No traffic from social network and book marking sites

[secret33.com]

I have accounts at many social networking and book marking sites including Myspace, Squidoo, Markaboo and others but I am getting zero traffics from them. Is anyone getting any traffics from them? Does anyone know how to generate traffic from them? I am baffled. Your reply would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Alfie]

Hi Secret33, we have a fair amount of success with Squidoo, but only after an initial learning period! Without giving away too many secrets, i would urge you to look at using Social Networking in a completely different way to traditional online marketing - if you go in like a bull in china shop trying to get people to buy or folow links, it probably won't work.
If you genuinely build a decent informative page ( talking about Squidoo in particular here ) and keep it updated, adding fresh content, telling as many people as possible about it, maybe adding some neat video's - you'll soon start to climb up the ranks and attract visitors.

All the best,

Alf

[jess1]

Alfie: I am coming to the same conclusion as you.
Doing a few experiements with facebook, so far... direct aff marketing is not working, little traffic and no conversions. So re thinking :0)

Js

[Alfie]

Hi Jess, yep, i think its too"in your face" to go for the normal direct sell route using Social Media - i think more of a softly softly approach works better.

We have an informative site about home brewing which is 95% content, with just a sprinkling of affiliate links in - it does quite well for us!

[jess1]

I guess creating a group on facebook.com maybe one way.
Im reluctant to do this as Im not my clients... truffleshuffle seem to be getting sales coming in via this channel, Ill have to ask Discoo how their group is going.

Nice thing is, for the little campaigns I did, small investment so the risk was not so great.
Yielded (wait for this... are you sitting down) 25 clicks (pmsl)
But.. Im going to explore applications next, see if affiliates could tap into it this way.
All good fun

[krush]

Facebook advertising is useless.

Use Squidoo to jump on your niche keywords and gain an extra place in SERP listings. But like someone said make the content relevant, pull in some RSS feeds, update it with content occasionally.

Digg is pretty good for long tail keywords also.

[oxleyBM]

Hi Secret33,

In addition to the above, think also about what you desire from Social network/bookmark traffic.

The affiliate conversions or inbound links, subscriptions etc? Consider turning *off* your ad's during a successful social media campaign.

Matthew

[Greavsie]

I work with some developers in the states generating over 20 millions impressions per month. their trick is to think social and not your atypical affiliate website.

do people want vouchers/discounts/cashback on FB,Myspace? Maybe, but they are getting inundated with them anyway.
do people want fun and interesting apps which they can play around with for a short period of time and then maybe continue or stop? yep.

Look at the apps you use on those sites and then think about why you use them, because it is fun. once you have someones attention you can then start to brand and advertise around them. e.g.

anyone looked at FoodFight on FB? check it out. maybe something random like sending a friend a can of SPAM. the spam is sponsored by McAfee or Norton, "protect yourself from Spam" etc. Cheesy but maybe good wordplay

Social in my humble opinion is still in its infancy and therefore we should resort to sponsorship/branding and cpm models, whilst trialling CPCs and CPAs. Every type of application as a potential sponsor, you just have to think outside the norm.

greavsie

[Grounded Vertigo]

I definitely agree in the social networking world that you have to adopt soft techniques. To do anything else is going to get people's backs up as more and more are seeing websites such as Facebook as something private where they get to "socialise" with their friends.

Having said that I think Facebook apps could be our winning tools. I know Steve from Affilistore has created his own app which has pride of place on my profile and I'm also planning something myself (once I get my head around the programming...)

[foxtucker]

I have accounts at many social networking and book marking sites including Myspace, Squidoo, Markaboo and others but I am getting zero traffics from them.

Perhaps, the problem is a result of trying to particpate in so many [social networks] at the same time. It's difficult to contribute anything of value when you're spreading yourself thin.

As for the bookmark networks, many use the rel="nofollow" tag and therefore prove utterly useless from an seo stand point.

[maranda]

Secret, everyone here is correct. Promoting via social networking sites is done very "in your face" as someone here mentioned. Soft selling is the way to go. Slapping a banner on a MySpace or Facebook page may not necessarily be any better in terms of driving more traffic or generating sales.

Also, not every merchant wants to see their brand on all these sites. Keep that in mind.

[webhead]

This is a great thread. Congrats to all.

Someone above mentions 'spreading yourself thin' and in my experience this has played the biggest part in many peoples, my own included, failings on the social networks.

Its all to easy to spend days - weeks even, trying to cover as much ground as possible, all to no avail.

Far better I found, to spend some time targeting your networks, (think like a consumer), and then, with a target list of reasons to use this network over that, build a campaign.

Most importantly of all perhaps, take part in the community you wish to communicate with.

Simply logging in to drop an aff-ad on your profile, and not being seen for another week, is a sure fire route to failsville, with a click-thru rate befitting such a destination.

Thanks for the informative input.

webhead

[jess1]

Is any one making money from social networking?
As APA is just content and we have an aff group on fb (no one comments btw) but we have 550 members now and we get around 1% of our traffic to APA from there, so we know people are clicking through. We have one client on FB (They did this themselves) where they get a few sales trickle through. So I am still of the opinion that the only people making real money are the social networks themselves, what do you think?
I still think web 2.0 is just another way of ripping people off (personal opinion) Were the compuserve forums a social networking platform back in 98?

[alpha249]

Ive gotten 1 hit from facebook

[purple]

I did have some luck with Social networks last yr and beginning of this. I got bored though!! and some places like hubpages and facebook banned my pages etc.

My successfuly social network attempts are ones where I interact, or now have a good community who chat amongest themselves. Income wise they do not make much, but they can work well to enhance you brand and get some feedback from visitors.