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Social Media

3 Ways In Which Online Marketing Is Evolving

by admin on December 28, 2010

explosm evolution t shirt 3 Ways In Which Online Marketing Is Evolving

The world of internet marketing is forever evolving. What was true six months ago isn’t true today and what’s true today probably won’t be true six months from now. Therefore, it’s imperative that you constantly and consistently keep your finger on the pulse of the Internet.

Recently, three new changes have either come about or been imposed/proposed that could have a profound effect on the way things are sold on the Internet. Anyone who wants to stay relevant in this fast changing field had better pay attention and learn to adapt.

The Rise of Facebook

You may be saying to yourself that this is old news. Facebook has been around for ages and everyone knew two or three years ago that it was an important tool in the Internet marketing tool box. True enough.

However, what you may not be aware of (and even if you are, you may not realize just how profoundly this affects your marketing efforts) is that Facebook is expected to surpass Google shortly for sheer volume of searches.

In other words, while we have focused on search engine optimization and only recently begun to look at how to maximize our efforts to market on social media, our market has been shifting out from under us and is rapidly making SEO a second fiddle to the needs of closed networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Proposed Rules on Tracking

While it’s still not official yet, new rules proposed by the Federal Trade Commission regarding web site tracking have the power to fundamentally alter the way we do Internet marketing for the foreseeable future.

A very big part of figuring out what consumers might want to buy has (until now) involved tracking web surfing habits on major web sites, especially places like Facebook and Google. This has proven to be a highly successful tactic in making sure for example that you aren’t wasting banner ad impressions of emergency alert systems for seniors when the people surfing a particular web site are mostly teenagers (to put it into very simple terms).

However, if the FTC’s new rules go into effect, much of the tracking that is the lifeblood of today’s Internet marketing efforts will go down the tubes as people choose to opt out of tracking.

New Rules on Net Neutrality

Finally, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has recently proposed a new set of rules regarding net neutrality that could equally affect your efforts to sell products to people using smart phones.

Net neutrality means that Google’s web site shows up just as fast Grandma’s Sweet Recipe’s site and ever other web site on the Internet. However, the new rules that have been proposed mean that on smart phones at least, certain web sites can be given preferential treatment to show up faster and others can be displayed much more slowly.

The means that those who need to market to cell phone users (and let’s face it, that’s pretty much all of us) could find ourselves out in the cold with customers effectively unable to visit our sites and choosing a competitor’s web site instead.

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Tagged as: facebook, fcc, ftc, Google, internet marketing, net neutrality, Social Media, tracking, twitter

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3 Reasons Why Social Media Success is Extremely Difficult

by admin on February 9, 2010

social media landscape 3 Reasons Why Social Media Success is Extremely Difficult

Social media is the future of the web, right?

Yep!

But what exactly is social media? According to Wikipedia:

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).

Simply put, websites like Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, StumbleUpon etc, which allow user contribution and quick sharing of information form what we call social media.

Social media rocks.

But have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to succeed in social media as an online business owner?

Now, I understand that a couple of internet marketers are making a killing online using social media, but most internet marketers are still trying to find out how to make social media work.

For people who still have not found success here, it really isn’t their fault.

Here is the brutal truth: It is very difficult and time-consuming to make social media work..

And to cause even more problems, social media courses make everything sound a bit too easy, which confuses people even more. Just about every course out there gives the user a “foolproof” plan. Social media does not work that way.

Anyway, here are 3 reasons why it is quite difficult to find success using social media:

1. Social media processes are extremely difficult to manipulate: This is by far the most important point.

There is no short-cut to getting mass appeal. There is literally no way you can “force” the masses to promote your content if they do not like you. If people do not like you, they might ignore you, leave your group or simply report you as a spammer.

The point is, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to get a short-cut to social media success.

And taking a short-cut is exactly what most people want.

A lot of people start a Twitter account in order to leverage their followers into becoming buyers, but give up hope in a few weeks. They complain that the followers are always “listening” to their tweets but never respond.. How do you sell to someone who does not respond?

This slide-show suggests some of the reasons why people think Twitter might not be perfect after all.

It is the same with Facebook too. Most people also start marketing on Facebook by quickly forming a group, sending mass invites and hoping to see the sales roll in, which never happens.

If you want to be successful in social media, you have to avoid taking short-cuts. Social media success is a game of consistency and persistence.

If you try to manipulate people to your benefit, it will backfire as most people will be able to see through your self-serving practices.

2. You need to give it a lot of time: Unless you are someone popular, you need to work very hard to get people to like and trust you.

It all comes down to trust. If there isn’t an element of trust, no one cares what you have to say. And trust takes a lot of time to develop.

Social media successes like Guy Kawasaki, Yaro Starak and Brian Clark have been around for over 4-5 years. They have provided their audience with a lot of good content, which has allowed them to leverage their trust. To get their level of success, you need to make some serious effort.

If you are serious about social media, you will have to connect to your audience everyday and think up new ways to engage them.

99% of online marketers will find this task extremely difficult to do for hundreds of different reasons.

3. Social media hates direct marketing: If you try to market directly using social media, you will be disappointed.

And this is exactly what happens. Most people try to use direct marketing on Twitter and Facebook, spam everywhere and end up getting their accounts suspended.

These practices can easily be seen on Twitter. For one thing, my Twitter timeline is always full of people trying to sell Twitter software or home business courses.

People seem to believe that slapping an affiliate link on their profile/outgoing message and writing a catchy, hyped up promotional message will do the trick. This is just not the case.

Social media users are very tech savvy and are there mainly for the content. Provide them with good content, maintain your relationship with them and they MIGHT buy from you down the road.

In conclusion, I am not saying that social media is useless. Quite the contrary.

However, from the perspective of an online marketer, it takes much more time to be successful at social media than it does to rank a website to start receiving traffic through SEO.

That being said, if you have the drive and determination in making it work, it can be a very worthwhile investment.

Comments? Feedback? Let us know!

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Tagged as: Social Media, social media drawbacks, social media success

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