Internet Marketing
Marketing With Out The Fluff

what’s your experiences with telecommunications network components. What do you use every day at home, work?

what’s your experiences with telecommunications network components. What do you use every day at home, work?

Advertisers want to know if Bing can really provide a new experience for searchers, or if it’s just Live.com with a cooler name. Bing may not be for everyone, but as a PPC marketer, I like what I see. …

"As a part of the JellyTalk series, I will be discussing Yahoo! Search BOSS and open search alongside Eric Jensen from Twitter Search and Rajat Mukherjee from Google Custom Search on Friday, May 15 in San Francisco."

Guess what?  Social networking online is very similar to social networking offline (in the real world)!  Big surprise?  Believe it or not, for some, it really is a surprise. Whether you are looking to grow your network, influence, awareness and reach or advancing your professional and personal goals it’s important to recognize that being successful in social networking online and offline are very similar.  Most of us know the rules for networking in the real world, but it’s important to remember them for online, particularly if you are making your first moves into online social media and social networking.  The following are tips to become a decent social networker in either medium. Most tips apply in both scenarios. Know the organizer: Make it a point either when you arrive at the event or prior to leaving the event to thank the organizer for putting the event together,  let them know that you wish to attend future events and that you met some great contacts.

Having trouble getting exposure for your linkbait on social media news sites? Well, complain about algorithms all you want, but the odds are you’re doing something wrong.  Identifying these 5 main mistakes along with these tips to correct them, can help you debug your social media problems leading you to social success! This is a no-brainer; social media ‘power users’ do exist.  While you DON’T need to be a power user to find success on sites like Digg and Reddit, you DO need to be a part of the community.  If you don’t regularly participate in the community, vote on stories, submit great content (not just your stuff) and make friends … then the odds of  your content becoming popular are severely limited. If your accounts have never had any social media successes in the past, don’t waste your precious linkbait trying to make it your first ever submission to go popular .  Join the community, contribute to the site and build yourself up BEFORE submitting your content.  If you don’t have time to work your accounts, you should either stop your involvement in social media news marketing or look to others for help/guidance.  Chris wrote a brilliant post awhile back on how to meet other social media users and how you can use this to your advantage. The quality of accounts is one of the most critical success factors in the social media news sites.  To set yourself up for success, make sure you join the community wholeheartedly or know someone  who does. The quality of a site is make-or-break in social media.  If you are too salesy, business oriented or ad-focused you are setting yourself and your content up for  colossal failure.   Social media news users are looking for one thing – interesting news or great content .  They didn’t come to get slapped in the face with a massive pop-up. Many users are even repulsed by content that is too corporate.  Many times the creation of special non-branded pages or microsites is a good way to ensure that your linkbait will have a higher probability of being seen. A classic example of setting yourself up for failure is that of spreading your content across multiple pages to boost your ad impressions.  Sure, getting  ten extra pageviews for that piece of linkbait spread across  ten different pages is nice, but what would you rather have – a social media success with 100,000 visitors and 100,000 page views or a failure with 100 visitors with 1,000 page views.  I always recommend erring on the side of caution, and not giving social media users a reason to not vote for your content (or even downvote you). Even the most powerful social media users can’t make poor content popular.  Your content should fit the site’s audience, and be unique and engaging.  This is far and away the most common problem with the linkbait success. People spend far less time on lists, guides, and articles than they should.  If your content doesn’t floor someone, then why would they vote for you, let alone link to you?  If you are taking the humor hook , have your funniest friend or local struggling stand-up comedian help you write it.  Using the resource hook?  Then reach out (send emails, leverage twitter) and try to gain a quote from an industry expert. Maybe you think you can buy votes to get popular, or maybe you think setting up hundreds of accounts will do the trick.  Wrong.  Strategy is absolutely critical in social media news sites.  Your content should fit the network that you are using; you should follow all terms of use and you should act in a way that represents the community. Buying votes is a bad strategy .  Submitting to irrelevant sections just because they have more subscribers is an awful strategy.  Having everyone in your building vote on a story is a terrible method. Make sure that you have a well documented strategy before engaging in social campaigns, as one bad tactic can kill your linkbait forever . Let’s face it, sometimes your competition is just dirty .  Make sure your campaigns are under the radar until they become popular.  Don’t update your Facebook about upcoming promotions or send out Tweets asking for votes.  You are just asking them to help you fail.  Like everything else, there are always people looking to halt your success. Conclusion If you can take one and only one thing away from this post, I implore you to think about this: “When in doubt, always take the cautious route”. Do whatever it takes – ping a top user, put that corporate linkbait on a non-branded page, throw an extra set of eyes at the content, spend the extra time coming up with a comprehensive strategy and stay under the radar.  Your linkbait will thank you. If you like this post, please consider subscribing to our RSS or follow me on Twitter for more of the same