Social Networking Web Portals: The New Gold Rush

Roughly 150 years ago, when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, a unique event occurred in American history: 300,000 men, women and children–bonded together by the promise of a brighter future and a wild sense of adventure, began flocking to California. They came from all walks of life, some with frontier skills hardened by years of struggle and others with no experience whatsoever, all determined to find their future in a new and exciting endeavor.  Few were actually successful, but most were fearless; spurred on by courage, emboldened by optimism and buoyed by that very American belief that success was possible through hard work and grit.

Today another form of Gold Rush has taken over the Internet, the creation of Social Networking web portals by modern-day prospectors, as the panacea for realizing elusive online profits.

The purpose of this posting is to assist those brave entrepreneurs in the pursuit of their dream … to give them the tools, the maps and the resources to make their journey a successful one.

BASIC RULES

In online business strategy, as in all successful American business efforts, three rules are axiomatic:

1. Plan your work
2. Work your plan, and
3. Use the right tools.

These rules are deceptively simple, but they are not easy. They require determination, persistence and ingenuity.  And they are ignored at your peril.  The upshot of the following article, and of future articles in the same vein, is to provide a list of indispensable ideas in furtherance of these rules.  This is not rocket-science.  It is merely a primer on strategies, tactics and techniques that have served Jericho Technology well.  They are given in the spirit of frontier camaraderie, in the hope that our current clients, future clients and friends may benefit.

A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR PLAN

During the famous exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in the seminal work by Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice asks the cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—“said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” the Cat responded.

“–so long as I get somewhere,’” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

1. Be sure that you know where you want to go: If you are creating a Social Networking website for any other reason than to secure profits for your online business, then the road map to success will be different.  If profit is your ultimate objective, don’t settle for a lesser result. Keep slugging away until you get there.
2. Do exhaustive research: Remember that this new territory is a burgeoning and changing frontier.  No one, including this author, has all the answers.  Look at all suggestions with a jaundiced eye, and continue your research periodically.
3. Re-examine your plans often: Resting on your laurels can be as counterproductive as doing nothing.  Never assume that “walking long enough” is an acceptable outcome.  If your results are elusive, reevaluate.
4. Have contingency plans: It is always prudent to weigh your alternatives in advance.  Don’t wait until a mid-course correction is vital to avoid impending failure.  Analyze your market and have reasonable alternatives in place.
5. Finally, never give up: If the journey is worth the first step, it is worth being single-mindedly persistent.

STRATEGIES, TACTICS AND TECHNIQUES

WHY BOTHER?:

1. It let’s you be you: Personally, I consider this to be one of the most important reasons to “bother” with Social Networking web portals, and their associated marketing potential.  When the Internet was first coming into vogue, many detractors pontificated that it would make us into a world of mindless automatons, lurking around in the background gradually losing all contact with other members of the human family.  Meeting face-to-face would become passe, they warned.  Personal credibility would be replaced by online biographies.  The human factor would be destroyed by the computer chip.  Well, this has not happened, nor will it.  In fact, the predominant result appears to be similar for online businesses as it has always been for real-world businesses:   To the extent that you are real, engaged in your profession, forthcoming with useful opinions and advice, and truly interested in your customer, you will find your niche and that niche will be profitable.
2. Social Networking is cost effective: Creating a Social Networking Web Portal is one of the most economical and cost-effective strategies available on the Internet today.  Whether you develop your own, or employ someone else to perform the initial programming, keeping it alive and useful only requires a modicum of time and talent.  The act of working your plan in this way crystallizes your thinking and provides an important asset for those you serve.  Unlike the pioneer days of the Web where everything was relatively expensive, the time and resources required for social networking is actually less than the opportunity-cost of doing nothing.
3. Social Networking accomplishes multiple objectives simultaneously: Performing this activity creates new and vital relationships, expands your reservoir of new skills, solidifies your value as an avowed expert, and provides collaborative opportunities — all this in addition to developing your marketing base at little or no expense. 
4. Search Engine Optimization is an added benefit, at no additional cost: Improving placement in search engines has been a bugaboo for online entrepreneurs since day one.  It is easy to expend countless hours and significant financial resources searching for the elusive first-page ranking, and with the frustrations of changing algorithms, unpredictable results, and often wasted effort, it is one of the most heralded and least productive uses of your time.   Social networking websites, with their ubiquitous blogs, go a long way toward improving a bad situation at no additional cost.  Most blog entries are, or can easily be, rich in the key words associated with your business, they provide fertile ground for search engine robots, and blogging software makes the SEO art and science increasingly unnecessary.
5. Traffic for the sake of traffic is a fool’s errand: Perhaps no other time-waster is as insidious as blindly seeking traffic to your website when the possibility of turning those visitors into buyers is remote.  Give me a small handful of visitors who have been enticed to visit because of the value of a blog entry, and I will gladly forgo a thousand visitors who have come by accident, or worse yet as the end result of blind traffic enticements.  Unless a visitor is a potential customer, and unless that potential customer ultimately buys, his visit is essentially pointless to begin with.

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS:

1. Go slow, be courteous and most importantly, be circumspect:  “Going slow” and “being courteous” are not foreign concepts even for the Internet, though perhaps a bit counter-intuitive.  Using the biblical admonition, treat others the way you would hope to be treated yourself.  “Being circumspect” is another matter.  It means to look around, being cognizant of your prospective customer’s mid-set, his point-of-view, and his ambitions, unrealized or not.  Afterall, you are in the service business, so be service oriented.  Make certain that your audience finds some value in your comments.  If they don’t leave feeling slightly improved over where they were when they arrived, they will not come back, nor should they.
2. Even if you sell a commodity, recognize your true product: Unless you own WalMart, your real product is yourself.  Be genuine, be personable, be dependable, be unselfish.  Know what you’re doing and do it well.
3. Be proud of what you do: If you can’t look yourself in the mirror every morning, being proud of how you make your living, then don’t do it.  If your real motive for social networking is purely financial, stay away from it.  If conversely, you know for certain that your vocation and expertise add materially to the success of others, by all means share it openly and with abandon.

To be continued …

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