Most internet marketers starting out build their knowledge base on commonly held misconceptions. Unfortunately, those misconceptions rarely change and instead continue to be part of internet marketers’ paradigms. This information is passed down to the newbs, replicating the vicious cycle time and time again.
So, let’s look at 5 of the biggest internet marketing misconceptions, and remove them from your internet marketing strategy.
Internet Marketing Myth 1: Social Media is a Platform, not a Podium
Many internet and social media marketers believe that Facebook and the like are places to converse with your audience; a place to talk with them, not at them. While social media is a place to talk and engage with your customers and prospects, there are significantly more people listening to what you say than there are people engaging with you. For every 1 person engaging with your posts there are 10 reading it quietly in the background.
The truth, is that social platforms are indeed more like podiums than platforms. So, when marketing on social sites phrase your posts as informational, in addition to conversational; this way you don’t alienate 10 listeners for the sake of engaging 1 active participant.
Internet Marketing Myth 2: “Please Retweet/Share” doesn’t work
Too many marketers out there underestimate the efficacy of asking your users to repost/share/retweet your content. While some may think this sounds imposing or desperate, it is not, and your followers aren’t not surprised or put-off by you asking. In fact they are 4 times more like to share your content if you ask, or remind, them to.
When you kindly ask your users “please share/retweet/repost” don’t forget to include a Call to Action, so that the people reading your retweeted information, they know who it is coming from and how to act on it.
Internet Marketing Myth 3: Don’t Market on Weekends
While the marketing rule of thumb is to post social media content primarily Monday to Friday, content posted on the weekend gets far more visibility and shares. Studies have shown the same thing with email marketing, that Click-Through Rates (CTRs) are significantly higher on weekends. The likely cause is that people have more free time to browse when they are not at work (or recently home from work and preparing dinner and watching The Big Bang Theory).
Instead of sticking to the traditional marketing time, marketers would do well to embrace contra-competitive social posting and email sending times.
Internet Marketing Myth 4: Don’t Call yourself a Guru—despite the Ego Boost
The marketing industry as a whole is sick of people self-labeling themselves as ‘gurus’. But after analyzing over 5 million social media accounts its been discovered that marketers with ‘guru’ in their title had an average of 100 more followers than non ‘gurus. Their followers were more engaged with them, and the ‘gurus’ had more social influence than non-identified internet marketing gurus.
Internet Marketing Myth 5: Klout Scores aren’t worth the Virtual Paper they are Written on
Klout scores have been dubbed as generally useless by the marketing community as a whole, but don’t discount them yet. Despite the tendency to over-value and overlook the scores, they do provide helpful guidance. They are also still the only real industry benchmark statistics that there is. A high Klout score still looks good on any internet marketers resume.
Klout scores should be taken with a grain of salt in terms of specifics, but the overall depiction of a Klout score is accurate. When compared with other forms of measuring internet marketing success (inbound links, website traffic, etc.) there is a direct correlation between marketers with high Klout scores and overall marketing success.
Now that we have debunked a few of the biggest internet marketing myths, use the information above to build a more-accurate–and effective–internet marketing strategy.
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Robin Wilding is a professionally trained Canadian journalist striving to bring journalistic-era intergity to online media. She has a second degree in Political Science--with a focus on International Relations and the developing world. Currently Robin is a contributor to several technology publications, including Brajeshwar.com, SocialTechnologyReview.com, HostingIndustryWatch.com, AnimationCareerReview.com and CompareBusinessProducts.com. She also works for several web developers; and does ghost writing for several high level executives within the technology sector. Robin's work is showcased in her portfolio: http://shownd.com/robinwilding
