I hope this is the start of a soon-to-be-popular Smojoe blog series. Actually Sharing Secrets identifies those precious few web thinkers and social media marketers that actually reveal their tactics and give precious glimpses into their marketing practices, and not just positive affirmation or basic explanations of systems that most of us already understand. Too many so called ‘experts’ just regurgitate the page copy that’s found on these sites, without ever trying them or seeing what’s possible.

Let me explain something basic, we all know the question that drives social marketing is ‘how can i get more traffic to my website?’

Answer, ‘increase your website page rank to list higher for more keyword results on search engines’

The next question is ‘How do I do that?’

And that’s where it gets complicated. This is an age of earned media, and when people ask me, ‘where can i find the official manual?’ I shrug and tell them to download mine for $9.70 its as good as anyone elses - better, I get specific.

Today you must earn your media by being socially relevant. And not only do you have to plant your own press, you have to research tips and tricks on how to plant it properly and what solution best fits. There is no textbook for social marketing (but there could be). Although you can follow TechCrunch, Mashable and WebProNews, there is no official source for reliable insights into the Google search algorithm. And that’s because something new happens every day, and something old changes.

Google doesn’t publish details of their algorithm. If there is one company that could issue such Holy writ, it’d be Google. But they don’t say much about their ever changing search engine algorithm because they don’t want to lose a perceived competitive advantage, or engender ‘black hat’ SEO practices.

Google endeavors to preserve the effectiveness of organic search, bless their hearts, and ironically one of the most commonly searched topics is how to do search engine marketing? as people look for someone to lead them in knowledge gathering exercises.

Actually Sharing Secrets identifies those people, one by one, who actually share useful secrets.

Toby Miller: Earlier today I happened across a Ryerson online think tank page, Weekend Pictures.ca which I wouldn’t normally scan. But the link was on Zucket.ca and I was trying the figure out the connection (Zucket was featured here talking about Facebook). That’s when I discovered Toby Miller, author of Global Hollywood. In this video he talks about ‘using social networking tools to sell books’.  And of course I was overcome with curiosity; with a title as direct as that, would he actually reveal any useful tactics?

http://stw.ryerson.ca/others/s7may/literacy.html

And he does! Much to my surprise and delight he does actually speak about how he has hired ‘young social marketers in Montreal’ to create and manipulate MySpace pages and profiles (what we at LifeCapture Interactive used to call banner spam). I know from experience the impressions are massive on this type of marketing, and they can be measured with a simple tracking script, but the actual click through rate is usually quite low. However his book does have the word ‘Hollywood’ in the title…

Here is Toby last fall at an event in Calgary called YouTube, Facebook and Blogs, Do They Matter? Unfortunately I didnt see how it all wrapped up, but I think they panel came out with a ‘yes’.

Toby Miller is actually worth watching, but fast forward a centimeter into video below,

To put this in context, Toby Miller is a social media technologist talking to scholars at a stuffy event at the University of Calgary. Right after he says ‘…In the United States, 49 year olds want to look like 24 year olds’, he postulates that social networking sites harvest data for corporate America to help older people accomplish this primal desire. According to Toby, the principle value for corporations getting involved in social media is surveillance, and not for national security, but for marketing purposes. He goes on to talk about Second Life and other platforms like Last.FM He justifies this position in part by the amount of money paid for these properties versus their actual profitability, among other things.

His second book Global Hollywood 2 got a good review in the UK book world,

Tags: Facebook, Search Engine Marketing, Toby Miller, understanding social networks, University of Alberta, YouTube

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under Actually sharing secrets, Social Media, Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.