Every now and then I’ll get an e-mail from someone who is just getting started with their site. They are overwhelmed by all the social media sites, tools, etc. (Who can blame them?)
Some are even so turned off by social media, they tell me they want nothing to do with it. Others believe it can be a distraction because you can get so caught up in being “followed” or “liked” that you lose sight of the real goal.
However, they realize how popular social media is today and they see so many bloggers and website owners relying on it for promotion, traffic, exposure, etc. So they ask me if I believe it’s possible to build a solid online presence today without using social media.
Well, obviously the short answer is “yes”. Look at all the people who have created a tremendous following on YouTube (For the record, I don’t consider that a social media site.) But video is not for everyone, nor is it appropriate for every kind of site.
And of course there’s SEO, but it has changed. Getting listed and ranked for competitive keywords in the search engines takes a lot longer than it used to. In addition, article marketing and directory submissions are not nearly as effective as they once were.
Of course there are other ways to promote a site (guest posting, press releases, writing exceptional/unique content etc.) But is that enough today?
What do you think? Is it smart for a new blogger or static website owner to ignore social media altogether in 2011?
I think Social Media will be more and more important.It’s part of the online business.Personally.I like video more than text.It’s more convenient to me.
Thanks for the info, i am going to get a twitter acount and make a facebook page for my site. I know it will take a while for a site to build but i have the patience.
I think it always depends. But in general i would say why not use social media? It can boost your traffic tremendously…. whats wrong with that!?
Hi…I don’t think success will be achieved without social media marketing…
I’m having a hard time to believe that you can succeed online without being link to social media marketing. Most online stores now rely on Social Media Marketing. I guess even an ordinary person will sign up on those social networking sites to be popular.
of course you can go on without SMM, before there is no such thing as SMM but many are still successful with their online business. they just used Social Bookmarks and Ads. but today SMM is a big factor in marketing success.
I think Social media is good for any business sometime it look useless but not always. Social media is good way of marketing.
Yes, you can go without a SMM strategy, and the success would depend. Compared to a strategy that has both SEO and SMM. SMM isn’t for sales conversion nor traffic generation. But, It could lead all possible audience in that possibility and if you got a very well crafted Social Media page I don’t think you wont take a 80/100 possibility of visits that would lead you in traffic and revenue. Its like, you advertise on tv where tv is equal to SMM, you wont get the revenue in the tv but you got a great possibility of sales via your advertising.
Take any top brands out on internet, all of them have a very strong online presence and out of which their social media marketing is the best. The keep updating and sharing information all day and keep the audience involved and updated. Social media may not give you sales like SEO, but helps a lot in brand reputation and maintain the online presence.
Lisa…Hi. Iam a website owner i did every thing to promote my web like directory submission bookmarking on social networking and comment on others posts my web link… But i didn’t get the good results what i do iam really so excited and i didn’t get any success of getting reasonable traffic on my web tell me some hints that make my web popular and people come to my website plz. Thanks
I think it depends on the size of the business, how many resources they have available for SEM and what their expectations are. Sure social media is important part of website promotion, but at the same time if the company is small, local and maybe doesn’t have too much competition then it can be left out. I also think social media marketing done badly is better not done at all.
Nooo i dont agree because no online sucess with out SEO and SEM
—————–
Wills
Great article, Lisa! I can no longer imagine online success without social media marketing!
I really haven’t done any social media, so far I’ve been focusing on SEO only. But I guess you have a point. Someone said trusting Google alone for your traffic is not sound. I haven’t found the time to learn it though.
I agree with Leo above. More and more SERP will have your social engagement and shares factored in, so you can’t ignore the importance of social media. I have 3 blogs, and the one I favor and has the most social media engagement is the one with the better Google ranking. I can’t help but wonder if Google+ is the opportunity to tell Google where you are on social media so it can gauge this better.
Online media can definitely help in business nowadays…But sometimes, it depends upon the situation…
I’ve kept well away from marketing on Face Book. The primary reason being that as a “social” site, I wish it was just that, and not an advertising platform for every Tom, Dick and Harry. Besides, with many types of business it is proving to be a large investment of time for very small return. I don’t like their arbitrary way of deleting things they don’t like and I have never felt confident about the security aspect of Face Book, especially where personal information is concerned.
Perhaps I am suffering because I don’t use Face Book as a platform but I find my time more effectively spent elsewhere.
OK let’s take this another way. If a small business had $1000 per month to spend where should they put it… SEO, PPC or Social Media Marketing? Let’s put the money where our mouth’s are.
social media can be very effective in marketing, Depending if you use it right
Hate to disagree with you here. But search and social marketing is starting to blend. Shared items from people you follow are shown on the front page that otherwise wouldn’t rank in the top 10.
That is where search is heading. And for that reason alone, who you influence becomes a far more important signal than simply using traditional search marketing practices to rank.
And if that is the case (which it is), your better served building a network and making strategic alliances with people within your market that have a share already than simply gouging the search engines with manufactured or bought links for rankings.
That message was for Rick, btw, not you.
I’ve enjoyed very good success in all my niche websites, and blog w/o social media. sure I have the icons up and I have an account, but I am not actively engaged on them. SEO and internet marketing, along with delivering good content is what has carried me. It’s tougher to rank higher today with just SEO, but it does still work – just takes a bit longer.
unique content is the key for sure. have tried myself
Ofcourse you able to success in online without social media .
Every internet marketer have their own way to market their product and service .
Social media is not suitable to all kind of website and blog because some maybe too professional or maybe some people will not bother about in real life.
But seem it free , why not have a try ? since it able to get free traffic from there.
Social media is very useful if done right. During the course of a day I get many random thoughts and because of my smart phone I’m able to search online while at work. I get great results and conversation when using twitter than I would using google.
I have also gotten a lot of visitors to a niche site by just promoting a post. Some read it and retweeted the article. That specific page still gets a lot of visitors. So I recommend people use social media to promote information because it’s powerful stuff and works if done well
Social media is all about bringing awareness to your brand. Think of an advert in a newspaper for a car, the advert will not sell you more cars but it will get you brand awareness, which is a good thing. Too many people think social media is the be all and end all to online marketing. Quality content with quality links is what it is all about.
You are true that online success is not possible without social media marketing, but content also plays an important role. We can divert the traffic to our site by doing social media marketing but without good content who will stay to our site. Social media marketing + good content = Online Success.
“Is it smart for a new blogger or static website owner to ignore social media altogether in 2011?” As the Beatles once sang, “there’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.” I once worked for a fellow who always told the employees “throw your ideas up there and see which ones stick.” And he would caution us: “John and Sue could both have the same idea. Both could toss them up. One might fail why the other succeeds. Why, if both ideas are exactly the same, would that happen?”
The answer involved TWO things: TIMING and PR (Public relations, Publicity)…
Same goes for bloggers. my spectacular WordPress fishing blog might sink while Fred’s crappy little blogspot fishing blog gets a write-up in the New York times. SOME call it “FATE.”
Blog on!
I think it’s always smart to go where the people are.
Hi! Lisa, I really do think that social media is essential but it all boils down to the niche.
I own a motivational and inspirational niche blog that deals on self development+relationship and love, so, I really need an almost one-on-one relationship with my readers, followers and readers.
What do you think about this?
Lisa I think Facebook and Twitter belong later in the sales cycle where you build and strengthen relationships with people who are already interested in your solution. It’s not for creating basic awareness of your solution. You just don’t have their attention yet. That’s what Google and Search Engine Marketing is great at.
Absolutely, but when I say “use it lightly” I mean there’s nothing wrong with creating a Twitter and FB account in the beginning to use for announcing your new website content — especially since these tasks can be automated and take no time. Having said that I completely agree that social media can help strengthen the presence you have…. it’s not necessarily the best for creating awareness/attention/credibility (at least not by itself).
There are exceptions though. Maria Andros comes to mind. She used social media and YouTube to launch her business (no website). But she is the exception more than the rule. I know for me personally, I’m not social enough to build up my brand/following that way. lol I prefer the old fashioned “give em great content’ route and use social media to nurture/build upon what I’ve created! 🙂 So yes, I agree.
Hi Lisa,
I think using social media is important. It is a way to connect and reach others who might need what you have to offer. The problem I notice is business owners lack a personal way to connect adding value to their followers. They need a plan of how they will feed their followers with valuable content. If not, social media will be a waste of time.
Just my Opinion,
Life Design Coach, Lou Ann Kent
When I started my blogs, I began to work the social-media sites hard, with marginal success. I’ve reduced my efforts there, because I believe my time is better spent at producing quality content and working on SEO. In my opinion, folks have become numb to the massive amount of stuff that flies at them on the social-media sites, and most of blogger’s promotion goes unnoticed.
I completely agree with you, targeted traffic is better than traffic from social network sites because they will most likely not click a ad or purchase a product but targeted users always are looking for products and information.
I totally agree with you Matt regards to social media networks, most of the visitors come to my site don’t even bother to click or at least to leave a constructive comment….
Mirage’s last blog..http://miragemarketingroup.com/?p=296
Hey Lisa hope you are well.
I think there’s a lot of confusion about Search Engine Marketing versus Social Media Marketing. They really are very different animals. One is about selling and one is about networking.
On Google you can connect with people who are actively looking to solve their problem. But people don’t go to Facebook to solve problems. They probably go there more to avoid their problems. Facebook is more for branding and building existing relationships than starting new ones. It’s great for those goals.
But give me Search Engine Marketing and a website I can control if I want to move people through my sales cycle and convert them to customers.
So to turn your question around Lisa, I think most businesses can survive and thrive without Facebook or Twitter perfectly fine if they know what they are doing.
Very good points, Rick. I do think they can survive without it, but why not use it (even if it’s lightly) since that’s where people are these days.
On a slightly separate point, it’s also to emphasize that if you use social media you don’t have to be a heavy social media user. I consider myself a light social media-ist. I promote my new content, interact with my followers from time to time but I don’t rely on it totally because I don’t need to thanks to SEM, YouTube etc. So it’s not an all or nothing type of thing.
I think some people assume social media marketing means you are on Twitter or FB all day. Not necessarily so. Of course I had an advantage because I already had a presence prior to social media so it wasn’t as much of a priority/necessity for me.
I believe that social Media is a golden opportunity for some and quick sand for others. The very nature of social media is better suited for preexisting businesses with large followings.
For example, newspapers, tv stations, large retailers etc… are losing their marketing effectiveness because people are getting online and using social media more and watching tv commercials less and using yellow pages and other such mediums less.
So these brands can get on social media and reconnect with their large group of customers and can even have a more intimate relationship with them.
Also old internet businesses with large followings also can reconnect with their followers who maybe are getting in the forums less, using article directories and other such mediums and are spending their time in social media and build a more intimate relationship with them.
However, if you are just getting started, social media can be the worst thing to start with because the social media medium becomes the whole business. A lot of people are trying to build their whole business in social media and that is not really the main strength of social media. It can be done but it takes a lot of time and focus away from the main purposes as you stated.
For those of us with meager resources, we need to focus on building momentum that is lasting and builds cash flow so that you can hire other people to spend their valuable time building the intimate relationships with the followers you get.
Just my opinion…
Paul
Excellent post, Paul.
So the question becomes what should you work on first when you are building your brand, especially considering the fact that social iterations are now more relevant for ranking in search?
I’m a newbie, but I think that success will depend on the blogger and their niche. Social media is a great marketing tool. However, I don’t think that it is a must for every blogger.
Hey Lisa–great question to ask. I agree with Donna that you need to get involved with social media but choose those locations where your audience will be hanging out. For my stress management site I use Twitter and Facebook because moms hang out there but I also use LinkedIn because professional women hang out there. But those are the three social media outlets I use so that I don’t get overwhelmed and caught up spending too much time there rather than on my site writing more content and improving the quality of my offering for my readers. There is still only 24 hours in a day and you need to use it wisely.
Hi Lisa, it’s a chicken and egg question actually. But as for me, Social Media is just another portal of communications. When I embrace Twitter and Facebook, I simply have 2 more avenue to broadcast my messages.
Similarly when those people post messages that I could see or read on Twitter or Facebook, I could choose to ignore it totally or browse it if the content seems interesting.
What I mean here is that, to embrace Social media or not is still a personal choice and when you do, to read the messages or not is definitely a choice too. I’ll try to use an analogy to describe this feeling : The iPhone and iPad technology is still something that not many people accept but when every developers out there start to create Apps for Smart phone usage, do you think they embrace it because everyone does so or because they have no choice but to change their phone?
It is important to look upon it as a learning experience but as the cliche goes “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” 😉
William Siong
Learn About Computer And Make Money
I don’t think it’s possible. Facebook is ranked no. 2 after Google in Alexa.
Absolutely not. A new website won’t get any traffic without social traffic playing a part in the equation early on and if they are vying for legitimate real links to boost rankings in the search engines (rather than making them yourself), they have to get out there and market themselves if they don’t want to find other sources of traffic like PPC.
I think social media can be very effective in marketing…Thanks for posting it…
There is nothing wrong with social media and marketing online. But my only worry is that many loose focus of why they, in the first place chose social media as a form of leveraging on thier online business! You must first understand why you need social media before using them.
social media is a bullshit to me. Peoples come from social media, never buy any product or nor click on ads. SE visitors has no alternatives.
Honestly, I believe that social media is a “must” these days in order to have a successful website or blog. Most companies and media outlets rely on social media — that says it all. So I believe if one is going to become very successful online today, they must rely ont he social media outlets.
Rather than ignore social media, a beginner should embrace it. Social media is a beginner’s only hope of getting the news of his/her website or blog out there quickly. Out of all the website promotion techniques, social media is the only one you do and have fun at the same time. Can you say the same for search engines (SEO), article marketing and link building? No.
My advice is to find one that works perfectly for your niche and focus on that one, do not try to do all the social media at once because this is what makes it overwhelming. Ask yourself where your website audience would normally hang out and go there. While Twitter did nothing for my food recipes website, Facebook is doing wonders for it because the visitors of that website are more likely to have a FB acct. than a Twitter account.
Some of the established sites we see everywhere all have employees handling the different aspects of their sites’ social media presence, don’t try to be like them because you will burn out.
Keep keeping on guys, don’t give up. It is all part of the big picture of owning a website or blog. When you get a hang of social media, you will actually begin to like it.
I think that social media plays and important part for any blog or website. It can certainly be overwhelming, but picking just a couple is important. Readers check these sites more frequently then they check their e-mails. I think social media works best when you have a loyal following and part of building it is using social media.
That’s a good point, Brankica. I definitely think it’s more popular for Internet marketing blogs, but I think if I spent more time on my exercise blog and built up a personality/following with that like I’ve done here, it could work. I follow a lot of hair blogs and YouTube channels that use social media for promotion and it seems to work out very well. I just don’t have the same passion for my other sites so it’s hard to compare them effectively.
hi lisa , i love u so much , i realy want to hold u and kiss you.
i will tell you my storie , im a young boy from arabian country ,at us it’s little hard to get a real job and even if you get one , it’s dont give you so much money , so one day i see in net ads who talk about get money from net so i just belive in this idea because i was realy need a work.
i told my friends about it , so they tell me it’s lie and there is no way to get money from net , but i dont hear to what they say and i belive so much in idea of work from home.
in this time i was know noting about this domain , noting at all except some storie like boy who creat facebook and man who creat ebay and …..
so i begin searsh , i fined first that i can have free site (blogger or wordpress) i chose blogger i dont know why , maybe because of adsence.
i begin to write some post about different things , and i stay watch.
After a month , i know that work from net is not so easy like i was think , and it’s a real work who need so much hard and time.
i face the probleme of no visitore at alllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.
just little few peoples from germany and frensh , and …..
maybe 2 or 3 in the month.
i stay 6 months without any visitore and my adsence was 0$ , so i begin searsh in arabic site about a solution for this visitore , and i fined noting at useful at all.
arabian peoples dont know so much about this stuffs , and even if they know they dont chare the information.
i searsh in english site , but same , i wasnt understand what they was talk about.
i download some books like books of SEO but damn they was so big 500 page and in english.
so i let the idea of SEO and visitore and i open a page in FaceBook and i care just about gathering some fun.
so befor a week i download ur free book of GUID TO BUIKD SITE , and he drive me to ur site.
i just want to say thank you , and that you born to be a teacher , i stay in ur site all the day.
you use so simple english , and so clear words , and u show the things simple.
hope that u visite my site , haha it’s so small , i chose the small nich (Nike Air force shoes) , i steel wait visitore.
and belive me liza , my dream is one visitore and not one dollar in adcense.
in all way i want to thank you so much , and god bless you and bless your sites and your busnice.
please stay help us.
bye with all my resppect liza.
(and keep my storie secret , just between us )
Actually, I think that only bloggers in the blogging and internet marketing niche see all the benefits of social media, if they use it right. However, most of them have never done anything else but have a “blogging blog” so they can not see nor understand the other side of it.
In niches that have nothing to do with it, social media is not as effective.
Let’s just compare your static site with your exercise site. Although they are not comparable in terms of hours you put it them, you can compare how social media works for them.
Would you say the effects would be the same?
I personally don’t see it on my niche sites comparing them to my blog.
Social media is defntly powerfull but i also agree that somtimes users get into this so much, dat they forgot that at the ending Content is King!
Hi Lisa,
If you have an online presence you should use some form of social media. The vast majority of people coming to your site will be looking for other ways to connect with you and social media is the quickest way to do so. If you have a new blog, I’m willing to bet more people will keep up with your posts via social media than they will with RSS. Most people who use RSS hesitate to add a brand new blogs to their feed, but they’re more likely to follow your tweets until you prove yourself worthy.
No it’s stupid. However I do understand it. I am a bit overwhelmed with Facebook, but twitter is doing great things for me at the moment. (Check my post websitebabble)