October 2, 2009

Delete Your Facebook Fanpage—Now

I’m tired of people who pitch social media marketing as a way to make sales. Either they aren’t measuring the results they get for clients, or they don’t care. Every good case study is either about how someone used a famous friend’s endorsement to make new sales, or how they made a tiny number of low-profit transactions they probably would have made anyway.

I hate pitching social media marketing—but I still do it, because it does serve a purpose. But the most important part of the pitch is the warning: if you follow the convention wisdom, your social media presence is almost certainly costing you sales.

Read the rest of this entry »

August 28, 2009

Metcalfe Was a Pessimist

The value of a network grows at roughly the square of the growth rate of the users. That makes sense for telephone networks—add one more user to a network, and the number of new connections available goes up by the number of existing users.

Classically, this breaks down because the first people to add it get the most out of it. Maybe a phone was crucial for the first few people to use it—but the next phone sold today is probably going to replace an old phone, replace borrowing somebody else’s phone, or complement an existing Skype connection.

But Metcalfe’s law can break in the opposite direction, and I think we’re seing that in social media. In fact, I think we’ll see a lot more of it. Read the rest of this entry »

August 26, 2009

Why Not SEO And…

I advocate SEO for the generally sensible reason that I do a lot of it. And the reason I end up doing a lot of it is that it works. But search engine optimization works best when it’s combined with other kinds of marketing. Not to reprise yesterday’s post too slavishly, but: why not try SEO and…

  • Pay per click advertising.
  • Banner ads.
  • Social media marketing.
  • Traditional Media
  • PR
  • No new marketing spending
  • Nothing else

Read the rest of this entry »

August 25, 2009

Why SEO and Not…

Advertising is a competitive business. Budgets are tight, and still tightening. When I persuade someone to use search engine optimization as a strategy, I have to persuade them to use SEO instead of:

  • Pay per click advertising.
  • Banner ads.
  • Social media marketing.
  • Traditional Media
  • PR
  • Cash under a mattress
  • Shotguns next to the canned goods under a mattress that doubles as an all-weather escape raft / emergency shelter.

Read the rest of this entry »