How Social Networking Sites Affects Marketing
Add to : Del.Icio.Us / Reddit / Digg / Stumble Upon
Well, for my part, I believe it’s a good thing! Let me explain why i see it that way, cause i’ve heard many marketers complain about the exponential growth of community sites!
Ok, first: marketing! What is the end result you’re looking for when marketing your products or affiliate stuff? Of course it’s to bring in more sales, and raise brand awareness, and pull more profits! One sure way to market stuff online is by using PPC services like google adwords, yahoo publishers network and others…
…well… that costs money! And if you’re not sure what you’re doing, you might end up paying more than you expected… not good huh? But on the other hand, if you know what you’re doing, you can surely pull nice profits from that! (provided you went through the “trial-and-error” thing, and learned either by reading books/ebooks, or got help from someone who knows how to do it and who is doing good! And how is willing to share his/her “secrets”.)
Say you are somewhat successful at marketing products and services online, you easily make good profits and all… but why not use community sites on top of that? Don’t get me wrong here.. keep doing what you do if it gives you a nice income!
So why should you get involved in community sites then?
Read on…
You send traffic (paid traffic that is!) to an affiliate site or a sales page.. that’s great.. you get sales..that’s even better! But wouldn’t you like to know WHO is buying those products? Feedbacks and comments?
If you talk or chat with a potential customer, well that person will most likely buy your thing! There is a lot of money to be made from affiliate marketing and the likes using PPC advertisement, but if you personally recommend something to a single person, that person will most certainly buy it (if it suits their needs of course), and your “potential customers” will be able to ask you questions before they buy!
I’ve seen many many affiliate sales pages (you know the ones you find by clicking on sponsored links in google) with no contact button!! To me that’s a huge no-no! How do you expect someone to buy something if they have questions and there’s no “contact us” link? Many times i’ve read sales pages and found the product really interesting, and was almost ready to buy it, but i had just one single simple question… ooppss.. no “contact us” link! Too bad for them, i won’t buy it…
Reason why i think social networking sites like mybloglog, linkedin, ryze and even myspace (!!) are a good thing! I believe there is much more money to be made by talking, e-mailing or chatting directly with someone than by using PPC (unless you really know how it works!)… there is real people buying real products! Make them feel important, answer their questions, and be available for them is the least you can do! Using those community sites is simply a way to keep in touch with your customers (just like you would do with a blog!)!
What do you think?
Add to : Del.Icio.Us / Reddit / Digg / Stumble Upon
If you enjoyed this post you might want to consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, and you can also receive updates in your e-mail, so you'll always be up to date. Thanks! ;)
5 Responses to “How Social Networking Sites Affects Marketing”
Discussion Area - Share Your Thoughts
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] to get smart wealthy and rich? Well check out Jonathan-C. Phillips blog and his latest post on social networking and marketing. It’s not like we all signed up for MyBlogLog to make […]
Sounds like you summed it up quite well…especially towards the end.
“People want to know how much you care, before they care how much you know.”
Be personal, sincere, honest…you’ll sell more this way than by being impersonal, selfish, and untruthful. THAT’S FOR SURE. The ‘Contact Us’ link is a big deal…all sites should have at least an e-mail address that will be replied to within a couple days.
Some social networking sites are horrible from the marketing standpoint.
I’m still involved in a couple of them but seldom take them too seriously.
One of the worst things which happened to me was that, as soon as I joined
one, before I could get my profile, etc organized, tons of “friendly” spam
messages arrived in my inbox ! Always in the name of “so-and-so would like
to invite you to be a friend” WITH a message, half a dozen of affiliate url’s in
there and some even put this in their messages : “Be sure to check all my programs
and join as many as you can” ! Treated like a “lead”.
I’d anytime prefer to sell through ppc and my own email marketing.
Yes, its very important to leave a contact email in any sales page. I always display
an email address at the bottom of each page (you can see that from any of my sites).
Chee
Hey Bryan, Chee, thanx for replying! :)
Bryan: Totally! “be personal and honest”! We’re all humans (with emotions, feelings, desires), and a little bit of apppreciation and sincere and genuine interest in our “potential customers” can way a lot! Hey Bryan howw’s your study going by the way?
Chee: I like your reply, it’s honest and to the point (keep those comments coming!). I totally agree with you.. when i joined myspace (which was over a year ago) my mailbox got flooded with spam e-mails and stuff (and a year later i still get a boat-load of those!).. and it sucks pretty bad! I joined other networking sites (like mybloglog) and got almost no spam.. but i agree with you, there’s a lot of “be-my-friend-i-don’t-know-you-buy-my-stuff” people on there!
One thing i would never ever ever do is that.. spam people.. so say you chat/talk/interact with 10 people, there is surely two or three (or more) that will ask for your opinion, and ask you how you do this and that…if i know or feel that a book i’ve read or a program i joined can help them, i will tell them about it! .. at first my intention is soooo not to sell anything (i didn’t care at all for that money) all i want is to help.. if a product i found can help , i will tell them about it!… my intention is not to sell anything, but to help them. Which is something you cannot do with PPC (don’t get me wrong here, i use PPC and it works perfect, and i love it!) I simply believe that personal interaction is often overlooked in marketing.. sites like mybloglog and others makes it easy to meet new people (hey it’s just like dating! hehe) then you get interested in others’ work, and they visit your site also, then everyone starts chatting and talking, then someone asks for your help.. no shame in giving a aff link (my thoughts)
Hey i really apppreciate your comments Bryan and Chee! This is what keeps this site running! Thanx a lot! :)
hey by the way, thanx Mark for the pingback! :)