SMX Session Eight
Micro Communities
Liana “Li” Evans, KeyRelevance
Highly Competitive Markets:..Casinos…Viagra…Travel…Diets…Wine….see Snooth.com
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) are far less effective now because of the enormous increase in websites.
Identify good bloggers - send Personalized Emails - offer them a free sample / invites to trials / interviews -Something- Plan Contact / Monitor Results. Sound calculating? Welcome to Search Marketing!
You’re looking for the “Big Catch,” so you have to “fish where the fish are.”
Bottom Line: The new formula is (maybe) SEO and (maybe) PPC, but definitely SMM!
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
Read/WriteWeb was just mentioned as a good place to find Web 2.0 companies.
With micro communities - like the niche of Alternative Search Engines - it is fairly easy to find a person or a blog or web site that talks about one very particular subject. From there, you should be able to expand outwards until you have pretty much discovered the complete “space” for that topic. It’s a simple - bad news: small audience. good news: fairly easy to reach them all.
Sites of Interest: LibraryThing / Care2 / WebMD / Yelp / Trulia / PeerTrainer / DonorChoose / ThinkVitamin / Minti / Real Estate Voices / DeviantArt / SportsShooter / Threadless / Cork’d / Imbee / Virb / Wayfaring / CouchSurfing {other people come through your town and sleep ‘on your couch’} / Wikihow / Helium / Etsy {nice} / Avvo {lawyers} / Urbis / BakeSpace / FoodCandy / Sphinn / The Stranger / ebay (!)
What are these for? From a Search Marketer’s perspective, it’s not that your topic will necessarily match one of these topics, although that would be great, it’s that you might be able to slide in a post or comment that is semi-related and get some links. Sound like a bit of a stretch? Welcome to search marketing and the blogosphere. SEOs are the has-beens. Bloggers are the new power brokers.
Here’s the example: The client markets a Diet Shake. So they tried SEO - too competitive. Then they tried PPC - total waste of money. Then they contacted bloggers and said, “Hey, would you like to have some free Diet Shakes? Are you a little pudgy?” But don’t ask them to blog about the Diet Shake! Play it cool. The blogger will just say “Buy an ad on my blog.” Just keep trolling, and wait to see which bloggers “bite” - i.e. write a free post.
End of Session Eight
October 17th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
[...] Charles Knight wrote an interesting post today on SMX Session EightHere’s a quick excerptSEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) are far less effective now because of the enormous increase in websites. Identify good bloggers - send Personalized Emails - offer them a free sample / invites to trials … [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
[...] Charles Knight wrote an interesting post today on SMX Session EightHere’s a quick excerptWith micro communities - like the niche of Alternative Search Engines - it is fairly easy to find a person or a blog or web site that talks about one very particular subject. From there, you should be able to expand outwards until you … [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
[...] SMX Session Eight Micro Communities Liana “Li” Evans, KeyRelevance Highly Competitive Markets:..Casinos…Viagra…Travel…Diets…Wine….see Snooth.com SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) are far less effective now because of the enormous increase in websites. I… [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
[...] SMX Session Eight Micro Communities Liana “Li” Evans, KeyRelevance Highly Competitive Markets:..Casinos…Viagra…Travel…Diets…Wine….see Snooth.com SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) are far less effective now because of the enormous increase in websites. I… [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
[...] SMX Session Eight Micro Communities Liana “Li” Evans, KeyRelevance Highly Competitive Markets:..Casinos…Viagra…Travel…Diets…Wine….see Snooth.com SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) are far less effective now because of the enormous increase in websites. I… [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 7:34 am
[...] came across this post - SMX Session Eight - and thought it was worth sharing. I hope you find it interesting too and take the time to read [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 7:54 am
[...] Charles Knight wrote a fantastic post today on “SMX Session Eight”Here’s ONLY a quick extract [...]
October 19th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Nice recap of the session I spoke on.
Just wanted to add one thing, it’s not just identifying the bloggers or any social media outlet for that matter - it’s also doing the research that matters. For example bloggers, you really do have to read their blogs, for communities you have to take the time to participate. Just identifying them and firing off emails or comments in forums without knowledge will sink you social media strategy faster than the titanic sank!
I’ll be posting a recap of my presentation later on today if you interested on http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com.