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Not Really a Top Ten Tips on How to Make Money Online with G+

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I remember when Twitter started and I was following/being followed by about 200-300. The signal to noise ratio was very high. Because you couldn’t add pictures/video/music into the stream there was little distraction.

Things were focussed on the the business of SEO and Social Media Manipulation. All good stuff. Of course the “drinking coffee” Tweets started to seep in and things increasingly got tedious and banal.

But then an interesting thing happened to Twitter, normal people started to join it. The BBC and other mainstream media organisations came to the party. And it became a powerful tool for a marketer.

Looking at my G+ stream right now, there are pictures of cars, funny videos, reviews on TV shows and so forth. Very little of what I really want, which is SEO and social media and other media stuff. Now, you could say just create a circle and blah blah blah. Problem is, it’s not the people I need to separate, it’s the topics of the posts.

I am sure there are people have a lot of time on their hands to be able to tweak and learn a new social media system. I’m trying to be polite about this, but there seems to be a lot of “look at me I’m a first mover” kinda business going on.

If your business is built around telling me what social media tool to use in exchange for piles of cash, then it makes a lot of sense to be here.

But, I look at my stream in G+ and just see a bunch of distraction and just like Twitter can be, it’s a bit banal, a bit childish and a bit crap. Sorry if this offends, but my job is to write what I think, not to give borderline personality types the warm fuzzies.

I have my Google Reader, I have Twitter, I have Facebook, I have Google Alerts, I have Linked in, I have email. I very much doubt I will miss something if I don’t squat on G+ as client work ends up being late (as it mostly does, but that’s another story).

There is a big bag of reason to be on G+ and check it out. But if it does not fit my strategy it ends up being a big bag of wank. I think there are reasons to keep tabs on the system as these things tend to morph into something that wasn’t initially expected. But the idea of sitting here, eating carrot cake and ingesting the stream of G+ leaves me a bit queasy. Much better to go and read my copy of the Guardian which I bought in a pique of righteous indignation whilst tutting at the piles of unsold copies of the Sun.

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Social Media is about Influence not Relationships

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I have a shelf full of overpriced books on social media. I say overpriced as most are just rehashed blog posts.

And most of them bang on about “relationships”, or “it’s all about the conversation”. As if yammering away about anything and everything and connecting with everyone and her dog is all you have to do.

Well that thinking is just a big bag of wrong.

Because, “IT” is not about the conversation, “IT”, is about influence or persuasion.

Sure, the conversation or having a rip roaring relationship that transcends all other relationships ever had in the history of humanity is something which social media does very well.

But, that is not the point.

It is NOT the goal.

The goal, is for people to be influenced into making a specific action.

For example:

  • Think positively about your brand
  • Buy more of your stuff
  • Hire you for a killer job
  • Make love to you in a Ford Cortina

And before you climb up to the pulpit to proclaim sex has nothing to do with social media or influence or persuasion. You may want to look at the fundamental nature of human beings.

I thought about this as Tina Jonasen questioned me on twitter.

@lyndoman Just wondering; you say you are a “Link Builder”, but follows nobody? Maybe I´m confused between Link- & RelationshipBuilder !?

Which is an interesting question.

Humans are those who link, therefore relationships are very useful. I tweeted back a few thoughts.

@ThinkInNewAreas A link can be a result of a human relationship built on following someone on Twitter but it’s not an effective or efficient

@ThinkInNewAreas The, “shall I link to this webpage” thought process only sometimes has a “does this person follow me on twitter” component

@ThinkInNewAreas Also, I want to suggest, it’s not about “relationships”, it’s about influence. Relationship is merely a stepping stone.

I think people get wrapped up too easily in the “relationship” part of social media. Which is perfectly understandable, but you have to step back and ask, “what am I doing here?”

“What is my social media strategy?”

It will stop you building relationships with the wrong people or spending all morning trading pictures of kittens who look like members of the Royal family.

Not following anyone on Twitter is a very interesting thing to do, as it removes a sedentary proclivity (natural urge to sit on your arse and be spoon fed information) and go on the hunt for useful bits of info.

It also highlights a few other things, which I may talk about later.

12 Skills of the Rand

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When I read the The 12 Skills That Have Served Me Best in My SEO Career I immediately thought, “good stuff, must twitter”.

Wrong, wrong wrong.

Posting on my blog helps by:

  • Building my blog
  • Giving SEOmoz a link that is better than the link from twitter
  • Reaching people who do not Twitter
  • Avoiding overlap as other people will tweet
  • Comments become part of this blog and not twitter

If you want to read my words you are going to have to read them here. If I twitter it, all I get is a bunch of retweets by people who are too ADD to read the article and to help Twitter build its business.

Which makes me think of another headline for this article, “Why I wont Tweet Rand Fishkin”. I will use that on the tweet to announce the post. It has lots of elements of a great headline, which I may deconstruct in a later post.

I recommend the article to anyone who needs a blueprint to being a great seo.

Short is not simple, it's essential

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Should we twitter like we blog and blog like we twitter?

Is brevity needed to cut through the information haze?

If my twitter stream becomes a stream of consciousness, my blog can be more like my twitter stream used to be.

  • I’m shortening my blog posts
  • Reducing the amount of links in my twitter stream
  • Twittering what I think I want to hear
  • Increasing more links in my blog post
  • Sending out as many twitter posts until my thoughts are finished
  • Using the blog to communicate the most useful information in the shortest way possible
  • Ignoring the number of followers I have

Screw those who tell you there is only one way to use twitter, it’s a tool, the way you use it entirely depends on your objectives.

A twitter manifesto? No, it’s way more than that.

Feed your Friends, Starve your Enemies

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Vikings

It’s an ancient tactic and one which works online as much as anywhere else, even more so.

When someone links to this blog with content above a certain quality threshold I will Stumble, Sphinn, Delicious that content. I may even Twitter if the content is appropriate.

The reason being is to boost the power and authority of that page and the link. Also, some traffic will travel down that link to its destination.

This technique is why a lot of generous and naturally nice people succeed in blogging, they constantly feed their friends and starve their enemies.

You can apply the same principle to Twitter. You recommend people to follow the friends who recommend to their friends to follow you. You help build their account, because if they are saying nice things about you, you want they to have a bigger audience.

Can this be used for evil? Possibly, but the people I see working this technique seem to genuinely enjoy sharing it around. I know I do, it simply is a natural thing to build up your friends whilst ignoring your enemies.

When I say enemies I am really saying people who would never do anything for you, whilst you do everything for them. In the strict definition of the word they are not your enemies as in they may not even know you exist. They are an enemy to your progress online if you spend resources on them.

Spend your resources on your friends, not the big cheese, online super hero blogger. Too many people clamoring for attention. They simply don’t have the time to help you.

But if you’re friends with the “up and comers”, these are the people who can give you the leg up, these people have time for you. Hunt them down and do nice things for them often. They will notice you and do nice things back.

It’s all very karmic in the end. If you want to get ahead in music, don’t try to get advice on Bono, go find the best Pub band in your area and buy them a Kitkat. Or a pint. These are the guys who have the potential to help you.

Now go out and do some good.

Sournce:
Vikings, The History Channel

Analysis of an SEO story going Viral on Twitter

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I tweeted, The Future of seo. From one of the UK’s top seo companies, Freshegg.com

The following retweeted the story.

Catnboots
lloydcooke
webaddict
mimojito
tyno
BWelford
Bukowsky
notifyneal
casspa

The total number of followers these account represents around 21,000 people. Is there going to overlap, as in the same person following twice? Probably. Are everyone of those followers going to be online at that time? Doubtful.

How many of the remaining number actually click through? I cannot calculate, but the webmaster of the targeted website cam. From there they can construct an idea of conversion rate of a retweet.

It remains to be known the value of a story going viral. My definition of a viral is where someone passed a story on that another person had picked up.

This story has obviously a highly focused audience and not likely to leek into the mass market. But not many people need to see it to be a successful post. Sometimes I have found only one person needs to read a post for it to be successful.

We don’t yet know the power of a retweet, but those who have spent their lives steeped in the world of the viral for the past few years know something very interesting is happening.

We can feel the heat, even though we cannot measure the burn effect of the viral.

Building Twitter Real Estate

Which leads me to another aspect. How do you get people to retweet your stuff. Most of the principles of linkbait apply here, you give people the reason to retweet.

Most people don’t get that. I do a lot of training and it’s amazing how such a simple, fundamental aspect of online networking gets overlooked.

Give people a reason to reteet your stuff.

I don’t have time to go into this in more detail, but here’s a clue. The above accounts all retweeted the story. Do you think they are worth following?

Do you think tweeting quality information is going to get you retweeted?

Do you think they will be motivated in any way to tweeting this story?

I know a lot of social media marketers wished I would stop blogging and giving away all the tricks. But I just can’t help it, I love to share 😉

You can follow me on Twitter if that is your desire here