DISQUS

Hi Jim,

Great post ... I love statistics like these... They confirm my theory about the social media technology bubble that is about to burst.

In servicing our own business as well as clients we have a strong need to streamline our effort and then leverage that effort as effectively as possible.

In my experience, one micro-blogging site is enough because Twitter dominates. Most micro-bloggers are already on Twitter so the need to reach out to the same users on other platforms is redundant. The effort to squeeze a few new followers in smaller platforms is equal to the effort expended on other networks (with higher market share) yet it is less effective... What's the point?

Much like there is no need to optimize for any search engine other than Google, the same is true for much of the social technologies. If 80% of your market uses Facebook then why use another?

There is a need to reach out on niche networks, of course, but I suggest paying attention to why you are really using the networks you participate in... Here's the big question...

Are you networking with people or are you just trying to "build a friends list"?

If it is the latter then you are going to grow very fatigued and will see little result from your effort.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

This is a great idea... It is a great model if you are selling information.

Show the prospect quality for free and then when value is perceived and trusted by someone who needs to dig further then they will buy.

Good one!

This is the single biggest question that I get from individuals and companies looking to enter the social space.

What can I do to get noticed among the crowd?

Social media effort can easily be wasted unless you are setting yourself apart from the normal tone of the market. If you sound like a hundred other people and deliver all the same information then you will never rise up and be noticed and you will spin off a bunch of content, spend a bunch of time and get nowhere... Social media = waste of time.

Your social media engagement and content strategy should be planned well in advance. Chris gives us a good example of doing this... He set out to write 100 useful blog posts on social media and did it exceedingly well.

We have been watching how he rose to fame in this space, he literally jumped off the page going from unheard of to an industry leader inside of a few months. I never knew of Chris until the crowd started mentioning him in the past 3 months... Planned content based on community needs.

We have logged all the networks that Chris participated in and how he engaged them... Chris Brogan and this blog can and should be back engineered as a case study in a successful "content driven" approach to social media success.

Great post Chris! ... You have proven yourself to be a valuable asset to this industry ... keep 'em coming.

Charles Heflin

Your post depicts a realistic scenario that touches on a small tangent of possibilities that are open to marketers who use social media.

The main point of confusion for marketers is going to be accepting that results from social media as a marketing tool is going to yield results in indirect ways that may be hard to measure unless they are aware of the possibilities.

Social media as a conversation analysis tool, as depicted above, is not direct marketing but does spread a message of focus on customer satisfaction which may yield results that are not directly measurable.

Social media marketers need to understand that results are gained from increased search engine visibility, word of mouth (crowdsourcing) and branding through community building and interaction... Traditional metrics and tracking are an issue that I am sure will get better as this space continues to develop.

For now marketers have to accept that social media is mainly a branding / search engine visibility enhancer that will lead to traffic, action and sales but not directly unless you simply run ads on social networks. Traditionally the direct traffic that comes from social networks converts poorly and is rarely worth the effort unless you have built a community of supporters around your brand. In most cases the benefit for marketers is indirect as stated above.

Marketers that use social media have to take the time to learn this medium before jumping in. All to often I see marketing professionals that misuse social platforms because they don't know what they are doing... They try to view marketing in social media through traditional Internet marketing goggles.

When I heard you say the 2 C's ... Content and Community I immediately knew that you know your stuff... Funny, it takes people a long time to come to this one simple revelation (me included) ... you can test, test, test until you're blue in the face and you will find that the 2 C's always prevail.

Great, to the point... you're on my watch list.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

@CrustyAdmin - If your take on this is to be "fake" then you have missed the entire point.

@Hiram - this does not apply directly to websites but can lead to the overall success of your website by building communities of trusting friends and followers who will contribute to or buy from your website.

@Dexter Babcock - thank you for the comment and the phone call. Sorry about the terrible cell phone reception I had :-) ... too many "can you hear me nows" but a good conversation in any case.

Thanks,

Charles

@Real unlocked phones - Using social media for the purpose of building links to your website is the wrong outlook and is dying a slow and miserable death. Success in social media is derived from community building and empowering your communities to crowdsource your content through the law of reciprocity.

The SEO value of gaining inbound links from the "mention of others" on social platforms with "no follow" is of little to no consequence. I have evidence that the crowdsourcing effect has almost immediate influence on search engine rankings. Does this do away with the "nofollow" theory? (it is a theory) ... I am not sure. All I know is that quality social media interaction does increase search engine visibility... bottom line.

Thank you Robert,

Your comment adds a great deal of clarification to the overall point of this post.

- Charles

@Dave and @James - There is such thing as social media advertising, I have used Facebook ads as an example. The funny thing about social media is ... It IS what we make it to be so there is no single correct answer. Social media can be used for more than just social interaction without question.

@Robert,

Thank you for your excellent contribution to this thread.

Hi Les,

The pings on both blogs are identical.

After further research into this it is actually quite common to see fast indexing as a result of the pings ... This may be a good case for hosting a blog ... Fast indexing for target keywords is always a good thing.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting

We have evidence that Google is paying attention to the level of “community” and “friendship” and “voting” that occurs within accounts that list your website link.

– would you be able to elaborate that statement — prefereably with some kind of documentation? Is it based on somebody else’s analysis or is it in-house generated knowledge?

@Bergholt - I will elaborate on this statement ... We do have evidence and I cannot share the evidence that we have shown for our clients but I can share my own. Anticipating this question I began monitoring the phrase "return on investment in social media" immediately after I posted this. Following are points to noto:

1. Indexing on new blog posts usually happens within 5 - 15 minutes on Google (on this blog). We came in at position 40 for the term this morning.
2. At this moment we are holding at position 4
3. I watched the position rise as the content was crowdsourced and linked to from several blogs (thanks to everyone).

This is not an isolated event ... I/we have been observing this trend for the past several months. With Google courting Digg for a buyout (and acquiring other social platforms and filing several relevant patents) among other things we see strong evidence that Google is paying attention to user voted content.

All we have is the evidence and we are not the only ones seeing this. This is what I call The New SEO. There was never a focus on SEO yet there is strong SEO benefit to creating good content that is favored by communities... A by product if you will.

@Erika - Thank you for stopping by, your comments are always insightful and appreciated.

@Peter Konig - No disrespect meant re: item#5 sorry it came across that way.

@Steve @Caroline T - Thank you

@Anna - You're right... All the social networks out there are dizzying and you really only need to be involved in a few to be effective.

@Marc Meyer - Thank you for the insightful comment... I will be reading your take shortly after I post this comment.

@Rita Wilhelm - yes, I am happy to see that the Internet has become a mirror reflection of people in the offline world ... just at a faster pace.

@John Austwick - Thank you for the insightful comment

@James - it's the "not so obvious" parts of the obvious that took us a long time to decipher... We basically spent all that time categorizing and dismissing 18 different types of social platforms looking through the lens of Internet marketing, SEO and pure social interaction to determine where the roads meet to form an actionable and effective process.

We needed to learn how to teach traditional Internet marketers and marketing firms to move their thinking in regard to social media. The approach is totally awkward to marketers.

Furthermore, we had to categorize the social networks so their purpose in regard to business application could be understood by marketers.

There is a lot behind the scenes and it does seem that we have come up with some obvious or common sense conclusions... but we had to test from a marketer's perspective in order to show them how to shift their gears.

I agree ... Being real should be one of the statements above ... I knew I missed one!

@Derrick - I agree... patience is the name if the game in social media. Another important point is that with patience comes reward. The reward is the compounding effect that social media interaction has... It grows over time as you make more and more people aware of your message. The reward is greater though the results coming in may be very slow at first.

Slow is good though because that means you reached some people... Where you can reach some, you can reach many... just rinse and repeat.

@Jay and @itayi - thank you for reading and commenting.

I believe that that everything is atomizing because of mass confusion. Bloggers that have dispersed their efforts into lifestreaming instead of blogging are leaving their social focal points by the wayside in favor of more direct communication technologies like Twitter. I believe this is a mistake. Much like giving up on your real estate to live in the street.

Similar, there are so many micro events in the industry that a similar confusion is arising. It seems that people are chasing their tails to stay in the game. They seem confused (and rightfully so) about what even to attend to enhance their business.

I for one will sit right here in the comfort of my office, read reports, network with people and make my own personal business decisions without moving around or chasing my tail.

There is something to be said for consistency. Fragmenting your effort is not the answer. Don't become atomized, stay the course, do what has always worked while seeking to implement new technologies and strategies where they make sense.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

The Google AdWords Keyword tool coupled with Google Insights (http://www.google.com/insights/search/) are two of the most powerful keyword research tools available to the public at large. If you are not using them then you are probably guessing.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

This is a good resource that we will be making reference to in the future... Thank you Aaron.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

We did not implement AdSense on our feeds. Hate 'em.

I checked our subscriber counts this morning on 5 blogs ... all show ZERO subscribers ... we lost em all.

This has to be a glitch because though we show zero subscribers I still receive our feeds and so does a few other people that I spot checked with.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

Oh no ... this is not good. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this. I for one will not put AdSense on my feeds. I think that many people will be annoyed with them.

You must be getting slammed with traffic. Took forever for your blog to load.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin

All good points Chris... I would like to add that social media is a tool for networking with humans. If you focus on building honest relationships you will achieve trust. Once you are trusted people will look for an opt-in form, join your RSS feed and/or your product offerings.

So many traditional Internet marketers try to classify social media as yet another marketing vehicle. They don't understand that Social etiquette is the missing link.

Thanks for the heads up... I will check it out an see how if fares against other services.

Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin