January 25, 2008
The Opportunity Cost Of Social Marketing
I was just reading a post on Andy Beard's blog that had a single paragraph that really got me thinking. I won't link to it directly because he doesn't want the post promoted, but here is what he wrote:
I love comments on blogs, I hate when the most important discussions happen on social media and social news sites. Following comments on *** isn't an efficient use of my time, and to be honest, in many ways is harmful to the conversation as it can't be seen by all users.
I've never really given this much thought before, but it's an excellent point.
If someone submits one of my posts to a social media/news site, I would have thought it was nothing but a good thing. After all, Web 2.0 marketing is all the rage right now as a traffic generation technique, right?
But if your story is truly valuable and gets people talking, how much of that talking is going on at the social media site instead of your blog? If you're truly blogging and not just using a blog platform & social media for building & promoting content sites, you want those comments on your site.
An active, lively community is an important part of any successful blog. But if all the discussion is going on somewhere else, most if not all the benefit is going to them instead of you. Plus, anybody who lands on that post from somewhere other than the social media site is going to miss it all.
The traffic from those sites is still important, but I think you need to be sure you're encouraging people to comment on your posts as much as possible.
How do you encourage comments and discussion on your blogs? Are you doing something to get your visitors talking?
Filed under Blogging, Social Networks by John
Comments on The Opportunity Cost Of Social Marketing »
There are really 3 ways to work social media bookmarking and news
1. Let your readers do what they want and just monitor conversations with something like Google Alerts and other tools
2. Scattergun - this is effectively self submissions for backlinks, and to hell with the conversation unless you get a lot of traffic from an accident
3. Really get involved with a limited number of sites
My personal preference is 3 - I invested a lot of time in ****** as I have done with a few other communities. The problem is you end up having to monitor all the conversations, because comments can just appear out of the blue.
If you write something that kicks off a debate, there is likely to be quite an extensive monitoring job, and it is not as simple as responding to comments appearing in your email with notifications.
Ultimately I would much prefer to respond to comments on blogs that link to me as a form of continuing the discussion. I have been slacking a little on that though I still get around as much as I can.
I agree with you Andy - I think the 3rd option of getting more involved with fewer sites is the best option if you're going to be active on social media.
The biggest issue for me comes back to where I spend my time and resources.
Frankly, I'd rather put my time into a discussion on the original blog that's linked from the social media site - not the social site itself.
For one thing, it's of more benefit to the original blogger and since they're the ones who created the value, they should reap the rewards.
And for another, you never know when a conversation could spark up again. I've seen plenty of blog posts with comments that span months or even years. There can be a lot of valuable information in those comments that would be missed by anyone finding the post well after the buzz has come and gone on the social site.
I have been trying a few different ways to get people to comment. However, its not an easy task. I think mostly interesting articles are most effective so far
I have almost started looking at blogging as a multi level marketing phenomenon that a lot of us "new bloggers" have missed out on due to the insane number of blogs. As a result, I have found that there are three types of visitors to my blog. 1. Those who come for the content a provide for educators. They come from search engines. I assume they digest the information they need and leave. Based on the nature of what I offer, they never leave comments. (which I understand as I never left comments on similar sites).
2. SU visitors, who are great as I am content in the fact that 1,000's of people have viewed my content, even if force fed. And Mr. Beard is correct, any comment on the content is made on the visitor's social media homepage which does not encourage interactivity among my readership.
3. The last type are from the links from those blogger networks where credits earn for surfing, i.e. entrecard.
Anyway….provocative post.