Over the last few months, I've been very tempted to kill both my MySpace and Facebook accounts.
I was sick of responding to the seemingly endless ‘friend requests', mostly from internet marketers whose idea of friendship was to spam the heck out of my account with sales messages. I wasn't particularly keen to waste my time reading the ‘let's get together, baby' messages or viewing scantily clad women. Duh.
Overall, I just wasn't seeing the value of these social networking sites — but to be fair, I wasn't really actively participating to make them work to my advantage, either.
The video I watched this morning has me reconsidering the value of using social media sites as a marketing tool, however.
The 50 minute video “Social Marketing – There Are No Secrets” video by Don Crowther is the latest one in StomperNet's “Going Natural” series, which are some of the best quality production videos I've seen in the Internet marketing arena — not to mention entertaining and informative.
Don got my attention right from the start of the video by saying, “Forget SEO!“, a statement about search engine optimization that echoes the opinion I've always held and shared with my readers.
He also explains how you can still get ‘first mover advantage‘ if you start using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon now — and estimates that the window of opportunity on this marketing channel will start to close within the next 12 to 18 months.
The video shows how the Stompernet boys managed to claim the first 8 PAGES on Google (yes, pages, not listings) through social media marketing.
OK, that opened my eyes to the possibilities of using Web 2.0 (a.k.a. social networking, social marketing, social media) sites to build traffic and sales for your online business.
Don also shows results from research studies that demonstrates how traffic from social networking sites is actually more valuable than traffic we might get from ppc and other marketing techniques. Nice…
I think it's a worthwhile view and have posted the video below for you to view. Access to the other StomperNet videos is available through the playlist on video player. The Stompernet boys are also giving away a free 33-page social marketing strategy guide called “SMARTS”.
Watch it… you might find yourself reconsidering or adopting the social media marketing strategy it you do. 🙂
[tags]social marketing,stompernet,don crowther,brad fallon,andy jenkins[/tags]
Congratulations Frank! I love the plan to do your mouseovers in English and do wish that I could speak Spanish fluently. I do speak pup though… bow WOW!! 🙂
A great video. This is only the second video I’ve actually sat down and watched all the way through, by these guys, but I’m very impressed by the quality.
Wow that was amazing Thanks roz for pointing that out. Please send me more man!
Ros,
You have the same perception of “social” sites that I did. A lot time spent flittering with no real benefit and little knowledge gain. At least if I participate in forums, I learn “stuff”.
Don Crowther’s Stompernet video is an eye-opener for a number of reasons other than just the MySpace, FaceBook and Bebo traffic. The fact that there are
large numbers of “real people”, not just teenie-boppers, using these sites was a total surprise.
Don also highlighted a number of sites that are useful and can make a marketer more efficient. These sites can help manage Web 2.0 bookmark sites, make research easier, and provide access to quality content.
Regards,
Gus
‘Morning Ros-
That is a great video and it complements well alot of what Rich Schefren has been talking about for awhile. And Social Marketing may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the Internet is evoving.
I have one thing to say about “SEO” on the optimization end, is that if people were paying attn to Jeremy Palmer in his book when he talked about the Black, Gray and White Seo tactics: White hat focus is on quality… can’t drill that in to peoples heads enough. If you get quality on the seo front and quality on the content front, as you advocate, thereis a pretty great combination . And, no, people shouldn’t concentrate uniquely on paid search. But getting folks to pay attention to the right people is always difficult.
I had a lot of time off from a job in 2004, and I had looked at the Internet for exactly this kind of information at that time. Pretty much all I found back then was the endless stream of ” Get your url submitted to 100’s of se’s, sites with seemingly endless ads to sign up for everything, and lots of virus. I left to do the work for someone else rut and finally got to the end of my tolerance. I am quite pleased to find a great change in the enviroment. And, Thank You, for providing a lot of great information and for playing the part of someone who will question what the herd is doing when it’s not making sense.
I didn’t mean to go on so here. About the video. I have to watch it again because a part of the 3rd tactic isn’t ringing the right bells in my head. The Social bookmarking topic and using a ( Social Marker) tool that will bookmark things automatically was discussed toward the end of that section. I may not have understood what Don said or I’m just seeing how people will get blasted by Google.Making it available for people to bookmark you is one thing, but automatically bookmarking yourself is another. Do those links have any value other than the fact that peole know how and where to find your urls?
Hum… I’ll watch the video again. I may have had a short brain nap and now I’m missing the point . Please comment if you have a moment and thank you, again.
Ayn Elise
Hello Rosalind
Quickly viewed my Important Emails this morning ( yes yours are included ) and came across your mention of the Stompernet Video. When I saw that it was about 55mins, thought no – cant spare the time.
Anyhow changed my mind and did view and pleased I did.
Great to be sent some useful info.
Certainly got my gray matter spinning!! Thanks.
Regards
Rodney
Rosalind, I too spent yesterday reading emails and blogs but I also watched that great video. Imagine my surprise when at the 16th minute mark Dan unwittingly featured my Google results for the keyword, “Squidoo Marketing Strategies”. Seven of the top ten results linked to my lenses, blog or articles.
Since I watched the video, I have increased my use of social bookmarking and now more than 30 of the top 100 results link back to one of my articles, blogs or Squidoo lenses.
I just happened to finish watching that video on their site and I LOVED it! It was so awesome – my brain is whirring and spinning and flailing about with ideas!! 🙂 And it really helps that I love social networking sites. I haven’t completely gotten the hang of Facebook, but, I love MySpace!