Social Media

maxtiny

Hi

I am looking for some advice and help on social media to promote a new website i.e. FB, Linkedin and twitter.

Any suggestions welcome!

LifeBeginsAt40

maxtiny wrote: »

Hi

I am looking for some advice and help on social media to promote a new website i.e. FB, Linkedin and twitter.

Any suggestions welcome!

Hi,

What sort of advice would you like? I use twitter, Facebook and Google+ to promote several of my online businesses with good success.

Am happy to help. Drop me a PM if you want some tips.

Peterdalkey

Hi
I posted a similar query recently at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056625412 ........could still do with some more ideas

Thanks

Peter

LifeBeginsAt40

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Hi
I posted a similar query recently at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056625412 ........could still do with some more ideas

Thanks

Peter

I run 2 online businesses and both of them have Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Blogs. I am tweeting, blogging, Google+'ing and Facebook posting every working hour of every working day.
Every day I am making new contacts online and interacting with existing contacts. The results are working well.

It's all about being seen and being social, don't be tempted to just auto-tweet or tweet the same old stuff over and over again. That's the quick fire way to lose people's interest.
My approach is to only follow / follow back, people that I genuinely find interesting and hope that my followers will also find interesting.

It's NOT a numbers game, don't be fooled into thinking your 8000 followers are better than my 1500 quality followers etc.

There isn't a magic plan and the climb to success is long and hard.

mneylon

Have a look at what other people are doing with social media. Check out the http://socialmediaawards.com/ for some inspiration

Peterdalkey

Thanks Blackknight

Pretty much as I would have guessed/ expected, not a single B2B plain vanilla industrial punter in the frame. A decent well managed website and a proper Adwords budget is the way to go for these types of business. Hang a couple of FB fan Pages on to the site and all the bases are covered, the rest is just supply side hype.

Cheers


Peter

bdo

Peterdalkey, I beg to differ. I assume you are referring to B2B when you mention "not a single B2B plain vanilla industrial punter in the frame" ... I think there are a lot of instances of B2B success about for social media, especially when anchored in a decent content marketing platform on your own website.

link8r

maxtiny wrote: »

Hi

I am looking for some advice and help on social media to promote a new website i.e. FB, Linkedin and twitter.

Any suggestions welcome!

Hi Max

Good question! I think you need a particular strategy for each platform. It takes someone with no experience to treat all 3 as the same. It also depends on the type of business you have, and which platform might work for you. Equally, it will also depend on your own personality and which platform you take to.

I would say that with sites like LinkedIn, you can "network" without people necessarily visiting your website. So it's not great at promoting your site but it could be good at finding opportunities, whether they be of a learning, connectivity, partnership or lead generation nature.

Facebook can sometimes be about supporting an existing brand with cross-media representation (e.g Coke, Dell, Addidas, Sky, Tesco) and these can be hard-to-follow. But it can be good at recognising a good group of loyal supporters who want to champion your cause.

twitter is the ultimate networking tool.

Online isn't like offline. Its not about advertising. You're not paying for anything, so nobody is listening unless you're interesting. And that means what you're interested in, we aren't.

Hope that helps!

link8r

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Hi
I posted a similar query recently at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056625412 ........could still do with some more ideas

Thanks

Peter

hi Peter - I really like your post! I started my first company at 19 in South Africa (my parents are Irish) and I used to install the internet into networks for companies (I know, sounds strange to many). I'm still online. I don't know which category I fit into. I didn't make any money over Y2k and I often face the most bizarre show-downs with the latest suite of graduates who are "specialist" internet marketeers but have never owned a website. This week actually!

I also query the amazingly large bullhorn that is the Social Media engine. Don't get me wrong - I quite like twitter, blogging, facebook, G+, Digg, Stumbleupon. Sometimes with and without reason. I have sent an amazing amount of tweets and I have met an amazing amount of people (for me anyway). But I always remain a healthy sceptic.

To me, Search is by far the easiest, most democratic platform but then I could easily be accused of being biased. But I have always seen a major link between content platforms, social media and search. For example, I have slides on slideshare with more views in the last 6 months than my main site would get in a year.

The problem with promoting a website via SMN (social media networks) is that the CTR is attrocious. The conversion rates can be worse. I keep getting caught up by novel and great exceptions to the rules who can claim 50% conversion rates (holy grail area) but I have also seen 78% conversion rates in search (again, massive exception to the rule, even more so).

You have a number of things to balance online: broadcast at your peril, what you like might not work, what you don't like may well work, what you want to work may not but somehow, if you're really lucky - it could just all click together.

Chet Zar

link8r wrote: »

hi Peter - I really like your post! I started my first company at 19 in South Africa (my parents are Irish) and I used to install the internet into networks for companies (I know, sounds strange to many). I'm still online. I don't know which category I fit into. I didn't make any money over Y2k and I often face the most bizarre show-downs with the latest suite of graduates who are "specialist" internet marketeers but have never owned a website. This week actually!

Got a linky link to the latest show-down? Over on IWF perhaps?! Would like to have a look

There are going to be a LOT of gung-ho internet marketeers flooding out of the colleges and the likes of the Digital Marketing Institute over the next few years. But if you've never at least tried to run your own site, you've no business advising anyone else on their online marketing.

Would you trust a personal trainer who doesn't go to the gym?

link8r

Chet Zar wrote: »

Got a linky link to the latest show-down? Over on IWF perhaps?! Would like to have a look

There are going to be a LOT of gung-ho internet marketeers flooding out of the colleges and the likes of the Digital Marketing Institute over the next few years. But if you've never at least tried to run your own site, you've no business advising anyone else on their online marketing.

Would you trust a personal trainer who doesn't go to the gym?

Unfortunately no link! This is in real life. Someone who did a 12 monther course and is now a specialist in SEO, PPC, Social, PR, Marketing, Analytics, Content etc

We have a client who are now either #1 or as close to it as they're going to get (not withstanding Wikipedia, Government sites) for the next 3 months, including their wish list. Its been a dream project and we were getting ready to go to the UK search market until their online co-ordinator changed their job description to "Head of Global Online Specialisations" - <insert hell here>.

The e-mails are hilarious. Google are warning that WP is out of date but they can't move hosting company and the hosting platform won't support the latest WP version. The new "Senior VP of Internet and Digital Operations"'s world has seemingly collapsed around them....Couldn't happen to a nicer person really.

The problem with experience-led learning is you just don't know how much more experience you need, even though everyone around you who has it thinks you're an idiot :-P </end cynical me app>

+1 on the personal trainer analogy - exactly.

Peterdalkey

Thanks for all the input.

I am keeping the FB Pages and adding some more but will use them alongside the websites as a support and extra channel. The whole thing with the move by General Motors this week pretty sums up where I think we should be and how we should engage in the social space.

The FB advertising was just very expensive and next to zero return or even site visits. The key is probably to stay hooked up to how the whole social media thing is evolving from a commercial perspective and what is wrong now may evelove into a valuable opportunity in the future.

I was offered some FB placement shares last week, I declined and will watch the IPO happenings tomorrow with interest.


Thanks again

Peter

LifeBeginsAt40

We've gone back to Google Adwords, Facebook advertising was OK for building up a following, but tracking shows more sales came from Adwords.

I tend to use twitter to find new business contacts and leads and use Facebook as a place to post longer links, comments etc.

I think at the moment Facebook has stalled with regards to hooking in the business users. Twitter IMO seems more 'grown' up.

My Google+ followers have now overtaken the Facebook followers, that says something.

link8r

LifeBeginsAt40 wrote: »

My Google+ followers have now overtaken the Facebook followers, that says something.

Wow, that's a first. I have a theory that suggests that people who like G+ are quite detail-orientated thinkers. Not sure if that's relevant.

link8r

Peterdalkey wrote: »

The FB advertising was just very expensive and next to zero return or even site visits. The key is probably to stay hooked up to how the whole social media thing is evolving from a commercial perspective and what is wrong now may evelove into a valuable opportunity in the future.

I was offered some FB placement shares last week, I declined and will watch the IPO happenings tomorrow with interest.
Thanks again
Peter

FB advertising should be very cheap? Who were you paying/what did you pay for?

FB creates edges (conversation in cyberspace that are infinite in quantity) - each edge creates an impression but you should (i think) only pay for clicks.

Yes, a FB funnel will look like this:

1,000,000 max people > 100,000 impressions > 500 clicks > 1 click to website.

Cynical POV:
Facebook is for outbound marketeers who "suddenly" get the web. they want people to see their lovely brand, and lie (a little) about how good they in order to demand a higher sales price. Which they then waste on advertising because they can't build a real product.

Realistic POV
Facebook doesn't want to build traffic, they want to build a walled garden version of the web. That's why Bing is their search engine (and because MS owns/owned 5% of FB) - because they want to create conversation on their site (or platform if you prefer to make a 100 billion $ out of nothing)

Less than 1% of web transacations are attributed to facebook marketing and if you believe your company can do the same as Dell or other well known brands then maybe you need to take a second think.

If the barrier to entry for SEO or PPC is low - try the barrier to entry for those in the social media echo chamber

Yes, SM can work but in a very, very targeted and specific way.

The internet is made up of a variety of platforms. E-Mail market is still good.

We have well over 2million Irish visits per month through different Analytics accounts we manage. No doubt many of them are the same people interacting on different sites. Google makes up some 75% on average of all traffic. It can make up to 80% of commercial traffic.