October 2010 Linkedin Poll: Would you allocate any portion of your Internet Marketing budget towards Twitter’s new proposed advertising plan?

For October 2010, I chose this question for my Linkedin Poll: Would you allocate any portion of your Internet Marketing budget towards Twitter‘s new proposed advertising plan? With Twitter’s pending advertising platform in the near future to be unveiled, will anyone use it?

This sort of reminds me of the early days of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising through Google and Yahoo. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) firms sprouted up left and right, as businesses didn’t want to or didn’t know how to properly control any aspect of their online budgets. The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry was relatively small and unknown. However, as time went on more and more businesses woke up from their PPC Crack-pipe reality. (imagine: a crackhead trying to get off crack. Now imagine a business that has been duped into believing their PPC campaign is driving all their online traffic to their site. That’s the PPC crack-pipe.)

Many realized that SEM firms would skew the numbers and making obscene profits from overcharging. From this chaos, sprouted the SEO industry full force, and carried with it many disenfranchised former SEM clients as the PPC Crack-pipe alternative.

Here’s a twist for you…Who is to say that something similar to this can’t happen within Social Media, within Twitter to be precise? This parable could totally be applicable to SMM (Social Media Marketing). Could these paid and sponsored tweets give rise to yet another sub-sub-industry that is within the SMM sub-industry? Are you confused yet? Am I using to many three-lettered abbreviations beginning with the letter S?

To simplify…think SEO for SMM. What would this sub-sub-industry be called? I think: OSM (Organic Social Marketing) Sounds odd right? Paying a company to tweet out “seemingly” organic statements and links, instead of ‘in your face’ sponsored ads? You know what? I’ve seen and heard of stranger industries.

There is an industry for anything, especially online marketing.

With that as a possible perspective, would you do a paid advertising campaign through Twitter, like a PPT (Pay-Per-Tweet) kind of marketing? Or would you go with an organic approach with an OSM firm?

(Please note that not all SEM firms are guilty of price gouging, but speaking as a former client that hired quite a few firms over the years…it’s safe to say a hell of a lot of them did and still do.)

Let me know what you think. Byte back!

Tags: internet marketing, online marketing, Paid Search, pay per click, PPC, search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO, SMM, Social Media, social media marketing, Twitter
Posted in: Google, Internet Marketing Consulting, Online Search, Organic Search, Paid Search, SEO / SEM, Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Twitter |

Comments: 3 Comments

New Linkedin Poll Post: What form of Internet Marketing is most conducive to your business model? (Paid Search vs. Organic Search)

I just posted a new poll over at my Linkedin account; Which form of Internet Marketing is most conducive to your business model? (Paid Search vs. Organic Search)

It’s important before starting any type of campaign to know where to focus your business’ attention to. There has always been a great debate as to whether or not a business should place significant emphasis to a paid search campaign or to an organic search campaign.

I have always said, that in the long run, a well thought out SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plan is much more cost effective and efficient. For many companies this really isn’t the perfect solution or even an option as quality SEO takes time (somtimes 1-3 months) to be indexed by many or most search engines. SEO is great in getting the main website indexed and organically ranked hirer.

Paid search is great for when time is short and every advertising dollar can be quantified to one degree or another. If a marketing campaign runs for a week or 1 month and the business wants to gauge the response…the best bet is paid search with the landing page being a unique microsite catered to that widget being advertised. The main focus would be either direct sales or lead generation for 3rd party sales.

Either way, the important thing is to know how and when use the proper keywords and content that are relevant to your website.

Take the poll and let me know what your opinion is.

Tags: internet marketing, internet marketing consultant, keyword, LinkedIn, linkedin poll, microsite, Microsites, Organic Search, Paid Search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO, Social Media Posts, social networking
Posted in: Google, Internet Marketing Consulting, Keywords, Lead Conversion, LinkedIn, Microsites, Online Search, Organic Search, Paid Search, SEO / SEM, Social Media Posts |