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Great articles! You´re site always impresses me throught explicit lyrics and mass of valuable information.
Especially the Social Marketing is a slippery floor.

My personal feeling is, that social bookmarks are always a good try to get results in the first serps, but with a little detour.

Last edited by aknet47 (2008-03-21 08:54:05)

Did read. As usual, didn't fully understand, but am thinking. (Can you smell the brain burning from too much thought again?!)

Never did fully get if you were asking the simple purpose of SMM, if there is even a simple purpose, or, what is the benefit in selling SMB on the concept?! If the last choice, it sure explains why I didn't get it -- no interesting in selling businesses on any SMM.

We do have one thing in common -- bottom line, what do I get out of it? (ROI in your lingo.) That, to me, is a two way street - ROI for the SMM owner and ROI on the sites people.customers?!

Going way back, when we were doing it, but it didn't have such an "in" name -- back when it was called "message boards," "forums," "linking to each other's sites," or even the not so distant past, when it was called "You Tubing" -- there was always a clear purpose, folks with a common interest connecting with one another. Back in those olden days, the board I used to visit most often was literally social networking without all the blogs. The common interest was Secretarial Services and/or Resume Writers (typing, desktop publishing, resume writing, and/or "Dear Santa" letters as a business) and we all joined together for three purposes -- teach Noobs what to read to get started or to find out if they had the personality to do it, help each other on pricing oddball orders or how to land a customer type we hadn't had before, or ask for help with jobs we couldn't tackle in the time limitations on our own (subcontracting.) There was little problem talking about our particular businesses, since our specialities differed, making any particular person more likely, or less likely, able to help others, to figure out what was entailed in a job or to give others an idea how much to bid. Even if our businesses were alikely, location, ability, speed, background and marketing skills made it likely that even the most seasoned professional could use a little assistance now and then, so no one over- or underbidded for any job (unless overbidding was intensional because customer was already noticably a PIA, so worthy of the extra money.)

It was even known as a networking board so we could know where to turn when a job was out of our league -- I can do resumes, but not CVs and wasn't very good at resumes for cops or ITs. I also knew nothing about medical or legal transcribing, even if I could type a legal brief properly. When someone asked me to retype seven books in 5 days, there was no doubt who to turn to, because she was (probably still is) the fastest typist in the country. (124 wpm -- beating one of those dictation/speaking programs, by typing faster then the expert could speak the words to the headset.) Still, even then, the board was broken up into subcontracting, business info, marketing and the always needed "Water Cooler" section. No commericials (ads) for services were ever allowed, and, if any tried to sneak one in, if we found it before the mods did, they heard a beautiful batch of sarcasm, and were cut to shreds by the best in that field so quickly, no one ever dared do it more than once. Rather obvious the need for that early-edition SMM, and it was all brought to us by our associations, whom also sold books for folks considering getting into one or more of those businesses, or for us already in it, but needing a quicker way to calculate pricing, and find ideas on new services we probably never considered offering.

Nowadays, I'm still selective when deciding which ro join. I won't join, if they request all my personal information, before even getting to look around the site. I won't even sign up, if they merely want me to register my name and e-mail address, unless they are offering something I really want. I join for one of two reasons -- it's about a subject near and dear to my heart, handled the same way I'm interested in it. (You'll never find me in any SMM sites for teddy bear collectors), OR I can make money by joining. The one I joined for writers got me through a contest for authors putting out their mystery novels (just the first three chapters, assuming the first chapter, and then the second chapter were good enough to get enough good votes and comments to get to the third round to show the third chapter. It was a win/win situation for most the members of the networing sites -- the prize was a signed contract to publish the book by Simon and Schuster, BUT Borders was giving out $500 gift certificates to the 20 best reviewers for the winners of the first round to go onto the second round, and then $100 gift certificates for the best reviewers of the books going onto the third round, and, of course, a $100 gift certificate for the best reviewer of the winning book(s) -- Simon and Schuster picked two books. The site made it worth our while to want to read over 1500 entries!

They've since had the same kind of contest for Romance Novels, but the gift certificates weren't as big, and I'm not big on romance novels. (That and they had it while I was busy helping my Dad often, so no chance of getting into it seriously.)  Since then, I won another of their contests, but now that they aren't having any contests or worthwhile awards, I haven't been visiting much.

Anyway, just trying to give some idea for worthwhile SMM for specific kinds of fields, to show how they can market, get ROI, and get their customers some ROI. I do agree that they need a specific audience, and a quantifiable way of deciding if it is worth it. I know that some of the big names in Interneting or computing have boards for all sorts of people, but the one I've been to has no input from company people, so is basically Break/Fix techies or program experts telling casual users how to get their computers/programs to work. If you want help from company people, that company charges you. Not much ROI, but then again, not much investment, except the website itself.

I consider this site SMM, and can see where the money comes into the equation, but have no idea if it's worth the ROI for the owner. Obviously plenty of ROI for me.

Soooo, now that I wrote all this, are we even in the same ballpark on subject matter, Dave? If so, did I give some concrete answers for you to consider? I wouldn't be surprised if I've been lost since your first article. Might be hard to believe, but I'm not stupid. I am, however, often lost by what you write about or the lingo you use. At this point most of what I know about SEO I've learned from you, so, if you're still figuring out SMM, I've got to be several grades (at least) below you.