The Power of Social Media

Social Media has really come into its own as of late and has really been making a tremendous impact on how people view and interact with their surroundings.  Social Platforms like Twitter and Facebook and Blogging have allowed people to express themselves in ways that were never even conceived of just a few years ago.  Now you can interact with people from other countries, learn about events that are happening and interact with individuals involved with activities literally thousands of miles away if you choice.  The walls of the famous have been taken down as well.  For example, I was in a conversation with MC Hammer the other day on Twitter..he was talking about his trip to Russia and what he has been up to as of late.  Do you think I could have seen him on the street and had this conversation with him there some few years ago…I think not.  And the even funnier part of it, it was no big deal, it really wasn’t.

Blogging has come a long way as well.  Blogs which were once just something a person could use to express themselves and weren’t taken too seriously, have now gone mainstream and are used for personal purposes, professional, and for whisleblowers (some of you know what I am talking about).  The blog, as long as what you write about is the truth or if not, causes no harm to anyone, can be a powerful tool in your marketing plan.  And in marketing plan I mean, a means of becoming known, because that is what everyone that writes for a purpose is trying to do in the first place.

As time passes, more and more Social Media Platforms continue to rise out of the depths of the imagination, based on blogs, or pictures, or music, or videos, they continue to multiply.  And with all these new platforms come to utilities that allow people to do things such as post to one and update all, link all the sites together, gauge your importance or influence on these sites with your audience, etc.

This is a fun and amazing world we live in now.  It really has become that much smaller.  I am a firm believer in 6 degrees of separation.  If you are not engaged in Social Media or feel intimidated by it, go create and account at one of the platforms and be a “lurker”, someone that just watches and observe the interactions that are occuring.  When you feel comfortable enough to engage someone, do so and don’t hold back, but don’t be rude!  Eventually you will be immersed and you won’t understand why you were so resistant in the first place.

I think its time to wake MC Hammer up now…hope he is not grumpy in the morning…lets find out…

 

You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/rmasse10 or @rmasse10.  See you all out there!

When Online Videos go Viral on the Web

No, I am not talking about sending out a virus to your computers or some type of online attack on your web server.  When something goes Viral, which takes the word from the characteristics of viruses replicating, it means that something is being replicated all over the web or word of mouth and/or online references are being created.

Lets take the infamous “Leave Britney Alone” video that was on Youtube.  I am not going to post a link to it because it was famous enough, but last I looked, which was just a minute ago, received more than 10 Million hits.  What is very interesting, from a marketing standpoint, is that it is videos like this that have great marketability but little to no market value.  Imagine what you could do if you could create a video like that, ridiculous, but have a message of a product or service…wouldn’t that be something.  This is why the Super Bowl Commercials are such a big hit, because the marketers for this large corporations understand the value and try to create something that has large market appeal.  How many of you remember the commercials about H&R Block for tax returns…probably none of you.  But how many of you remember the Budweiser Frogs (I bet a whole lot).

What happened here is the Frogs represented something of entertainment, while selling a product or creating product awareness.  The best rule of thumb I can give you is that there are 2 things that sell online, sex and comedy.  If there is a way of creating comedy with sex or implying sex in some way without being crude, then your odds of creating something viral increase exponentially.

Think about it for yourself the next time you are trying to do some video marketing of your product.  After all, when was the last time you remembered a series commercial versus one that was entertaining…probably never.

Stop Monitoring the SERP’s, Watch your Long Tail

Some people will understand the title, while other will have no idea what I am talking about.  Many Real Estate agents get all excited when they hit the first page of Google or Yahoo for one of their key terms that they work on.  Hell, I was no different.  All that time and energy and now you are finally there.  I could have gotten there in an afternoon, just sign up for PPC (pay per click) but that is very costly and there is a lot of click fraud going on to run your credit card bill through the roof.  Ok so again, your on the first page, so now what?  Well, where is your traffic coming from?  I don’t know, isn’t it coming from these terms that I have so masterfully pushed up to the first page?  Well, yes and No.

There is the old 80-20 rule.  It was once believed that 80% of your business comes from your top 10 key terms and 20% comes from the rest.  Well, it was once believed that the earth was flat and was the center of the universe.  Guess what…wrong.  The reality is that in fact it should be called the 20-80 rule.  20% of your business comes from the top 10 key terms and 80% comes from the rest.  How could this be?  This can’t be true.  Well my friends, it is.  It turns out that many people searching online for things actually type in more complex search criteria than before.

For example, lets say that I am looking for Pizza.  I may type in Pizza and get the results I get.  But it is not what I was looking for.  I need to be more specific now.  So I change my criteria to Pizza in Tampa.  Ok that is better, but not good enough, I want it even more specific than that.  So I change it to Best Pizza Joints in Tampa.  Ok, now that is better.  I know most of the results I am looking at did not optimize around that terms specifically.  Maybe they optimized around Pizza or Pizza in Tampa or even Tampa Pizza.  So now my results are exactly what I am looking for but I got to these sites from the back door sort a speak.

How does one monitor this type of traffic.  Well, I think to start, you need to look at the definition more closely and understand what the graph looks like.  No, there is no math involved so don’t worry.  Take a look at this link for a good explanation of it  Long Tail Theory.  Ok, so now it should start to make more sense. Now you need to find some software out there to review this and what your tail looks like.  The software I use is HitTail.  I am not going to go over how to set it up as the site will walk you thru it.  It is a little flaky at times, but when you get it up and running, it works beautifully.

Ok, so now this is where things verve off alittle.  I have not seen anyone actually do this but I try to when I have time.  Review your tail past the top 10 terms.  Look for term 11 through say term 20, assuming that your tail hasn’t leveled out (make sure there is still sufficient area under the curve).  And now CUT IT!  Yes, cut the tail off metaphorically speaking.  You want to look at those terms and create new pages on your website geared around those terms.  Don’t roll them into one page, create several or many pages, whatever you think is required.  Now what you have done is move more terms into the top 10, so now you just made it the top 20.  Don’t worry about your tail, it will grow back again, and will give you a whole new list.

By doing this, you will move up on the first page of many terms, both short tail and long tail which should exponentially increase your web traffic.  Keep in mind that this can be a tedious task and may require a greater understanding of Internet traffic.  But with a little research and a better understanding of your own website, the benefits are plentiful.

This post was not created to be all inclusive regarding the long tail theory and other influences regarding web traffic, purely a glimpse that there are other forces at work that bring people to your site.