NetBusinessBlog

A comprehensive guide to Social Media Marketing

Posted on 31. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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Social media is everywhere and there are lots of tips to run a successful social media campaign. This week, let us find out some of the best posts on social media marketing and best practices. If I missed something, please write a comment and I would add it in the list.If you want to know what is social media these two (Larry Chase) posts (Top Rank Blog) can help you. Take a look at those posts – it is always an advantage to know what others are thinking and how others are defining even a common topic like social media. If you are not sure about why you need social media marketing, you can read “The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Why You Should Learn and Master it” from Dosh Dosh.

Now, you can read this post on How to get started in Social Media by Shana Albert. Here comes another post from Top Rank Blog titled “Live from SMX: Tips on Social Media Marketing” by Barbara Boser the Social Media Director for 3 Dog Media, on marketing with social media. If you think, social media marketing is just about posting a few links, you might be mistaking.

Here are some fundamental tips on social media:

1. Create a mix of social media networks according to your niche to explore.

2. Actively participate and communicate with other members and do not try to sell your product alone. Forget about easy profit – invest your time and money on relationship and brand development. Consider Stumble Upon to be your micro blog and links are the regular posts.

3. Add some value to the community – your favs and buries would actually create your identity.

4. Be a social being rather than just a robot or a salesman.

5. Develop a brand name on your niche and become a power user.

6. Promote your friends in those networks and let them know about it – in time, they would come ahead to promote your link.

BTW, “Social Media Optimization” and “Social Media Marketing” are two different topics. You may read this post by Glen Allsopp titled “What are Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimisation?” to make things a bit more clear.

If you have any question, don’t hesitate to ask in the comment box.

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As a startup blogger what can you learn from top 10 successful blogs!

Posted on 30. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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The Blog Herald has just published a good post titled “5 Ways to Imitate the 10 Most Popular Blogs“. The five ways include publish frequently, have a team, offer hot news, have an attitude and be visual.All these are great weapons to promote a blog but what about the startup bloggers? Can you afford that as a startup blogger? Let’s find out:

Publishing frequency and team blogging: As far as publishing frequency is concerned, you need a team of motivated bloggers. Otherwise there are high chances that a new blogger would soon fall short of ideas. Either you involve your friends in the blog to post on a community or put some more money into your budget to hire some good bloggers in your niche. Otherwise two or three well researched blog posts per week are great for a start up blogger.

However before hiring a someone, make sure that he or she has enough blogging experience and flexible enough to get into your shoes (that does not mean that he or she should say good bye respective writing styles – but they should be tuned enough to move in a single direction while writing blog posts). To add to this, make sure that the blogger knows “where and how” a blog post is different from writing an article. BTW, why don’t you involve your friends?

News: As far as offering hot news is concerned, you must have access to news sources in your niche. This is not easy and often almost impossible for a start-up blogger. There is another set of bloggers who have great editorial skills that come out of experience in that definite field. That’s your position as a start up blogger. News is nothing unless they are criticized and rendered under different microscopes.

Attitude: You must have an attitude – no compromise with this point.

Images: There is no doubt that images in a blog posts makes it more scanable. However, do not use any image (I repeat, do not use an image) unless it supports the post. A lot of bloggers use an image for the sake of using one – it does not serve any purpose. If you want to follow the style, spend some extra time to find out the best image (if necessary, pay for it).

The end note: Don’t follow any successful blogger – find and improve on the elements they use to become successful.

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Do you need a style guide for your bloggers?

Posted on 29. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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You have a blog and you can write whatever you want – there is no one to stop you. However, if you want to be a successful blogger, you must prove your authenticity as well as uniformity in content selection and presentation. Just think about a newspaper – it has a predefined set of guidelines as far as publishing is concerned. It is a different issue that general people (readers) do not know about those guidelines, but these guidelines actually influence the brand of that newspaper.Do you have a predefined publishing guideline attached to your blog! Perhaps it is time to think about one if you are a serious publisher and have different bloggers to write for your blog.

Why this is important?

Ever blogger have his or her own writing style – specific choices of subjects (ok, there may be thousands of different topics in the list but it is a list after all) that they write about (just think about your tags and categories). They have certain stand points for or against some issues (if you are a serious blogger, you got to have a voice). If you follow it closely, you will easily identify a pattern – something that you may call your style sheet or style-guide.

Come on, I am not suggesting you to publish the style sheet in your blog. But if you are publishing a multi blogger unit – you can think about having a wiki based style guide for your bloggers. This would definitely help you maintain a common pattern in your blog. And more importantly, you can easily communicate with your bloggers about what you want from them.

Just think about blogs that accept guest post. They publish some primary guidelines for the guest bloggers – but here you are accepting the bloggers to come up with his or her identity. A style sheet or a style guide may be an extended version of these guidelines where the blogger would also write according to the stance of the blog on certain issues.

- Especially if your blog has grown into something like Mashable or YouMOZ or something that publishes user generated content.

There would be a lot of issues against this point like:

It may kill the essence of blogging – personal style. (But what is the basic difference between a newspaper and a multi blogger unit?)

It may kill democracy. (Don’t you have a personal blog to show off democracy?)

etc…..

What do you think?

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Brand sells ? any Doubt?

Posted on 28. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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Branding pays in the long run ? there is no doubt about that. And that is why, big companies spend huge amount in brand development and promotion. Even in FMCG sectors, people try to promote their brand rather than the product alone.
As I always say, people do not need your product – they need a solution to their problem. In this respect, you may say that why people are buying an iPhone though their old phones are just enough for the purpose!
In this situation too, they are succumbing to their need. The iPhone is not just another phone that makes a call ? it is something more than that. And often you can not or do not want to identify what is ?the more? with iPhone! Now add the brand name of Apple with this phone and you get the huge response from the market. Do you really think iPhone would have got such response in the market if it was not produced by Apple? There are many phones which can perform almost similar task ? so why buy an iPhone?

Brand names are important not simply for early adopters, who actually set the market on fire. Even if you take a look at the long tail, you will find that the brand name works havoc when the buyer is just at the verge of taking the final decision. Bigger brand names enjoy more trust among end users.
The same thing happens with your online brand. Who would get the maximum exposure for publishing the same story on SEO ? SEO Moz or just another SEO blog? Who has the maximum trust rank?
There is a saying that if you pour some honey on the wall, it would attract bees. Does that mean you would need to pour more honey to attract more bees in the same progression? My experience says that, in case of good branding, the existing bees actually attract more bees. And it eventually increases your brand value.
Any doubt about that?

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Seth Promoting Click Fraud ? Really?

Posted on 27. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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I have always been a big fan of Seth Godin (I have written it a few times in this blog).Why I like him so much?

The primary reason is – he is an idea man – he can think – he can add new perspective to a common story. And if you are smart enough, you can learn a lot from those interpretations.

In last couple of posts I have been talking about recent changes in online advertisement industry – mainly in the communication pattern. For example, you can take a look at these posts. What do you think? Did I write those posts just to share some information on recent changes?

Of course not! I was very excited the way things are changing in online advertising world. Advertisements are no longer viewed as a link where someone clicked by chance and without knowing it to be an advertisement.

Thus when Seth wrote the post titled “Ads are the new online tip jar“, I did not find anything special about that. I just took it like – the way online advertising is changing, Google AdSense is turning out to be a tip jar.

However, things were not so simple – a lot of people took that post word for word and started blaming Seth for promoting click fraud. Things turned so worst that Seth had to come out with a new post along with comment in another blog (read the first comment) to rescue his image.

What do you think guys?

Do you really think Seth just made a stupid comment?

Do you really think Seth was supporting click fraud?

Do you think advertisers should concentrate on product selling or brand development?

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Getting Some Social Love

Posted on 26. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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Web is changing fast and we are going more social. There are thousands of websites that depend on visitors from social media – especially in the start-up stage. To add to this, social networking and bookmarking websites are very important for start-up companies as search engines are yet to identify them as good source of information.

As far as my experience goes, I divide traffic in two sections:

1. Those who belong to the same industry (perhaps they provide the same service online or they are very much interested in the subject or about the product you are selling)
2. People who actually need the product you are offering (the real buyers of your solution or product)

There may be a few sub sets too in this list – for example, those who are just information seekers. But, if they do not have any web presence (like a personal blog or website), you can ignore them for the time being.

Again, as far as my experience goes, people from section number 2 normally comes from search engines. And if hard cash is involved with the conversion process – they are the visitors you should be aiming at to make the business rolling.

However, you will only get those people unless you have secured a good place at SERP and in the initial days no search engines would allow you a better position for a competitive keyword.

So what do you do?

In the initial days of website development, concentrate on social networks – as much time as you invest on link or content development. These are the places that would actually provide you link and help you to establish a brand identity.

So, how to get more traffic from social networks?

LOL. You would find thousands of tips on different blogs that talk about how to get more traffic from any and all social networks. You can read them – some of them are really good and to the point. I have only two tips:

1. Identify the network where you can find maximum number of participants from your industry.
2. Be a worthy member of that network and develop your own micro network within the network.

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Facebook?s Engagement Ads ? Another Step towards Better User Interactivity.

Posted on 25. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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Do you remember the post I wrote a couple of days back – titled “Platform-A’s Goowy widget-based advertising tool, AdSense ads and User Interactivity“! If you are yet to read that post, I would request you to take a look.

Anyways, we have another major shift in online advertising. A popular advertising magazine has just published a new story titled Facebook Tries New Ad Formats (Social network aims to friend more brands within site structure) that says that Facebook is testing new advertisement format called “Engagement Ads” in their own network. However, at present, this ad format is open to a few brands only.

You can also read the story at cnet “Facebook’s ‘Engagement Ads’ tests the waters” and Jeremiah Owyang’s blog titled “What Facebook’s New ?Engagement Advertising’ Means to Brands“.

However, the most exciting thing about this shift (from traditional text and image based advertising) is that, it has tried to develop an interactive advertisement format in sync with the ambiance of the website – social network and word of mouth marketing.

What happens there?

Visitors can write comments on the advertisement, endorse the brand and share it with their friends in micro networks (smaller groups inside Facebook). It is almost like associating a human being with a brand (you become the brand ambassador of a product you like). Don’t we do the same thing in real life when we were an expensive brand and show it off in our friend circle!

More importantly, the visitor will not be redirected to another website to interact with the brand – this would act just like another widget in your page. Moreover, what can be a better place but one of the biggest social networks in the web (Facebook) to try such things!

In theory, there are high chances that this ad would become successful. More importantly, the brands would get more exposure with these sorts of ads rather than direct selling. What happens when someone publishes his or her Amazon Wishlist! It does not remain just another product in the market – he or she is also endorsing the brand in close network (visitors of the wishlist).

Tim Kendall, Facebook’s Director of Monetization said that they tried to build “ad products that users can interact with in the same way they do with other things on our site.”

Let’s wait and watch if Facebook can make enough money out of it or not.

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How not to create hype in the market

Posted on 24. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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Ok, these are some random twits on iPhone by real people from around the world. There had been lots of good comments too but I found these to be more in line with the content of this post.

I just read this story on how “iPhone Poland Launch Used Lines of Actors to Hide Weak Demand“.

Seth has already declared that all marketers are liars. They are famous to try every possible way to make the most out of an opportunity via ads, paid reviews, manipulated hypes etc. However, does it really help in the long run? Can a manipulated “need” sustain itself for long?

Hype is good but it is also important to think about how you create that hype. If iPhone is not getting enough popularity in Poland, there should be some reasons – making “lines of hired actors” – does not solve the problem. Again, something that is very popular in USA should not necessarily create the same buzz in another country.

Moreover, what happens when people come to know about the manipulation? Read these twits to get some reactions.

Same rule applies to online business. Be careful.

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Are you focused enough with your Blog or Website?

Posted on 23. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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In my last post, I was discussing about the habits of using widgets in a blog. That post has nothing to do with this post as far as topic is concerned. So why am I mentioning that post here!

In that post, I was talking about staying focused with your blog or website. While developing a new website from scratch, good SEOs and marketers try to focus on a single topic or a single purpose at a time for each page. Though there might different options or possibilities, the focus should be into a single solution. This helps you to navigate your visitors in a better way.

When you offer many options, there are high chances that the visitor would get confused. It is always better to provide the visitor just what he or she has been looking for.

Just think about Google’s Homepage. As soon as you get in there – you know their focal point – search. They could easily make it a something like an iGoogle page by adding all the products they had – but they did not. On the contrary, they added a ?more’ button for other services.

I know what you are thinking – what about Yahoo! The Yahoo home page is more of a news portal than just a search engine. They have a different page to offer the search services and undoubtedly, Yahoo’s search page is more focused than Google’s Home page.

What about Twitter?

Twitter’s search solution is taking the PR and marketing industry by storm. This has become a great hit in no time. However, they did not incorporate the search option in the main site. They do not even have a link to the search page from the home page. Are they loosing any traffic to the search page for not having any link in the home page?

I don’t think so – the target audience for both the services are different. And more importantly, though the Twitter search engine is located in the same domain, they are developing it as a distinctly different product for a different set of crowd. I don’t think that the search engine would have got such a mileage if they did not promote it as a different product or if they had just added a search option into the Homepage.

Twitter has done a great job by identifying a product. What about you?

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Are you a Widget Freak?

Posted on 22. Aug, 2008 by Roy.

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I know that you love accessories and a lot of people are so accessory freak that they would simply add on anything to show themselves as “the in thing”.

Do you follow the same rule with your blog? I mean do you add as many widgets as you get to your blog?

If your answer is positive, you got some problems or you are far from being a pro-blogger.

There are some primary widgets or add-ons that you must have to run the blog smoothly. For example, if you are blogging in WordPress platform, widgets like Blog Archive, Pages, Tags, Categories, Recent Comments, Blogroll, Feed, Direct Contact Form, Related Posts plugin and All in One SEO Pack are good enough for you as a start up blog. Do you really need anything else to run your blog smoothly?

If you look closely, you will see that, I did not even include Akismet, which is considered almost inevitable for any WordPress blog. However, do you really need Akismet to filter comments right from the beginning? Do you really have enough comments to get an automated system to moderate?

Another common thing is showing off visitor counts from day one. Do you really have enough visitors to show off? Would it gain more trust from existing visitors?

I am not saying that, you should always take a minimalistic approach while adding widgets in your blog. But if you start using widgets hoping that your visitors may like to use it or if you add a widget to show off that you have a good collection of widgets, you are loosing your focus – your blog posts.

There is no doubt that widgets have the potential to divert your visitors from the focal point. Personally, I consider widgets to be exit points of any blog. Thus before adding any widget, I ask myself a thousand times if it would really help my visitors to interact with my blog. Can I do without that? Will it really add some value? Moreover, that’s not all – I watch its performance closely (Google Analytics) over a certain period of time before taking any final decision.

This is true for any industry or topic – even if you are blogging about widgets.

BTW, how do you decide on the respective position of a widget?