This weekend while I was mowing my jungle lawn between the final performances of Midsummer Night’s Dream, I listened to a MarketingExperiements podcast called “Harnessing Social Media - Web 2.0 Grows Up - Free Internet Traffic.”
Yes, I am a supergeek. And I thought I should share some things I learned.
According to the discussion (which is different than the print summary of the discussion), Social Media Optimization [SMO] depends on three primary things:
- Quality - How good is my content?
- Quantity - How much content do I have?
- Channel - How broadly is my content distributed?
The Quality and Quantity of Your Own Work Depends on Your Individual Effort
Writers and bloggers need to take care of quality and quantity on their own. At most, they can assemble a small team of people to help them generate quality content. But most of us are going to be sole-proprietorships for the foreseeable future.
And if we are working to develop ourselves into an author brand, we are always going to be sole-proprietorships when it comes down to content generation.
The Channels Distributing Your Work Depend on Your Community
The MarketingExperiments guys say, “Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2). In other words, a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes.”
That is a fancy description of the way the internet works. Every link is a potential source of traffic. Sites that offer inbound links to your site are nodes in your “telecommunications network.” It sounds fancy, but we’re mostly talking about blog networks here. Some networks are highly organized like our beta HighCallingBlogs.com.
Nodes Are People, Links Are Conversation
Don’t let the fancy marketing language turn you off. They may talk about the importance of “creating nodes in your network.” But a node is just a fancy way of objectifying a relationship into something measurable.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to use social media to find people who think like I do. Some of my best friends are the people I work with. Does it matter that a large part of our relationship has been built around our mutual working needs? My office partners are my friends. And sometimes they ask me to do things.
Friends do that. We make recommendations. We support each other. We go to see each other’s shows in the community theater. And we don’t mind using money to show our love sometimes. When one of my office friends goes to see our show, I know she spent $15.00 on her ticket. Of course, she’s getting value above and beyond my little rendition of Duke Theseus, but a large part of the reason she came was to support me.
There was no shame in inviting her to my show and expecting her to pay for it. Just like there is no shame in making online recommendations and expecting people to consider buying books, purchasing tickets, attending conferences, donating money or whatever.
(This may seem like a tangent, but remember I have money hangups.)
The point is this. We all agree that it is okay to build relationships online. And it is completely natural for some of those relationships to involve the exchange of goods and services.
***Tangent Alert ***
OK, Mark, What Are You Selling?
Honestly, I don’t have any specific pitch in mind here, but if you need one go to HighCallingBlogs.com. We’re ready to accept people into the network who already have a blog!
***End of Tangent***
Real Relationships and Meaningful Conversations Are Not Easy
Marketing Experiments said, “our SMO efforts required constant trial and error and at times disrupted the community in which we were trying to become a part of.” That seems discouraging to people like us, but it isn’t. It means we are already doing exactly what the experts are doing.
Except we aren’t paying experts thousands of dollars to experiment with our brands.
MarketingExperiments went on to say, “while actually generating free viral traffic online requires creativity and patience, creating an SMO strategy can be a very worthwhile investment.”
Again, don’t let the marketing language distract you from the real value. Investing in relationships is about much, much more than money and platform and distribution channels. But it is okay to seek objective ways to measure the depth of a relationship. And it is okay to let the exchange of goods and services be one of those objective measurements.
On the Other Hand Social Media Doesn’t Bring Money Directly
You can read the ROI (return on investment) stats from MarketingExperiments if you want. I’ll just summarize the good news and the bad news.
Here’s the good news (not to be confused with the Good News): They said, “The initial test of social media, proved to be very successful from a traffic generation standpoint.”
Well, duh. Sort of. I mean, we all suspected that social media could generate real traffic. And my numbers last month for GoodWordEditing.com proved the point. I had 1200 unique visitors to a site that’s less than a year old. It’s not CopyBlogger success, but it’s nothing to be ashamed about.
Here’s the bad news: No word on how much of that traffic generated real income. No information on the percentage of unique visitors who demonstrated loyalty with some kind of measurable monetary investment.
If you are using a blog or a blog tour to sell books directly, this is a bit of a shock. We still don’t know if blogs can sell books. Even the experts still don’t know. I’m a few weeks behind, but the MarketingExperts teleconference took place in May. They posted the summary in June. This is cutting edge stuff.
The Bottom Line On Blog Tours and SMO for Publishers
No matter how many books you sell directly, each participant is someone who loves you and wants to talk about you.
MarketingExperiments said, “A 12 month study in Social Media Optimization (SMO) generates a 1,427% (and counting) better ROI than Paid Search.” Remember, they are measuring their return in terms of traffic not monetary income. But that is still a very impressive stastic.
It’s time to deliver on the promise of my title. Here’s what this means.
If they had spent $15,000 to purchase quality Google ads for any entire year (that’s a $1250 bill each month), you could have generated around 24,684 visitors. These numbers involve some extrapolation from MarketingExperiments data, but I think they are valid.
They did spend about one hour a day on SMO for an entire year, and they did generate 93,209 visitors. Folks, that’s amazing. It’s a matter of time and perseverance and creativity. Spend an hour a day doing the kinds of SMO that the MarketingExperiments people tried.
If you are trying to build an author brand, why not give this a try? Remember, there’s no hidden SMO consulting pitch here. I’m just passing on some encouragement to help Christian publishers and Christian writers who are looking to spread the good news and measure the effectiveness of what they are doing with some objectivity.
Here’s Why Publishers and Writers Can’t Ignore Social Media
Your message is worth one hour a day. Let’s assume you start an SMO campaign. The relationships you develop will have value even if they never turn into a direct book sale. But here’s the real kicker. Those relationships will continue long after the SMO campaign ends.
On the other hand, 12 months of google ads would cost $15,000. And the traffic quickly trails off when you stop purchasing ads.
For bloggers and writers, I think investing in yourself is a much better option. And unless you have $15,000 laying around, it is probably the only option.
This doesn’t mean publishers and independently wealthy bloggers should shun Google. MarketingExperiments is clear on this point: “Pay-per-click advertising was a much easier and quicker form of advertising. Within minutes, and with the click of a button, we found we could drive traffic, while our SMO campaign spanned a period of 12 months.”
If you have the funds and you need a quick boost, try Google. But remember, the traffic shuts off when you stop buying it.
In Social Media, the relationships are real. They take time to develop, but the value is much, much greater than the cost of a few book sales or other monetary transactions.
I’m sure there are lots of wealthy hares out there who are going to take a nap someday. I’m not a hare. But I could be a tortoise.
Slow and steady wins the race.
(Now if we could just keep our eyes on a worthy goal…)
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