Occasionally some old fashioned hogwash is regurgitated and described as “the new new Internet business model” or words similar to that. A couple of weeks ago newspapers announced they were going to start charging for access to read articles on their website. It makes you wonder who makes these decisions, surely no one who actually surfs the net could possibly think their material will be worth squat if it cannot be shared by Internet users such as bloggers and twitter publishers. Who will ever know they wrote anything behind their paywall?

They tried this before too. One of the papers announcing this new move is one of the papers that failed in 1999! What short memories they have or are they not mentioning because of the bad karma it would bring? Who knows. The only thing we know for sure is this won’t work. Why? Well if they hide their text behind a paywall Google won’t index it. If Google don’t index it then no one will know they wrote it. If they allow just Google through like the idiots at Expert Exchange then all you need to do is click the Google Cached link beside the link and you have the full story for free. End of.

If they could provide a compelling reason for people to pay up and read, en masse, they may have found a new business model, but honestly, the only reason I read papers online is I don’t like ink on my fingers.

Successful online promotion can only be achieved through constant change.  15 years ago the Internet was hailed as a revolution and paradise for adverters.  Instant feedback to marketing campaigns fuelled the spread of banners and it wasn’t long before every site apart from the BBC looked more like the Exchange and Mart.

We became “banner blind” and these ads lost their effectiveness fast.  A few years later Google arrived with its “Do no evil” policy yet sure enough, as soon as we were all hooked, they too became banner bandits.  Every webmaster who couldn’t figure a way to make money dropped Google code on the site which ironically encouraged people to leave the moment they arrived.

Internet users have grown immune to this kind of advertising.  How many times this week have you bought something after clicking their banner?  Can you remember the product for any banner you clicked this week.  It’s known as “push”.  Traditional media likes to brand us like cattle, with their mark burned into memory forever.

We are less likely to allow old media to influence us.  Instead we are interested in opinion.  When you buy a book from Amazon do you prefer the Synopsis by the author or the comments by his readers?  Do you read the negative first or the good or do you juxtapose them both?  Do you trust a book with one five star rating or another a hundred reviews and a four star rating?

The benefit of the wisdom of the crowd over traditional advertising is compelling.  “As seen on TV” is now considered a warning against paying too much.  Today we buy from experience rather than advertising hype.  Not just our own experience but the experience of thousands of other consumers too.

Ask any salesmen their preferred lead and it is likely to be “Word of Mouth” which is an elementary way to describe social media.  The difference with word of mouth is it is limited to a few friends and social media has access to billions of potential customers.  Members share all kind of information with specialist groups covering any subject the mind can imagine.  Each member of the group looks over the shoulder of fellow members to see what they are doing and ask advice.

The advertising interloper will always be excommunicated from these groups.  Old media, advertisers and opinionated individuals are quickly identified and removed from the sphere of influence for good.

What does this mean for the person with something to sell?

It means mediocre and poor quality are unlikely to benefit from the new social phenomenon.  If that’s all you have then stick with old media as it suffers from the last death throws push advertising has to offer.

Worthwhile products enjoy a boom without leaving a hole in the balance sheet.  Introducing your product to targeted groups and attract positive reviews from esteemed and influential social media experts in your field will generate buzz.  Place your product in the correct sales medium so it can be found and purchased easily from a trustworthy resource.

Unlike TV, Radio, Press, Banner Ads, Google Adsense or any other form of traditional advertising push media is finite, whereas a social media marketing campaign will produce infinite buzz always online and ready for review.

Too many cooks…

It’s easy to be trapped into the belief you need friends in facebook or followers on twitter to achieve your goals.  As a relative newcomer to these services I speak from the experience of the lack of experience, a rare qualification!  With confidence I can say sales come from something else.  It is too simplistic to say “the more followers I have the better chance of sales” I can think of many arguments against this but perhaps the most obvious is that if everyone is hunting the highest number of followers it’s likely he or she is attracting the same kind of people, and how often do you read messages from the hundreds of thousands of messages that spend the odd micro second on your timeline?

My advice is to only follow those people who you think can help you in your pursuits.  And don’t worry about offending people by not following or even removing them as a friend.  Instead congratulate yourself on taking the right steps to protect what you want.  People will respect you for it, especially those you choose to follow because you think they are worthy of your attention.