Social Marketing Traffic Experiment Updated Results Video
It’s time for an update to my experiment here to see if I can use social marketing and social bookmarking to launch a brand new site into the web traffic stratosphere. I’ll be doing this with high speed SEO, social networking, social bookmarking & video marketing. If you have not seen my first YouTube video on social bookmarking explaining my experiment you should watch it by clicking here. You can also see my first post explaining the whole live social bookmarking online experiment by clicking here.
Here’s my latest YouTube video:
My Timing Could Have Been Better
One of the things I’ve run into this week is extremely bad timing. This whole project came down at the last minute so I couldn’t really plan when I was going to do it. Unfortunately, the holiday weekend here in the US really messed up my timing. I really wanted to keep working on this through the 3 day weekend, but family comes first. So instead I had some fun with my wife and my boys. We went and saw Indiana Jones and did some other fun stuff. Have you seen it yet?
Anyway… on to more serious stuff: I’m back on the project and able to start promoting the site again.
SEO Progress So Far:
So far I’ve been setting up profiles at the major social networking sites, bookmarking & pinging my profiles (if you don’t know what pinging is be sure to watch the video above) and adding friends at the sites like FaceBook & MySpace.
My subscriber list is starting to take off and incoming traffic is building. I’m getting traffic coming from Google as well as dozens of other sites.
Another key point has been my video promotion. Always make sure you attract links to your videos (or at least your profile on the video sites). This REALLY helps. I also have been promoting my videos on the social networking sites and in my profiles.
I’m not going to get into too many specifics quite yet, but at the end of this experiment anyone signed up to this site will get all the inside data. I’ll give you EVERYTHING. Im even considering throwing in some of my scripts or WordPress plug-ins that my programmers made for me.
As always, I really want to hear from you! Comment below and tell me what you think of my experiment or my results. Ask me anything. I’ll do my best to answer here.
Tags
Tags: feedburner, internet marketing, online marketing, rss, search engine optimization, seo, social bookmarking, social marketing, social media, social networking, traffic, video marketing, visitors, website traffic, youtube
Great Stuff Bill,
This is and will be fun to watch.
So far not much new in your approach, it is just not
many of us take the massive action needed to pull
it off. Look forward to more great info and will try to keep up.
Dan
Thanks for the nice comment.
There are definitely some tricks I have up my sleeve with this project. Once I wrap up the testing phase of the site I’ll be filling you in on all the details. So make sure you’re subscribed and can continue to follow along.
I definitely see this is a more aggressive approach to marketing.
While I like the idea of social networking, which I see as an opportunity to learn and share information, my results have been embarrassing. Take MySpace. My page and blog look totally unprofessional. The appearance of something is as important as its content.
No doubt you are thinking: well if she doesn’t like what she sees, why doesn’t she change it?
Trust me. I would if I could.
The entire “tool kit” provided by MySpace is alien to me. In fact, I actually have more than one MySpace acct because I could no longer find earlier versions!
Sometimes when I visit MySpace, I find the menu to change, say, my profile. However, it has been weeks since I’ve seen the option that allows me to edit or add to my blog there. I keep my fingers crossed that no one else will find it either — it looks like it was written by a 2nd grader!
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for following along with my experiment.
An important point that a lot of people miss about social networking is that it isn’t about the graphical tricks or a nice looking profile. It’s about connecting and communicating with people who are interested in you and what you have to offer.
Don’t worry about making your myspace profile fancy. In fact, I recommend a more conservative design on your profiles.
Just get out there and start making friends with people who express interest in what you have to offer.
Is this the correct place to leave my comment?
In case it is, I do like the idea of watching you become a Social Network leader! Sorry about the fire.
Anyway, what I hope to learn is the most effective way to create a community of people who “like it, love it and want some more of it!” in the value that I provide.
As Ken Blanchard says, raving fans!
“If you build it they will show up and when they do…bill em’!” unknown
Thanks,
Kevin
Hey Bill
I am so glad I got your update on this experiment adventure. Learned a few good tricks today thanks to your video. Can’t wait to start trying it all out…I’ll sure look forward to more.
Godspeed, Social D. !
Wagner Q
good stuff!
Hey Bill, this is a really cool experiment. It’s amazing how you can use social marketing to your benefit. I can’t wait to do a little experiment of my own and hopefully be successful in launching my own site. Thanks for the great tips.
Bill.. You know what I want?
I want to be mentored by someone like yourself. … Seriously!
I see the benefit from learning from the pros, and working with other people. I see so many people, myself included for a time, trying to learn it all on their own or figure it out by surfing the internet late at night to find the answers.. Or of course, buying products left and right only to give them half of the energy necessary to succeed, and then moving on and buying something else!
I’m tired of trying to figure it out on my own!
I’ve saturated my mind in online business ideas for the past 5 months straight.. I’ve learned a ton of information in that period granted, but honestly, I don’t see how people can do it all on their own, unless they have a good teacher first. I want to be an instructor at some point, but now realize, that I need to be a student.
I don’t think your located geographically to me, but If you have any ideas, It sure would be appreciated.
I need Help..!
PS: If you could respond to my post or email me at [email address removed for privacy], I would appreciate it. I have the drive and belief to be successful, and I know I will be, However, I don’t want to take the hard road of trying to do it all on my own.
I am flying myself to miami for adtech tomorrow, and Im sure some good will come of that, however I would seriously dig getting my own personal mentor.. Let me know what you think or suggest.
Jonathan
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your interest & the trust you place in me.
I know what you mean about the information overload in the Internet marketing world. There certainly is no shortage of products to buy and the overall “noise” in this industry makes it hard to actually find good advice.
I currently do offer consulting and business development services. These services tend to be on the high end pricing side, but are extremely valuable for people who already have a successful business or have a really innovative new business idea. You can contact me over at http://www.BillMcintosh.com and ask about those services.
I have been considering offering some sort of mastermind group calls or limited email coaching/consulting. This would enable me to help a larger number of people and make it more affordable. In the very near future I’m going to post about this on http://www.BillMcIntosh.com and if there is enough interest I’ll start that up.
Make sure you head over to that site, subscribe & send me a message from the contact form. Let me know more about your business & what goal you want to achieve by having me mentor you. I’ll be on the lookout for it.
Jonathan,
I’m no internet guru, but I do know about networking.
One of the earliest forms of networking was guilds. That model survives today in a variety of modern structures including the military.
I joined Moli.com another social site and just published a network invitation. I’ve attached a bulletin board to my profile (Elaine Garrett) and you can contact me there.
I believe networking can solve the central stumbling block to launching a successful business.
Everyone who dreams of starting an online business brings strengths and weaknesses to that project. Very often we don’t see our own, but we sure can pick out weaknesses in others.
Think about it. I’m sure you’ve had friends ask you for advice in getting a date or maintaining a relationship. And I bet most of the time you’ve been able to help out — even if your own relationship was on the skids at the time.
I don’t think it necessary to hire a webmaster with 20 years experience to look at your website to figure out why your visitors don’t stay. Or why it isn’t generating traffic in the first place.
I may not recognize my website’s shortcomings but I guarantee you would.
Hope to hear from you!
Building traffic is formulaic, too.
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for joining in the conversation here.
I agree with you that networking is a vital part of building a business. In fact, it’s a vital part of the strategy I’m employing on this site. However, I also find that learning from a mentor/coach or expert has tremendous value.
Over the years I’ve probably invested $30,000 or more on attending seminars, buying coaching and information products. Some of them were worthless, but when I studied the one’s who REALLY knew what they were doing: I got a lot of value. I often found that not only did I learn what they were teaching, but I got a new level of understanding all my own. This let me take off from their ideas and actually improve on them. In fact, I can say with certainty that without all that mentoring and coaching early on: I would never have successfully created the various businesses I have now.
So my motto is: If it isn’t something I can become skilled at quickly: Find someone else who does and let them either teach me or have them do it for me.
I took your advice and I have been using social bookmarking for my traffic generation blog solely as i have been focusing on other projects and have been really surprised at how effective it was to generate unique traffic to my site
Glad to hear you’re having success so far!
Just wait until I release everything to the subscribers! There’s a lot more going on here than bookmarking and I look forward to telling you all about it.
Hi Bill
What a wonderful experiment, I have learnt something from this and am sure everyone else will to.
I will be setting up my first blog soon and I would like to add a email subscription. I was thinking of using feedburner…but am not sure if this is a good one to use. can you recommend any.
kind regards
Avis
Hi Avis,
Thanks for the comment.
I like to use FeedBurner for my RSS feed subscriptions, but I use Aweber for email. I’m going to release a special Wordpress plugin that will help you set up both of these and tie them together on your blog. As a subscriber I’ll let you have first crack at it to help me test it out. It’s not quite ready yet, but I’ll email the subscribers when it is. Keep an eye out for it.
Good luck with your blog!
Hey Bill,
I have been following several of your websites, especially this one. I admire you and I would first of all like to thank what your doing for all of us. I am big fan of the work you have provided so far and I am really interested. I am starting off and tonight I start my business/marketing and advertising course with a local ’start-up business program’.
The question I would like for you to answer (or bring up in your video) is:
” I selling products such as generic OEM iPod shuffles, financial backers want me to provide market results for this product. I do not know how to find out how many of these products are being sold and if their IS a market for them. Although I do know there is, I need proof in order to get financial backing.”
Again Bill, you have been my mentor so far and I am really looking forward to your reply. Good luck man and say hi to CoCo for me
Hi Ciaran,
There’s an enormous market for products like Ipods, but I’m afraid I don’t have enough information to give you the exact answers you need. One over simple way to do market research for this it is with keyword research. You can easily find the records and statistics of what people are searching for online. Try: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com for a really basic search. Just type in the keyword related to what you are researching and it will give you There are more in depth keyword tools available, but that’s a good place to start. They show a little over 52,000 daily searches for ipod related keywords.
I hope that helps
Hi Bill!
I was your 2nd fan in Hub Pages! Love your experiment so far.
I am anxious to find out the most efficient and effective methods for monetizing my blog, Hub Pages,lenses, articles etc.
Thanks,
Mike Hutchins
Hi Mike,
I’m glad you’re my fan… Thanks for following along!
Have you used hubpages & squidoo to promote your blog yet?
I wrote a long reply the other day but I do not see them here:
So here I go again…
1. Tells how you get 50,000 + views on your youtube videos?
2. I noticed you have private adsense webpages the promote your videos like dailycash.com… how can we be part of that? or create one of own?
3. What is the next step after we set-up our social networking sites?
4. Is there software you use to build friends on the social networking sites?
5. What is the formula for making 3.5 million with adsense?
6. Show us step-by-step on how to drive traffic to our sites.
7. Imagine a large river of internet traffic and we can divert that traffic to our website. Is it the linear or is it random?
8. Noticed you follow Michelle Macphearson, are you friends?
9. Is there a really secret club of network marketers that control everything OR can anyone join?
10. Why didn’t my campaigns work as well as yours?
I’m glad you’re so interested in my experiment. I can give you a few specific answers to your questions right now, but the rest of the specific details will be answered when I release the whole package of how I did this at the end. Since you’re a subscriber you’ll get all the inside details for no charge along with the other people who sign up here.
1: promote them and get people to go watch them.
2: I have had Adsense pages all over the place, but I’m not 100% sure what you’re referring to here, I’ll look at it when I have more time and let you know.
3: Wait for me to complete the experiment and give you the details (in the meantime, go get friends on Facebook & Myspace who are interested in your market)
4: For this project I’m doing everything by hand. No software. There are various software programs you can use for a lot of what I’ve done here (they make it go much faster), but to make it a fair experiment I’m doing it on a low budget. I’m very picky about what software I use. For social networking and making friends I don’t ever use software. For other things I do. You have to really understand what these programs do and how they work before you use them though. Otherwise you risk a ban from many websites.
5: Lots of hard work + talented people helping you + lots of website traffic + smart promotion + well put together websites = $3.5 in AdSense earnings.
I may share more about this at a later date, but this project isn’t about Adsense.
6: That’s what this project is about… Stay tuned.
7: You’ve lost me on this one.
8: We’re not friends (yet), but I respect Michelle & think she’s a very clever marketer.
9: Are you talking about Internet Marketers? I’m not into “Network Marketing” or “MLM”. We Internet Marketers have our own secret society, dominate the world and control everything, but that’s a secret (sshh!) Truth is: If you can demonstrate you are good at marketing and can convince people they should follow you: You’re in! No membership card needed. However, I caution people who are not really “pros” in this game to avoid jumping in. After all, how can you teach others about something you’ve haven’t yet succeeded at yet yourself?
10: Because you tried to copy me without understanding what I’m really doing or all the techniques I’m using. Plus, you even copied some of my website without asking my permission or even giving me a direct link back. Karma maybe? (I’m half way joking here, but I advise you to just wait till this is all over and then use my techniques to build your own unique business)
Bill
Thank you for the replies… you have my upmost respect…
You are true master and i can not what to learn more from you soon…
Thanks for the very nice acknowledgment. I’m busy putting together a lot of good content for you and the rest of the subscribers. I look forward to seeing what results you get once you get to apply the full system.
I am really looking forward to getting all the inside secrets you are planning on sharing with me and your other subscribers.
I could certainly use the help on traffic generation.
I am a member of a few of the social sites you’ve listed, but honestly I had no idea there were so many social sites. Nor did I know anything about pinging.
I’ve been following you for a while now, and I do have a question. Why did you decide to help others? You have clearly been successful in marketing. So what made you decide to do this?
It’s funny, I was just answering the comment below yours. If you look below you’ll see what I said there, but in a nutshell I think that I can provide more value to the world by teaching people how to expand their businesses on the Internet. Up until recently I intentionally stayed hidden and didn’t even want other marketers to know what I was up to. I wanted to just keep making money with AdSense, Affiliate marketing and my various businesses & keep it all a big secret. I think in the end I’ll be more successful sharing this information with others.
Hi Bill,
It’s difficult to be specific about what I’m hoping to learn from SocialDominator.
I’ve been a practising professional engineer, and marketing zero, for 20 years. I’m tired of being an employee, and I’m tired of Old Business. I want to create a new kind of business, with which I can make a bigger and more positive impact, for more people, while also benefitting myself. And I don’t know how to do it. Yet. But I’m getting closer.
But I suspect that Web 2.0, and social networking, and maybe even SocialDominator, can be combined with my existing skills somehow, to create Engineering 2.0, or something like it.
So I’m hoping to learn how to market myself inthe 21st Century, and maybe find some Eureka, to kickstart my dream.
Hope that helps. Keep going, mate. This is interesting.
Thanks for the encouragement!
Do you know what you want your new business to be yet? A word of advice: Find what it is that you do well. What can you teach others and are passionate about? A lot of why I recently got into teaching Internet Marketing was because I realized that it’s the thing I do best, I’m passionate about it and I enjoy teaching others about it. I think I can provide more value to the world by teaching people how to expand their businesses instead of staying behind the scenes and making money doing AdSense & affiliate marketing.
The next hurdle is taking what you are passionate about and crafting it into a product or service that people will pay for.
Those are the hardest parts. The mechanical stuff of building the business from there I think is much easier. If you keep following along with me I can certainly help you with that part
Bill, I just saw your Youtube video and I signed up. I can’t wait to see how this pans out. I am going to do everything you say step by step so I can follow your lead and be successful. Thanks for the info. I’ve had my website for less than a year and just started with adsense as an attempt to generate some income from the search engine traffic. I have roughly 500 visitors a day. It’s not even close to making much happen. I hope I can go farther with this and become profitable.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for following along. I hope I can help you learn new ways to increase your traffic.
Although I have a tip I feel I must give you: If you are already getting 500 visitors a day, but still not having much happening on your site then you should be focusing your attention on other things besides traffic increases. If I had 500 people a day visiting a site and that site wasn’t building me a list or making progress then I’d be overhauling it until I was converting more of the visitors into customers, regular readers or leads. Either that, or I’d start working on getting better targeted visitors to my site instead.
Bill, thanks. I will do exactly that then. Your advice is greatly appreciated.
I use social bookmarking sites quite a bit myself.
However, think about this: If Digg has 5 million users and the average number of posts, from the Digg top 100 to the user who no longer participates is 1 post per day, that is 5 million posts.
How can you possibly expect that Google will see your 1 link in Digg in 5 million others as a backlink to your site. In fact if you submit your site to Digg and no one else Diggs it, I have come to feel that is a negative indicator in Digg’s eyes. the worst thing you can do is submit your Digg posts yourself and then get no Diggs.
One of my friends on Social Marketing Central wrote an article that went hot on the Internet. He got like 1500 visitors in a few days and 80 comments. The bad news is that he only got 18 Diggs. Now tell me this: Don’t you think that Google, that has access to the popularity of posts on Digg just like we do, would not see 1500 visitors and 18 Diggs a negative indicator of this blog and the blog post itself?
I can easily get 100 to 200 Diggs for any article I want in Digg in 2 days. I do that through my own strategies and participation.
So social bookmarking if done wrong can actually hurt you. Social marketing is about being social, so be social on social bookmarking sites, don’t just submit you own content and expect that this will bring you results.
Aloha!
Interesting experiment.
It’s been informative to me as I’m very much new to the idea of social bookmarking.
In a casual web-search I’ve found dozens of social-bookmarking sites. I’m sure they ALL can’t be popular… which ones would you say make the most sense? Because I imagine it’d take quite a lot of time to create and maintain profiles on ALL of them.
I’m eager for that next video/post in which you describe how to use Youtube to your advantage. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for one of my site’s in particular.
So yeah, keep it coming and keep up the good work!
Shaun
Great idea.I just subscribed few hours ago, but i have something to say about this thing.I mean you are already having traffic because bloggers and others are speaking about his project, but we, with our sites for example,we can’t have this kind of promotion as you have. It;s quite interesting and i’m gonna try to do exactly as you say and i am really curious about the result. Good luck with your project.
And another question, when you say fast siterating, traffic and all this stuff what do you mean?How many months, or years? i don’t know, i’m just asking. Sorry if my english is not perfect,but english is not my primary language.
[…] D presents Social Marketing Traffic Experiment Updated Results Video posted at Social Networking Bookmark […]
Hmmm, I originally stopped by to tell you that I’ve just published your article on the most recent Marketer Review Blog Carnival and I see the trackback didn’t work. Yours is not the first site, I must have done something wrong on my post. I’ll have to look into this.
Come by to vote on the best post of the 31 posts this week. Yes, you can vote for your own post. Use the social media of your choice to help get traffic back to your site. I stumbled your post just now.
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