Social Media and Bookmarking – Cure All for Traffic Problems or Another Over-Hyped Question Mark?

I love Social Media, and like Michelle, see enormous traffic potential there. While Social Media and Web 2.0 Marketing is hardly hype, in an of itself, there is a lot of hype surrounding how it can bring your site traffic.

To survive the hype machine and get down to the real usefulness of Social Media as it relates to your business, become mesmerized with the following two ideas:

1. Being a part of the Social Media Movement is about being social, therefore, in its maximum beneficial capacity, it is about building relationships.
2. Web 2.0 Tools are NOT the Answer. They are, at worst Another Question, and at Best, AN Answer.

Every single person with a judgement against Web 2.0 Tools or Social Media that I’ve spoken to has turned away because

A- They just didn’t get it.
B- They thought they got it, but with an old-school, outdated marketing perspective, the real utility of social media, social news, social bookmarking, web 2.0 networking tools, user-participatory and user-generated content escaped them. Comments like “blogging is a waste of time” come from people like these, not as preludes to a question, but as answers to why they give themselves permission to be lazy about discovery, and thus, obsolete.

That’s right.

I said it.
C- They didn’t give it enough time.

It took me four tries to finally “get” Facebook. No amount of how-tos I could find online were telling me why I’d want to be there. It was through trial and error and learning what to DO on Facebook, rather than what it IS.

We’ll come back to that another time. For now, let’s delve further into point number one…

If you approach the social media signal with the attitude of the billboard/catalog plus payment option view of Web Marketing from 2001, you’ll fall on your face in this evolving age. The original Web was a bunch of closed-off waystations in cyberspace. The old web began to become a connected web of those waystations, working in conjunction but not cooperative at the technical level – i.e. my site couldn’t “talk” to another site in a semi-automated fashion such as Trackback or RSS.

The new/now web is evolving into a cluster of linked neighborhoods rather than disconnected house on an unmapped hillside.

Examing point number two more closely…

Social bookmarking is not a traffic cure-all where you can spam your links to get more visits. However, applied correctly, learning the principles behind social media can help you flow into conversations surrounding your business. Going straight for Digg and trying to get your site to the front page without engaging the community through Social Media and social community networking is putting the cart way before the horse. In fact, you’re living in the age before the wheel was invented.

If you don’t quite get that, it’s precisely why you need to keep reading about Engaging Social Media from as many sources as you can find.

Here’s a hint. You’re one person. You can submit your own site to Digg. Whoopee. You won’t get far without other people to help vote you up the poll. And do you understand Digg? Is that really where you need to be for your traffic? Will it bring you the targeted traffic you truly need?

Another hint: Engage the Web 2.0 community that is closer to your niche, and you won’t need to submit your own links.