My Pathetic Belief about Social Media

Posted on 21. Jan, 2010 by Julius.

Social media has become a big part of every Internet marketer’s life. Lots of people claim that they are getting huge amounts of traffic through social web sites. And people believe them. And so do I.

That’s why I’ve tried to use social media thinking that I could easily generate massive amounts of traffic to my blog. The sad part is that I haven’t been able to do so.

And do you want to hear something even more pathetic? Until now, I haven’t realized that social media isn’t about promoting your content, it’s about relationships. Why did it take me so long to realize this?

When you are new to blogging you visit highly popular web sites searching for information. There you find all this information about blogging, SEO and also social media.

Some of the articles on social media tell you that you need to promote your web site. So logically you arrive at the conclusion that social media is all about promoting your content. And that simply promoting your content will drive traffic to your web site. Then you try it and it doesn’t work.

The reality is different. Social media isn’t about generating traffic. It’s about building relationships. And it is sad that it took me almost a year to figure that out but I am glad I have realized it at least.

If you focus on building relationships first then traffic will follow.

Building Relationships

Making friends is not as hard as people think it is. Building a relationship with someone you don’t know can be quite strange but it can also be easy.

In order to build a relationship we need to first know what it is all about. A relationship is about a mutual exchange. This exchange can take any form whether it is love or simply helping someone out.

You need to give in order to receive. But how do you give through social media?

Give in Order to Receive

Well the idea is quite easy. Let’s say you use Twitter as a social media web site to drive traffic to your blog. A way you could give, is for example by retweeting someone’s tweets. That shows that you find the information useful and that you are willing to invest in the relationship.

Instead of retweeting you could also follow a link via Twitter. On the web site you could leave a comment or simply tell the person via Twitter that you enjoyed his content. If you didn’t quite enjoy it then you criticize the article but in a way that is not disrespectful.

Promote Value

When you have enough followers don’t feel the need to promote every of their posts. They won’t do it either. But simply state what you like and what’s worth looking at. Ask questions, create conversations and write about interesting topics.

It should be a very simple form of communication. A conversation on Twitter might go like this.

You: I like this post
You: I am writing a post
Other Person: RT I like this post too
You: @Other Person thank you for retweeting it. I hope it helped
Other Person: My new blog post
You: RT My new blog post .. Great article

That’s a fictive conversation via Twitter but it shows the mutual exchange that needs to take place. The way I used to tweet was like this.

Me: New blog post, take a look at it
Other Person: my own new post
Another Person: Read this …
Me: Latest blog post ..

It’s easy to realize that this is not a conversation. Now it seems so obvious that such things don’t work but when you start out using social media it doesn’t.

My goal now is to use social media to promote my web site. I want to build relationships with lots of Internet marketers, present my ideas and promote theirs.

What do you think about it? Do you use Twitter or other social media web sites? Do you use them actively?

1. The Power of Social Media Optimization