Social Media Marketing is a new and exciting branch of Internet Marketing. We thought it would be nice to do a survey on how other SEO’s and Search Marketers approach SMM for themselves and for their clients. Thanks go to the following for taking the time to complete the survey:
Eric Ward of EricWard.com
Content Publicity and Link Building Strategies
Geoff Simon of Sky Search Placement Marketing
Sky-SearchPlacement.com
Russ Jones of Virante Inc.
Virante Search Marketing
Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising
PronetAdvertising.com
Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting
StoneTempleConsulting.com
Daniel Tynski of Voltier Inc.
Voltier.com
1. Do you use Social Media Marketing for your own site, your clients sites, or both?
Mathew Inman
Both
Eric Ward
For both if and when appropriate
Geoff Simon
We use social media for our site as well as client sites.
Russell Jones
We primarily use SMM for clients and our blog, theGoogleCache.com
Neil Patel
both
Eric Enge
both
Daniel Tynski
Both, SMM has been a very successful for us, especially when launching sites for clients with little or no web presence already.
2. Can Social Media Marketing work for all types of sites, or just certain sites?
Mathew Inman
SMM can work on any site, although it’s more difficult on something that’s commercial oriented. SMM works best on a blog or tech-oriented website - especially with Digg. StumbleUpon users don’t care as much what kind of wrapper their content is in, and with SU it’s not quite as night and day as Digg or Reddit - where either you make the homepage or you don’t. One tactic I like to use is to place linkbait on a separate domain or even a sub-page of your site with a completely benign tone, get the links you need, and then 301 that content to your commercial site. “linkbait and switch”
Eric Ward
It’s not a case of either/or, it’s about potential. Yes, some types of content will enjoy a better overall social media experience and response than will other types of sites. But frankly any site that is designed for a specific purpose and user, and which provides a useful and valuable experience for that user, has a social media
potential.Geoff Simon
It depends on what you mean by “social media worksâ€, any company selling any type of (P) can use social media and it will deliver some traffic. If what you are looking for is if that traffic converts, is it targeted and does it bring users to the site that is a different story. Our metrics show that consumer related sites perform better than B2B sites in terms of conversions from social media traffic (in general), there are always exceptions.
Russell Jones
For the vast majority of sites, SMM can be successful. However, certain sites tend to struggle, especially those that are either riddled with advertising or are in specific spam-heavy industries (pharma, gambling, etc.)
Neil Patel
I feel it can work on the majority type of websites (if you get
creative), but no where near all.Eric Enge
It can work for MANY types of sites, but I hesitate to say that it will work for all of them It can work for MANY types of sites, but I hesitate to say that it will work for all of them.
Daniel Tynski
In our experience, it can work for all clients in some capacity. Clients with businesses that cater to a similar demographic as social media will have an easier time taking advantage of it.
3. What Social Media Sites do you promote with?
Mathew Inman
In order of importance (kind of): StumbleUpon, Digg, Myspace (bulletins), Reddit, and Netscape.
Eric Ward
Any that are appropriate for the subject matter
being promoted.Geoff Simon
Geoff was awesome enough to give us an amazing list of the sites he uses (this could be a great resource in and of itself)
Russell Jones
Primarily the big 3 (reddit, digg, del.icio.us) but also Netscape, Furl, Stumbleupon, and a large number of SBS.
Neil Patel
digg, reddit, stumbleupon, netscape, del.icio.us
Eric Enge
Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Netscape are the main ones
Daniel Tynski
In order of importance: Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Netscape
4. Reddit and Digg are probably the big two, have you had success with others?
Mathew Inman
Stumbleupon is my favorite, and if something gets picked up virally on MySpace it can generate some serious traffic.
Eric Ward
Yes, many many others. Social shopping sites can be powerful.
Geoff Simon
We have seen some success in terms of traffic from Netscape recently.
Russell Jones
While we have had easy success with sites other than Digg and Reddit, they simply do not push the traffic. Still worth it for the backlinks and branding though.
Neil Patel
I have had success with tons of them such as Netscape and StumbleUpon.
Eric Enge
StumbleUpon is a great area to focus on. We have had good luck with that, as well as success on Digg and Reddit.
Daniel Tynski
We love StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us too, and have seen some good traffic from Fark.com.
5. Do you use Social Networking sites like Myspace or Facebook for promotion. If so, which ones and how.
Mathew Inman
I use MySpace quite a bit because the bulletins can yield pretty impressive traffic numbers if they spread virally. Myspace users are also more likely to click on ads than someone from Digg or another geek driven website. I haven’t done much SMM with facebook because they strip HTML from your “wall.” If you create a viral badge myspace strips out <img> tags from bulletins but not inline styles using background images, so make sure and use inline styles because myspace is awesomely stupid and doesn’t filter them.
Eric Ward
I’m extremely conservative regarding interaction within these communities.
Geoff Simon
We do. We create profile sites for certain clients on these sites. Now that Facebook is really picking up steam and has better sharing options, we use Facebook and not Myspace anymore. We also create profiles on for our clients on LinkedIn and other business networking sites.
Russell Jones
Rarely. We have done some local social promotion via these networks, but very little.
Neil Patel
I use both of them. For Facebook companies can create apps and for
MySpace you can create corporate profiles.Eric Enge
We are just beginning to dabble in this
Daniel Tynski
We have done a little bit with MySpace in doing widget creation and profile promotion. MySpace users are becoming much more savvy and less tolerant when it comes to self promotion, so providing something useful is the best way to take advantage of the huge user base. Facebook presents a great opportunity for all Search Marketers in my opinion. We have created a few applications with some good early success.
6. When generating content for social media sites, is it always on topic for the site you are promoting? or do you ever go off topic?
Mathew Inman
It’s a mix of both. If I want links that are highly topical I’ll try and create the bait to contain the right anchor text, but other times I’m just going for volume and am looking to improve the authority of my domain. I had a site recently that I’d registered and wanted to remove whatever domain age authority the site lacked, I did this by getting 20 thousand inbound links via social media marketing that were barely on-topic. From there I started building topical links and was able to rank for some highly competitive terms.
Eric Ward
You don’t have to generate content just for SM sites, though you can.
It can be far more powerful to engage the key influencers already
there for content that already exists.Geoff Simon
Always on topic, content + technology = social media success. Quality content that is useful, not promotional and interesting is what works the best.
Russell Jones
The topic is always at least tangentially related to the specific topic of the site. We rarely stray from topic enough that a visitor would be suspicious of the reason for developing the content.
Neil Patel
I try stay on topic.
Eric Enge
We never go off topic. We want the links to be relevant
Daniel Tynski
While we try to stay on topic, but many times we our clients can benefit from content that is only marginally related. It is not necessary to have a 100% on topic viral article to see improvements in rank. A successful piece of link bait can improve the authority of a domain even if that piece of link bait has little to do with the content on the rest of the site. As a rule, our ultimate goal is to develop relevant and interesting piece of content with keywords in the titles.
7. What methods do you use when promoting a story? Do you ask others to vote for your story? Do you have a lot of friends?
Mathew Inman
If the content is good enough you usually won’t have to rely on your friends to vote for it, but it helps a little.
Focus more on creating a killer piece of linkbait and less on having all your pals vote something up.
Eric Ward
I don’t explicitly ask others to vote, digg, tag, etc.
That’s a form of attempted manipulation. I believe you
let the content earn the natural degree of attention
it deserves.Geoff Simon
Seems a bit black hat to have all your friends vote for your story (especially when no one else does), and in fact know of a company that got banned from Netscape from doing this exact thing. I will submit a story to dig or somewhere else and maybe have one or two of my colleagues vote, but that is about it.
Russell Jones
Primarily through account reputation building. Having a strong, active account that regularly participates is the safest way to promote content.
Neil Patel
I just use natural methods. If the content is great then it should do
well on its own.Eric Enge
We offer top users with the various sites information about what we are offering. Hopefully, they pick it up. We do not actively ask others to vote for the story. We have not setup a lot of friends on our own accounts, but are beginning to scale that.
Daniel Tynski
Having accounts with good reputations can help more than you would think. Having a high karma score in Reddit, and a lot of friends and a good voting history on Digg can be the difference between success and failure.
8. How do you feel about manipulating Social Media sites or Social Networking sites? or SEM’s that use
sock puppets or other black hat promotional tools?
Mathew Inman
I have no altruistic obligations to social media sites, I’ll manipulate them until the cows come home if it means making more money. I avoid blackhat techniques simply because there’s not a lot of longevity to it, usually you’re just exploiting something and it doesn’t last long - which doesn’t make for a dependable long term business model.
Eric Ward
I don’t do it and I don’t take clients that request it.
Geoff Simon
I don’t like sock puppets….If you want to create buzz or defend a position, do it yourself. Creating fake personas on the Internet is common and okay in some cases, take secondlife for example, but not sock puppets or meat puppets or whatever.
Russell Jones
We do not currently employ these methods because they can be dangerous to the client’s long term SMM strategy.
Neil Patel
I am not a big fan of manipulating social media sites, with great
content you should naturally do well.Eric Enge
It’s too bad that this happens, but it does. I hope the Social Media sites will become more effective in combating this.
Daniel Tynski
It depends, sometimes some amount of manipulation can help bring you over that difficult first hump of downmodders a burrier’s on Digg and Reddit, but ultimately your content needs to stand on its own two feet or no one will link to it anyway.
9. If you had to give a one sentence piece of advice for writing content for social media sites, what would it be?
Mathew Inman
Make the content look as benign as possible - like it wasn’t intended for a social media site. Geek stuff helps, too.
Eric Ward
Spend time interacting within them before
treating them like marketing outlets.Geoff Simon
It’s not a sales pitch, write something you think people will say, “wow, I got to show this to……†– You just don’t get that reaction from spam.
Russell Jones
Make your content so good that even if everyone knew it was developed for-profit, they would still vote it up.
Neil Patel
Write content that appeals to the users of these social media sites.
Eric Enge
Understand that it’s not about getting on the home page, or the popular page, of some site. It’s about getting links as a result. So write something that people will vote for AND link to.
Daniel Tynski
Include as much Rich Media as possible. Illustrations of your points, videos, etc. Remember that your audience is intelligent, but with a short attention span. Make sure your content is interesting, but easily digestible.
10. How Important is a good title? What tips do you have for writing an effective title?
Mathew Inman
It depends on the site. For digg/reddit it’s incredibly important, for SU it doesn’t matter. Sensational titles work best - pick up a copy of “men’s health” or “cosmo” (print magazines) and look at the covers.
Eric Ward
Strategic truncation is under appreciated…
Geoff Simon
Titles are very important. Some advice, use your imagination, make the title relevant to the story and twists on words are always good. Controversial titles are also good, no matter what side you are on.
Russell Jones
The title is extremely important. There are several large players on the primary SMM’s who resubmit regularly with improved titles (ie: grab a failed, good story submitted by another user, retitle, and resubmit). Give just enough information to entice the user. Usually people say “the shorter the betterâ€. This is just not the case, especially on a site like Reddit.
Neil Patel
Titles are very important because some people vote based on titles
alone. I recommend checking out http://www.copyblogger.com if you are
looking to write great headlines.Eric Enge
A good title makes or breaks the submission. Best tip for writing an effective title is to get to know the audience you are writing for (i.e. the users of the social media site you are targeting) really, really well, first. Then target your title to that audience.
Daniel Tynski
Titles are extremely important. They are your one and only opportunity to capture the readers attention. Ask yourself as you create a title, “Would i click on this if I came across it on Digg or Reddit”. I know it sounds like a very common sense thing, but it will really help you separate the winner titles from the losers. Also, being a regular reader and participator on the social media sites outside of marketing will help you to get a better feel for what works and what doesn’t. A few months as a Digg or Redditor and you will have a decent idea of the difference between a good and a bad title.
11. Any “sure thing” topics that have almost always done well for you?
Mathew Inman
Geek stuff and tech humor.
Eric Ward
Sites with a current event focus have done well
Geoff Simon
Controversy is one, up to date (like up to the minute) reactions to news items in your field is another (this has more to do with timing though) also lists of tips, lists of sites to use, all compiled in one place. For instance, the top 10 social media sites (and supported with data).
Russell Jones
Create useful tools. It can be expensive, but everyone loves a new web app.
Neil Patel
Apple
Eric Enge
No. Variety is king. Also fit of the client’s site to the audience of the social media site.
Daniel Tynski
Top 10 lists have done well in the past, but are becoming somewhat cliched and annoying to readers. Anything about odd or ingenious people, place or things usually do well for us.
12. What is the most success you have had promoting with Social Media? (backlinks, organic traffic increases etc.)
Mathew Inman
Backlinks and visibility. Most social media sites won’t drive conversions but they’re an awesome way to get your brand out in front of tens of thousands of people in a very short period of time.
Eric Ward
Treating social media as tool to be measured ignores the real
power it represents.Geoff Simon
Backlinks is #1, secondarily the traffic helps, but social media traffic tends to bounce fairly quickly in most cases. Of coarse you will get the random user who reads an article about how great this new blender is then go to the site and buy it, but that does not happen often.
Russell Jones
Backlinks. The short bursts of traffic are rarely profitable. The natural backlinks, however, are invaluable.
Neil Patel
Best success was over 3000 backlinks and 100,000 visitors in 1 week.
Eric Enge
We focus on getting relevant backlinks. We have gotten up to 1200 backlinks in these campaigns.
Daniel Tynski
We had over 6,000 backlinks and 130,000 visitors from an article that made it to the number one spot on Digg and Reddit.
13. Is using social media for SEO/SEM a viable long-term strategy, or will it become ineffective?
Mathew Inman
Most social media sites will eventually become overrun - just look at squidoo. It’s become so cluttered with SEO spam that the site is pretty much useless now in terms of online marketing. I don’t think SMM will necessarily go away, but I think we’re continually going to have to mix up our strategies for it to keep working.
Eric Ward
Social media should never be thought of as an SEO/SEM strategy.
Geoff Simon
I don’t believe that social media overall will go away. I think the idea of user rated content and the pull vs. push information cycle will continue to flourish. This is in fact the next big movement on the Internet, not some new cool tool. When people look at social media, they see tools, social media and web 2.0 are movements, and movements don’t die quickly. Of coarse some of the names and faces will change, but the coming generation is almost more comfortable in the digital world than in the real world, and they want what they want and they don’t want you pushing it to them.
Russell Jones
It will remain a viable long-term strategy. Spamming these networks, however, will be come less and less effective.
Neil Patel
Long term.
Eric Enge
Yes, it’s viable, but you can’t depend on it alone. You need to have a balanced strategy, and use this as one interesting component of it.
Daniel Tynski
It will always be a part of the Internet Marketing game, you should never rely solely on SMM for increasing your sites popularity.
14. What is the quality of the traffic you have seen from social media sites?
Mathew Inman
Most social media traffic is fairly poor in terms of conversions. Instead make those users build links for you and then get your conversions from the search engines.
Eric Ward
It will depend on the quality of the content being promoted and
the care taken to identify those who care.Geoff Simon
Currently, the traffic is decent in terms of interaction with sites. But as far as conversion, it is still not as high as traffic coming in organically from search.
Russell Jones
Low. The long term branding and link building are by far the most important payoffs.
Neil Patel
Most the traffic isn’t high quality, but a small portion is. These
sites drive so much traffic you can’t expect every visitor to convert.Eric Enge
Really, really poor from Digg. Slightly better from Reddit. Better from del.icio.us and Stumble Upon.
Daniel Tynski
StumbleUpon traffic is decent, Digg and Reddit traffic is marginal, but all three produce great backlinks, which is always the goal anyway.
15. What has been your experience with the “anti-SEO” culture of some social media sites?
Mathew Inman
Like I said before, drop the commercial tone of your content and most of the time the users of those SM sites won’t have a clue that it’s the work of an online marketer.
Eric Ward
I agree with them.
Geoff Simon
I think it’s preposterous; the idea of social media sites is that users can promote the content they like. Many people find SEO/SEM related articles useless, which is fine, but there is a million dollar industry that a lot of people want to hear about. Manipulating the social media sites is a different story, but if you submit a story to digg and people find it useful there should not be a band of rogue diggers burying the story.
Russell Jones
It really is not so bad. The bar is a little higher for SEO stories, but the reason primarily is that SEO just isn’t all that interesting to the average social media reader. Honestly, who wants to read about URL canonicalization?
Neil Patel
These sites hate SEO’s so you better try and hide the fact that you are an SEO.
Eric Enge
We avoid any exposure to these issue, but not approaching them as an SEO.
Daniel Tynski
We have seen the worst of it from Digg, submitting anything that smells like SEO is a pretty sure way to get your story buried.
16. How should Social Media Marketing fit into an overall Search Engine Marketing strategy?
Mathew Inman
It should be an integral part of your strategy but don’t rely on the same tactics over and over again. Mix it up a bit and stay creative. If you keep making the digg homepage because you create some sensational “top 10 ways to [something techie],” that’s probably not going to keep working in the long term.
Eric Ward
It shouldn’t. Social media isn’t about rankings. If you think it is
you are missing the point.Geoff Simon
Right now we use social media for links. This should be a part of any SEM strategy.
Russell Jones
It should be a primary facet. The regular creation and submission of content that targets Social Media outlets is invaluable.
Neil Patel
Social media is a great way to build links. These links can help
increase your search engine rankings.Eric Enge
It’s one component. Natural backlinks from authority sites are still the key to long term success. We get those by approaching the sites directly. Social media campaigns, properly done, can help you get some of these too.
Daniel Tynski
It should be a large component for promoting new sites, it can help them avoid the sandbox and get indexed quickly. For older and larger sites it should play a part, but should not be the main focus.
17. Anything else you would like to add?
Mathew Inman
I think a great non-tech/liberal oriented social media site has yet to emerge, so it should be interesting to see if a site pops up in the next few years that has the volume of users of myspace with the democratic appeal of a site like Digg.
Eric Ward
If the only time you ever interact with a social media venue
is when you are doing so for a client, you are part of
the problem. Why not get online without an agenda every now
and then and see what makes them so wonderful.Neil Patel
If you can relate to the social media audience you will succeed.
Daniel Tynski
Thanks so much for all who contributed, it is great to see how others approach Social Media Marketing.
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