Website Traffic - The Dark Side of Using Web 2.0 Sites & Social Media Networks For Getting Visitors

There has been a lot of hype surrounding the use of Web 2.0 sites and social media networks for getting new visitors online. In this article I want to show you the dark side of using these sources in your niche market to get new visitors to your site.

First - You have to always be doing all the work!

The problem with using social media sites to get new traffic to your website is the fact that you are the one that has to always be doing all the work to get more visitors to your site.

You can't automate what you are doing very easily and it is very hard to outsource all the work that has to be done as you have to be the one who is usually doing everything.

Second - You have to compete with a lot of people to get visitors to your site.

The problem with a lot of free traffic sources like Web 2.0 sites is the fact that you have to compete with so many other advertisers to get visitors to your site.

The reason that you have to do this is because the traffic is free and therefore everyone wants to get access to it and use it to grow their businesses.

You need to realize that in most cases it is a lot better to use other sources that you can automate and that are proven to actually work! Sources like banner advertising and Google AdWords can give you visitors without you having to do anything.

What if you can't get more website traffic? Here's a "secret snowball traffic system" that has generated over 1,175,000 visitors for my tiny websites. Click Here Now to get this free video that will show you how to make it happen for your sites. http://www.jasonnyback.com

Do Not Advertise on Social Media Sites

Don't advertise on social media sites. Lets be honest, advertising is about persuasion while social media is about empowerment - service as opposed to solicitation. The difference boils down to consumer confidence - advertising and marketing messages are inherently persuasive and rightly perceived as biased whereas word of mouth messages naturally build (or diminish) confidence without perceived bias. Granted, the value of good advertising in social media or any other environment is in its ability to spark inspiration and need, emotion and thought; from those things that make up everyday life.

So why does traditional online advertising not work in social media? First, most consumers' decisions on social media sites take place through the referral of friends. Case in point, 78% of respondents to the 2007 Nielsen Global Survey on Word of Mouth indicate consumer recommendations are the most credible form of advertising. Second, the push marketing approach does not apply to niche, fast-moving audiences found in social media sites. Three, the mindset of social media users is driven by self promotion and community (social engagement) - in order to connect there has to be an exchange that is of value to the user. If you chose to advertise on social media sites be conscious of the need to give that audience something of value as opposed to a advertising message.

Twiter, Facebook, Flyertalk and thousands of community boards, blogs and social media platforms empower consumers to communicate, network, contribute and make decisions about their everyday life. The gold dust of social media is consumer generated content and the sentiment it reflects about brands - dynamic word of mouth and conversation. The question is how to identify, harness, measure and act upon the conversational gold dust. In simple terms the challenge is to define and tie key performance indicators to the content and sentiment being measured.

The first thing to understand is that social media and consumer generated content serves as a repository and public record of conversations and consumer sentiment about a brand. A number of companies (Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Brand Watch, Market Sentinel) have popped up offering technology to capture those conversations for analysis but much of the application of that technology is still quite tactical or focused on brand reputation management. In fact, the consumer generated insight research opportunity is to use that insight on a regular basis and with quality marketing-based analysis to derive valuable insights that can improve marketing communications.

In our experience, the single most important measurement metric for social media is a variation of Net Promoter Score ®. Creator, Fred Reichheld of Bain & Co., measured the number of consumer "Promoters" (those who would recommend a product or services) and "Detractors" (those who actively discourage the use of a product or service) of hundreds of companies across many categories finding that on average the NPS leader grows at 2.5x. While the Net Promoter Score ® metric can provide a foundation metric, it is important to define additional metrics aimed at benchmarking the contribution of social media against other channels of consumer interaction.

Our work with Avis and OpenSkies on the social media space has allowed us to define a measurement approach to consumer generated content; based on five measurement modules.

1. Involvement

This set of metrics is aimed at understanding the propensity of involvement for either your own social media environment (community board, blog) or third party social media sites that drive users to your site. Assigning a unique referring ID to your social media property or third party social sites within your site analytics tool (Web Trends and Google Analytics) should facilitate this data.

- Site visits

- Time spent

- Pages viewed

- New vs. returning users

- Navigational path

2. Engagement

These metrics are aimed at understanding the specific actions and behaviors of users. Every engagement such as a comment should be equated to a call centre engagement or store visit. This approach allows for social media engagement to be viewed as part of the overall customer journey, providing a degree of benchmarking.

- Commentary volume

- Frequency of comments

- Sources of commentary

- Commentary creator segments

- Topics/Subjects

3. Sentiment

This set of metrics is aimed at identifying changes in positive and negative feedback across time and against competitors. This information can be used by Customer Service teams to proactively address specific issues being openly discussed by consumers. - Net Promoter Index variation

4. Propagation

This set of metrics is aimed at indentifying the distribution of social media content and its impact on how other consumers find and participate on the discussions about your brand. A key metric is search engine indexing which is related to the incremental impact of natural search traffic and visibility derived from social media.

- Citations

- Trackbacks

- Search Engine indexing

5. Transaction

While not applicable to all brands, transactions from social media can be measured by leveraging third party ad-serving and site analytics data. Establishing a control test against your average transactional site data can be an effective way of identifying variations on behavior and value.

- Registrations

- Shopping cart instances

- Conversion rate

- Revenue per transaction

- Revenue by user

Alain Portmann, Web Liquid

Social Media Marketing - Get New Customers From Social Networking Sites

As a small business owner, your job is to get as many customers as possible. Social networking is a big part of this. This is where you meet as many different people as possible, pass out business cards, and spread the news that you are open for business and you're ready to accept new customers. But you can only meet so many people and you can only hand out so many business cards.

Advertising on Social Media Sites

Another way you can advertise your business is to utilize the ever growing social media phenomenon. Social media marketing is the best way to get the word out about your business to attract new customers. With the internet spanning the globe, and reaching millions if not billions of people, if your business isn't using online social networks, you as a business owner are seriously behind the times.

Social media describes websites that bring others together, no matter where they live. A few popular sites include Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and more. To get a full list, you'll have to do your homework. All it takes is getting online to find out just how many social marketing opportunities there are out there. To promote your business on these social networking sites, you'll have to create profiles, describe your business, post pictures if applicable and anything else you would like to advertise or promote.

Keep It Simple

To attract as many customers as possible, you'll need to keep it simple, and just give enough information to cause potential customers to want to contact you to learn more. You don't want to give everything away, such as specials or prices. Have people get in contact with you, or have them visit your website where they can learn more. The purpose of social media marketing is to reach as many people as possible, thus increasing your chances or drumming up as much business as possible.

Social Networking and Relationship Marketing

Once you've signed up for the social networking sites, it's now time to get your business out there to the masses. Start developing relationship with your target audience. By becoming friends with people on Facebook, or having followers on Twitter, for example, your business and your message are going to reach more people than you ever could have with just word of mouth and business cards.

With the internet so popular, and most people doing their business online, you're doing business and yourself a disservice if you're not on one or more of the many popular social media sites out there. It may seem time consuming at first to create many profiles, advertise on each profile and then network your profile out to others; but the hard work you put in will reap benefits beyond your wildest dreams.

Get more social media marketing tips to help you in attracting more customers at http://www.smallwebusiness.com/. Plus you can learn many great ways to utilize social networking sites.

Google "Pay-As-You-Perform" Model for TV Ads Will Give Insights for Marketing to Social Media Sites

Google essentially has its own TV network now, or at least access to its own network through its deal to sell Google TV Ads on EchoStar's Dish Network. EchoStar feeds 120-odd smaller cable TV networks with programming and advertising. How Google works out its collaboration with EchoStar will give internet marketers valuable insights into how Google will move towards monetizing YouTube. How Google does this will give give both large and small online marketers valuable insight into how they can best tap into the vast potential for online marketing though social media sites such as YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook and del.icio.us etc.

Perhaps Google CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt, and the folks at Google Research need look no further for a model on how to monetize their potential cash cow, burgeoning social media networking behemoth YouTube, than the business model they are undertaking with EchoStar. Figuring out how to make YouTube, which is experiencing near-exponential growth, generate additional revenue for Google's already burgeoning bottom-line has been targeted as Google's top 2008 priority, as Schmidt confirmed in his April 2nd sit down interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.

With EchoStar, Google is figuring out the metrics and mechanics that will allow them to sell TV ads "based not only on price but on how well quality advertising performs", according to the anlaysis in May 5th's copy of Advertising Age. Lower-quality advertising will essentially be penalized by paying higher prices for the same slots than higher quality advertising as judged by audience response to the ads. Google is working its way through the mechanics of measuring how many viewers watch the ad spot, how many watch it through to its end and how long audience members stay with the ad before skipping forward through EchoStar's video on demand format to resume watching the next segment of the programming they've tuned in for. Using this model for Google's TV Ads "could go a long way toward answering who is responsible for bringing viewers in and who is responsible for retaining viewers" - production companies and networks who bait the hook or advertisers who reel in the catch, according to Advertising Age. The beauty is, that for YouTube, Google already has the basics of measuring click-through rate in a media they cut their teeth on.

Once Google gets the model for pay-as-you-perform ads on EchoStar worked out (and if I were a betting man - and I am, I would venture that is happening before the mechanics of the EchoStar collaboration is fully worked out for pay-as-you-perform commercials), users and advertisers can probably expect a variation on the same model to be rolled out to monetize YouTube for Google. Teenagers are a much more interactive audience with each passing year. They actively search out the medium that provides them with the entertainment they want. Aficionados of YouTube are already clicking on videos of the world's most entertaining commercial "commercials", whether they originate in Europe, Japan or South America.

Every year on Super Bowl Sunday there is almost as much buzz about the newest, most entertaining commercials that will be making their debut on the year's biggest TV-buy as there is about the game. It is Madison Avenue's biggest bonanza of the year, with companies wait-listed to pony up the US$2.5 million for a 30-second ad. Here in Canada, where many U.S. commercials making their Super Bowl-debut are pre-empted by Canadian networks because of the effect of restrictive governmental regulatory protectionism, there is most often disappointment that the best and most entertaining of the U.S. paid commercials are cut and viewers have to wait for these same commercials to make their way to regular network programming. Many never do, at least in Canada.

"The idea of TV Ads is predicated on the notion that TV is becoming more like the internet," Advertising Age analyst Abby Klaassen observes. Immediately prior to this year's Super Bowl telecast, snack food giant Frito Lay stepped up to the plate with an interactive promo where users created the content for their ads and the viewing audience voted the advertising spots generated up or down in order weed out the top five viewer picks. When, not if, Google figures out how to monetize YouTube, expect interactive content where Google inserts its paid ad areas on YouTube. Don't be surprised, however, if it costs more to put up under-performing ads that do not hold audience attention span based on their click-through rates than it does to put up popular ads whose content appeals to YouTube's younger, techno-savvy demographic. Google's work with EchoStar already shows that they are hip that internet users, particularly users of social media sites like YouTube, do not want to be the passive TV audience they once were and will resist overt marketing ploys in favour of ad content that entertains while giving a sales pitch or call to action. However Google monetizes YouTube will give us all valuable feedback on how social media sites can best be utilized to reach this valuable consumer audience. Once pay-as-you-perform is firmly established, it will be a barometer for the tastes of the audience frequenting social media sites.

For information on online marketing for small businesses visit Wolf21 Marketing Inc. at http://www.smallbusinessmarketingwolf.com or call 1-888-756-2444. "If Your competitors are eating your lunch, we are probably doing their online marketing."