Social Media sites, here to stay..

[An Oasis]

...or just todays fad?

Gray Wolf made a post that made me take a second look at the type of sites that were ranking in the SERP's.

I have to admit to not taking social media that seriously, thinking it to be a passing phase, should I reconsider?

 

[wecandobiz]

Yes you should look at them, as your company and brand could already be being discussed and details shared over them.

I'd suggest you look into StumbleUpon and Twitter first.

Also take a look at my own site at WeCanDo.BIZ as we enable you to complete a profile and them easily share that with 30 social media sites to help make your exposure on the sites a positive one.

IH

 

[Gillie]

Oh dear Rich, looks like you will have to start doing more with your facebook/myspace/stumbled account etc that you already have!!

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Yes, social media sites get a lot of citations, and as such become authority sites quickly. They are often treated as 'news sources' so again this is another reason to consider them. Also they get you lots of traffic and backlinks. Nice natural listings.

 

[Kneoteric_eSolutions]

Social media optimization (some refer it as social media marketing) is a great way of channelizing the large amount of traffic that social media websites attract, to your own website. It is also a good brand building exercise.

 

[An Oasis]

Oh dear Rich, looks like you will have to start doing more with your facebook/myspace/stumbled account etc that you already have!!

Arsebook - been there, done it, yawn
MySpack - no chance it's full of cretins
Stumbled - lookers not buyers, just eats into your bandwidth
LinkedIn - ZZZZZZZ
Can't even remember the rest

So I still don't get where the buzz is?????

 

[LongNeck]

I am on facebook, have a page etc(www.facebook.com/pages/Long-Neck/10119857031), use twitter (www.twitter.com/KarenInKenley), have presence on MySpace etc. It is early days with all of those, but I am getting traffic. I do read and post to various forums and do get orders directly from those.

 

[24x7 Exchange]

I still don't get the point of Twitter. I ignored Facebook forever. Until the beginning of this year I had still never even typed the word let alone arrive at the web site. I eventually joined about 3 or 4 weeks ago to see if I can put it to use for my business following all the articles I had read. It's nonsense. MySpace didn't even enter into my vocabulary. I couldn't see how it was of any use.

I have started to regularly submit to Digg and I occassionally Stumble Upon my articles. As I'm in the technology arena I also submit to Slashdot and I try to keep up and participate in as many forums as I can, when I can. I've also just started blogging on our site (Spam Filter Talk) and I'm getting results by way of traffic from these.

But contributing to all of these social media, bookmarking sites and forums is very time consuming. To keep up with them and post meaningfully in forums as well as write articles for our new blog seems to be a full time job in itself. I do think that they're here to stay. I think that they are part of an Internet revolution and as such there will be casualties along the way. Not all of them will survive but those that do will form a major part of the way we do search and receive search results. I wrote a post on this in another forum and have added it to my UKBF blog, see How Search Might Be Changing

 

[An Oasis]

I still don't get the point of Twitter. I ignored Facebook forever. Until the beginning of this year I had still never even typed the word let alone arrive at the web site. I eventually joined about 3 or 4 weeks ago to see if I can put it to use for my business following all the articles I had read. It's nonsense. MySpace didn't even enter into my vocabulary. I couldn't see how it was of any use...

Good to see that I am not the only person to think the whole thing is a pile of poo! Thanks for helping me in thinking that I am not a totally brain dead moron and everyone else has seen the light, I think the only thing that they have seen is their arse.

Good for business? Good for wasting time!

 

[wecandobiz]

Good to see that I am not the only person to think the whole thing is a pile of poo! Thanks for helping me in thinking that I am not a totally brain dead moron and everyone else has seen the light, I think the only thing that they have seen is their arse.

Good for business? Good for wasting time!

One could waste time cold calling, but it can also be a great source of leads. In business if you do anything badly, without direction, then you are not likely to see a benefit.

There are some very useful social networking and social media sites out there. It's just a case of finding the right ones, working them and forgetting about the ones that aren't where your target market resides.

To write the whole thing off makes anyone sound like the sort of person who was claiming they didn't need a website 10 years ago.

IH

 

[An Oasis]

...To write the whole thing off makes anyone sound like the sort of person who was claiming they didn't need a website 10 years ago.

IH

Great post, so how have you benefited?

 

[24x7 Exchange]

Good to see that I am not the only person to think the whole thing is a pile of poo! ... Good for business? Good for wasting time!

Hmmnnn... yes but, I didn't reeeally say it like that. I sort of said:

There are some very useful social networking and social media sites out there. It's just a case of finding the right ones, working them and forgetting about the ones that aren't where your target market resides.

Yes, that's what I said. And this is just poetry:

To write the whole thing off makes anyone sound like the sort of person who was claiming they didn't need a website 10 years ago

 

[An Oasis]

Hmmnnn... yes but, I didn't reeeally say it like that. I sort of said:



Yes, that's what I said. And this is just poetry:

Fab post, so how has it been worth the time that you have put into it?

 

[wecandobiz]

Great post, so how have you benefited?

A stack of members on our site have benefited in many ways. I've picked two because they express a return in terms of closed business, which is easy for anyone to understand:

"If we get this third one in then WeCanDo.Biz will have scored us more work than any of the other online forums/directories we're a member of... you'll be in for one hell of a referral."
Daniel Lyddon, Seraphim Pictures

"I am a business consultant who is passionate about helping SME businesses grow. I have been using wecando.biz for less than two months and have already gained paying customers. As well as this I have been able to help several business owners by answering their "biz needs". Wecando.biz is a great service and the first one I have used in six years that has bought real financial returns. Wecando.biz is a community of like minded business owners and employees serious about growing their businesses."
Edward Bodium, SME Advice

And it takes 10 minutes to add a listing to our site and then we tell you when people need what you sell. It isn't something anyone needs to spend heaps of time on, eating into their return.

As an aside a fan page on Facebook has got me 60 followers for hardly any effort, all of whom are opting in to marketing messages; and I have around the same number of followers of Twitter, all of whom are opt in again and get a feed of Biz Need leads from our website (and most of which have also signed up for our service).

I don't spend much time on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Plaxo as most of the content posted in my/our areas is automated added from our website through an RSS feed. Likewise, anything I blog also gets sent to these platforms for my contacts (probably 700 in total across all services) to receive.

I'm getting real benefits from it, but spent a little time in advance setting it all up so it was easy to manage. I actually hardly any effort at all.

IH

 

[An Oasis]

Sorry Ian your site is not lumped in with the others I only found it since you joined UKBF and so I'm afraid it has not been around long enough (in my time frame) to say if it is good or bad. I think I've posted into your database and it was a very easy process, but sorry until a few months have passed I cannot pass comment either way. No offense but your site does not count AFAIC.

 

[wecandobiz]

Sorry Ian your site is not lumped in with the others I only found it since you joined UKBF and so I'm afraid it has not been around long enough (in my time frame) to say if it is good or bad. I think I've posted into your database and it was a very easy process, but sorry until a few months have passed I cannot pass comment either way. No offense but your site does not count AFAIC.

Well fair enough, but we count ourselves as a social networking site all the same.

There are good and bad in everything of course. I'm not a fan of Ecademy or LinkedIn especially -- it's way too easy to burn time on both with nothing really to show.

That said, I like Facebook and genuinely believe that friends of mine who are not on it suffer. Not convinced it is great for business unless you target consumers, but there are 18,000 people in the UK with business in their keywords. MySpace is rubbish though -- way too cluttered and I'm reluctant to navigate around it because of the garish colours and ear splitting screeching that seems to accompany everyone's profiles.

There's gold in them thar hills though; don't get distracted by the dirt!

IH

PS I am planning a "Social media for business" seminar for late November so I'll pop you an invitation over Oasis...

 

[An Oasis]

...PS I am planning a "Social media for business" seminar for late November so I'll pop you an invitation over Oasis...

More than welcome to do so Ian, I look forward to it and will do my best to attend. If not I'll post on my blog, so let me know either way it can't hurt.

 

[wecandobiz]

I sent a mailiout to our users this morning with some stuff in and I wanted to mention it here to see what people think.

The theme of the piece was "the hidden value in your e-mail address book" and my overall point was that it is probably easier to win business from people you know then new prospects gathered from thin air through tortuous marketing methods.

Thank about your e-mail address book. You have possibly hundreds of people in it who are buying from other suppliers every day. they pass you up befoe you have let contacts lapse, they may have forgotten about you or what you do (so it doesn't occur you could help), or because other companies are doing a better job of being in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes you may send mailers to them, but these are often broadcasts and you rarely get any direct connection back.

If all those contacts where on a social network with you, chirping away with updates as to projects they are working on and needs they have, would this not provide you with a wealth of information about them that you just don't get today? Further, it would allow you to respond to needs as they arise, putting you in a much better position to do business with them. how lucky would your timing have to be to land a mail or phone call on their desk at exactly the time they have the need otherwise.

I see this is one of the most powerful aspects of so-called social media, IF people participate in them, which they increasingly are.

Thoughts?

By the way, the full content of the mailer I sent out about this is here.

IH

 

[LongNeck]

Your website looks interesting, I am just joining!

 

[DarrenC]

Getting back on-topic

Social Media ROCKS!

I am a massive fan of social media networking sites and tools. Sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, have brought thousands of visitors for individual blog posts. Anyone who has the sense to create a blog to promote and market their products and service should look at social media sites.