iThnk.com – Your Freestyle Social Media Resource

A couple of days ago I spotted the discussion post below on Linkedin…

It gained a number of answers, but unfortunately the post was closed for any further comments (ironic?). The best comment of the lot is below:

“When commenting on a blog, article or video it is usually to add to the educational contribution of the author. To add a perspective to their writing, to confirm their viewpoint or to include my own experience to the mix of comments.

There have been a few instances where I have disagreed with the author or another person that commented, however, this is rare.

A reason that many people, marketers for example, will comment is to add their company information like website address in the comments; for Search Engine Optimization reasons.

I do not agree with this technique because it ruins the real reason for comments – to share experiences or perspectives. But that strategy is effective in driving traffic to one’s site.

Also, it can be very important for brand management. For example, if someone blogs about a company, perhaps their dissatisfaction with the quality or service of a company – it is important that the company have folks monitoring the internet to ensure that brand-bashing for the sake of it does not go unnoticed. A compelling argument can be created in the comment of a blog or article that defends the company or their brand.

Knowing that a company monitors their brand online is sometimes a good deterrent, but also can influence others that read the blog/article and the comments before posting their own. If I see that a company rep has posted that their product has undergone changes that addressed the issues being complained about, then I may feel less likely to post my complaints OR my complaints may become mitigated by the new information.

Engaging in blog comments can be used for many purposes. They are an important facet to the entire social networking trend and should be taken seriously by customers, marketers, corporations”.

So I thought I’d throw it open to you…why do you comment? is it…

• For Back Links
• For Traffic
• For Branding
• For Networking
• To Add Value

Oh course if you don’t feel the 5 options above are enough you’re more than welcome to comment…

Generally advertising and social media are regarded as separate entities. Social Media is about transparency, dialogue and building relationships; whereas advertising is merely interrupting your day to get a message across.  But things are changing.

It used to be quite foreign to see corporate URLs in ads, but nowadays you couldn’t call yourself a decent marketer if you didn’t promote your URL. Similarly, not so long ago it would have been considered shameful to part with any amount of coin to promote your blog.  However,  recently I’ve noticed people advertising their blogs on facebook, and some are even using Adwords.

This got me thinking, is social media going the same way as the URL? Are we going to see an explosion of twitter, facebook and myspace icons all over billboards?

I’m dubious as to whether you can actually draw people into a conversation through advertising, but I thought I’d put this trend to the test by taking advantage of the Google Business Stimulus Offer. Over the next couple of months I’m going to use the $75 free AdWords credit to see if we can boost iThnk.com’s readership. I’ll be looking at a number of things, total page views, time spent on the site, returning visitors and on site activities such as comments, diggs, retweets and sharing.

I set up the initial run of ads for this wee experiment two weeks ago and so far my limited exposure to Google AdWords has already taught me some valuable lessons. After reading that some companies will pay upwards of $60 U.S for a single click using keywords such as “car insurance”, I felt compelled to do share my thoughts on how NOT to spend that much.

Country music your thing? You like it so much you’ve started a blog about it? Well of course you’re so stoked on your blog you want to share it with everyone that may (or may not) be interested…you could run an AdWords campaign!  Watch out though, simple keywords like “country music” will could cost you $0.78 a click – and Google estimates you’ll expose your ads to almost 3 million searches. Ouch, that could be expensive. “Country music blog” will not have anywhere near the same amount of traffic but could sting you $1.20 a pop. Can you afford to fork out $1.20 every time someone clicks on your site? Remember there’s a reasonable chance they won’t like what they see. Money well spent?

So what do you do to get that wicked blog seen by interested peeps without needing to chuck the acoustic on ebay? Target your campaign locally, use local search terms, and get REAL value for money. “New Zealand country music blog” may not get millions of Garth Brooks fans to your site but those who do respond to your ad will definitely stick around a lot longer. At an estimated $0.09 a click it won’t take long busking outside New World to fund an awesome AdWords campaign.

Quick tips:  Keep an eye on what search terms are generating clicks and modify keywords accordingly, keep your daily limits at levels you are comfortable with, and use keywords in the ad text. Oh and don’t click on your own ads everyday to make sure they work!

I’ll be back with an update on our progress sometime in the near future. (Update here)

A few years ago I stumbled across Dr Ralph Wilson suggestion that there are 6 fundamental principles of viral marketing:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviours
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

When I first read Dr. Ralph’s 2005 post I didn’t truly understand the impact that viral marketing was going to have on us. While his hotmail example is still a great guide for product adoption, since 2005 the web has changed. Now everything can go viral.

We now live in the world of status updates, retweets, and diggs. We spend more time online, devour more information, and share that information across a far wider range of networks. Why? Because it’s easier and more fun than it has ever been.

Everyone can ‘go viral

Because every company has a story to tell, every decision is fuelled by inspiration, and every person has a passion to share, everyone can now ‘go viral’.

In the past if you were posting on a blog or Vlog to fuel an on going conversation what you were doing was not considered viral marketing, it was relationship marketing or PR. This was simply because adding to a conversation didn’t scale dramatically into the same explosive buzz that giving away email accounts did. But today any post that is shared, retweeted or Dugg becomes part of mini-viral interaction, and there are thousands of these mini-viruses spreading and then dying  out every single day.

6 has become 3

There are three fundamental viral conversation guides:

1. Start a conversation that inspires us
2. Make it easy for us to retweet, digg & share
Scales easily from small to very large – What number does your retweet button go up to?
Exploits common motivations and behaviors – We’ll share it if your story is good enough
Utilizes existing communication networks - We’ll share it wherever we want to
3. Use third party tools and apps e.g. don’t make a video & not upload it to youtube or vimeo

What do I do with this viral attention?

All traditional viral messages die eventually. The more people that know about your viral campaign the smaller the incentive to share becomes, but the more people that are involved in a conversation the more valuable the dialogue. With blogging, viral marketing shouldn’t be viewed as a once off promotion, but instead a catalyst for a drawing people into your conversation.

If you continue to spark enough mini-viral conversations, one day one of  them might just reach millions.  Just ask Jeff Jarvis who’s Dell Hell experience is now being used as a case study in first year marketing classes around the world.

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