Tactical Execution

There’s a lot of talk about how to leverage the internet to grow your business.  Different people have different strategies and they all seem like tricks you have to do just right to see results.  And while some of that may be true, there’s value in understanding the concepts behind Internet Marketing, allowing you to apply the same concepts to dozens of different strategies.  Besides, I always like knowing what it is I’m trying to accomplish rather than just knowing a sequence of steps to follow.

Before jumping into the meat of this post, I also want to address the fact that the internet has changed a lot over the past decade and the concepts behind Internet Marketing have changed as well.  Although the modern realities all have roots in those early years, the dynamic was very different in the mid to late 90s.  Today, the internet is starting to mature with people using it in predictable ways.  And perhaps more importantly, the internet has become more social; hence the new buzz words like social media tools, social networks and social bookmarking.

The driving force behind modern Internet Marketing boils down to one simple phrase: conversations are markets.  If you want to access a particular market, you have to find that conversation and participate in it.  Let me say that again.  If you want to access a market, you have to participate in the conversation.  Simple.  But let’s dig a little deeper and see how we might accomplish this.

MySpace is a huge conversation.  In fact, there are thousands or even millions of individual conversations taking place on MySpace.  Same with Facebook.  The blogosphere is one massive conversation.  Forums are conversations.  Bulletin boards are conversations.  Twitter is a conversation, as is Utterz.  All the social bookmarking platforms like DIGG, delicious and StumbleUpon are all conversations.  People are interacting.  And if you want to sell a product or service to those people, you have to participate in that conversation and establish credibility within those circles.

If you’ve spent any time on the platforms just mentioned, you’ll know that within each certain users stand out as authorities.  Perhaps they have more posts or more friends or more content or more bookmarks.  In general, those who are active are quickly recognized as authorities.  So what does that actually mean?  It means you can be an authority yourself by just selecting the conversation that best matches your business and becoming an active user.

For most people, there are two problems.  First, people are fickle.  Second, they have no discipline.  Go to a gym in January and it will be packed.  Go in March and it will be quiet.  Why?  Because everyone had a New Year’s resolution they soon abandoned in favor of other healthy activies like watching TV or drinking beer.  Bottom line; those who stand the test of time will win in the end.

Never before has the formula for success been so clear cut.  It’s a simple formula.  Participate.  Be active.  Establish yourself within a community and you’re almost guaranteed to succeed, or at least make progress.

Let’s move on to fickle.  Every single day, new platforms are launching on the internet and they all allow and even promote interaction within their users.  Every day, there’s a new fad.  The problem is that if you constantly follow these new fads, you never become established anywhere.  At some point, you have to pick a particular conversation and focus on that.  Even if something flashier comes along, there’s value in sticking to your plan.

Now, am I saying that you have to limit yourself to all the old-school platforms that are no longer attracting fresh visitors?  No.  All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be too quick to jump from one to the other.  Put some time into the initial selection process.  Find the conversations that apply to your business.  Find the best forums.  Find the best blogs.  Find the best groups on social networks.  Look at them all and decide which ones you want to focus on.  Then stick to it for a while and see how your efforts pay off.

There’s another level to this discussion.  There’s something even more powerful than participating in conversations and that is facilitating conversations.  This might include becoming an organizer for an online group.  It might include adding a forum to your website.  It might include creating a wiki and then opening it up to your audience.  It might include using Ning to create your own social network around your particular business.

The possibilities are endless but you have to ensure you have an enthusiastic audience before you pull the trigger.  There’s nothing worse than a forum with no posts, a wiki with no contributions or a social network with no members.  But let’s look at an example of someone who has truly capitalized on the axiom: Barack Obama.  Now, I am not referring to his politics at all.  That is not my concern here.  But in terms of participating and facilitating conversations, he’s done more than any other politician in history … by orders of magnitude!

If you go to his website, you can create a profile and accumulate friends just like any other social network.  You can create a neighborhood and stay updated on events or even organize your own events.  You can obviously donate to his campaign or you can offer to match someone else’s donation, and even stay in touch with that other person.  But most interestingly of all, you can create your own blog within his web platform.

As of this writing, the Barack Obama website has over 40,000 active blogs, all written by individual supporters.  All these people are thoroughly engaged in his campaign and are contributing buckets of unique relevant content to his website.  They’re interacting with each other and getting more and more intertwined with the Barack Obama “change” movement every single day.  There’s no question he has capitalized on the “conversations are markets” moniker and I personally expect his dominance in this area will carry him through the November election.

Take some time and think about the conversations taking place in your field, in your business.  Do some searches on Google and Technorati and Big-Boards.  Find the conversations and begin participating in them.  You might be surprised how quickly you become a known quantity and how quickly you can start promoting your own products or services to the people you meet.

Last night, at my Lamorinda Toastmasters club, one of the Table Topics questions was, “if you could live in any time in history, what time would you pick?”  My answer to that question is TODAY.  I can’t think of a single period in history that I’d rather live in than today and social media tools are a major reason why.  Actually, social bookmarking is a more specific culprit.

As you probably know, social bookmarking platforms aggregate the bookmarking activity of all their members, allowing users to search for tags and find the most popular websites bookmarked under those subjects.  That sounds a lot like a search engine, doesn’t it?  Well, there’s one big difference.  Search engines deliver search results according to a sophisticated algorithym developed by Google, Yahoo, MSN or whoever.  Social bookmarking platforms deliver results based on the preferences of the peer group.

This is a monumental distinction.  Social bookmarking is the ultimate democracy.  Never before have we had such real-time visibility of our own peer group.  And although some people believe it only fuels the Britney Spears generation, the opposite is true.  You can search for the tag “Mozart” or “fly fishing” and find the top rates sites according to other people who are also interested in those subjects.  But there’s an even bigger implication than that.  Social bookmarking and the internet in general have put the focus back where it belongs: content.

Back in the good old days, people looked at the SOURCE first and the CONTENT second.  Today, the reverse is true.  Today, they look at the CONTENT first and the SOURCE second.  Do you know what that means?  Do you see the implications?  I am willing to bet this one simple change will, over time, create a wholesale shift in our culture.  I believe this one change creates more opportunities for early-stage entrepreneurs than any other shift of the past century.

What’s that change?  Well, it means that people with good quality content can get noticed, even if they doesn’t have fancy titles or extensive experience or some heroic feat under their belt.  Even someone brand new in a particular field can rise to the very top if their content is good enough.  The titles don’t matter anymore.  The experience isn’t so important.  The heroic feat that justifies our status as an “expert” has become largely irrelevant.  If your content is good, your content is good.  Period.  You’re an expert.

The moral of the story is this: figure out what you’re an expert in and then demonstrate that expertise.  Whether you realize it or not, you’re already an expert.  You know more about something than most other people.  If you haven’t already done so, figure out what that something is.  Figure it out.  And then start building your knowledge and demonstrating your expertise on the internet.  If your content is good, it will rise to the top and get recognized accordingly.

Social media tools like social bookmarking are making it easier and easier to sift through the endless piles of content to find exactly what you’re looking for.  Although more content is being produced today than ever before, it’s becoming easier to find the good stuff.  The cream rises to the top.  That’s an opportunity; for me, for you, for everyone.  The real question is, “who will take advantage of it?”  Personally, I intend to.  That’s what I’m doing right here.  And I suggest you do the same.

Whether it’s blogging, micro-blogging, podcasting, social networking or posting videos, the time has come for you to show your stuff.  Speak your truth and show the world where your passion lies.  And then let your peer group spread the word.  It’s an exciting time.  Don’t let the opportunity pass you by!

There’s a fantastic resource out there that few people are aware of.  It’s called blogcarnival.com and it can help you dramatically widen your audience in just 1 hour each month.  So, what’s a “carnival”?  Well, it’s like a magazine except online.  It’s a collection of articles (blog posts generally) that someone puts together and distributes to an audience who has expressed interest in that topic.

BlogCarnival.com lists all the carnivals that are being published in the coming weeks and months.  It lists the organization putting it together, the topic of the carnival, the date of the last issue and the date of the next issue (if known).  As a blogger, you can then submit your blog posts (via permalinks) to the carnivals that cover similar topics.  If selected, your post will be featured in the carnival and distributed to an audience of people who may have never heard of you before.

This strategy exemplifies the difference between Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing.  Social Media Optimization involves the things you can do to make your blog easier to share and distribute through social media platforms.  For example, adding the social bookmarking buttons for delicious, DIGG and StumbleUpon is a Social Media Optimization strategy.  Those buttons make it easier for your visitors to share your content with others.

Social Media Marketing involves more proactive strategies like going to blogcarnival.com yourself and submitting your blog posts to upcoming carnivals.  Another example is bookmarking your own content on the social bookmarking platforms, or even sharing your bookmarks with others to get more “votes” within those communitites.  Social Media Marketing involves all the blatant self-promotion activities you can do to get your content in front of the masses.

You may or may not feel comfortable with shameless self-promotion, but the benefits are clear.  Bottom line; if people don’t know you exist, they can’t endorse your content.  The idea is simply to help the world find you.  Once they have been exposed to your content, their endorsement is beyond your control.  And with that in mind, blogcarnival.com is a great place to share your truth with a broader audience.