Category Archives: Social Networking

Word of Mouth

Getting an idea, product or blog noticed can be quite difficult, and things like Digg, Del.icio.us, and others might help you get some attention, but one of the sources I have found to be the best way to launch something is good old fashioned word of mouth.

I keep a pretty extensive friends list on my various e-mail accounts, and instant messaging clients. I also try to keep a few lists of people that I think will like what I am working on, or cover a similar niche.

How you can say things, and the methods you can use to contact various people depend on how developed your relationship is, but from my experience, people respond better to personal messages, than mass e-mailing or putting together a professional sounding press release. Don’t get me wrong, a press release works great if you have little to no relationship with someone you want to inform, but don’t expect a response from those people, no matter how great your release is in your mind.

Conversation

The first people I talk to are family and friends. These are people I see here and there who might know someone that would be interested in the product, service or blog I am working on. I try not to make it the focus of a conversation, but I do bring it up for as long as possible near the end of the conversation. People seem to remember the last few things talked about much better than the first things talked about. I guess we all have pretty spotty memories.

Instant Messaging

For my second round, I like to tell people via an instant message client. I don’t pressure them into going right that second to check out what I am releasing, but instead I only explain the concept and ask them for feedback. People love to give their opinion on things, even if it is something they know nothing about, and they will be more likely to really look at what you have put out if you ask for their feedback.

E-mail

After I have done that with as many people as possible, I move onto e-mailing various people. I write about three different e-mails, each with their own level of formality and tone. I want to make sure I am sending e-mails that have a business tone to people I don’t know well, and e-mails that are friendlier to my friends. I then try to personalize each e-mail with a sentence or two. This takes a fair bit of time, but much less than writing a custom e-mail for every person, but will most likely garner a much better response than mass e-mailing them all.

Blog

The fourth and final step is writing about it on my blog. This is really the least personal step of the whole process as I am just broadcasting. Any feedback I get, I try to respond to, and create a dialog, anything to spread the word of what I am doing farther and faster. This step usually brings back the least feedback, but sometimes the most traffic to whatever I am doing. This step also requires that your blog be a platform for your projects. If you skip this step, try to make sure someone else blogs about what you are doing. A broadcast like this can really help spread your idea, product or blog.

Originally posted on July 23, 2007 @ 1:33 am

Social Sites for Promoting Your Content

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Getting your content out into the world can be very difficult, but as the web community grows, everyone is looking for new ways to find the best content on the Internet. To deal with this need, many social sites have been developed that allow users to vote, bookmark, or randomly find the most interesting things posted online.

This article is going to highlight a few of those service based sites, as well as talk about the type of traffic you can expect.

Digg

Digg is still considered the premiere place right now to gain attention for your site. Getting on the front page of Digg will bring so much traffic, that many sites find themselves unable to keep up with the requests, thus succumbing to the Digg effect. If you are lucky, you can get a fair number of new RSS subscribers from Digg related visitors.

That leads me to the biggest issue that I have with Digg is that the traffic doesn’t convert well. Getting on the front page of Digg a few times will use up huge amounts of bandwidth, create a big influx of one time readers, and do very little else. Don’t expect your Google AdSense to be filling up with cash from Digg related visitors.

You can promote news/articles, podcasts, and videos on Digg, but the biggest traffic effect comes from being on the front page of the News section.

Reddit is a much simpler looking site when compared to Digg. It has more or less the same basic premise though: voting up moves the story closer and closer to the front page. And just like on Digg, getting on the front page is where you can get most of your traffic.

Where Digg is very technology focused, Reddit seems to do well with more traditional news, including politics, world affairs and “funny news”.

The traffic here, just like Digg, are web savvy users, who know how to avoid advertisements, but they don’t come in the same numbers as with Digg. Also, from what I have seen, Reddit users seem to have a longer attention span, and are more likely to check out other articles on a site once they arrive.

Del.icio.us

Even with its strange domain name, Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking website. There are no votes here, only a system that counts how many people have added the same link. If enough people add your link to their Del.icio.us account, you will find it on the front page.

The Del.icio.us community is very diverse, but technology stories seem to make up its Hotlist more often than not.

The visitors from Del.icio.us are a lot like the ones from Reddit. They are more willing to stick around, though they are still very web savvy and most likely won’t click on any advertising you have.

Netscape

One of the newest “big” players to the social scene is Netscape, and from what I have seen, it is probably one of the most filtered and managed services, with Scouts and Anchors on shift to filter out garbage from the site.

The front page is littered with political stories and news. I have seen topics such as movies, music and science also hit the front page regularly. The users here range from the inexperienced to the very web savvy.

The traffic received from reaching the front page is much smaller than most of its competitors, but I believe that it is of a slightly higher quality, mostly due to the lack of knowledge that some of its users have. This means traffic from Netscape is more likely to click on advertisements than Digg or even Reddit, but just like Digg, they probably won’t stick around to see what you write next.

StumbleUpon

A very different system than all the rest, StumbleUpon is primarily for randomly bringing you to sites and stories you will like. You add StumbleUpon to your browser, and when you click on it, you stumble to the random site that the service chooses.

The service is growing at a viral rate, especially lately as reports have started appearing on sites about the massive amount of quality traffic that StumbleUpon is bringing to their sites.

I haven’t experienced this first hand as of yet, but it seems to be one of the communities worth joining. A word of warning though, one of my friends has spent hours aimlessly stumbling from site to site, saying that the service can be addictive, and a great way to procrastinate.

All The Rest

There are many other social news and bookmark sharing sites, some with a broad focus like most of the sites I have listed above, and some with specific niche focuses, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. My biggest tip would be to cast a wide net, and involve yourself with as many of these communities as you have time for. Over time you will learn which ones work best for you, and focus on those.

The best thing you can do for your site is networking, so give it the time and energy it deserves.

Originally posted on July 20, 2007 @ 9:52 pm

Social Media Meets SEO: Learning the Basics

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It’s a point of frustration for many people that you have the best idea in the world, and you talk about it constantly, consistently, and passionately on social media, but somehow information about your opinion or your product never gets anywhere. This is a very common area of growing pains for people who are trying to find the intersection between social media and search engine optimization.

A few of the ways that you can learn the basics about how those ideas combine is by going to workshops, learning to adapt to algorithms, knowing the difference between real and fake success, and using your knowledge to hack the system. Continue reading →

Originally posted on March 8, 2018 @ 2:48 am

4 Social Media Marketing Mistakes And What You Can Do To Avoid It

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In this modern age, it has become standard to not only have a webpage for your business but also have accounts on social media. By joining a social media platform you will be able to give your business a more personal voice which people can relate to.

Unfortunately, for many businesses they aren’t sure how to market effectively on these platforms. They may be great at traditional marketing but social media is an entirely different ball game. Since the idea is to be sincere and personable rather than come off as a cold faceless business, it can be challenging for some businesses to find their voice.

When it comes to marketing your business on social media, here are some of the things that you definitely don’t want to do. Continue reading →

Originally posted on March 19, 2018 @ 9:20 am