Am I Alone When I say that Social Marketing is Usless?

Lets say you're some shmuck trying to launch a website or blog, so you decide to tap in to

the web 2.0 social networking sphere to 'go viral' and save money. For your efforts MAYBE

you get a tiny spike traffic (which invariably tapers off to zero after a day or two). This

includes facebook, digg, sphin, twitter, youtube; all essentially useless. Anyone agree?

 

It's only useless if you don't know how to use it properly.

 

No, IamNed, you are not alone.

Although "tiny spike" is not accurate in many cases, but you still pretty much hit the nail on the head.

 

Digg (pretty much on its own) has made me more than $10,000 over the last 2 years.

But I don't use Digg traffic directly and I don't use it in the way most internet marketers do. These sites are all just tools - some of them can help you with some projects some of the time. They are not a get rich quick scheme and you have to be somewhat intelligent to use them effectively.

 

For my market and site, I tend to agree. Most social marketing is useless. This would depend on your niche, your site/product type and your marketing strategy.

In general I do think social marketing is over rated, mainly by IM people who push it as a product.

 

What makes it worse is when ass clowns are selling crap on how to make money through that avenue.

Funny thing is, these Gomers can't even back up with facts, what they are selling.

Anyway, anybody who has all their brain cells firing in proper order knows the reality of this "method."

 

You are not alone to say it is useless, but you must be the minor group who say like this.
Social Market is positive and useful, not only in drawing some traffic but also in seo.

 

Well that's true. But those clowns will try to sell you anything they think you will buy - it isn't that fault of social networks that every lying scumbag is using them to produce a fake system that generates fake revenue.

DigitalPoint is the same way. 98% of the stuff on here is useless (or designed to get us to buy something). But this site does have its moments, and every once in a while you come across that 2% of content that is useful - and it makes up for all the crap you had to search through in order to find it.

 

i think it is useless if we dont know how to use it....

thats the problem with me...

 

Please don't be ignorant and say 'social marketing is useless'. Not to be confused, it is hard to do. And, many people fail at it. However, it has great power if used correctly. And this doesn't just mean spamming Youtube with useless videos...

Check out: http://www.fiestamovement.com/ Ford released a campaign for their launch of the Ford Fiesta. Basically, to qualify to be the first to buy or test drive the car, you must help spread the word via Blogs, Twitter, etc. This campaign has been really successful and things like these are the reason Ford is still a company.

Creating any kind of 'Buzz' on the Web is hard right now, especially with everyone trying to do it. There is still potential though, you just need to find the right angle and put your effort in the right place.

 

I understand your point of view IamNed and you're not alone in that sentiment. However, I agree with dlm and mmelen; the people who say it's useless don't know what they're doing and probably haven't taken the time to learn either. If you don't know how to use Social Marketing then it is useless. BTW, so is a car, fork, axe and just about anything else you can think of .

Online or offline, marketing is marketing. Learning to capitalize (dare I say ca$h in ) using web 2.0 isn't difficult but it does take some effort (more than most people give it which is why so many fail and have a poor attitude about making money online). There are a handful of no cost/low cost resources availalble online that show you how to do it legitimately, honestly and ethically. There are decent people that give their time and talent to show and help others learn how to generate income with Social Marketing. I'd say if you're really serious, give it another go. Learn as much as you can from the right people, they're not hard to find (at least in my experience).

 

Hit the nail on the head....couldnt have said it better

 

IamNed, rolling your eyes at these posts, aren't ya?

You are not alone. heh heh

 

Cynical to a fault.

Anyone ever heard of Blendtec? That company started the "will it blend" series of videos on YouTube. Smart, smart, smart marketing idea - millions of views. Their sales skyrocketed due to their use of social networking.

As I said, there is a time and place for social marketing...you probably just aren't smart enough to have figured it out yet.

 

Yes, I have heard of them.

Good videos!

Show IamNed where they started out like that, and that is what brought them "millions of views" at THEIR site(s).

By the way, they started off with newspaper and TV advertising in their first year. During that time, they were also guests on TV shows due to their very unique brand of advertising their product.

 

Social marketing in and of itself will not generate you a zillion dollars but it does have it's place for SEO. Consider that you start a web page, then write 50 articles about that web page, post half on ezinearticles, post the other half on assorted Web 2.0 sites.

Link the Web 2.0 sites to one another and to your site.

Submit all those sites to digg, reddit etc.

Watch your site movement go up in the search engines.

If all you do is submit your site to digg, mixx etc, yeah, it's a waste but use those sites to point to all your other sites that point to your main site and you have a pretty good use of them.

By the way, 50 articles is not nearly enough for most keywords. I had to put together over 500 articles out there pointing to my Web 2.0 sites (blogger, blogspot, wordpress, vox, etc) and my main site in order to get on the search engine gravy train.

 

"Search engine gravy train"???

What is your url, and what page are you on?

 

It can be useless but you can also make it work
it depends on how much you put into it

 

I'll not share my url (not looking for any more competition) and I'm on page one of google for 9 keywords. I don't have an offline job any longer, I sold a business that I ran and make a very nice living from my site.

 

Gee, didn't see that one comin.'