See that picture? That’s Alcatraz. If you use the social media wrong, you may as well be in Alcatraz. That’s how much chance you’ll have of building a good presence online.
You have no doubt seen many, many examples of social media online. This blog is social media. MySpace, Facebook, Digg … all social media where people get together and communicate with each other … as opposed to a static, never-changing webpage.
In many of these media, when you fill out your first form, their #1 question is something like: Are you here for
- friends?
- relationships?
- networking?
- dating?
The idea is to help tag you for others. It’s also a lesson to you about why people are there. It’s helpful to understand the “social media mindset.”
People come to these sites for friends, relationships, networking, & dating. That’s interesting. Do you notice that one category not here is …
to be advertised to
No one goes to a social media website to be advertised to. They didn’t go to MySpace so that you could change their life. No one filled out a Facebook profile hoping you would show up and preach to them about how much you love some product or company. They didn’t go out on a quest to find a bunch of people they don’t know and will probably never meet and yet, those people ask them for money.
THAT is definitely not the purpose of joining a social networking website. They don’t show up, hoping to be hammered into submission. And yet … and yet … I sure see a ton of people trying to do just that.
If you try that, the game is over. They click away. It’s not what they want. You go someplace else. And yet I see it all over – Facebook pages, Myspace, blogs. You see people who have a company logo as their photo. Or they have a product as their photo.
Let’s review …
Networking. Friends. Relationships. Dating.
To be advertised to?
NO!!! Who wants to network with a company logo? Who wants a relationship with a company logo? Who wants to date … well, you get the idea.
The value of the social media is in building relationships. And what we have found … I work closely with Charles Heflin at SEO2020.com, presenting the Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine for you to assemble and use … what Charles has found over the years in his testing is, the social media don’t really give you very good leads.
Is that a bummer or what, after all the time & effort you’ve put into it?
You can certainly get site visitors from the social media, but that is not where you get your best prospects.
However … if you tightly define what your target market wants and then do your research and uncover content your target market will really value … and you link to it in your social media … then people will connect with you. They will want to build a relationship with you, because you give value. They’ll link back to you. And they’ll promote your links to others in your target market, who will also link back to you.
You can get a lot of inbound links to your blog (Central Hub) by promoting other people’s great content from your social media sites. And as far as Google and MSN and Yahoo & the other search engines are concerned, nothing impresses them more about a website than inbound links. THAT is a site they will rank high.
So you’ll get more searches. And you’ll get more click-throughs, more people to your blog. And those are REAL prospects, people who have been searching keyword terms appropriate to your target market. Those visitors are way more valuable than the ones who come straight from the social media. But … you made use of the social media to find them. That is how it ties together.
One more time. The social media mindset is, people come to your blog (Central Hub) to be entertained, educated, enlightened. They are NOT looking to be hammered into submission. They are not looking for a salesperson.
They are looking for someone they can trust. That is key. They are on the lookout for good people in their niche to build relationships with. They want to find specialists in their niche, people who share their interest, people they can learn from.
Let that be YOU! Let someone else go to Alcatraz.
Richard Dennis