For some reason, some people think that Social Media should not be exploited for money. I can understand why some might want to think that way. The search started out the same way, as have many other technologies. It was known just by the select few and it was something that really helped people find what they want. I think if you think in terms of exploitation you are using the wrong words, if you think in terms of how does it work for me, then that is a good way to think.
Unfortunately, most people who consider themselves ‘social media experts’ (who for some reason shy away from this term!) fall into two camps: 1) Idealists who believe that social media should remain ‘pure’ and NEVER be exploited for money, and 2) Spammers and Scammers who believe that social media is just another medium that, like TV, direct mail and email marketing, is primed and ready for exploitation.
The truth is, both camps are just WRONG, indeed the statement is wrong. There is a happy balance to be had. You don’t have to – and you should not ever resort to spam – there is no need anyway, as Social Media is an opt-in system. Without the opt-in element, it would not be social. Those that want technology to stay ‘pure’ is just not realistic. The social media vendors are trying to monetize them. Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin have found ways to monetize their service – wake up guys, it has already happened!
We would agree that social media is not the ideal source of getting rich quick schemes. Social Media takes effort – it can be your effort or someone else(as you buy youtube views). Whatever you do, you need an effort management system. To operate blindly in any media, you need to work out a triangulation process for effect, time management, and results – these are the keys to social media – to make sure you get the most out of it.
There are some things that you can do, that are immediate. You can build rapid relationships, you can test headlines and you can generate leads. Why is this – the reason quite simply it is that there are just so many millions of people online, getting involved, from every walk of life – and it is a two-way street.
People can talk back to you too. In social media, the average person spends 19 miutes a day getting involved, Google is around 2 minutes per day and Ebay is past its heyday.
At this time, the big players in Social Media include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Linkedin. Currently, the numbers involved in Facebook is nearly 400m people. Twitter is doubling every 90 days and is around 15 million users currently and YouTube has over 75 million videos. Youtube has about as many daily viewers as all of the TV channels combined worldwide.
So, we would explain that Social media is the newest marketing frontier because of all the people there. If you are in business, the only way you can trade is where there are people. Combined, the business opportunities Social Media present are endless if you know what they’re doing, if you take care. It is possible to blow it, it is also possible to recover from mistakes – but better not to make them – we have made a few, for which we humbly apologize, but we are the kind of people who push boundaries. Of course, there are obvious limits and these are down to common sense mostly.
Fundamentally, for Social Media to work for your business ‘you have to be in it to win it’. In search, the way we did it was to have a network of sites, each site being on a different part of the equation, all of them connected together. With social media, you don’t need to make micro-sites, you can if you want, but today, the ‘micro-sites’ are your account pages in the Social Media.
For some reason, some people think that Social Media should not be exploited for money. I can understand why some might want to think that way. The search started out the same way, as have many other technologies. The search was known just by the select few and it was something that really helped people find what they want (I remember people telling me that Search would never take off -how wrong they were!). I think if you think in terms of exploitation you are using the wrong words, if you think in terms of how does it work for me, then that is a good way to think.
Unfortunately, most people who consider themselves ‘social media experts’ (who for some reason shy away from this term!) fall into two camps: 1) Idealists who believe that social media should remain ‘pure’ and NEVER be exploited for money, and 2) Spammers and Scammers who see social media as another medium that, like TV, direct mail and email marketing, is prime for exploitation, that they can stamp on it to make it work!
The truth is, both camps are just WRONG, indeed the statement is wrong. There is a happy balance to be had. You don’t have to – and you should not ever resort to spam – there is no need anyway, as Social Media is an opt-in system. Without the opt-in element, it would not be social. Those that want technology to stay ‘pure’ is just not realistic. The social media vendors are trying to monetize them. Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin have found ways to monetize their service – wake up guys, it has already happened!
We would agree that social media is not the ideal source of getting rich quick schemes. Social Media takes effort – it can be your effort or someone else. Whatever you do, you need an effort management system. To operate blindly in any media is crazy! You need to work out how to triangulate for effect, time management, and results – these are the keys to social media – to make sure you get the most out of it.
There are some things that you can do, that are immediate. You can build rapid relationships, you can test headlines and you can generate leads. Why is this – the reason quite simply it is that there are just so many millions of people online, getting involved, from every walk of life – and it is a two-way street.
People can talk back to you too. In social media, the average person spends 19 minutes a day getting involved, Google is around 2 minutes per day and Ebay is past its heyday.
At this time, the big players in Social Media include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Linkedin. Currently, the numbers involved in Facebook is nearly 400m people. YouTube has over 75 million videos. Youtube has about as many daily viewers as all of the TV channels combined worldwide. The number of worldwide unique visitors to the Twitter website reached 44.5 million in June, up 15-fold year-over-year, according to ComScore data.
So, we would explain that Social media is the newest marketing frontier because of all the people there. If you are in business, the only way you can trade is where there are people. Combined, the business opportunities Social Media present are endless if you know what they’re doing, if you take care. It is possible to blow it, it is also possible to recover from mistakes – but better not to make them – we have made a few, for which we humbly apologize, but we are the kind of people who push boundaries. Of course, there are obvious limits and these are down to common sense mostly.
Fundamentally, for Social Media to work for your business ‘you have to be in it to win it’. In search, the way we did it was to have a network of sites, each site being on a different part of the equation, all of them connected together. With social media, you don’t need to make micro-sites, you can if you want, but today, the ‘micro-sites’ are your account pages in the Social Media.
