The drive to find the “ultimate” way to do something implies that there is one best way to do something and that a web-lebrity (ok, I’m using this term) like Lisa will give the answers/secrets, and somehow everyone who follows the rules will be able to replicate the results with precision.

Right?

Wrong.

So if her headline “Stop looking for rules. There aren’t any” is true. Does that mean that newbies are scrod?

And more importantly, is the “stop looking for rules because there aren’t any” a rule itself, making the post paradoxical/oxymoronic?

Here’s her answer:

If I define it as a rule, then it comes moot, right?

I think you can either take it and apply it or you can sit here and argue semantics as to whether its a rule, life lesson or something that should be found inside a fortune cookie. As time becomes more scarce and
more precious, I like to focus on what matters. Arguing semantics rarely does. Unless you’re doing it with Michael Gray and the it’s THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS!

–

Instead, here’s her advice:

I think people who are looking for the universal rule book are putting themselves on a path to be mediocre. Following the worn path rarely leads to anything particularly interesting or great. It just ensures
you’re starting out just like everybody else. There’s no point of difference. I don’t want to know the 10 things that you say I need to do on Twitter. That cookie-cutter information does nothing for me. I want
to hack Twitter. I want to turn it upside down and inside out and do things that every expect would tell me not to and be horrified at. Because that’s how I’m going to learn what it’s capable of and what I’m
capable of using it. That’s where I find my value.

–

Which makes perfect sense if you’re willing to deal with 2 challenges: fear and failure.

Fear is something that most newbies, whether dipping their digital toes into twitter or social media are going to deal with. Especially if you’re constantly reading about successes like the CoffeeGroundz cafe which saw business double and soon became a destination for tweetups (twitter meetups). The spate of success stories can be pretty intimidating for the clueless.

It’s the rare individual who likes to be mess up on their first attempt at doing something new, although it’s a likely outcome for the majority of people who try something new. If you’re working in a corporate environment, the repercussions of messing up can be pretty high. If you’re working for yourself, you might burn through a bunch of cash and time that you could have otherwise spent elsewhere. And besides the fear, there’s the possibility of the failure itself.

So, most individuals will go looking for the internet marketing equivalent of “The Rules“. Even as experts like Oprah are proffering opinions like “The Rules isn’t a book, it’s a movement, Honey”, the hapless will try applying:

• Rule #8 –  Close the deal – Rules women do not date men for more than 2 years or
• Rule #5 – If you are a long-distance relationship, he must visit you at least 3 times before you visit him

So there’s a transfer (it’s more like surrender) of responsibility from figuring things out yourself to a third party. If things mess up, it certainly isn’t your fault.

Here’s Lisa again (on internet marketing):

I think that’s actually why rules are so dangerous, because they take your focus off the value.  You become so obsessed with hitting the ABCs of social that you have no understanding as to why you’re doing what you’re doing or how it’s supposed to help you.  You just heard you “have” to do it. And there’s no value in mimicking something that you don’t understand.  It’s far better to forget what everyone else swears is “right” and to see what actually works for you. Because a lot of times, especially in social media, what works for
someone else won’t work for you. Or the reverse happens and its you doing everything you’re NOT supposed to do that’s getting you attention. If I followed all the Twitter rulebooks, I’d never tweet. I’d be too
afraid.

If anything, value is derived from the results you obtain and whether that tool helped you reach your end goal.

–

So if there’re no rules, what then?

[Lisa] A rule is the norm; at this point I think it’s all advice.  It’s all advice based on what we’ve seen in the past, what we think is happening now and what we expect to see in the future.  These tools aren’t old
enough for the “norms” to have been established yet. How much history do we really have on things – a year? 18 months? We’re all trying stuff out, seeing what feels good, and coming to see which techniques for us,
individually.

Which can be a scary prospect, especially if you’re not in the mindset with the possibility of:

• Trying stuff out even if it doesn’t work
• Expecting to fall flat on your face a couple of times
• Getting up on your feet again and going for round 2, 3 and so on.

Sounds pretty intellectual/theoretical in this post, but trust me, doing it is a whole different ballgame.

Here’re some tips (not rules!) to increase your chances…

If you’re new to the business, looking at the leaders in your niche, observing what they’re doing, analyzing their intent and system, then adapting it for your brand/business can lead to success. It sounds like work, a lot of work actually, but sitting around waiting for an ultimate rulebook, might be a pretty long wait.

And just in case, the intent of the “There are no rules” post isn’t clear, here’s Lisa again:

The point of my post on Outspoken last week was to encourage people to stop walking in fear and looking for the absolutes.  You want to know how to get the most out of Twitter — start using it. You want to know
how to build a successful blog — start blogging.  You’ll learn so much more that way than by simply collecting someone else’s answers on a blog.  There’s no answer key to success.

That is all.

(Above) What might happen if everyone followed the same rulebook

Lisa on Twitter

Peter has been an affiliate since 2000 and has a variety of different experiences in the internet marketing/affiliate industry since then, using a variety of different strategies to generate traffic to his sites.

During his time on the podcast, he shared a number of comprehensive tips to use video hosting networks such as YouTube, Metacafe, Revver and others to generate leads for your affiliate offers.

He also shared some business management tips which he’s used to grow his own business.

Besides his role as a VIP coach for the PPC Classroom program, he consults for clients on their internet marketing strategy, and has recently launched a new training site, AffCoaches, targeted at new and experienced affiliates.

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

• Peter on Twitter
• Peter’s blog
• AffCoaches

Rebecca’s just taken up the portfolio of Directo of Social Media at internet marketing consultancy 10e20, where she’ll be taking up blogging duties on the 10e20 blog as well as take up social media work with clients.

I had the opportunity to invite her on the Friday Podcast where we talked about:

• How she got involved with search engine optimization
• The role social media can play in job searches
• Which are the relevant social networks now
• How companies can better use social media in their branding and marketing
• Key elements that can make or break your social media campaign
• The big picture view for social media. What users are looking for, how to make that traffic work for you?
• An example of a company which is using social media effectively and how they’re doing it
• Her new role at 10e20

Check out the podcast below:

Links:

Rebecca on Twitter
10e20 blog
10e20
Mediocre Athlete
Fresh Edge Media

#1: I Enjoy What I’m Doing

Let’s face it, even if you are doing well (refering to income) from something you do, but find it a chore, repetitive, boring, etc, you’d bound to quit doing it after a period of time (depending on the financial return, it could be weeks, months or years). Which is why you hear of bankers, lawyers and even doctors becoming actors, singers and sometimes even internet marketers!

If you’re contemplating starting a podcast or a vidcast, consider the fact that you might have few (or possibly no) listeners/viewers while you’re starting up. Do you keep going? Or do you write it off as something that “doesn’t work”? (There’s a number of parallels with internet marketing and affiliate marketing here…)

Choosing something you enjoy means it’ll bring you intrinsic joy (you get pleasure from doing the activity itself) vs doing it for money or free stuff.

#2: Being Prepared

A carryover from my days as a journalist, it takes a couple of hours to prepare for each call before I get on the conference with the guest. This time is spend researching the guest, reading their blog, forum posts, checking out their speaking gigs at events, conferences, other podcasts.

This boils down to “knowing your shit”.

Some podcasts can go on an ad-hoc, free wheeling, stream-of-consciousness style. I’ve noticed they tend to die after a couple of weeks or 6 months down the road, where the folks feel they have said all they’ve had to say.

Planning is important, especially if you’re seeing podcasting as a long-haul effort, vs just pumping out 1-2 podcasts, then trying to figure out what to do next.

#3 Create Value and Paying It Forward

You may publish a free podcast, but it costs you time, effort and some cash to put it together.

Likewise, listeners also “pay” with time spent listening to the call.

Aiming to give value to the listeners should be a priority for any current or potential content publisher. Do listeners leave feeling good, feeling like they’ve learned something? That they can apply something in their life or business?

If you delivered on those aspects, you’ve succeeded in your mission.

–

Of these principles, I consider having fun to be the most important. Because if you aren’t, chances are that others won’t either.

Live long and prosper.

• Promotion by mass media: So suddenly, mainstream media like newspapers, TV news and talk shows are jumping on the twitter bandwagon, making it sound like the best thing since sliced bread. Just like they did with the internet back in the mid 1990s.
• Overemphasis on the technology: So there’s been an overemphasis about the tech aspects of twitter, how you can build a following of 100,000 in a few days/weeks, how you’re able to mass msg them updates.
• Celebrity buzz factor: Now everyone knows that the_real_shaq is well, the real shaq. And that other celebrities have their publicist, manager scraping old interviews and sending tweets out on their behalf, saying that the content is sent in the “spirit” of the celebrity. Authenticity/credibility fail.

But the bigger danger of social media, especially the new wave of twitter’s brand of new social media is that it could potentially be tethering you to your computer instead of freeing you.

Remember the crackberry, er, blackberry?

When blackberry addicts had it with them 24-7 and felt compelled to answer an email the moment it was received? Till now, I know of a number of affiliate managers who keep their blackberry at their bedside and wake up to answer emails the moment they come in.

Me, I’m in the process of cancelling my cellphone to be less accessible.

But here’s why I think twitter might be self-destructive – the design of the system is such that it’s like a 24-hour chatroom, with topics being constantly discussed and possibly buried in a matter of hours.

That means if you want to:

• tap the buzz
• be part of the flow
• be part of the conversation

It means you need to tether yourself to the medium, you need to essentially be watching the channel during the 8-12 hours that the service is at its peak.

So it’s like watching TV, except that instead of being constrained by the content being broadcast by the television network, you’re at times held hostage to the content being broadcast by other users.

If anything, that’s the dark side of user-generated content.

You could read twitter updates on a delayed basis, that is hours or days after they were first broadcast and use twitter as a proxy RSS reader, however, it’d limit the conversations you’re able to conduct, unless they’re highly targeted in nature.

If social media, especially with the vanguard led by Twitter is to evolve to its next stage, it’ll require:

• More flexible content management
• Higher quality filtering and relevant updates

for users.

What do you think?

During the course of our conversation, Sam talked about:

• How he got involved in online marketing and his quest to become a Renaissance man.
• How he has “given up marketing”
• Ethics and morals in affiliate marketing
• What inspires him to podcast
• The origin and direction of his Thinking.fm podcast network
• Monetization options for podcast network owners
• One of his favorite podcasts and why it works effectively

Sam’s one of the deep thinkers in the internet marketing industry and it’s always a pleasure to talk to authority who helps shape the industry.

Checkout the podcast below:

Links:

• Sam Harrelson’s personal website
• Sam on Twitter
• Thinking.fm
• Sam’s previous Friday Podcast appearance

Take a look at the signs of the impending apocalypse, once proud A-Lister bloggerati have taken a hiatus, stopped blogging, or are pummelled over the twitterstream into irrelevance. Is blogging, once the circa 2006 golden boy of mainstream media, now it’s whipping boy?

More importantly, is anyone going to read more than the 140 character limit imposed by micro blogging platforms like Twitter?

Are we destined to become a SMS/text nation?

Gee… I hope not.

But anecdotal evidence shows that bloggers are updating their Blogger and WordPress blogs left often, meanwhile they’ve racked up hundreds, if not thousands of twitter updates within the space of a few month.

From casual observation, the mantra seems to have shifted from “I’m blogging this” to “I’m tweeting this”.

It’s a valid observation too. If you’re busy talk-tweeting for an hour every day, that’s an hour taken away from think and composing your next blog post.

The paradigm shift might be this: From an isolated position of having to plan and write a blog post in isolation and interacting with readers through the blog comments later, it’s shifted to a model of firing a question into the twittersphere and using a combination of @username and direct message responses to have a real time chat – Twitter is kind of like the bastard child of IRC and forum discussions in my opinion.

So yes, Twitter is here to stay (at least till the inter-continental wifi-enabled telepathic communication becomes ubiquitous).

Where does that leave blogging?

I believe blogs and twitters can and will continue to co-exist. There’s only so much that can be said in 140 characters. The modus operandi involves including a URL together with the short, pithy update. And blogs more than adequate fill that space.

If anything, twitter has replaced email marketing as a traffic channelling mechanism, and blog traffic has been picking up.

Not to mention having made a couple hundred more blog friends through the enabling technology of Twitter.

Believe or not, 140 character tweets will likely sit side-by-side with 400 word blog posts for some time to come.

In the meantime, new bloggers are still purchasing copies of Chris Pearson’s Thesis WordPress template and streaming into my Secret Blog Weapon program.

So all’s well on the blogging front.

So in recent weeks, there’s been a spate of discussion about “Twitter Snobs” – twitter users who don’t follow many people back. Maybe following 200 people and have 20,000 follow them.

Todd Friesen AKA Oilman was analysing how he could get into SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin’s twitter cliche. Rand  follows 11 twitter uses and has about 5,200 followers.

Likewise, other bloggers have been pontificating why it’s bad to be a twitter snob and how you should fix it (follow more of them back, make friends, etc). See the references here, here and here.

–

So where do I stand?

I follow 217 users and have 1,374 followers. Or about a 15% follower rate.

Which is closer to about 12-13%, since I have a number of fake twitter profiles among my followers.

Here is where I think it’s good to be a snob – I read every update each of the people I’m following

As my twitter profile page says “If I follow you, I read every update”

–

It’s just like the traffic generation game, although quality (raw numbers) is good, I still focus on quality (lead generation/traffic quality) over quantity any day of the week (or month).

Assuming you’re in this business to do more than just generate eyeballs and plan to convert or monetize them, I’d say quality is darn important.

And there’s a difference between a snob (someone who’s selective and realistic about who they follow) versus someone who is just out to be a “faux twitter rockstar”, gathering a following of 100,000 and just seeing everyone as just another number.

–

There’s a difference between being a participatory and non-participatory member of twitter.

You participate when you use DMs (direct messages), @user (to reply to a specific person, while everyone can read your twitter stream) and selectively RT (retweet) and broadcast/syndicate quality content.

As the folks at Bruce Clay note: you could go the Guy Kawasaki route and use twitter as a broadcast medium – funnelling traffic to your own site (in this case Alltop) and not responding to replies or messages, that’s your perogrative.

It shortchanges the social media channel in my opinion and relegates Twitter to being in the position of just a digital signboard in the middle of the virtual deserts, when it could be used as a channel of online conversation.

And ultimately, the best customers are the ones who feel they are appreciated.

So I’ll keep my twitter snob hat on my head, until it isn’t working for me anymore.

Oh yes, and you can join my followers at http://twitter.com/andrewwee.

Background: I’m an active Twitter user and have been using what I would consider the best Twitter client, TweetDeck, for a couple of months.

Sure it’s had some weird idiosyncrasies like having to shut it down so I could run more bandwidth-intensive applications or MMPOGs on my system, but on the whole, it’s been a pleasant experience (read my earlier review)

I may or may not be the typical Tweetdeck user – here’re my usage habits:

• My computers are on 24-7. I run mainly Windows XP operating systems (a combination of Professional and Home editions). I reboot when virtual memory drops “dangerously low” or I get a BSOD (blue screen of death).
• I follow about 200+ Twitter users, some of whom tweet as many as 50 times a day or more.
• I live in a GMT+8 timezone (which is 13 hours ahead of EST now. My night is your day. I’m snoozing while you’re working)

As a result, it’s not uncommon to wake up to 500+ tweets during the 6 hours I’m sleeping.

Particularly today, my machine crawled to a grinding crawl, and pulling up the Windows Task Manager (hit alt-ctrl-delete to see this):

Coming in at #1, TweetDeck with a pretty monstrous 334 MB of memory usage (followed by Firefox where I had about 30 tabs open).

And a screenshot a few minutes later:

So I’ve had to shut TweetDeck down, as almost every other application was pretty unusable.

Dave Davis AKA RedFly mentioned that TweetDeck’s memory leak issue had been Dugg (the orig post has since been removed) though I found another blog post mentioning the leak.

There’s speculation that the Adobe AIR runtime is responsible for the memory leak. Others are saying TweetDeck is the culprit.

With some probing, I saw mentions on the TweetDeck posterous/wall/blog or on TweetDeck founder/developer Iain Dodsworth’s twitter stream.

In response to a user’s complaint that TweetDeck had swallowed 1.4 GB of ram, Iain responded: “yep will fix ASAP – in meantime just restart app to release memory and go back to starting memory usage amount”

Iain has also mentioned incremental upgrades are on the way with a major release scheduled soon. Hopefully, Iain will kill the memory problem dead.

I still think TweetDeck is still the best fraking Twitter app out there, especially if you’re following more than 50 twitter users. The memory leak issue should be addressed soon.

–

Update: If you leave TweetDeck on 24-7, it looks like you can keep a maximum of 500 backlogged/unread tweets, so there is a buffer for 500 tweets. As new ones come on, the old ones fall off your viewable page.

–

Follow me on twitter.

So with micro-blogging platform Twitter providing API (application programming interface) access to developers, it was only a matter of time before a slew of twitter “stats” and “analytics” services made their way onto the market.

Do they really mean anything?

Is it statistically significant?

There’s still a big question mark in that area.

What has happened though is that these services have turned out to be great linkbait, and they seem pretty viral too, with various twitter users announcing/bragging about their “Twitter Elite” status (even if you are the top Twitter dawg in your village of 500….)

The Twittersphere has been abuzz with various users announcing their “Twitter Elite” status.

Are you a member of the elite? Check out the twitter grader and find out.

The service seems simple and harmless enough. Enter your twitter username and hit the “grade” button.

If you’re lucky, it might show something like rank #3,207 out of 548,986 users and you can write some report about “How to dominate the Twitter Elite rankings” and sell it for $10 (Ok, I am kidding here).

You can also click for more detail and see how you stack up in your geographical region:

Here’s what I would not do.

I would not make a blog post about how great you are just because some service ranked you as #1.

I would not twitter about how you outrank your friends and colleagues.

I would not get some notion that you’re some type of social media expert, just because you got a high ranking.

Instead, the twitter rankings are a good way to find out other people who’re actively twittering in your area, or in your niche and following them to see if they’re worth networking with.

The score (out of a total possible 100 points) is calculated based on:

• The number of followers you have
• The power of this network of followers
• The pace of your updates
• The completeness of your profile
• …a few others

Which sounds pretty vague.

It also may not discount out the people who have 3,000 followers, but are following 4,500 others.

Maybe the follower:followee ratio should factor into the ranking alogrithmn, or count for more if it hasn’t already.

Till the ranking is refined, it’s just another fun little toy to play with.

But what happens when friends send you these messages?

Granted, it won’t be as overt as a “Hi, I’m Natasha, I would like to chat with you

Talk to me now at: [Adult friend finder affiliate link]”

But still, some of the things that rankle my haunches include:

• Talking about how amazing you are or how great you are (Go talk to your bathroom mirror if you feel the need to share).
• Talking about how you’ve been in the industry for 10 years or 15 years (Unfortunately, it was more like you experienced the same day over and over again since day 1 and haven’t learnt a thing).
• Endlessly promoting some product and include affiliate links in your twitter messages (We’re pretty savvy marketers and seeing a redirect URL and a bunch of cookies being placed in our browser fires off a couple of warning bells).
• Talking down and treating your audience like kids, assuming they’re going to believe everything you say.
• Failing to provide any value to your followers/listeners/fans.

In my opinion, there’s nothing terrifically new about the web 2.0 or social traffic sites – the same rules apply, it’s all about building the relationship with the person you’re talking to.

Just because you can use the power of twitter to send marketing messages out to 2,000 followers doesn’t mean you should do so at every opportunity.

Likewise, following 4,000 people and having 500 follow you back does not make you a “social marketing expert” either. On the contrary, it tends to smack of desperation.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Tools like Qwitter let you see when someone who has just followed you, decides to quit 24 hours later when you don’t follow them back. This is like the pickup artist who heads into a bar and uses a string of one-liners, gets no love and leaves at the end of the night empty-handed.

If you want to be in the internet marketing game for the long term, it’s important to play the game with a long term focus and a long term plan in mind.

Some of the principles that have helped me include:

• Focus on the quality, not the quantity of relationship: It’s much better to have 1 staunch ally than 100 casual followers. So quit bragging about how you have 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 fans. How many of them do you know, and what do you know about them? Being a mere “friend collector” is even more superficial online, compared to it’s offline equivalent.
• Being invited and being part of the in-group: Do you feel that you know the person well enough to call them a friend? I think trust has to be earned. Even though social networks are open and you can find my accounts using the search engine, that does not give you license to ping me as I’m working on a campaign to give me a hot new offer, or beg me to try out your new product or service. “Permission Marketing” by Seth Godin is a good book which addresses this topic, failing which a copy of “Miss Manners Guide to Good Social Etiquette” wouldn’t hurt either. You wouldn’t come up to a group in a party and butt in with an off-topic, irrelevant question, so why abuse the internet in a similar fashion?
• Build the relationship: Relationships progress – from strangers to casual contacts to friends to buddies. You can’t leapfrog from strangers to friends or buddies in one fell swoop, unless you have some serious moxie. Developing a sense of EQ or emotional quotient and taking time to build rapport with someone shows sincerity and does more to build the relationship than anything else. But if you’re hellbent on trying to get a sale out of the whole superficial exchange, then there’s not much anyone can do for you.

In a nutshell, being a “bad” social marketer has a lot to do with coming across as being rude and seeing someone as a customer, rather than a human being. If you aren’t able to pick up the lessons to step up to responsible marketing over web 2.0 or web 3.0, you won’t be able to get a passing grade anytime soon.

Obviously blog spam in the form of useless comments would be posting “Need Russian bride? Visit this website, good price, many selection. http://……ru”

That ends up in the spam bin immediately. (If it hadn’t already been filtered out by my Akismet or Bad Neighborhood filters).

What isn’t as clear are response like “good post”, “interesting” and “I will read this”.

I’d use a simple “letters to the newspaper editor” test – would you realistically expect a comment to be published if you mailed it to the editor of your local paper, responding to an article in the paper?

If you wouldn’t then, why would you choose to post it in a blog comments section?

Is it merely to see your name in “web print”?

Even if the intent is to post an obviously off-topic comment in hopes that someone will clickthrough to your affliate link/phishing site, the effort is wasted.

Even if the blogger doesn’t wipe the comment off with a click of the “delete” button, who’s to say that any reader will click on your link, even if the anchor text is “SoCal Beach Bunny”?

Social media is a double-edged sword, you can easily establish yourself as the leader in your space through the power of blogging and participation in community sites and forums.

At the same time, if you are facing a serious credibility challenge, web 2.0 can be equally ruthless in exposing every blemish, scar and imperfection in your “social media” campaign.

Although I don’t fully agree with Jason Calacanis’ arguments that the Internet is being polluted with affiliate spam, I do think of my blog as my virtual home and like to “curate” or censor out the junk that doesn’t add value to the blog reading experience.

—

For ideas on building a sucessful blog-based business, check out my Secret Blog Weapon program.

Though it’s a social medium, success in Web 2.0 is ultimately about building a long-term relationship (personal or business) with your readers and your community. And that’s going to pay handsome dividends.

Anything else and you’re just fooling around.

As a marketer, social networks or web 2.0 networks and services give you an opportunity to reach out to potential customers at significantly lower costs compared to search engine optimization or paid advertising.

In my opinion there’s greater finesse involved, because if there are another 100 marketers using the same channel to reach out the the person, you have to fight to gain the person’s attention, even as they are being courted by 100 other suitors.

So the $64,000 question is how do you get someone’s attention without becoming annoying.

Can you painlessly win the social media love dance, without getting your heart (and sales conversion) broken?

Here’s an example of what I mean:

My facebook “friend add” request queue currently numbers in the 450+ range.

How do I decide if I approve a friend request?

First step, I look to see if we’ve friends in common.

Second, who are those friend? Casual acquaintances, close friends? Business partners?

–

If there’s a personal note, it could gain a couple more bonus points…or be a major deal killer.

A reason like “I saw you on the network and I want to grow my friends list. Please add me” works well if you’re building a friendship profile, or looking for strangers to chat up on an instant messengers or IRC. It doesn’t work as well otherwise.

Another poor reason “I see you’re in affiliate marketing. Let’s be friends”.

Erm, my blog is listed there. I have videos up. Would it be too much to take a look at what I do, and invest a minimal amount of time and effort to find out more about me. And then decide if you want to be my friend?

The analogy would be, if you wanted to expand your circle of friends, would you find out more about someone, or would you go out in the street and randomly start talking to strangers?

I can’t say that talking to strangers might not yield results, but I’m fairly sure the hit rate is going to be significantly lower.

–

So you’ve made it past the velvet rope, now what?

The love dance doesn’t end once you get in the “inner circle”. If anything, that’s when the work begins.

My focus remains to bring value to the table.

What’s “value”? It’s anything useful that will help the other person – perhaps a relevant blog post, report, video that relates to the person’s interest (personal, business or otherwise).

That’s what search engines do their best to replicate, don’t they? Serve up appropriate results.

Any relationship will improve if “stuff” going in, improves the relationship.  If you focus on improving the relationship, you can expect good things to come out of it.

What’re some no-no’s when it comes to building a relationship?

Here are 3 top cardinal sins to avoid:

• Being Irrelevant:Being accepted into a “friends” group means that there is some commonality between you and me. Serving me irrelevant and unrelated information or offers (even if it’s a highly profitable affiliate offer) will kill the relationship some, especially if it’s way out of what I focus on.
• Pulling Favors Too Quickly: Whether physical or virtual, there’s a comfort zone related to what people are willing to do. If we just became friends yesterday, and you send me an email asking to mail all my lists with your offer, I would probably do it if it was compelling, and I believed in the product or service. Asking someone to do something for the sake of doing it (even for the “highest payouts” reason often cited) is a bad practice in my books.
• Following Up: UFO marketers are really irritating. And they really should get their email systems fixed. When they need something from you, they send emails leading off with “Hey buddy! How’s it going? Here’s an offer you want to look at”. And when you send them an email, you don’t get a timely reply (and sometimes don’t get a reply at all). I have a blacklist, it might be good to stay off it. If it’s a consolation, Donald Trump talks about being stood up in his book “How To Get Rich“. How do you deal with these people? Just ignore them and move on, says the Donald.

Being a successful social marketer is not a difficult task. What makes it difficult is when marketers forget some of the simple rules and get themselves into a world of unnecessary difficulty.

The unfortunate part is that these troubles were likely of their own making.

Market Leverage ranks as one of the networks which effectively uses its marketing and branding budget to devastating effect. By contrast, I work with several networks with great affiliates managers, and one corp comm/PR person who isn’t really empowered to do much and/or doesn’t have any real budget to work with.

As networks see affiliate acquisition as part of the affiliate management success formula, doubtless there’ll be more resources channeled towards building a quality affiliate base.

I appreciated Market Leverage’s Digital Media Relations specialist Debby Phillips arranging a discussion with Market Leverage’s founder and CEO Mike Jenkins.

Mike’s certainly savvier than the average network owner (who’s typically a successful affiliate marketer turned network owner). Conducting some research, I’ve found that Mike has been involved in the business management aspects for a number of pretty large listed firms too.

I especially like how he’s constructed a holistic business ecosystem under his PrecisionPlayMedia group – with 3 components – DigitalLeads (an in-house offer production/packaging subsidiary), Market Leverage (the CPA network arm) and InboxBeyond (an email publishing arm) – which is how the top tier CPA networks structure their business.

During the discussion, we also touched on, but haven’t fully resolved the issue of whether the community-building /relationship-building approaches of social marketing via blogs,video will eventually clash head-on with the current incarnation of affiliate marketing, with the mostly shorter emphasis on one-off lead acquisition payout.

It’ll also be interesting to track Market Leverage’s upcoming announcements in the next 2-3 months.

Check out the Friday Podcast below:

For sign up as an affiliate, visit:

–> Market Leverage

Market Leverage is taking the lead when it comes to relationship building and branding with measures like it’s care package campaign to the top affiliate bloggers, and initiatives like Market Leverage TV. Kudos to Mike and his team for getting on the radar with innovative social marketing strategies.

In the course of our discussion, I was wondering — Will affiliate marketing come to blows with social marketing and social media?

From my discussion with affiliate managers, it seems that the majority of affiliate marketers are only interested in the one-time pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale commission structures. Ask them about revenue share or continuity (eg: subscription/membership) type payouts and they aren’t as keen.

With some bizop offers paying out $100-120 per lead or sale, this could trigger the “quick cash” impulse among some affiliates.

On the other hand, savvy merchants and advertisers would’ve grasped the subtleties of lead generation, building up an leads database and reselling the data or marketing offers to that database, and in many scenarios employing both techniques.

In this case, rev share, especially for a CPA-based network will be a moot point.

This is the business model for “affiliate marketing 1.0” if you want to apply a label to it.

–

With social marketing and its technologies like video, social networking, blogging, forums, etc, the emphasis is on building the relationship, forming a community, focusing on the long-term – pretty much a complete opposite to “affiliate marketing 1.0”.

Sure you could just take the tech aspects of social media – the viral marketing, the video and audio which massively increase conversions and leave the relationship benefits at the door. But does that strip social marketing of some of its inherent benefits? Do merely become an updated version of “social engineering” as practised by Kevin Mitnick and others?

It’ll be interesting to see how these initiatives pan out.

Tune in to the Friday Podcast tomorrow to check out the interview with Market Leverage founder Mike Jenkins.