I often fall back on my lessons from running track to help me through the tough times. In track you must train relentlessly for months before you even race. And even then, it is only the beginning. You have months and months of training and competitions. And only to continue to the next year and the next. The harder you work, the better you run. And there are no short cuts, no team to pass the ball to. You train alone, you perform alone, you lose alone but when you win, you win with everybody on your balls. The same can be said about business. Train hard, don’t let up, go out to perform and kick some ass. If you don’t have that Tiger Woods mental toughness to take the setbacks than go get a job, it’s much easier.

So, as the use of online mediums for product or service promotion grows the need for people who understand the medium will too. Unfortunately, the senior people who make these decisions are not web savvy people. They are in the most part old school and they are using a traditional print model approach in a digital medium. And they are two different things.

In that perspective, I believe that an IT professional is more qualified to run an online marketing campaign than a marketing professional. Traditional marketers look at presentation and emotion of the message given. IT geeks look at performance statistics. And at the end of the day, the reason anyone markets is to sell their stuff. And if you ain’t selling something than why and what in the hell are you marketing anyway?

I bought my first mixtape on 125th Street in Harlem, NY in August and the year was 1993.  I remember clear as day.  The purchase was from a random street vendor (& movie bootlegger).  The tape was titled “DJ S&S 7/93”.  The title was just as simple as that, and it was the best mixtape ever!  It was the first time I heard “Protect Ya Neck” from Wu Tang and the first time I heard “Deep Cover” from Snoop Dogg.  And to this day, these tapes break new music from unknown artists to a massive audience.  Now, I bought the tape knowing that there were a few popular artists that I knew of were on it.  But the benefit was discovering the unknown stuff while enjoying the known artists.  And from there, I found more and more places to get my mixtape fix.

And there is something to be said about the marketing power of mixtapes.  Not convinced? Well, take rapper 50 cent.  He on many occasions has stated that he first received buzz and then attention from labels and the public alike from having his music placed on mixtapes.  And to this day, he uses mixtapes consistently to create buzz around new projects. And the lists of mainstream (urban) artist who have followed that same model goes on and on.  Now I admit, the only genres of music that I have heard in this format are Hip Hop, R&B, Reggae and House.  That is not to say that having a Rock mixtape isn’t possible or it would not make sense.  But to date, I personally have not yet heard one in the same format as the urban style ones. 

By using readily available online tools, unknown artists from any genre now have the ability to create and distribute their own mixtapes.  The power in marketing in this medium is that your content is embedded with popular and highly sought after content. 

So to use this model, first gather a list of songs that are from popular artists that have a similar sound or genre as your music.  Then create a play list embedding your stuff in with theirs.  And now its time to take that compilation to market.  You cannot sell it because not all songs belong to you but you can display those songs for free.  Just create an account with iTunes and load your play list as a podcast.  Be sure to tag the title of the podcast with names of popular artists.  Or if you really want to get creative, create a song with the instrumental from a popular artist.  Format the song title using the well known artist’s name. (ex. “mysongname_ft._kanye_west.mp3)  Then add this song to any file sharing service and watch your downloads grow from people doing searches for Kanye West but actually finding your music. 

Please note, this technique I believe will help raise awareness of your music but it alone may not drive sales of your stuff unless you somehow provide directions on how or where to purchase it. I have not yet conducted a sound test of this theory so I will publish my findings as soon as I conduct and conclude a valid test.

Herein lays a problem.  Marketing via social media is bullshit.  It is a fallacy.  It is essentially a con game.  The most interesting thing that I have noticed is when these types of conversations happen with random people who feel as though they are really on to something, it turns out that they fundamentally believe what they large social media companies want you to believe.  Don’t get me wrong.  Before making this assessment I made sure to cover my bases by actually trying this stuff out.  And then I researched it.  (Its my job, can’t help it)  There is nothing conclusive in the form of a case study or white paper that states, you will make more money by using a social networking account.  The only research out there says.. “There is potential however the industry must find a way to harness it.” 

The reason why there isn’t anything concrete is because it doesn’t work.  Twitter, Myspace and the rest of them have went through a lot of trouble making the public believe that their websites blew up overnight just from word of mouth.  And from the brainless, no-researched backed pitches made by other people supporting that myth is directly related to those companies’ strategic efforts.  See, making people believe that their product is popular just from other people is good for business.  It’s the crowded restaurant scenario.  You drive by, it’s crowded so it must be good.  No one told you how the food is, you just assumed it’s good because it’s crowded.  Now, the tricky part is convincing the public the website is crowded without actually allowing them to see for themselves.  In a nutshell, all of the major social networking players spent millions of dollars to convince you that their websites organically grew just from people having a personal interest alone.  What they have really done is used a very sophisticated product placement marketing model to integrate their name and brand into your everyday conversation.

For example, the next time you watch the news, try to count the number of times facebook or twitter or craigslist is mentioned.  The next time you pick up Time or Newsweek, do the same.  The news stories are never about those websites in particular, they are in reference to how someone else has used those sites for something.  To get that kind of coverage takes a lot of creative PR work.  And it is not cheap.  The result is, you have a reinforced brand that is delivered by un-expected media outlets.  There are few companies that are just upfront with it.  For example “Bing” from Microsoft just said the hell with it and ran TV ads.  But Google, they rather use news, and product placement to get the name out.  Google’s model is more successful in this instance because people feel as though they are in the know.  As opposed to “Bing” which is available to use but not really the same as being in the “know”.

Now back to the original point.  Twitter sucks as a marketing tool if you are interested in getting people to buy something.  I am in the business of getting people to buy my services so using a method that does not help that effort is a waste.  Myspace is the same.  These companies have made an effort to get people interested however it is not exactly in the context of buying something.  People are interested because of ego and sex.  Not for finding new stuff to buy.  It is the same as having a store front with nice stuff in the window but locking the door.  And if you were to take it a step further and do an analysis of all marking mediums, social web marketing is way behind. 

The effectiveness of a campaign can be measured in the following 4 factors:

1. Time to market
2. Reach
3. Impact
4. Cost

Now, if you want to find the most inefficient means of marketing try one that has the longest time to market (you have to manually select and send friend invites), smallest reach (only one user account at a time per friend invite), the lowest impact (people use those sites for sex and ego, not purchasing) however, it is the smallest cost in dollars.  So, the barrier for entry is the lowest but the results are the worst.

In summary, don’t suggest that a person should market their goods or services using a social networking site unless that person is broke or stupid.