News Source: http://www.seobook.com
Published: Nov 14, 2008 - 08:59 am
Story Found By: Ruud 1292 Days ago
Category: SEM
In stating that side so clear he forces you to either provide counter balance (start a discussion) or validate the time and energy you’re investing in SMM.
One of the better, more thoughtful posts on the topic out there and really worth the time to read through -- remember, a 1500+ worder is just 2 legal sheet, k? :)
If *I* think SMM is a waste? nuhuh. SMM is one of the rare media which at relatively low cost can bring a brand from zero to hero in no time. What do you think?
11 Comments
Comments
Yep, lots of good points. Before getting involved in social media marketers must, must know what exactly they want from it. Then they need to limit the time to achieving it.
Confusion stems from not differentiating between social media branding and social media marketing, maybe?<div></div><div>Except for some paid posts marketing efforts I’m not aware of a lot of successful social media marketing campaigns. On the other hand, we do know of a number of successful social media branding efforts like the now famous Zappo and the even more famous president Obama.</div>
great post. i wonder why this could not make the front page where some worthless pieces are doing rounds.
One of the arguments relates to the difficulty of scaling social media. I’d agree that social media campaigns are difficult to scale. Conversely though, a social media profile certainly can be scaled (albeit with a lot of time, skill and effort). The Maki’s & Darren Rowse’s of the world have scaled their social profiles to extract enormous commercial benefit for their online properties.
I find it ironic that this post is at the top of sphinn considering its content. I’d agree with many of the points put forth, but disagree with the premise completely. If you are doing social media marketing for Branding (unless you are cracked.com, xkcd, and a few others who all it brilliantly), or just for the traffic, you’ve completely missed the point. Social media marketing is about LINK BUILDING. More specifically, it’s about getting your content in front of large numbers of people. It is your job to make that content LINK WORTHY. In my years of internet marketing nothing has been even close to as successful for increasing rankings as a quality, linkworthy piece of content doing well on a social media site, not even some pretty slick blackhat methods.
Ruud, I know that at least one of my friends has managed to turn Facebook into his sole source of leads for new sales. I think it really depends on what it is you’re trying to sell and how you go about doing it. In his case, it has nothing to do with branding whatsoever, just finding people with a particular interest and having a profile page full of artistic products that blow their mind. But me? I’m more interested in ’Social SEO’ and a little bit of actual socialization (Where’s the watercooler 2.0? Need something fun and irrelevant to do in between all this website work...)So yeah, I think the key here is knowing what you want to get out of it, executing that, and not getting caught up in a bunch of new trends that might not necessarily apply to your own business needs.
The question isn’t whether SM is a waste of time or how it can be misused. That’s like writing a list of how riding a Harley can be bad for your health. The question is if you decide to go "social" how can you do it right?
Excellent hook, fly in the face of the popular gig on the block (socmed) create controversy (say its a waste of time) , get a few links and start a conversation :) Love it!I liked the last part especially, where he finished on a positive, because if used correctly positive is exactly what it can be. If companies or individuals are engaging with their stakeholders in meaningful ways then they’ll reap the benefits of it.Companies like Ogilvy PR are smart enough to hook up with tools like radian6 in leveraging the social angle. Companies and brands like Virgin and even mainstream individuals like Branson and Stephen Fry, John Cleese etc are all actively engaging too. Dell has most certainly recognised the benefits of social and are embracing it to connect with customers in all sorts of ways.“The social media stuff is probably the most important we do today, from a marketing stand point. The other elements of marketing mix has sort of become more and more transactional and more and more tactical in nature. Social media stuff is much more strategic… Use social media to power the fundamental of the business. That’s what we’re focused on”.So whilst i’d agree in principal if done shabbily it is a waste of time, there are nonetheless, a big bunch of examples around why it can be a massive asset too. The fact that Peter ended on this point speak volumes.In some respects this whole sphinn is dichotomous. here we are debating whether social is a waste of time, yet its that very use of social that is stimulating that debate and engagement with the topic. I don’t really see how exploring that can be a waste of anyones time. :)
It all depends on what you are marketing and the goals - its hard to find great value in social marketing for some products, branding and links are good, but value over cost is sometimes hard to accomplish. Plus in general social traffiic/users don’t repond well to the "sales pitch" so even if you can connect the right demographic to the right message - that potentially could result in a minimum conversion rate (keeping in mind that it is not typical of "social traffic"), you still have a hard job to deliver the message in a way that doesn’t interfer with the "recreational intent" of users. Unlike most search engine traffic - users are specifically searching for what you are offering, in social people are generally "stumbling upon" your content while just killing time.
The question is: Is appearing on the front page of Sphinn worth anything? The answer is:It depends. One should not assume it does, which is the point I raise in my article. Show me the money. BTW: I agree with this guy....http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=132606
@peterdavanzo - I agree - the article is good as well. I just want to talk about the last line in the article as it relates to the topic.... "So performance-based advertising will gain share over CPM." - this statement in the article is true- and is nothing new - the cpm model only really worked well before it could be compared to CPC. The problem is that sites that don’t have high volume or don’t provide great performance metrics depend on CPM otherwise they would make little to nothing. Its why large site with millions of impressions will sell CPMs lower than sites with tens of thousands of impressions- thus narrowing the gap between the ROI on a similar "performance based" camapigns compared to the CPM. Now in saying that...Social traffic can typically be high volume but low performance - giving it a lesser value for metric based advertisers. The problem is... weather you are promoting via or advertising on social networks or sites that are based on social traffic, there is still a cost. people especially the publishers want to compare its click value to historical/industry averages - but the metrics will never make sense. From the other perspective - publishers can not depend on a performance based advertising model when monetizing that type of traffic either - so there needs to be a middle ground. People almost have to accept the passive response and treat ads like TV commericals or other offline publications where they can reach the masses - but not expect much action, more branding and product awareness - less click to conversion expectations.maybe I pulled it a little off topic ;)Anyways its a good sphinn