A key point often forgot (or simply ignored) by marketers and individuals looking to make a splash in the social media realm is the idea that you need to add value to receive value in the world of web 2.0. Countless stories can be cited of companies and marketers entering the social media and social networking fray trying to tap into the social sphere, but ignoring the very core reason why the social realm exists. This reason is so that users can help users. Collaboration is the cornerstone of community and an analogy for successful open source and collaborative initiatives can be summed down to “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
It’s this principle, though, that’s often overlooked by many. It goes back to my recent blog post entitled 99% in which I quoted Seth Godin from his new book, Meatball Sundae, in which he wrote: “1 percent of the people are givers. In Wikipedia, for example, about 1 percent of the users create and edit articles.” Using this logic, there is a huge chunk of social media users who are content to be social media browsers and not contributers. This is all fine and dandy, but my point in this post is that if you’re striving to market and actually market effectively using the social media realm as your stomping grounds, you simply have to fall in the category of a contributer, otherwise your efforts won’t be nearly as effective, if it all.
What does this mean? It means that before you start a Facebook advertising campaign, Facebook company profile, and spam a bunch of Facebook users with your marketing message, take a step back (and a deep breath while you’re at it). Just like with organic search engine optimization, success in social media marketing isn’t usually something that happens overnight. The efforts that lead up to a particularly viral blog post, a following on Digg, success on YouTube, or getting your Squidoo lens to bring traffic to your website are typically overlooked, but for the sake of my argument, this is a huge mistake. Using Facebook as an example, before you do what I’ve described above, it’s a better approach to first actually use Facebook for a while on a personal level. Add friends, make connections, and focus on adding value to the community. Post relevant and thoughtful notes, actually contribute to groups, and stay in touch regularly with friends. Once you’ve built a presence and a following as a contributer, you can then begin to phase in your marketing goals. This is true with nearly any social media marketing campaign. Before you’re blog is going to work for your business, you need to first focus on writing good content, and a lot of it. You need to first focus on reading OTHER blogs and posting thoughtful comments and responding to comments you receive. You get my point: contribution is the effective stepping stone to marketing results.
I’ll pause now on the social media marketing discussion (don’t worry, I’ll be coming back to it regularly in the future). In the meantime, I’d like to highlight one website in particular that could be a valuable tool in your social media toolbox, if you follow my advice above: Squidoo.
Squidoo is a website that was pioneered by marketing guru Seth Godin as a social platform for easily creating pages on any topic imaginable and enjoying the benefits of a strong community and the inheritance of great PageRank. Squidoo does a good job describing itself: “Squidoo is an incredibly easy platform that allows you to build a lens, all by yourself, in less than five minutes. Don’t build a lens instead of your website. Build a lens to help your website.”
Squidoo is great because it’s super quick to get a “lens” started and constructed with social media and search engines in mind. If you’re a pet shop, you can easily create a comprehensive lens on, say, raising a lesser-known species of turtle or perhaps starting an aquarium. With a multitude of widgets to choose from, you can add content, plug-in RSS feeds, showcase photos via Flickr, highlight products via Amazon, or present videos via YouTube. What’s more, you can easily categorize and tag your lens before subsequently submitting to social bookmarking sites and joining Squidoo groups.
All of this means you can drive traffic to your website, earn money on ads (or donate the money to charity), build credibility, build online brand/name presence, and provide individuals, including your prospects, with valuable information at a time when they’re looking for it, a time when your help can make an impression.
Before you think it’s too good to be true, remind yourself that your initial goal is narrow: to focus on contributing and adding value. Squidoo is merely a platform for adding worthy content and fresh (or different, or witty, or more useful) information to the web. The web may be cluttered and crowded, but one thing is true: value has a way of floating to the top.
So head on over to Squidoo and let this lens help you get started. Need an example of an informative lens? We recently build this lens on finding and choosing a web design company. Still need more assistance? Check out their FAQ and forum!
