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Here's How You Can Profit From the Boom in Social Sites on the Internet.
By Derek Armson
Social Traffic, Social Marketing, Social Bookmarking, Video Sharing...to many people it's a thorny subject. And rightly so because the entire social "arena" does tend to suffer somewhat from "smoke and mirrors" syndrome.
With a bit of luck, I can bring a bit of much-wanted light to the topic.
So what is social traffic/marketing?
Essentially it's getting traffic from using "social techniques." To answer the question fully, we need to look back at a small bit of history. So let's descend into the mists of time, back to the era of the dotcom boom and the subsequent crushing bust.
We may all look at Web 1.0 through rose-tinted glasses these days, but it was a very unexciting place. The "www" was a one-way street back then. As a website proprietor, you could tell people things, give them information, etc. But there was no socialization, no interaction, no "social thing" happening.
And, in my view, that is where Web 1.0 broke and the reason so many "dotcom" companies went bust. They did a terrific job in creating the buzz surrounding the dotcom boom, but when it cam to actual delivery time, there wasn't much to deliver in terms of sales or benefits for the user.
In essence, the technology and know-how hadn't quite arrived. Add to that a complete lack of in-depth market investigation into what people wanted from the World Wide Web, and with that old 20/20 hindsight vision, it's easy to see why it all went so wrong. The moneymen and technicians delivered a combination of what they believed people wanted and poor technical wizardry.
However, those new technologies required for Web 2.0 were starting to emerge. Sadly not quite in time to save the dotcom companies.
Many of the finest technicians joined the dotcom bandwagon. In fact, I remember the investment banks being totally confused by the brain drain to the dot coms. But when the dotcoms went bust, these technicians were left "high and dry." Highly-skilled and motivated by how far they could push the technology (rather than make loads of money), something very interesting started to transpire.
Many very small highly-technical companies sprang up and started to deliver the truly interactive technology that we now rely on for Web 2.0 social traffic.
It started with blogging and then video sharing, social networking and more recently social bookmarking. All these are what we now know as the "social traffic fabric."
So why is this so crucial now?
The bottom line is that any web business must have traffic to continue. Thank about it--more traffic equals more sales equals more profit. It's what I believe is called a "no brainer."
Indeed, for any organization looking to maximize sales over the Internet, having a social traffic/social marketing strategy has grown to be more and more important. Why? Because expenses for things like Adwords have continued to rise. Contrary to claims that costs are falling, the costs for competitive keywords that return genuine sales are on the rise. And while fundamental SEO is relatively easy, a commitment to SEO as your sole traffic source becomes more and more marginal the deeper into the rabbit warren you go.
That leaves social marketing a social traffic generation as the only chief viable alternative. When the phrase "social traffic" is mentioned, it conjures up a whole plethora of images.
* YouTube* Wikipedia
* My Space
* Technorati
* Blogger
* Digg
* Squidoo
* Twitter (the recent rising star "microblogger")
It's true, these are all "social" properties. But what exactly is "social marketing" and how does it work? Well, there are a number of different "branches."
First, there is blogging. With great programs like Blogger and Wordpress, it's now simple to publish a blog in very little time.
What is a Blog? Basically, it's an online journal. Nothing new--people have been writing journals for years, and a Blog is an online journal. It's the merger of the words "Web" and "Log" = Blog!
It's a place where you (and anyone else for that matter) can air your views and sell your products. Value is built by the interactivity of the platform. Your readers can add views and comment, which helps build value, similar to the comments on properties such as Squidoo, My Space and Hubpages.
Secondly, there is the social networking aspect of social traffic. This tends to split into two categories--truly social (like Facebook and Friends Reunited) and business-oriented sites such as Hubpages and Squidoo. Twitter now sits somewhere sandwiched between.
From a business perspective, these sites are significant because Google treats them as "authority" sites and gives them peak weighting as far as organic search engine results are concerned.
What I really like about these sites is that they also offer you the ability to tag your articles for a wider marketing effect (as opposed to the strict use of keywords).
Social bookmarking is the glue that holds all this in sync. A social bookmarking site is simply a way of creating lists of favorites. You then intermingle with other users with related interests and permit them to have access to your bookmarked catalog of sites.
If your "social" friends like the sites you bookmark, they pass them on to their other friends, and so one until a momentum builds. That's when and how your social traffic starts to really come through. Now it does take an investment of time and effort to set up all of your social marketing accounts. There is NO way around this--sorry if you wanted quick fix.
And you do need to go wide with your social bookmarking. It's no good setting yourself up with just one account at one property. You do need to have an account at as many social sites as you can. So...sorry...yes, you do have to do some work. But hey, it's not exactly hard, is it? Beats sweating on a production line or in a City office.
The final "strand" of social traffic generation is the video sharing sites. YouTube is undoubtedly the most famous, but there are many others like Vimeo. In addition, Google, and Yahoo now have video-sharing properties.
Video has become more and more crucial as a selling tool online. You simply have to use video in your online sales effort if you crave success today. I heard it suggested that a sales page with video is 85% more likely to end up in a sale. Now that is a statistic that is well worth stacking in your favor.
So to generate a flood of social traffic, you need to use the social networking sites to be the source of your content. Then link them to a related article on your blog or other social property. Then socially bookmark both links as well as including video content.
You do this for a highly-relevant keyword, then wash, rinse and repeat for an additional closely-related keyword.
Again, I must stress that you cannot just have one keyword and expect success. Yes, you can get on to page one of Google for any certain keyword. However, to generate a real flood of free social traffic, you have to put forward a series of pages on associated keywords, as well.
That's how social marketing works.
One final thing--remember you have to respect the duplicate content rules. I know you may be tempted to moan about those rules, as I did when I first started.
However, it's because authority sites like Hubpages maintain these strict rules that Google treat them as such--Authority sites. In turn, we as users, get the benefit in terms of great, high-profile listings (quickly).
So spend some time configuring your social marketing and traffic infrastructure and you will get massive long-term, quality traffic to your pages and web properties. And it's an overnight near an instant flow of traffic--instant social traffic!
Derek Armson is associated with the Instant Social Traffic Formula, a system that allows you to "systematically" employ social media to guarantee a page one listing on Google in just a few hours. Visit the site and watch the short video to find out how it's done Derek invites you to visit: http://www.instant-social-traffic.com
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