The Gold is In The Picks And Shovels

My recent arti­cle about Face­book not being a viable mar­ket­ing tool has cre­ated quite a stir.

Many peo­ple agreed with me. But some peo­ple didn’t, and I respect that. How­ever, while a few were scathing and harsh in their remarks, oth­ers posted some excel­lent rebut­tals on their own blogs.

This topic seems to be as con­tro­ver­sial as the long-​​versus-​​short-​​copy debate in copy­writ­ing cir­cles. Deja-​​vu? Well, it’s no won­der because, just like the copy length debate, both sides are right.

It all depends on how you use them and with whom.

That’s why I agree with most of Facebook’s pro­po­nents. That might sound like a con­tra­dic­tion, but I believe it’s because many mis­un­der­stood my post. So I wanted to take a moment before hop­ping on the plane to clar­ify a few things.

First, some peo­ple have lumped my remarks with my feel­ings toward Web 2.0 as a whole.

They say, “Fortin is anti-​​Web 2.0.” Huh? If you know me, and if you read my recent white paper, “The Death of The Saleslet­ter,” then you know that I’m pro-​​Web 2.0, and prob­a­bly more so than any other copy­writer out there.

And some peo­ple com­mented that us Inter­net mar­keters are look­ing at Web 2.0 as just another way to pitch our wares. But since Web 2.0 is more of a con­ver­sa­tion than it is a medium, that’s the rea­son why mar­keters fail — or fail to see the “real potential.”

Let me be clear.

When I was refer­ring to social net­work­ing sites, and par­tic­u­larly Face­book, I didn’t lump it with Web 2.0 as a whole (and Web 2.0 is a lot more than just social net­work­ing sites, too).

In fact, I talked about blog­ging and forum mar­ket­ing as being great Web 2.0 tools you should have in your mar­ket­ing arsenal.

And when I said it wasn’t viable, I said it wasn’t for me. But it could very well be for others.

(Some peo­ple com­mented that they made a ton of money with social net­work­ing sites, and a few have said this in a snarky attempt to cut me down. My only expla­na­tion is that they mis­un­der­stood my post, they didn’t read my post, or they just wanted to brag.)

Again, I didn’t say Face­book wasn’t viable for every­one. It sim­ply isn’t for me. At least, not at this time. But that might change very soon, and I’ll come back to this.

Ulti­mately, the point of the arti­cle was not entirely about Face­book (which was, admit­tedly, used as a hook since it’s so con­tro­ver­sial) but about “via­bil­ity”. That was the point I wanted to drive home.

It’s about testing.

And what I found through my research was that, the real money, I believe, is not Face­book in itself but through the cre­ation — and own­er­ship — of plat­forms like it… or of appli­ca­tions one can use through these social sites.

Just like the gold rush a cen­tury ago, the money is not in prospect­ing for gold but in the own­er­ship of land rented out to these prospec­tors, and espe­cially in the sales of picks and shovels.

Sim­i­larly, Web 2.0 is just another gold rush — not a gold mine. And there’s plenty of money to be made with the rush itself. (Mor­ever, it doesn’t mean that some peo­ple won’t find gold. Some already have. In spades.)

Here’s an inter­est­ing video by my friend Jason Mof­fatt on the same sub­ject, and his thoughts echo mine — but I must warn you, Jason uses strong, some­times coarse lan­guage. So this is not for the eas­ily offended.

(He calls it “The Meat Report,” to which you must sub­scribe to view it. In it, Jason made a great anal­ogy where mar­ket­ing from within these social sites is akin to rent­ing ver­sus own­ing a prop­erty. Very appropriate.)

Bot­tom line, cre­at­ing plat­forms and appli­ca­tions for these social sites is where the real money is, as Jason Mof­fatt pointed out in his video. (In fact, its open plat­form is what dif­fer­en­ti­ates Face­book from other social sites.)

Can money be made with these social sites proper? I mean, with­out devel­op­ing appli­ca­tions and such? Sure.

But that’s the labo­ri­ous part I was refer­ring to. And in this case, it’s not so much Face­book in itself that might prove ben­e­fi­cial but its Groups.

For exam­ple, common-​​themed and interest-​​based Face­book Groups are great loca­tions for attract­ing and tar­get­ing mar­kets of like mind, and are no dif­fer­ent than, say, niche-​​centric or top­i­cal blogs, forums, or communities.

(As Dan Kennedy says, it’s about “gath­er­ing the herd.”)

That’s why, at the very least, I believe that Face­book Groups seem more viable than Face­book itself, as a whole.

Aside from Groups, its open plat­form, allow­ing appli­ca­tions to inter­act with it, is what makes Face­book dif­fer­ent than many other social net­work­ing sites out there, like MySpace.

(But now we’ve got another phe­nom­ena occur­ring. How many times are you hit with new appli­ca­tions every sin­gle day? From Super­Pokes to Zom­bie Bites? Me, at least two or three a day. So the new appli­ca­tion arena will become — if it isn’t already — just as spammy, I fear. But that’s for another day.)

Now, that said, here’s a strange piece of news that might change all this…

Face­book just announced on the same day I posted my arti­cle (funny that!) it will launch it’s new pub­lic pro­file system.

That is, your pro­file can be seen and indexed by the search engines, like Google, allow­ing you to be in them and cre­at­ing a poten­tial source of organic traffic.

Now, that is interesting!

(Hmm, I see another test com­ing.)

Nev­er­the­less, I don’t pre­tend to be a social mar­ket­ing expert. Not by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. Some of my friends have made sev­eral tens of thou­sands with Face­book and swear by it. Good on them.

In the end, it’s too labor-​​intense and untar­geted for me and my business.

So if you can out­source it to some­one, then do so. It would be no dif­fer­ent than, say, hav­ing mod­er­a­tors work your forum, ghost­writ­ers writ­ing con­tent for you, or free­lancers doing arti­cle and forum mar­ket­ing for you. (And that’s a whole other ball o’ wax.)

Speak­ing of which, some peo­ple said I con­tra­dicted myself by say­ing that you can out­source it, and there­fore it wouldn’t be any dif­fer­ent than arti­cle mar­ket­ing, which I pre­fer and would out­source anyway.

True, arti­cle mar­ket­ing requires work, too.

But it’s not as labor-​​intense as social mar­ket­ing. And the key­word word here is “intense.” Arti­cle mar­ket­ing has a lot more resid­ual pay­off than these social sites, which require con­stant maintenance.

But if Face­book does what it announced today — i.e., being indexed in search engines — then Face­book might indeed become viable for me and equally pro­duc­tive as, say, arti­cle marketing.

And that is my next test.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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