Social Media Marketing - The Power of One Versus the Power of Syndication

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IBC

There are so many people jumping on the band wagon teaching others how to participate on social media sites, but is this really the way to go? The fact is that you have exactly the power one person (yourself) creating buzz around what you do.

We have found this to be a guaranteed formula for failure for most people.

It is much more effective working with a syndicate of social media users where they do the work for you. In this short article, I will discuss what you need before you start generating social "buzz" and how to generate it quickly.

So what do people really do on social media sites?

Everyone starts by creating an account on each social media site on which they want to participate. They also have to learn to use each system - they all work differently and there is a different strategy to get the most out of each one. Every one of these social networkers then begin to network on each of these social media sites, making friends and promoting their content and other informational and promotional web pages. The problem is that there is just one person doing this work, and it just doesn't have the weight of working with several teams of people to do the same thing for you. It may take you quite a while to build that kind of following on each website.

What about these informational and promotional web pages?

If you haven't realized it yet, content is king when it comes to creating valuable assets for your company on the web. Your content can generate traffic, and more importantly, interest in what you are doing. You are your message. Content is made up of your articles and web pages and each one can generate leads for your business or project, so if you don't have great writing skills, you might want to consider improving them or hiring someone that can write for you.

How can content generate leads?

Each article or web page should have some kind of call to action, the most common of which is an opt-in form which allows people to get more information. Asking for a phone call is another common call to action. Offering good information for free on a particular subject and offering additional information on the matters already discussed is one of the best ways to get people to take action. Your content becomes your sales funnel, and as you add more content, each piece of content can add to the number of leads you get each month. Each person that takes action has "converted" and becomes a prospect for your sales funnel process.

The Next Step - Creating Buzz

Every content page can have a unique URL that you can promote through the social media sites. You could create one account on each of the social media sites, but then you have the power of just one person (YOU) promoting your content - blowing your own horn so to speak. Buzz is created from MANY people blowing your horn, so the bottom line is:

YOU JUST CAN'T DO THIS ALONE!

This effort is also time consuming and takes you away from your business, where your focus should probably be.

Doing It Yourself Versus Outsourcing

Our studies show that most people who invest in learning how to create their own buzz are just spinning wheels. We have surveyed over 1,200 people so far and found that more than 49 of 50 people that were new to social media, spent money on a social media "how to" course and then tried to do it themselves got absolutely nothing out of their social media experience (in terms of new business) in the first 6 months. We also found that more than 47 in 50 people in this same situation got absolutely nothing out of this type of effort after 1 year!* If you have any kind of advertising budget, you may want to outsource this type of work to others AND save money. There are so many others already doing this, why not let them create the "buzz" for your content so you can focus on your business?

What is Social Media Buzz?

Social media buzz is what you get when your content is noticed in the social media sites. This is usually done through social bookmarking sites where people "vote" on your content, usually through a simple one or two click process on the websites. If you are familiar with bookmarking sites on your web browser, you know that this is an easy way to save your favorite web pages for easy access later. Social bookmarking allows people to store their bookmarks on a website, and when multiple people bookmark your content, this creates buzz (votes) and generates traffic for your content through the social media sites. Search engines are also paying attention to this and when you get a quick 50-150 votes, it significantly increases your search engine rankings too!

These votes have a very long shelf life, and once in place, attract more votes from outside our syndicates!

Creating and Outsourcing to Syndicates

As people are trying to figure out how to set up syndicates, we have several years behind us in researching and setting up this area of our business. We teach others how to set up social media syndicates and we have a submission service that allows you to submit your content to our syndicate. Depending on the quality of your content, we generally get 50-200 "votes" on your content within about 2 weeks.

Conclusion

If you have time and want to do it yourself, remember that there are literally thousands of social media sites out there, and one person (you) can only do so much each week. Outsourcing your social media marketing is a great way to get things moving immediately whether you are doing it yourself or focusing entirely on your business.

*We also found that more than 9 out of 10 people people that had some experience with social media, spent money on a social media "how to" course and then tried to do it themselves failed to get new business from social media sites. In fact, we found that the only people making money on social media sites were people selling courses on how to make money on social media sites.