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Gevril and Haurex Italia dinner during Baselworld in March 2011 with Larry Brauner standing in the background.
Baselworld 2012 is right around the corner!
Dec
13
8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter
Filed Under Best of 2009, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing
The Global Map of the Social Web, newly published by Trendstream, illustrates country-by-country the already enormous Web 2.0 footprint.Not surprisingly, the rapid increase in social media usage has generated a corresponding increase in blogs, videos, photos and other social media content.
For you and me as social media consumers, our choices seem endless. New content is created at a daunting rate. Conversely, as content producers, we find it more and more difficult to penetrate the growing social media clutter.
This competition among sites and content will further intensify over time. We therefore need to find ways to compensate and stay consistently in front of our intended audiences. Here are eight ideas that can help:
- Build a Large Web Presence - Search engines and plain old geometry will work on your behalf. The better you do in the search engines and the more social media territory you can effectively cover, the more exposure you will receive, both in reach and frequency.
- Leverage Multiple Traffic Sources - Using many traffic sources will help you create a large web presence, and you’ll benefit in other ways too. Read Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places.
- Develop Relationships - Engage with those who engage with you. Not only will they keep coming back, but so will the people who enjoy the conversation but remain silent. Focus on helping by letting people vent or by providing helpful information. Be social!
- Offer Many Ways for Friends to Subscribe or Follow - People will naturally connect through more than one info stream. E.g., I’ve set up a blogcast, an RSS feed, a Twitter account, a Facebook page and profile, a NetworkedBlogs page, my own Ning site, a LinkedIn profile, a Business Exchange profile, a BlogCatalog group, and half a dozen other ways to keep in touch. Each one has throughput of one to ten percent, but collectively they all add up. That’s how social media list building needs to work. An RSS feed alone is insufficient.
- Be Reliable and Consistent - Do what you say you’re going to do, and publish new content as consistently as possible. Being somewhat predictable will help people get to know you and will build trust.
- Promote Others - Say good things about your readers, link to their content, and link to the content of others in your industry. Be a team player. Goodwill is an invaluable asset.
- Focus - Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to be everything to everybody or by trying to be active on many social networking sites. Concentrate on communicating your brand and message to your intended audience. Get the most you can from the time and effort you invest.
- Collaborate - Strategic alliances and synergies are a big part of my plan for 2010, and perhaps they ought to be part of your plan too.
How do you penetrate social media clutter?
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Tags: Search Engines, Social Media, social networking sites, Web 2.0, web presence
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I agree wholeheartedly with the last statement. People need to come together and form ideas together for the most innovative creations to come out. Competition breeds creativity but now its time to start actually forming real tested material and redesign/connect/partner to create the best available for the consumer. Only then will this industry see some form of consistency and structure. I believe this is the concept of the big players and ‘think tanks’ - Google/Bing - but as we come together amazing refined and collective ideas can come together to benefit everyone as a whole. That I believe should be the next step for the industry. Ok, I do not do soap box opinionated articles on my blog so that is the most you will get out of me. I can get that I will be posting a new article on my blog very soon - so get ready for a great read!
www.bizbuzzers.com
www.forefrontmarketingconcepts.com
(Which front page display do you like better?)
[…] 8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter | Online Social Networking. […]
As always - great advice from you!
Thanks Larry. I did not know about the “Business Exchange” network. That looks like a valuable location. I bookmarked it for later.
Excellent post! I wrote an internal doc for my sales team a few months back, and it aligned very closely to some of these points. Thanks for validating my gut and of course all the fantastic additional ammo!
Hi Larry,
Great post. Streamlining is important for me, as time is limited. Although social media marketing is, for the most part free, it does take quite a bit of time to develop, and that is in short supply for me right now. Thanks for the info.
Deb
Offering your reader a consistent and reliable experience, will always yield an excellent turnover. So it comes as no surprise if you do not offer quality content, you will begin to get lost in this clutter. Standing out in social media by always being approachable by your customers.
@Brooke I prefer the forefrontmarketingconcepts.com design for two reasons: simplicity and more text.
What I don’t like about it, however, is that the text is below the fold, and visitors who don’t scroll down won’t know that it’s there.
The bizbuzzers.com design is somewhat confusing and has little text for the search engines to work with.
@Sam @Jim @Dustin @Deb Thank you.
Excellent post - one other thing I do to keep abreast of the rapidly changing landscape is spend a bit of time each day at Mashable.
Jake Jacob
@thejakestershow
Mashable is one of my sources too Jake.
My overall mix of sources is derived from several digests to which I subscribe and from my favorite social bookmarking sites.
Valuable post–engaging others and exchanging ideas are both things I’m trying to do with my site right now. Partnerships can help bridge the gaps in the map you posted.
I agree with you in this article and the one about traffic in all the wrong places. I know that building a web presence requires time, consistently and often hard work. Computer glitches happen, technology problems abound, and there is no one simple, quick way to explode your presence. It takes time and interacting with lots of people. You didn’t mention article writing. I write for Ezinearticles and for Examiner.com and receive lots of traffic, comments and new connections through that.
@Dara Thank you for your comment.
@Erica Agreed. Articles and press releases can be great for building traffic and links. I personally prefer not to develop written content for others’ sites, but if I had a static web site and no blog, I would submit articles for sure.
his is true, it’ss not an easy task to penetrate all the social marketing sites. There are so many of them, and few offer really interesting web marketing tools. I think. however, that it’s essential to try them.
thanks for the ideas - luckily it has been built on frugal and all the tags can be set so text on the front page is not needed for SEO - i just have not had time to fuss with it and decide on my keywords. I wanted to show people all types of different medias that can be used because that is the most common question I get. They often say - ok, what is interactive web design but do not think out of the box in terms of what can be done. I will keep you up to date - so far bizbuzzers has actually had more feedback.
Good post. Another suggestion: be entertaining.
Good point Rebecca. Have a successful 2010!
I agree with the content importance but believe that branding via good and original video content can set you apart and cut through the fog of spammy stuff. Also providing a number for prospective customers to telephone. Systems for monitoring statistics about visitors are good on video hosting sites.
I agree with you. We must find ways to compensate and remain consistent in the competition between the sites and content. I’m sure that your ideas will be helpful.