Social media and the word “marketing” used together in the same sentence has become a subject of controversy, confusion and profiteering. This post is part 3 in a series dedicated to helping everyone understand social media based on actual tested results as they apply to marketing. In the last post in this series I covered the main reasons why your return on effort in social media yields poor results (sucks). This post is a continuation of the series.

Recently Chris Brogan gave us a simple example of how social media can be used for marketing purposes. In continuing my series here I will expand on this idea in an attempt to show some specific strategies that we have been using for years to garner traffic, action and sales from the social media space… Some call this Social Media Marketing… We like to call it Social Media Networking… There is a difference.

Many times results from social media are indirect either through branding (your name or company) through social channels which also leads to an increase in search engine visibility. Traditionally the traffic from social networks has been reported to convert poorly and yield little to no result. This post and the last one are designed to show you why. This post in particular is designed to show you what you can do about it.

Whiteboard Presentation…

How can you achieve traffic, action and sales from social media marketing? The following video gives a basic overview of a process that we have used with success on various projects:

Depending on your business this approach may or may not be appropriate. The “social nature” of your information also plays an integral role in your success or failure in social media. If you sell paper clips (highly non social) then you will have to get creative in order to create content that follows the 3 E’s of social media content … Educational, Entertaining or Enlightening. The popular “Elf Yourself” campaign from Office Max is a prime example of taking a non-social brand (office products) and creating a highly social application that appeals to the masses and brands Office Max (paper clips) at the same time. If you are in a non social niche then you will have to get creative in social media in order to gain mind share. Just remember the 3 E’s in your content delivery.

My initial (and continued) success with SEO20/20 and CharlesHeflin.com was derived by using the strategy depicted in the video. I have also successfully marketed products by building community using social networks and then rallying them to a new product promotions.

Following is some evidence of the effect garnered by using the process above:

These are results from seo2020.com using social networks to drive traffic, action and sales for a product I was selling on SEO Siloing called “The Master Plan” which continues to sell to this day. All traffic was derived through building community by providing educational material … much like I am doing now. I offered a free report called “The Plan” as the “hook” which has gained thousands of loyal opt-in subscribers over the past 2 years. These subscribers eventually led to sales of The Master Plan. This was a planned strategy (as depicted in the video) to use social networks to produce traffic, action (opt-ins) and sales from opt-ins.

The following screen shot shows how this effected overall traffic levels (through Alexa rank) through the crowdsourcing phenomenon. These graphics are shown mainly to show you that, despite others’ claims, traffic from social media networks does convert IF (and it’s a BIG IF) you take the time to build true relationships within social communities first.

As a social media consultant I am finding that many corporations don’t understand this type of grass roots networking and I am constantly challenged to find ways to easily get this understanding across. The major point to note is that I never sold anything to the communities that I have built using social networks. All the money I have earned comes from people selling themselves which only occurs after trust is established as discussed in the post before this one. The effectiveness of this strategy is directly tied to your willingness to establish true relationships with your target audience. In any case, as stated by Gary Vaynerchuk, anything you do in social media to establish community and community building is “better than ZERO“. Community is the operative word here… forget community and you may as well forget about social media as a marketing platform.

Many social marketing practitioners tend to look at social media marketing from an SEO perspective. They look at it as a way to garner incoming links (link love) to enhance their search engine ranking in an effort to produce traffic, action and sales. Please understand that I do not condone this method and don’t use it. We have tested it (we have several running case studies), while it is still somewhat effective, we are seeing a decline in its effectiveness and that is the subject of the next post in this series. I am not saying that social media interaction does not positively effect search engine rankings … It absolutely does… What I am saying is that using social media solely to increase rankings (ignoring community) leaves a footprint that is easy to spot… Do you think the engineers at Google are aware of it? … Do you think penalties are on the way? Do you think they are already occurring?

Have you been successful in marketing in social media? Please share your experience and strategies… This should make for an interesting and educational discussion…

Learn how to apply Social Media and SEO 2.0 to your business click here.

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