Internet Marketing Secrets
IMS #180 – February 09 2010
Using Social Media for Marketing
Find out how a 10 page minisite, and a little social media elbow grease, can earn swift commissions in the affiliate marketing space.
Using Social Media for Marketing
The websites we use for affiliate marketing have changed over the years. White hats have used microsites, mininets and authority sites. Black hats countered with scrapers, splogs (spam blogs) and MFA (made for AdSense) sites.
All have come and GONE as the strategy of choice. Even SEO has become “old school” and will soon take a back seat to the social media space.
In 2007, everything started to shift. With all the social media available, it became a lot easier to advertise your personal brand and get backlinks.
You could create mininets, doorways, pumpers and links, without having to set up your own websites. You could do it on the backs of the social media networks.
Two years ago I wrote on the #1 tech blog at the time, “”Search is becoming secondary in many markets. Word of mouth is taking over faster than ever, thanks to the reach of Myspace, Facebook and Twitter.”
“For example, if I’m looking for a product, I’m more likely to broadcast a tweet on Twitter, and get the opinions of people I trust. Only as a last resort would I rely on a search engine, that constantly gets gamed by people in the SEO business.”
“People can live in the Google SEO world as long as they want, with its 2003 search technology. But future traffic lies in (dare I say it) social media properties with conversational WOM (word of mouth) marketing.”
“Change happens. You either adapt or perish. SEO and its effectiveness have declined.”
“When it comes to getting traffic and paying customers, SEO has become secondary in many markets. It’s no longer effective at getting the word out, because it takes too long.”"
Remember, that was TWO years ago…
Within two months of writing that post, I wrote the Goobert conversational marketing method. I wanted to prove that everyone could have a successful affiliate marketing business, without learning SEO or having to pay for advertising.
In my very first test, I got up to 400 unique visitors per day in just four weeks. Fast forward to the present day and the Gooberts rule the roost. A mini site is all it takes.
I’m talking a topically tight 10 page site, with a WordPress blog on it. It might feature three items for sale. One in the low, medium and high price ranges. Something for each budget.
But rather than focus on SEO and organic search, and getting found passively, you jump into the conversations and take an active role in getting traffic to your site. It’s a lot more fun than setting up mininets, or one giant 200 page site, and waiting, hoping that you’ll get found.
Start your marketing by setting up a few pages on social hosting properties like Squidoo, Weebly, Tumblr and HubPages. These become topically related pumper sites to drive additional traffic and links to your mini site.
Set up social bookmarking accounts on Delicious, Mr. Wong, StumbleUpon, Mixx, BizSugar, Yahoo My Web, Faves, Simpy and Google Bookmarks. These are used to link and promote any page where you leave comments.
And if you still don’t think bookmarking is worth it…
Bookmarks apply the law of liking. (Robert Cialdini fans take note.) If you comment on someones blog, tell them why you liked their post. People tend to like people who already like them.
Bookmarks also apply the law of reciprocity. If I link to you, or bookmark you, that same type of behavior should be extended to me.
Bookmarks create links to pages that would otherwise be isolated nodes. You can give link love to those pages, so they get spidered and pass the link juice on to you.
(To learn more about the benefits of using social media for SEO, read Jiggling the Web. The entire strategy is available free online.)
Now here’s where the fun starts. How a 10 page site, and a little elbow grease in the social media space, can generate some swift affiliate commissions.
1) Subscribe to the Google Alerts, not one keyword, but dozens surrounding your market. Jump into every conversation related to your topic.
Go comment on their blogs. Be helpful while trying to divert their attention to your site. Social bookmark – not just their sites – but every post you comment on.
2) Go to Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com and type in your keyword phrase. Did you notice that Twitter is a search engine now? It’s real time results. This makes Google very nervous and Twitter could end up as a serious competitor.
You can jump into these conversations as they’re happening. In real time. You can prevent these people from needing a search engine. It’s being proactive, reaching the prospect earlier in the decision making process.
3) Start conversations and answer questions on your blog. What questions? As you monitor the Twitter stream, you’ll see plenty of questions being asked. Take note of the popular ones.
But if you want to jumpstart your blog with all sorts of useful content, go to the Wordtracker Question Tool. Type in your keyword phrase and the top 100 questions in your niche will appear.
Go down the list and answer those questions with posts on your blog. (Multiply the numbers by 54 to get accurate monthly Google search numbers.)
It’s this simple…
1) Subscribe to Google Alerts
2) Participate in blog conversations
3) Jump into Twitter conversations
4) Answer questions on your blog
5) Direct prospects to your products
Take one small 10 page mini site and sell the heck out of it. Talk about it. Advertise it. Market it. Brand it. Social bookmark every post where you leave a comment.
Tap the “social” aspect of social media. Be a good listener. And when it makes sense to do so, jump in and tell your product story to anyone who will listen.
Sell to this market. Agree with their pain or pleasure. Intensify their emotions.
Then aim their desire. Focus it on your product or service, as the solution to their problems.
That’s all it really takes to get started in social marketing and taste success. And once you taste it, you’ll never go back to your old routines of watching reruns on TV. You’ll have a whole new outlook of motivation, inspiration and burning desire for more success.
When you’re ready to try it, get Goobert 2.0. It’s the most powerful social media marketing method ever devised. I guarantee it.
Wishing you all the best for online success,
Michael
P. S.
Word of mouth = conversation, trust, loyalty. It’s how our grandparents marketed themselves. Social media lets us do it on a massive scale.
15 years ago SEO didn’t exist. 5 years from now it may be irrelevant. Conversation and persuasion on the other hand, since Adam and Eve.
P. P. S.
A more detailed version of this strategy is in the Vault. Find out how you can make social media your number one source for traffic, conversions and sales. Want to become part of the club? Come on over.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Michael, thanks for this information-rich article. I knew about liking, but some of this has come as an eye-opener.
Yes, it came as an eye opener to me too. So much so, that I wrote Goobert because I wanted to share social media marketing with others.
One Goobert customer is up to 320,000 unique visitors per year (of course your mileage will vary) doing Goobert part time. No SEO or PPC, just using social media to participate in the conversations.
Thanks for a great article. I own a business and do not have the time to do the work of social media. Can you give me an idea of how much a campaign would cost monthly to pay someone to do this for me? And can you recommend a firm specializing in organic mattresses to do it for me, or a firm who is involved in green business side of things
Hey Dennis, thanks for stopping by. I don’t have any specific “green companies” in mind to help market your organic mattresses. How knows… maybe someone will see your comment and contact you about it.
I don’t think it would be very expensive to do your social media marketing. You could have a junior employee doing this work. It’s pretty easy to set up Google alerts, comment on blogs and monitor the Twitter stream for mentions of your brand name.
I say employee, because I’d rather hire a “curious person” from within the ranks to do this job. If you were to hire an outsider, they wouldn’t understand your corporate culture. It’s critical that you empower the individual to act and talk on behalf of the company, and in doing so, be absolutely sure their voice is in harmony with yours.
Hey Michael
Great information. I might jump to the conclusion that you’re working an angle but as you stated, “conversation and persuasion” is a technique that is evergreen
Using social media to maximize and connect with people is a sound and lucrative strategy. Awesome resource in the Wordtracker tool btw! Can’t believe not more people are talking about this…hmmm, I think I want to keep it that way as well, haha.
Keep up the awesome education. I’m bookmarking this post and your blog today!
Talk soon
Mark
You get it Mark! Conversation and persuasion have always been and forever shall be. We do it every day. Any time we want someone to agree with us and see it our way, we’re selling and persuading.
Glad to hear you’re bookmarking this post and the blog. There’s plenty more tools to be found here. One of the most popular posts is my Top 10 Market Research Tips. Enjoy!
Great post! The transition as been…referral from friend face to face, to referral from Google, to referral from friend via social network. The internet is changing things in a big way, and the same ideas you’re using to run an affiliate site can be used for small businesses. All businesses need is a simple easy to update site/micro-site/page that integrates well with the social networks. That’s what we do. I’m going to link this page from my RethinkWiki blog right now!
This is excellent and I’ve been wondering the same thing about the shelf live of SEO. After reading this tonight, thanks to my brother who sent it to me via email, I went on to Squidoo and set up a lens related to my area. I use weebly, tumblr, hootsuite, facebook, twitter, etc. and I’ve recently started writing articles. It’s mind blowing all that can be done and must be done to get the ball rolling well.
I’ll reread this tomorrow when I’m fresh as I’m sure there is other stuff in this that I need to pay attention to.
Thanks!!!
Hi,
I think what you wrote is very relevant to e-commerce type companies but I am not sure how it can be applied to a IT service provider company. Can you please elaborate a little more and help me figure out a way to use social media for generating leads.
I personally feel that catching people in twitter or blogs will gradually make people distrust this whole process as Google search has become now because of SEO.
If there can be a genuine way to build a brand … maybe I am being naive and foolish by thinking like this.
Anyways if you can suggest some approach it will be truely helpful.
Thanks,
Atma
Hey Michael,
I want to thank you for this article. Im a student interactive media and I am about to start on my first freelance job taking care of the social media for a busines.
There are some very good guidelines in this article that im sure of ill use!
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