Online Social Networking Losing Its Edge?

Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 28 Comments

Larry Brauner

On a My Private Classroom private member conference call last week Diane Hochman reported a major downturn in the effectiveness of social media sites.

Diane pointed to social networking sites such as Facebook, micro-blogging sites such as Twitter and video sharing sites such as YouTube, but she inferred that all online social media were losing their edge.

Diane expressed concern that while top Web 2.0 and Internet marketing players like Mike Dillard and Frank Kern had successfully carved out huge niches and were earning millions, lower echelon marketers are hard pressed to compete with them, with the technical automate-everything gurus, and with the ever increasing online clutter of spammers and hackers.

Diane even went as far as to recommend that we focus on offline marketing.

I agree to some extent with Diane’s assessment. Certainly with most of the “low hanging fruit” gone and with the global recession in full force, a social marketing approach based on

free information and training
funded proposals
back end upsell
strong prospecting posture
amassing and leveraging a large quantity of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and YouTube videos

might not work as well as it did in the past and is probably not the best way to go. People are ultra-careful today about parting with money.

However, I do not believe than social media marketing is losing its edge.

Going forward social marketing will depend more upon investing long term in our relationships with the people we meet through online social networking and creative use of websites and a variety of social media.

We’ll adopt a go-giver posture, thinking about solving problems and giving more than we take, as much as we think about prospecting and the bottom line.

We’ll also rely on written content and SEO as much as we rely on social media and online social networking strategy.

And, just as Diane Hochman recommends, we’ll network and market offline too. We’ll get more personal with people.

We’ll be all around networkers and marketers… and fine compassionate human beings.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to my RSS feed or by e-mail. Also, visit my About, Services, Media Buzz and Connect pages to learn about me and my social media and web marketing services.


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Tags: Affiliate University, Bill Hibbler, Diane Hochman, Facebook, funded proposal, Mike Dillard, My Private Classroom, online social networking, SEO, social networking, Twitter, video sites, Web 2.0, YouTube

Apr

6

Social Media Marketing Training

Filed Under Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 2 Comments

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Larry Brauner

My Private Classroom for Marketers

For the past two years I have been showing people how to use social networking sites to make new friends and build their permission based marketing lists. Some of my conference calls are recorded and archived on my social media marketing training site.

I have helped many marketers to get started in online social networking and have received positive feedback from them.

In November I started blogging.

As I was optimizing my blog for the search engines, not only did I become interested in seo, I developed equal interest in social bookmarking and social media marketing. There are many hundreds of social media sites. Some of my favorites that include Digg, Qassia, StumbleUpon and Twitter are listed on my blog’s sidebar.

I mentioned one morning to my friend Tom Long that I was looking to learn more about social media sites. He suggested that I look into My Private Classroom for Marketers. I followed his advice and became part of My Private Classroom that very day.

My Private Classroom has scores of webinars every month on many different aspects of social media marketing. While most training is for members only, they also offer free social media training which you can read about in My Private Classroom Opens to Public.

What attracted me most to MPC however was their expertise and classes in video marketing. They teach members how to create and edit videos, as well as how to distribute and promote them through YouTube and other video sites.

I made my first video a couple of weeks ago which you can find in my post, Social Networking vs. Advertising. It’s a “quickie” video. There’s no actual video in the video.

In order to become a member of My Private Classroom’s advanced training and leadership program, I needed to join Leaders Club which sells leads, but I personally don’t use leads. I only wanted access to the classes that are free to My Private Classroom’s Leaders Club Team. I joined Leaders Club as a “Training Only” member, and that was my entrée into MPC’s leadership.

I attended about ten webinars since joining and enjoyed them all. The best ones for me were the ones about video. Another favorite was a live demonstration of MySpace networking.

I look forward to conducting webinars for My Private Classroom, perhaps as soon as May. I would like to teach about keywords and keyword research. Perhaps I will also teach about blogging and how to network online with other bloggers.

Several people have joined My Private Classroom through me, and I am personally mentoring them to help accelerate their learning.

New technology is changing the way we market every day, and I believe that leaders at My Private Classroom are acutely aware of this. They are doing an excellent job keeping abreast of the latest developments in the Web 2.0 social media platform and in mobile technology.

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