What’s Your Social Networking Plan?

by Jack Humphrey on Jan 5

I love how the experts in social media (apparently, everyone who has a Twitter account) bemoan the lack of a plan for building a following in your niche.

Well, #1, there aren’t many people to follow anyone in any particular niche yet except that we all follow Scoble.  There are only 5 million Twitter users.  All 5 million are geeks and early adopters.  All 5 million are telling each other things they already know.

Where to find the best (fill in the blank).  The stars of every niche are on Twitter but the casual surfers and followers attracted to each niche are not yet Tweeting.

So, to say you have a “plan” for Twitter domination and that others who don’t have a stated plan are fools is kind of dumb.

Regardless, I’ll tell you my plan for all my social marketing in 2009:

1.  Build a few places deep with followers

I am doing this because I can then expand in any direction I want and take a significant group with me wherever I go.  I’m tired of trying new things and inviting the usual suspects who follow me everywhere.  I want a big freakin’ posse.  An entourage to follow me around the web.

I also do this with a very specific plan to be able to pop out marketing related links and move crowds in the direction of those tips.  90% pure helpful content.  10% “do me a favor” “buy my product” kind of stuff.  Very fair.

2.  Prove that fewer is better for my business and my sanity.

2009 will be the year we all look back and go “Thank God we all came to our senses about the number of social sites we actively participate in!”  Mark my words.

3.  Be everywhere without BEING everywhere.

Maria Reyes-McDavis said it best in our recent Webside Chat.  RSS is how you “show up” in a million places without needing to physically log into each of them regularly.  It is a way to provide good content, thereby heeding the social rules of any social site, but without creating original content for all those damn sites!

Are you a social community or Web 2.0 site owner?  MAKE me want to be a regular participant by making yourself as useful and desired as, say, Twitter or StumbleUpon.  It’s not my job to make your site popular for nothing in return.

4.  Having a big following makes me Paris Hilton.

Want to get paid to belong to social sites and invite your friends?  That’s going to happen in the future.  Paris Hilton gets paid just to show up at popular nightclubs.  Good for business.  The only way I’m likely to join another social site for no reason is if you give me a reason.  And it better be a stack of Benjamins.

Social sites are relying on the popularity of the social revolution on the web.  That revolution is waning fast.  People are hungover from being everywhere and trying to act like each place is the only place they really care about.  No one is going to do that for the sake of it anymore.

I’m tired of creating content and inviting friends to help obscure social sites become more popular.  Since I can’t spend the right amount of time on them, and since most of them will be dead at the end of 2009, it’s not cost effective for me to be so charitable with my time and my following.  You’re welcome to host my RSS feed though.

If you own a social site and want it to have a chance of becoming high traffic, you’re going to have to work deals with big players in other groups to publicly come to your site and talk about it.  It’s not a negative thing.  I bet getting Scoble to try your site and Tweet about it would be more cost effective than Adwords any day of the week.  Even if it costs you $50k.

Being Big is Big Business

Let’s not forget what makes Paris Hilton special.  She’s special and successful for nothing more than getting attention and lots of it.  She can’t sing, dance, or act, so there’s no other reason for it than simply being popular for being popular.

The more people you have following you in a tight group of social networks which you specifically target for the bulk of your social networking time, the more you can do on the web to make money really fast.  Building your following might take a year before you can make fast money, but once you got it, you have power.

Old Business Not To Be Ignored

The other reason to prune your social network and go deep is to save time for what you are likely ignoring at your own peril:  link building, content development, new product development, time for more clients, and all the other stuff you have to do to run and grow your business.

Rather than tell you what your exact plan should be, the better advice from “social marketing experts” would be to plan for scaling down and getting intensely involved with a few sites to build a large following.  How you do it and where you do it is up to you and your market.

There are 5 million people on Twitter just dying to tell you about every new social site that pops up.  You’ll find the best places for your business to be just by joining!

Tagged as: online marketing plan, social marketing plan, social networking plan, twitter marketing plan

  • http://www.tonywrites.com Tony Funderburk

    Hey Jack,
    I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your info on scaling things down. I’ve been saying for a long time that trying to keep up with “everything” will only sink your ship. Even Paris Hilton can’t be everywhere… :-)

    You can be an authority to some of the people a lot of the time, but you can’t be an authority to all of the people most of the time.

    Web 3.0 is fast approaching. Be ready to welcome it with a cool drink of water from the medianet.

    Tony

  • http://www.iTalkBlog.com Mark [email protected]

    Jack

    You Talked about this recently and I agree. For me to keep track of everywhere I am “supposed to be” would require a VA, a white board with a grid and plenty of colored erasable pens close by and an elephant with a better memory than I have, just so I can be sure I have not forgotten any of the REALLY important ones I need to visit.

    I missed MySpace, never could find my way around and FB has a ton of apps that you can be invited to in any given moment. It was not until I decided to be serious on FB to build relationships that I said enough to those distractions.

    I would rather spend my time searching and reading the blogs that are to my liking and learning from them, posting comments, than trying to make it here and there on the ever expand WEB(as in I am getting very tangled here) of social sites.

    Less is more for me right now. Check back in a few XXXX and I may have changed my mind but for now, thanks but no thanks.

    I like the idea of them paying me to show up, I will go then…lol

    Mark Ayerss last blog post..41 Ways To Build Great Content For Your Blog

  • http://eoinoleary.com Eoin O’Leary

    Great post Jack,

    I can’t add to it but I do hope that 2009 brings a new App to make keeping up with everything easier.

    Focus …. in a Social Media world is getting very difficult.

    Eoin

    Eoin O’Learys last blog post..Recording Powerpoint, Video Test #1

  • http://www.platinumpaintprotection.com Al Kirke

    Thanks Jack,
    For the great content, funny thing
    even though i sign up with a lot of guys and Gals to see what they are up to in social media.
    I always find my way back to you and always open your emails in my inbox as i know it will tell me what you are up to in a bite size pieces then if i want to read more onward I go.
    Thanks mate
    Alan (from Australia) may your 2009 be what you want and More

  • Darrell McNish

    Jack,

    At first, I’ll admit that I thought you had a
    sound plan. So I went back over my Authority
    Black Book, and my Social Power Linking book, &
    then went thru my Conversation Domination
    material YET AGAIN.

    And I’m just hoppin mad.

    Not because the info is bad, but because you
    have just plainly reversed how you used to say
    social marketing should be done.

    And I realized – I can’t wait any longer, I have
    to write back about this!

    So here goes, in reverse order.

    ____________
    Old Business Not To Be Ignored
    ____________

    I agree that you have to focus on the tasks that
    can most directly make your business grow – but
    BOY did you get this one wrong!

    “Scaling down” ? Come on Jack, if we follow that
    marketing method, how are we going to see the
    benefits coming from massive linking via all
    those sites you have in the AB Book?

    Instead, I say we should ramp it up – build it
    to another level entirely. If you’re really
    thinking of creating yourself as an authority on
    a subject, the first order of business should be
    to get your neame or brand known – recognized -
    as THE dominating force in the field.

    Isn’t that what the Authority Site Center was all about?

    So how do you do that? I’d suggest that we stop
    worrying about the “$20 problems” (thanks to
    Howie Schwartz for that quote) and make a
    business map – what tasks we HAVE to do every
    day, week, month, and then decide which of those
    we HAVE to do ourselves.

    Tasks like getting on conference calls, or
    attending conferences or buyer meetings we most
    certainly must do.

    But the small things like Build moneysite A and
    promote with Social networks A thru Z, and Book
    mark all of them…

    Those kind of things we can leave to an
    outsourced agent. We focus on the new business
    building activities, and have them focus on the
    mundane. Thats “scaling the business.”

    ____________
    Being Big is Big Business
    ____________

    Forgive me Jack, but PLEASE never show up at an
    IM conference wearing a pink dress, high heel
    pumps, and carrying a “foofoo” poodle on your
    arm…

    “Building your following might take a year
    before you can make fast money.”

    I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to
    just sit on my butt, watching Twitter every
    moment, so I can hand out some cheesy link to
    advice that has nothing to do with a
    conversation. I’d rather pay someone else to do
    that – or better yet, get a programmer to build
    me an app to make it more automated for me.

    I can have 1000 tweets at 140 characters each
    made on hundreds of topics for less than $100 –
    and have their postings be automated too. Now,
    granted, I’ll want to build a real rapport with
    my followers, but I can’t be awake 24/7 anymore.
    I’m not that young!

    ____________
    4. Having a big following makes me Paris Hilton.
    ____________

    Oh please… PLEASE take my previous comment to
    heart!

    That being said, I happen to agree with most of
    this section – except for this one…

    “I’m tired of creating content and inviting friends to help obscure social sites become more popular. Since I can’t spend the right amount of time on them, and since most of them will be dead at the end of 2009, it’s not cost effective for me to be so charitable with my time and my following. You’re welcome to host my RSS feed though.”

    Jack, most marketers have little time to waste
    doing things like content creation – even for a
    new, about to be released project. That’s why
    eLance and all those other outsourcing places
    exist – to do our due diligence for us. As an
    example, I hired my son to do some of my social
    networking for me – I gave him a list of
    subjects (100) and he made 10 tweets for each of
    them. Took him 3 days after class. Cost me lunch
    at Wendy’s, and 2 days of him not taking out the
    trash or doing dishes. Bargain.

    And that RSS feed? Hey, you have all these
    tweets… that can either be plugged INTO a WP
    site, or you can plug the WP site into Twitter.
    Same with other Social networks – once you have
    the content, you can post it from / to anywhere.

    ____________
    3. Be everywhere without BEING everywhere.
    ____________

    See my above comment. Really, you can make ANY
    feed come “alive” simply by adding in your
    content.

    And again, you should be passing down tasks like
    content creation.

    ____________
    2. Prove that fewer is better for my business and my sanity
    ____________

    Sanity ? Yes. Proof that we should be in a LESS
    dominant position? No.

    ____________
    1. Build a few places deep with followers
    ____________

    “I am doing this because I can then expand in any direction I want and take a significant group with me wherever I go. ”

    Ok, that part’s not so bad – except for the part
    about doing it in LESS markets. Go back to your
    Power Linking days, Jack, you told us to grab
    links from “everywhere”.

    And if you want your “posse” that badly, how
    much bigger is it going to be if you have one in
    10 sites rather than 5? Or 20?

    I guess what I’m trying to say, Jack, is that my
    Social Plan has to part from yours quite a bit.

    Is that good? Don’t know. But I’m willing to try!

    Success!!

    Darrell

    • http://www.jackhumphrey.com/ Jack Humphrey

      Darrell – The plan is still to be everywhere, just not actively logging in or feeling the pressure to join a million sites all at once. So everything in the Black Book still applies. What I’m talking about is where your focus is. You say you can have 100 Tweets written up. You have the time to DO 100 tweets in your voice related to what’s actually happening on Twitter among your friends if you’re not messing with the other stuff.

      I agree 100% on some outsourcing, but one-way convos that just “butt in” out of the blue and out of context with the convo that’s going on in places like Twitter aren’t going to do you much good with your following and are PAINFULLY obvious that they’re pre-written. That’s fine as long as you actually talk to people sometimes too.

      The difference between the two styles is night and day when it comes time to ask your following to do something, believe me.

      You took the Paris Hilton thing a bit too seriously I think.

      The focus of this post was to really change minds about where we spend our time. It wasn’t meant to throw cold water on the Black Book or to insinuate that I’m not out there getting my RSS feed on every site possible. I’m just not going to spend more time than that, nor am I going to pay anyone to add more content to boost the traffic on their social sites for no more in return than I get by just updating their site with Ping.fm and my feed.

      Our two plans are really one in the same then. You still join sites. You just automate your presence at 90% of them and spend QUALITY time, real time, on a few places. Automating everything is a big mistake, though, for most people. Especially since you have time to be a real factor in a few places by saving so much time NOT being actively involved (or trying to) everywhere you have an account.

      So by all means, have a bunch of accounts! Outsource if you feel you must, but at the end of the day, that little bit of quality networking in key places is going to take you a lot farther than phoning everything in. That is, if you goal is to connect with new affiliates and bigger people who can drastically add to your following. They’ll never do it if your Twitter stream is on automation.

  • http://www.jackhumphrey.com/ Jack Humphrey

    P.S. – Darrell – I’d never advocate putting yourself in a less dominant position. That kind of goes against my whole 10 years online dominating stuff. :)

    I’m not renouncing anything really big here, just readjusting the mindset for social marketing so people can better understand what is really working and how to use social media properly.

    My argument is that I will be more dominant with phoning it in on far more sites and concentrating effort on sites that deliver more than just traffic and links.

  • http://www.brandingyp.com charles palma

    Having all 5 million following you would be amazing. You can definitely move from niche to niche and bringing in atlease one follower for that niche giving you a higher zero-loss chance. :)

    charles palmas last blog post..Google.com.ph – Google in the Philippines

  • http://john-gregory.com John Gregory

    Well Said Jack.

    I know what you mean when you say 2009 is about coming back to our senses and numbering the social sites we frequent. RSS is a much better way to go about mass communication with the mass headache.

    Where is the best place to run your RSS feed from to all the social sites ?
    my wordpress blog , facebook , twitter, what do you recommend??

    Thanks for all you do and share !!

    John Gregory

    John Gregorys last blog post..Video Titles = Google Rankings. Internet Video Marketing Tips

    • http://www.jackhumphrey.com/ Jack Humphrey

      John – #1 is from your blog. But if you get to put multiple sources into a social profile, then put your Twitter and myriad other RSS feeds other services give you in as well!

  • http://www.longtailtreasure.com todd alan

    Great post Jack!

    I think scaling back our social site hoping is great advice and one that is probably going to continue to be lost on most people over the next year.

    Given how old RSS technology is it amazes me how few people really grasp the power RSS has to syndicate or presence and not just our content.

    As we look to ways of being everywhere without being everywhere I think Twitter will prove itself over the next year beyond even the optimists wildest dreams (i’m an optimist ;) ).

    The simplicity of Twitter not only makes participation very economical but is also the very reason for it’s incredible flexibility. This is becoming evident by the shear number and diversity of third party tools and apps available for Twitter. And it’s these apps that will provide the glue for our social existence and allow is to being 5 places at once.

    It seems to me going deep with twitter is a smart move and the right place to be building our mega following.

    Now if only I can get Paris Hilton to retweet me it’s be golden! ;)

    cheers,
    todd alan

    todd alans last blog post..Obama Twitter Acount Hacked? Or Given Away?

  • http://thinkpadtoday.com Ian Orford

    Jack, superb and thought provoking post as usual. Social Media is becoming immensely cluttered and as a friend of mine once said, ‘when it becomes a band wagon, it’s time to get off!’ The thing we have found difficult with Web 2.0 marketing is how to apply it to our ‘Techie’ niche, but it is now coming together.

    It really is a matter of sticking with whats starts to work. the challenge is fighting through the clutter to get to the good stuff. We have a daily discipline that we follow based on your 60 day plan, but we only post to about 5 sites. We also derive great targeted traffic from facebook, something that even John Reese doesn’t seem to be able to master.

    We joined a highly targeted niche Group relevant to our brand, started to contribute, became an ‘authority’ in the group, became an admin, the group now grows like crazy and they are all brand fanatics, and guess where the outgoing links links go? To our ‘brand’ fan blog. they love it! Posts are RSS fed into the group.

    We are also experimenting right now with twitter, and that is starting to show some results, although its been a ‘distraction’ and a ‘learning curve’ but were now getting through the dross.

    I think the crux is Jack that if we were selling ‘free online games’ or ‘headache cures’, or ‘scrapbooking ebooks’ or god forbid, IM Stuff, then we would be going wide with a shotgun approach.

    But were not, we develop sites that sell high end Technology products and we have had to work hard to ‘socializes’ the process in addition to the traditional stuff like content creation, link building etc.

    So on a final note I would vehemently disagree with Darrell. Outsourcing is great, for somethings. But content creation on social networking has to be in your own voice, otherwise it doesn’t work.

    We have used some of the most expensive and well regarded content writers in the US, and quite frankly, the end result fails miserably because the voice is wrong.

    I write most of the content for 3 sites myself, and I know that I have to use outside writers very soon otherwise we will not continue to grow, but if sitting researching and writing content on my favorite subjects will earn me close to $150k + and rising this year, then I am a very happy bunny.

    Ian Orford Editor -ThinkPadToday.com

    Ian Orfords last blog post..Lenovo ThinkPad Coupon Code – January eCoupon and ThinkPad 48 hour Sale

    • http://www.jackhumphrey.com/ Jack Humphrey

      Thank you Ian – appreciate your insight here!

  • Darrell McNish

    Ian,

    Perhaps the point of my post was not so much to disagree with Jack as to force a conversation about practices and forward movement, and in that respect, Thank You for that post!

    BUT….

    I want people to think, truely think about what it is that formulates the majority of their “profit” time. By this I mean – “What activities have to be done on a daily basis to make my venture profitable?”

    If you ask yourself this question, and then map it out, I think you’ll find some startling truths. For example, on an average site, I will do something similar to the following:

    Decide on a product / service / affiliate offer that I want to promote

    Do my keyword research, eliminate duplicates and irelevant

    Research articles, videos, pod casts, forums, membership sites, user groups, specialized social media sites, webinars, affiliate programs, e-books, coaching programs, physical and digital products, related products / services, newsletters, subscriptions, blogs, and domain names

    Create 100 articles for use in my marketing, each on different keyword terms, with relevant LSI terms sprinkled in

    Create 5 to 10 niche related videos, also convert the audios to a podcast

    If the offer is for an affiliate product then I will create a “Value Added Proposition” that makes the offer virtually free, or better than free if possible (usually by creating a video tutorial, pdf report, and a “Best Practices” guide)

    Create a follow-up email series, usually one per week for 52 weeks, with the articles and some additional tips built in on using the product / service to get more out of it. I’ll also add in additional product or services that fit with a review of it, and possible uses in association with the original widget

    Create the money site (usually a WP blog) with a link to the USP page

    Setup Google Analytics or other tracking scripts as necessary, along with testing, tracking, and revision scripts to increase conversion rates

    Setup email addresses on the money site, membership section, forum, and interactive features with the content promised

    Setup follow on content for the next 52 weeks to be drip fed into the membership section

    Setup social BM accounts according to the SPL / ABB . Conversation Domination formulas

    Setup Social networking / content sites with the articles written, interlinking one way and three way linking to the money site, auto posting of additional content as available, RSS feeds from other related sites, videos (Note that I have, at current count, just over 3000 social sites that I know of)

    Submit branded videos to the video sites

    Submit branded pod casts

    Submit RSS feeds / ping blog sites

    On social accounts and in forums, build authority by posting quality information, with sig links to social sites or money site. This also leads to additional content at membership site in addition to the content all ready being drip fed, with the possibility of another product or report that could be sold based on this info

    Bookmark ALL of the previous content on a continuing basis, rotating accounts, never more than 2 or 3 per day with one account

    Repeat, ad infinitum

    Ok, so where in doing all that do I have time to focus on only one thing, unless I have outsourced most of it? In fact almost all of it can be outsourced – except the initial niche and keyword research.

    As for using “my own voice” on the social networking sites, think about that. If I just do that for 1% of the social sites I know about – that’s 30 sites – you’re still talking about spending FULL time on just one money making proposition.

    Obviously, you have more time than I do ;)

    For myself, I find that outsourcing these things to my agents actually makes my life a lot easier. I can focus on my next project, working on the tasks that DIRECTLY make me money.

    This is NOT to say, however that I don’t take part in my social sites conversations – I do. A lot. And not just because I have to build my personal authority, but because it’s a good source of ongoing research about what consumers are questioning or searching for in my niches.

    But do I spend 8 or 10 hours a day doing that? No. I don’t have time for that.

    I have more money to make.

    Success!

    Darrell

  • http://thinkpadtoday.com Ian Orford

    Darrell, your highly detailed ‘campaign’ and action plan sounds superb. You are obviously well down the road to expanding your business.

    AND you are it would seem, from the way you talk targeting niches that lend themselves to the ‘lets outsource it all’ approach. Some niches just do not lend themselves to that.

    It would be also interesting to know what your bottom line profit is and how quickly you go into profit with such a high outsourcing expenditure

    But I think that your post misses the original point that Jack made and the further point I endeavored to make. Most of the people that jack talks to are either newbies or people who are just starting to make a credible living online.

    Initially, they actually need to do the ground work themselves before they start outsourcing, just for the learning curve. And most never will outsource either because they love what they do.

    Building 2, 3 and 4 high value, content rich authority sites, with a large and loyal fan base can and does have the potential to generate $200/300 and $400k per year income.

    To me thats far better than the mass approach, and creates far more value for the visitor and the Internet as a whole. But, like everything, it s horses for courses Darrell

    Cheers, Ian Orford Editor -ThinkPadToday.com

  • http://www.rebeccacheng.com/blog Rebecca Cheng

    Thank you Jack once again:

    I am a newbie and I can see Jack talks relate to my need.
    Thanks Ian for it pointing out.

    It’s good to see both side of the equation.

    Today I am newbie (getting the ground work done) and I do this way, may be tomorrow with more experience and new ideas I may do it differently.

    Rebecca Chengs last blog post..Enemies, Soldiers, People But Who Are You?

  • Darrell McNish

    Ian,

    You bring some well deserved light to bear on the needs and desires of the “newbie” internet marketer – the learning curve, and the money curve.

    But there are a few pieces of information that would serve everyone well to know about – not the least of which is that the process I outlined would serve for either throw away AdSense type sites or for membership / authority sites that gain revenue from ongoing services.

    First – the cost of outsourcing. This does NOT have to be high, nor burdensome. In fact, in can be downright cheap, if you’re prepared.
    _______________________
    And, as a side note – to determine whether outsourcing is “for you” or not, use this formula.

    How much you make in a year on your sites = A
    Weeks in a year = B (or 52)
    Hours spent per week marketing = C (common practice is 40)

    A / B = $$$ per week

    $$$ per week / C = Your VALUE per hour

    Ian, if we take the low end of your suggested earnings, or $200,000 per year, then…

    $200,000 / 52 = $3,846.16 earned per week

    $3846.16 / 40 = $96.16 earned per hour

    So now, Ian, you’re worth at least $96 per hour. Would it be worth it to hire someone for, say (at the VERY high end) $20 per hour so that you could duplicate your efforts somewhere else? As in, creating another $200,000 business per year?

    If it were your high end earnings statement, those figures would DOUBLE.

    And honestly, I think the highest wage I’ve paid to ANY outsource agent was $16 per hour.

    If I can more than quadruple my income by hiring someone else, I think I’m going to.
    _______________________

    The outline I gave earlier of my “marketing flow” is not particularly detailed, because I only wanted to get across that the plan is not “mysterious”, and it IS something that every marketer should be putting together.

    When I outsource a project, I create a mind map of how I envision the site to move forward in development. I’ll actually create three maps, labeled Phase 1, 2, and 3, each with a detailed Step one, Step 2 Step 3 type checklist that usually remains the same for any project I start. This, obviously, changes as I learn how to market better, or come across new information. The mind maps are sent to my project manager, who parcels out the mind maps one phase at a time until completion.

    I would advise all internet marketers, new and experienced, to adopt for themselves a process checklist, one they can physically see and respond to, so that they can use it as a metric in how progressed they are in their marketing effort. I can say from experience that, until I started this, I was literally re-inventing myself every time I thought about a new site. I lost, literally, thousands of dollars ( my son was kind enough to do the math for me).

    In fact, Jack actually helped to create my process list, thru my reading of the materials in his SPL and ABB products, and thru the content served up here, Content Desk, and other spots. If there are “newbies” that aren’t sure about how to start, check out Jacks’ BlogSuccess – it might open your eyes to some new possibilities.

    Now that the shameless plug to get in Jack’s good graces is done… ;)

    My first experience outsourcing was to my son – at 11 years old, he probably knows more about the internet right now than I do, and that’s scary. It was a cheap, easy way to see how bad a teacher I really am, ;) and an incentive for me to start this mind mapping stuff.

    Get software called “FreeMind” from SourceForge – it’s free, but still has some good tools. try it out. You’ll make mistakes, but that’s how we learn to be better. There are other free or trial software packages that you can Google, if you desire.

    Then open up your copy of Authority Black Book – it’s a very good beginning for anyone looking to start their own process tree, but there are other resources you should check out, too, when you’re ready to advance yourself.

    Jeff Johnson’s Underground Training Lab is an excellent source of information and free training, and you can get on his email list to see most of the process he teaches his private coaching classes.

    http://www.undergroundtraininglab.com

    There are two more great teachers that I’ve “stolen” knowledge from – and although I paid for most of the content I got from them, just getting on their email lists and seeing some of the free videos and training materials is more than enough to add to or refine your process tree.

    John Reese at Income.com has launched their blog, and it gives out some amazing nuggets of information. And his Traffic Secrets courses are the foundation for a lot of peoples business practices.

    Then there’s Howie Schwartz – he’s just plain wicked, in terms of his “Domination” products, and is an avid enthusiast of literally entering markets from day one with the thought of owning the first page of SERPS. Do a Google search to find any of his products online, then sign up for his email list, because he regularly lets loose gold – from getting Google to TELL you what they want in their engine, to how to do massive traffic for free, to again getting Google to tell you what people are searching for right now, next week, next month…

    So now you have a lot of research to do, to get going with your process tree.
    – Get mind mapping software
    – Get a copy of the Authority Black Book
    – Visit Jeff Johnson’s Underground Training Lab and see how he
    markets his sites, get on his list for more training
    – Visit Howie Schwartz’s sites, get on his list for training on traffic
    and niche research
    – Check out Blog Success for some very targeted blog training
    – Check out the Income.com blog, and get on John Reese’s mailing
    list
    – Check out Mike Filsaime’s FREE Outsourcing Secrets site for
    more outsourcing info at http://www.outsourcesecrets.com
    – Check out Jeff Mills Outsourcing Secrets Revealed site for more
    info on outsourcing at http://www.outsourcesecretsrevealed.com
    – And most important, start your own process tree !

    Don’t worry if you have to change it, frequently, especially in the beginning. You’re SUPPOSED to. Being new isn’t bad – it just means you have less to un-learn – and you may learn some really neat Jedi Mind Tricks in the process !! ;)

    Success!!

    Darrell

    • http://www.jackhumphrey.com/ Jack Humphrey

      Crap Darrell – if you keep adding content like this I’ll be able to fire 3 outsourcers!

  • http://john-gregory.com John Gregory

    Well Said Jack.

    I know what you mean when you say 2009 is about coming back to our senses and numbering the social sites we frequent. RSS is a much better way to go about mass communication with the mass headache.

    Where is the best place to run your RSS feed from to all the social sites ?
    my wordpress blog , facebook , twitter, what do you recommend??

    Thanks for all you do and share !!

    John Gregory

    <abbr></abbr><abbr>John Gregorys last blog post..Video Titles = Google Rankings. Internet Video Marketing Tips</abbr>

  • http://www.glutenfreepages.com.au/ Bruce@Gluten free restaurants & Cafes

    Wow, stumbled upon this page, and as a newbie+ I am happy for leads on seo gurus to follow.

    Its probably been a while and the rules of twitter have probably changed. I am just getting my head around automating tools to save hours of manual labour, things like RSS and article spinners. On the twitter front though, I sitll havent seen anywhere that people suggest what you actually say, regularly, to keep people following you, when really all you want to do is sell a product on a website. I get how you can do it if you are a seo guru, dropping gold nuggets behind you, but for the mere mortal it sounds either exploitive, too hard, or at least very hard to understand what you might say, if for instance you want to sell something on a button site? there can be only so many advances and sales on this to keep people interested? Anyway, any comments are really really welcome … as I see the twitter boat sailing off into the distance.

  • http://www.glutenfreepages.com.au/ Bruce

    Hi,
    I am a relative newbie, and the twitter landscape has changed a lot since these posts, its now 2010,

    any advice or views on how an ordinary business such as selling buttons, would lure many followers, and tell them interesting stuff to retain them? I get that seo gurus and celebrities would have fans, just dont get how twitter works for the average site trying to sell a product – especially if the service or products are relatively stagnant – ie no hourly specials etc

  • http://www.helpdeskoutsourcings.com/ Telemarketing Outsourcing

    Social network marketing offers huge potential to merchants both online and off. The immense and growing popularity of social network sites has lead to a stampede of marketers vying for some of that traffic. Online entrepreneurs however need to develop and stick to some type of plan or strategy that will enable them to effectively promote their goods and services within any online social networking community.
    .-= Telemarketing Outsourcing´s last blog ..Help Desk Software and Customer Satisfaction =-.

  • Abhi Arora

    Secure Your Brand

    The first step of a successful (and long term) social media plan is to grab your brand everywhere you can, regardless of whether or not you plan to use it. It’s important that you have control of your identity all over the Web. It’s always better to have the username and not use it, then need to wait and kick yourself later when someone else grabs it. Having a unified social media username is very important in establishing trust with other members (and potential press contacts) who may belong to multiple communities with you. You want them to know that you’re the same person. Appearing as [cameraexpert] on one network and [cameras343] on another may confuse them.

    To help ease the mind numbing task of username registration, we suggest using Knowem to search a large listing of social media sites. One search will tell you where your brand is still available on 120 different social media sites. (We also use their premium service to register the profiles for us since we’re too lazy busy to register all those profiles ourselves).

Previous post:

Next post: