Internet Marketers- Web2.0 Traffic Does NOT want to be sold to

Why online marketers don’t really have “friends” when it comes to social marketing…

You are hanging out with your family and friends on Christmas day about to have Christmas dinner.  Your uncle pulls you aside and says he wants to speak with you….it will only take a second and it will be life changing….he takes you into the next room and starts off his spill…..

I have this great opportunity that I think you need to check it out….it will only be $99 starting out but you will make millions from it if you work two hours a day, four days a week…..

What is your response?   Awkwardness? Do you have that “how do I get out of this situation” kind of feeling?….

Now imagine that you yourself are doing this.  Are you finding your friends start to turn the other way when they see you coming?  Are your calls not answered?

Now imagine, one more time.  Same thing, different setting.  You have read that great book on how marketing through a social media platform is going to earn you millions.  Now you go out, create a myriad of accounts through facebook, myspace, digg, twitter, ect and proceed to spam market your products through them.

Have you tried this and are you not getting results? Congratulations.  You aren’t alone.  Monetizing social traffic has been an enigma for most online marketers.  Many an online marketer has tried to monetize huge amounts of digg traffic only to realize that digg users don’t buy and don’t click advertisements.

I should preface this article with a note.  I use social media for what it was intended for and that is it.  If I get followers because I make a connection, so be it.  But to me, social media web 2.0 properties, is basically useless to marketers when they use it in the usual way that most marketers use them. But hey…this is coming from an organic search guy.

So why are the social sites so hard to market to?  Is the social traffic smarter than the average person who is just cruising along the internet not being…social?

The main reason is (and pardon me for sounding like a smart alec) that social traffic is…well, it is social.  And let’s face it, most people whether online or off, simply don’t like to mix their socializing with buying stuff.  In a nut shell, people are turned off and want to tune out whenever their bullshit radar goes off….

And in the case of the hordes and hordes of marketers following each other and marketing to each other over and over, I would have to say that your B.S. radar would be going off the charts.

So, if the social media isn’t so responsive to most marketers efforts, does that make social media totally ineffective?  No.  But online marketers need to find a more effective pre-sell than simply lambasting their “tweets” with ad after ad.

Just like email marketing, there has to be a grooming process.

How to Market to the Social Web 2.0 Readers….

The main difference between getting traffic from web2.0  sites like twitter, face book and myspace or getting it organically is that organic traffic almost always is either looking for information or searching for a solution to a problem.

The social traffic is there for different reasons.  They are there in most cases because they want to be social.  You know, catch up with friends, check their emails, see what is going on.  And no, your special report on how to {insert your niche problem here} is not what a regular person using twitter is going to care to look at.

And that is the catch.  Sure, you can receive huge amounts of traffic from the curious social types, but if you are running adsense or some other contextual ad network, you can expect for your CTR to drop.  If you are running affiliate programs, then you can expect the same.

Blogs and Social Media Marketing aren’t that much of a match either

Oh, and by the way, blogs that primarily use social marketing are kind of in the same boat (hence why so many bloggers who focus on social traffic as a marketing plan are ultimately setting themselves up for failure, usually).

This bunch are the readers that pad a blogger’s RSS feed giving them the false hope that they are actually doing something.  In actuality, readers don’t tend to spend their money and resent being marketed to.  Why?

Because social media and web2.0 traffic is there to be entertained more than informed.

So how do you market to the web2.0 social platforms?

 

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Internet Marketer…don’t be THAT guy….

 

 

A guy sees a girl at the bar.

She is in the distance and smiling at him.

He approaches her and proceeds to tell her all the great things he has done in his life.

He tells her about how he was top of his class in school.

He mentions that he is in a 6 figure job.

He brags about his highest golf score.

He talks about his last time in Maui.

30 minutes go by.

He asks for her phone number and wants to know if she would like to go out with him sometime.

She hands him a fake number.  He never sees her again.  Where did he go wrong?

 

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As online marketers most of us are that guy who feels like he needs to prove something before he can gain trust. We are the guy who wants to rail off on all of his accomplishments like he has something to prove to his readers or followers.

 

 

What he doesn’t realize is that the chick (or social traffic) doesn’t really care….she just wants a drink…good times…and maybe a laugh.

The guy is so busy trying to prove something that he forgets the fact that the person on the other end isn’t hanging because she wants to know how much he can do or who he knows.  And the guy never takes a second to reveal who he really is.

She leaves not really knowing that the guy is a funny guy.  She never realizes that he mowed her grandmother’s yard when he was teenager.  She never gets to realize that he and her went to the same church when they were young.

Instead, all she gets is a sales pitch.  And there is no connection with sales pitch.

We, as internet marketers, are so busy trying to get our message out to visitors that we forget that we are trying to connect to another human.  Instead, just like the guy in the bar, we wind up talking at the person, and not to them.

But with social media, it is different and this is what confounds most internet marketers.  If you hard sell your marketing message, then chances are you are going to lose. What works when someone has googled a keyword to get a solution to their answers comes across to a social visitor like a used car salesman in a cheap suit would come across to a car buyer.  It isn’t believable and frankly they don’t care anyway…..

After all, they are there for a good time…

The best way to market to the social web2.0 scene is to NOT market to them….

Yeah.  I said it.  And I am sure that most of you who are trying to ‘twitter’ your way to success by waylaying your ‘twitter friends’ with garbage, self serving links are actually just wasting your time.  Just like the girl at the bar, they don’t care.

The social web could be a great way for a marketer to humanize himself….

In other words, your myspace page is just that….a personal page about YOURSELF….not some master plan to game and market those on myspace.  But a page where you are you, showing what you do could..perhaps..make that connection….and no, I am not talking about what you are doing or selling in marketing.

Your twitter page actually has tweets that aren’t market focused and driven.  Instead they are about YOU, the non marketer.  Like cooking?  talk about a recipe you found.  Like Sports?  Give your picks for next weeks game.  Saw a movie that you hate?  Tweet it, warning the world.  Got a book you couldn’t put down from start to finish?  Put it on your facebook page proclaiming it as a must read.

What good would that do though, right?  After all, if you don’t have a marketing message, then where is the money?

Well, if you don’t understand that, then chances are, you never were on Facebook for connections in the first place.  Time to go back to square one.  Time to take a more honest look at facebook, myspace and twitter for what it was originally intended for.

The money isn’t in the marketing.  Better marketers than yourself are still scratching their head trying to figure out how to market to social traffic.  The money is in the social connections that you make.  With social connections come the rest of the stuff.

A connection that is actually into what you are into is more likely to actually jump when you make a recommendation, right?

Social Web 2.0 Connections = Money

And this is where most marketers fail to understand the importance of social media and how to market to the social masses.

The number of “friends” you have won’t dictate into sales, no more than the number of readers on your RSS feed will equate to money….

They equate connections to the actual numbers of friends and followers that they have, the very same way that bloggers equate RSS subscriptions to success (the if I get 5,000 subscribers, then I will make money online…after all, that is how to make money, right?).  They do this with email marketing as well (if I have 10,000 people on my list, then I will be making money hand over fist…right?)

Connections in this way may drive traffic but in the case of social media, most aren’t interested in buying.  Remember…they are there to be entertained.

The social web wants REAL connections.  Your tweet following won’t make a difference if no one cares what you are saying.  You facebook friends won’t keep up with you if they don’t connect to you.  Your myspace page will be dead in the water even if you have 20,000 friends.

People like to feel like they know someone.  Most online marketers come across as unreachable and with an agenda that can be seen from miles away.  And the reason is blatantly obvious in most cases that the internet marketer could care less about their twitter and myspace friends.  They are only in it for the sale, regardless of whether they state otherwise.

So, once you make the connection, what then?

Now, just for arguments sake, let’s say that you do have a follower on twitter and you find out that he is interested is into record collecting.

Well, the next thing to do would be to separate him (and people like him) to a list for email marketing.  That way, your social platform isn’t tainted with sales page rhetoric and you are in effect, giving him what he wants…in this case, it could be he would be entertained with reading your blurbs on record collecting.

And because you made a connection (by chance because that is how real connections are made), you are now able to sell things to him…or in the very least entertain him.

Find the sweet spot, separate and then market…..spin, rinse and repeat…..

Another HUGE problem that marketers have when trying to market to the social masses is that the social masses aren’t looking for anything in particular.  I have already assessed that most want to be entertained (whether this is through browsing pictures, looking at playlists or generally ’spying’ on their friends).

But unlike organic search where the searcher is typically looking for a solution to a problem (which makes them much easier to market to), the social masses are for the most part unique and therefore, there isn’t many general things that you can market to them.

 

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A few years back, in my last life, I was a bartender.  There was a guy that would come into the bar that I absolutely hated because not only did he not tip that well, but he came across to me as snotty and obtuse.

 

 

I hated him.  I actually didn’t like him to the point that I actually thought about not working on Saturdays (he came in every Saturday).  I think that the feeling was mutual.  Basically, he would scowl at me and I would return the favor.  If I could cut him off, I would but he would just hang with his buddies and nurse a couple beers for the entire night.

One Saturday, he came in.  It was college football season and I happened to have it on a Big 12 matchup…Missouri versus Kansas.  I was watching this game because I am a Missouri alumni (Kansas and Missouri are rivals, by the way).  Anyway, this guy makes a remark about how much he hates Missouri.  We start arguing about who is better, ribbing each other each time our team scored, ect.

I found out the reason why he hated Missouri was because he was a Kansas alumni.  I also found out he actually played for Kansas in the 90’s.  This opened up a connection in spite of the fact that he and I were diametrically opposed to each other football wise.

It basically opened the door to other things as well.  For instance, I found out he was married and had a son, and liked to run in his off-time (I ran as well).

The point I am making here is that the connection does matter when it comes to all things in life.  And although I hated him as a nameless bar patron, I found that we had more in common than I thought.  He suddenly wasn’t “bar guy that I hated” and I wasn’t “sarcastic bartender that was slow to get his drink”.

Suddenly, he was “Craig the runner” and I was “Leo, the alumni from Mizzou.”

Social media works a lot in the same way.  If you are just showing your marketing side only to the social masses, then you are going to lose every time.  But if you can somehow humanize yourself, you find that people will be more apt to be approachable when you do have something to promote.

 

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The key that the social marketer should look for (in this author’s opinion) is those that connect with him/her on a personal basis.  You know, those that are generally entertained and actually pay attention to them not because of the marketing message they are sending BUT because they genuinely like them on a more personal level.

 

 

Just like “Craig”, he would have always been “guy who doesn’t tip” had we not connected on a more personal level.

Alternatively, you can use social media to soften up your Web 2.0 traffic as well….

Let’s say that you are blogging. A social presence can actually soften up your persona online. It can change the way a person is viewed.  I am sure that you have read that a photo of yourself on a sales page will increase sales, right?

Well, what happens when the person comes to your site, and then realizes that you live in Tennessee and bleed orange (for those of you who don’t know what bleeding orange means, it means you are a Tennessee Vols fan)?  What happens when they realize that you share an infinitity with collecting post-it notes (I know-weird but there is actually a forum online that connects post-it note fans)?

Or as in the case of the story earlier, what happens when someone that you had no interest in suddenly becomes interesting because you realize that you two went to rival universities?  I am sure that Craig would have always thought of me as just the snotty bartender had we not found a connection.

Social Web 2.0 Traffic connections = humanizing yourself and making yourself a regular person with regular person’s hopes and dreams.

The answer is instant connection.  And connecting is the secret sauce of working social web2.0 platform.  Hell, it is the secret sauce of becoming a successful internet marketer too.

 

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Social Bookmarking Sites or…..What can YOU do for ME?

Once upon a time, someone came up with the idea that rather than bookmarking the sites you love just on your browser, how cool would it be to share your bookmarked cool sites with the world?

The premise was great…until internet marketers came along.

Internet marketers figured that the social bookmarking sites would be a great place to not only spam market their sites, but that they would get a 2-for-1 from utilizing bookmarking sites.  The backlinks that came from this would go into their link profile, thus elevating their status in the SERPS.

The result of this was tons of marketers basically spamming their links in an attempt to get backlinks and traffic to their site.

Now, I have to ask this question….does anyone that is not an internet marketer actually use social bookmarking anymore?

Or is it nothing more than a link farm for internet marketers?

Social bookmarking sites were intended to give a reader more options and pages to find information that they like.

Marketers will usually use this the other way.  They will spam their site URL’s in a rather feeble attempt to gain traffic.  Most of them don’t even bother to give other good links that they know about. Why?  Because from an internet marketer’s viewpoint, unrelated links equals competition and who wants that?

Someone in one of the forums I wander through daily mentioned a site where you can pull in a bunch of your sites, connect them together and shoot them all over the web to try to get their marketing message across.

I asked, why do that (other than for backlinks)?  After all, wouldn’t someone smart figure out that all the sites were somehow connected?

What if rather than going that way, instead, you build an RSS feed with the sites that you visit daily that happens to include one site of yours that is relevant to the niche?  What would happen then?

Wouldn’t the person who happened upon it find it more useful than an RSS feed that basically had one person spamming their sites out there?

What do you think may happen?  Do you think that you may make a connection? Do you think that that person may plug you or your RSS feed?

I am just thinking out loud here though.  I do know this much.  The social web and the marketing world aren’t connecting because marketers tend to be a pretty self-serving lot.

 

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One form of Social Web Marketing that does work….

One form of social marketing that does work straight out of the box is actually the dinosour of social marketing…..forum marketing.

why does it work better than twitter, facebook and myspace?

• It is social BUT it is also targeted. In other words, most people who peruse forums are looking to be entertained but also to be entertained within their niche.
• The marketer can build a personality over time- The more active you are, the more likely you can make sales.  Basically, it boils down to trust.
• A forum has many entities on it as opposed to one entity on a page.  The social visitor isn’t subjected to the marketer exclusively.  They have a wide range of other people to read.
• The ad format in forums is non-intrusive-  Ads in forums come in the form of signature links.

Anyway, this is just a rant.  The next time you decide that you are going to tweet about the 15th latest greatest product on the planet that is going to cure their baldness, give them a permanent hard-on or make them a millionaire in less time than it takes for them to say “where’s the order button”, ask yourself this question….

If I was on the other end, how would I feel about following this person?

Once again, this is coming from an organic search marketer that uses the social media platforms as they were intended.  However, that said, social web2.0 traffic may be put to good use if you can make that connection.  If you can put your guard down just for a second and actually become “joe the regular dude” and not “joe the marketer”.  If you can find common ground and are entertaining to your followers.  If you can’t do that and would rather do what other internet marketers are doing, then chances are you can be guaranteed to have the same frustrations and issues that all the other social marketers are facing.

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