BradPace.com

Now days to us at World Vital Records we often consider social media to be just Facebook.  Just because we are developing apps for facebook.  Did I mention we have an app with 1.8 MILLION installs? Anyway social media can include anything from social bookmarking to blogging.  Each speaker at this session of Pubcon spoke about a different topic.  So here are the random highlights:

• Page views don’t matter (unless you can sell CPM ads).  So in social media especially it is the action that is important.
• The types of products that work best in social media are products (not services), consumer goods (not B2B), impulse purchases, and low cost door buster prices.
• Manage your expectations with social media.  Users are not there to buy so you have to understand that conversion rates are going to be low.
• In social media you need to make sure to let your visitors choose their delivery method of your content or service.  This means they may be getting your content via RSS for example.  So do everything you can to make your monetization method work with all types of delivery.
• Twitter – push sales and offers to customers.  This will work great both our World Vital Records users who use twitter!
• Tips on getting Digg traffic. First understand the Digg demographic but also know that more diverse types of people are starting to use Digg.  You need about 100 diggs in 24 hours to get to the home page.  If you cant do that then you can forget it.  Timing is everything on Digg. And make sure your site can handle the traffic if you do get to the home page!  One great suggestion is to post your content early and get it crawled by Google.  Then point the Digg traffic to the Google cache version of your page. Google can handle it! Hard core Digg users hate ads so remove the ads on day 1 and 2.  Then add them back in on day 3-5.  This is when the buyers come anyway.  One tactic is to use Digg to just get RSS subscribers or email addresses instead of sales. Great way to get branding.
• Ads are ailing. You need to find a different way to monetize social media.
• Negative comments are increasingly normal in social media.  So a company must actively participate.  Timely responses quell the storm.  But don’t get into public debates.  Try to take problems out of the social arena and work them out one on one.  There is an increased demand for transparency in social media.  So don’t pretend to be something you aren’t.  Be honest!

Sorry that is all so disjointed.  But there are some good thoughts and ideas in there.