

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New Klout Updates

August 18, 2011 under News, Social Media

Some of you may know what Klout is, but for those who dont, its a social media rank website. It basically tells you how good you are using social media.

In the past I have been quite happy with the free service and as a tweeter it seemed like a great tool. With the recent updates it seems clear that Klout could have a big influence on the market. There always will be comments about the differences in how it calculates unique social media scores but there is only one opposition, Peerindex, and they both do a good job in different ways… until now.

Klout use to mainly use twitter and linkedin in however have recently added other social networks like facebook and youtube. So your latest score can now be supported by how many you tube comments you get. My mind cant quiet fathom how far this could go. To add to the madness you can now also link Instagram, the mobile picture taking app, and Foursquare, the geo-tagging app.

To sum up the new Klout experience, you can now get scored on tweeting an image and video whilst its happening and then spread it onto facebook whilst having a conversation through various social media, still be wondering round the city Foursquare geo-tagging away…and get an instant great Klout score.

As with everything great, theres a downside. There are no real features that allow you to control how you see the results and see the results for one social media tool at a time. Its still good times for Klout and should keep us busy for a year or so, unless Peerindex have an update soon!

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Friends Circles and Networks

July 8, 2011 under Cyber Culture, News, Social Media

Depending on which circle you are in you could have different types of friends and it might even be that you keep your personal friends separate to your work friends. You may also have networking events or just bunches of people who you network with and meet, however they are not your friends, are they? Having many different faces and roles in different circles is a complex way of looking at how we live and mix with people. Put simply, we are social creatures with many different levels of attachement and we like to reach out and connect on different levels so we can keep a level of privacy.

As social media is now big business and now no longer free, with people around the world spending millions on digital social media strategies. The one main reason why social media is great is because it reflects the habits of a real person.

Tech Talk!
With Facebook taking the basic word “friend” and using in a digital capacity, people are now relate this word with something digital. The reality is that it is a descriptive word for what the friends button actually does. The major issue with the website has been that many people feel that “friending” and the privacy settings are not great and could be better. Despite Facebook’s effort in making changes, it seems people are still unhappy with the settings. The main gripe is that people can not easily relay information to one set of friends and at the same time keep information private from a separate circle of friends. The human and digital interactions are now completely blurred, in fact far too similar except Facebook lives 24/7. Any information you place out there is always out there and retrievable, not just by your friends but also by the colleagues who you dont want to share things with. Maybe there are other options out there.

There is a new social network in town to rival Facebook called Google+ which seems to have stepped firmly on the toes of Diaspora and Altly. Like shops crammed together in the centre of town there are now a few more options to where you can network. Google are unlike Twitter, who created a very robust and highly unique platform, but instead have chosen to take on Facebook.

 

Reality!

I suppose its now at this point that I return to the conversation about how we all have different circles of friends. With people now spending time online it seems that we may eventually forget how to speak and talk to people and forget that sometimes things take a little while to get to what you want. With this new generation of people and technology we all want to share online. The reason why I have written so much about technology in this blog is to say I am human and something stinks.

When advertising was big business we all bought the supermarket food until someone said this is badly put together. Im doing the same here I guess. All the technology above is grand and amazing however it’s still early days and it’s only feeding and weening you onto wanting and needing the internet. These social network sites are great but can not replace what is real and never will. The next time you get that deep feeling or the little ping in your head that leads your hand to reaching for your phone or switch on your computer, please remember one thing, do you need to tell someone, or do you want something else?

There are a number of emotions that we relate to when we look at adverts and these feelings are now even stronger when looking at adverts because they are personal to us. Online marketing now targets YOU and what YOUR trends are to be able to market products to you.

When we are children we always play and talk to other children however as we get older it seems that we are all onions and have far too many layers, so technology can help, however it doesn’t really help. Just like buying cheap sausages with 10% pok content, the internet is giving us something that is still watered down only we can’t see it. If you want the real thing, the ability to communicate and have a support network, to be able to have different circles of friends and tell them all different things at different times. The choice is easy. Use social media as a tool to give out information about your life without being too emotional and involving and also make the effort to tell everybody what you want them to hear, in person.

The only way to save time from learning and administrating your life online is to engage with your life offline because that life also works 24/7 wether you realise it or not.

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Swearing on Twitter

June 6, 2011 under News, Social Media

There are many TV shows that are live, from Big Brother to the millions of Saturday night programmes, and al lof them ban swearing. Its an old rule that everyone fits into and yet somehow the freedom of social media has opened the door more than ajar from some people.

Even though poets would argue some swearing can be comic and needed, I have to argue that on Twitter it sint. If we take a simplistic view of Twitter, its realtime, micro-blogging instant style tweet what you say, then swearing in them is the same as saying it. Swearing although fun is still something that is a very crude thing to do in public. What people may not understand is that social media is on a par with being in a room, train or bus with people on it. The only difference is that it is on a different platform.

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Altly – ready to do battle with Facebook

May 28, 2011 under Cyber Culture, News, Social Media


CTO Dimitry Shapiro once upon a time helped build Myspace, the first real mainstream social networking site and before this brought us VEOH.

It seems that there was a bee in his bonnet about Facebook (FB). Since FB started to use specific user information to target adverts on a more personal level more and more people have been worried about how easy it is for our details to get out and be abused. Shapiro particularly believes that although FB started out okay it now needs a competitor that can promise to keep things private and allow people to control their right to control their every move and control how much data is actually used against you to market products.

This new idea, FB would argue is silly because they are already doing their job, has spurred on despite there being past companies who have tried and seemingly failed. I have written a bit a bout Diaspora is a past blog and how this has not really shown much sign of life.

There is a nice long manifesto on the Altly site that also includes a mentioning about how it feels, and another website can prove, FB has actually changed and watered down its privacy policy rather than strengthen it. This site on its own has merit. With FB being on the news it seems that bad publicity on their part could also help the rise of the Altly site.

“A recent CNN story titled “Young job-seekers hiding their Facebook pages”, cites that ”A recent survey commissioned by Microsoft found that 70 percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online.”  http://articles.cnn.com/2010-03-29/tech/facebook.job-seekers_1_facebook-hiring-online-reputation “

With a quick mention of how Google did not decline there was a new planet to evolve a social platform called Google Circles, it really does seem that there is a change in mentality rising up from the digital world. More and more ‘doers’ are coming forward from the background and challenging some of the big digital giants. From the days where McDonalds and Sony are being challenged it seems the trend to challenge large online companies is the new boundary to break.

With some serious investment put behind this project, it seems that Altly could be the next big thing, and could be the first company to rival FB. The reality is that no matter how fast communication is, only time can tell what will work and fail.

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Diaspora the next Facebook?

May 28, 2011 under Social Media, Technology

Around April 2010 there was a site called Diaspora that aimed to challenge Facebook (FB). In fact there seems to be a growing trend of people who have gone past the stage of talking about how FB uses our data to actually doing something about it. The real issue is that nobody has managed to make a real go of it until Diaspora.

The company started by saying interesting things like:

“What will happen once Facebook turns into MySpace or one of these big large companies goes bust but has, as one of its assets, all of your personal data and all of our personal data?

Our communication, our photos, our comments – it’s within their power to do what they please with it, and this is a problem that we should and will fix.”

The community-funded company went as far as trying gaining 6,479 backers who pledged a total $200,641. The road map to their success also includes FB integration and with the privay filtering being used, what better way to show us the progress they made.

Diaspora Message Propagation (pre-alpha!) from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

Showing off six Diaspora seeds on the internet receiving information from a mutual Diaspora friend in real time.

No page refresh, and without an XMPP server.

In all honestly, I now, in the year 2011 have any idea what is happening as I have only recently been to their web site hoping to test it out, only to find that I had to sign up for an invite. The journey to rival FB has either led to total digital nothingness or the real creators have invented an elaborate secret society, in which case you have to be a Templar or Mason.

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Delicious devoured by YouTube

April 27, 2011 under News, Social Media

Most people would have bet on Yahoo doing the buying or at least keeping something as marvelous as Delicious. Today the Delicious blog just published they are happy about moving to YouTube. The marriage does not seem obvious at first sight to me but like most digital platforms, the product depends on the next level of innovation. Here is what the Del.BLog said:

Today, we’re pleased to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. They are committed to running and improving Delicious going forward.

Providing a seamless transition for users is incredibly important for both companies. Yahoo! will continue to operate Delicious until approximately July 2011. When the transition period is complete, your information will be moved over to Delicious’ new owner.

Starting today, we will ask you to login to Delicious again and agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to the new owner. That way, you’ll enjoy uninterrupted use of the service and will keep your account and all of your bookmarks when we make the transition. For more information on the Delicious transition, please refer to this FAQ.
Thank you for your patience in this time of transition and thank you for using Delicious!

Founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen said:

“We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

But then John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo surprisingly said:

“We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious,”


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