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Dave Winget has been in the online marketing industry for the past 10 years and is currently working as a senior SEO manager with a full service interactive agency in Denver, Colorado. In his free time Dave builds and promotes his own entrepreneurial websites including an SEO/SEM/Social Media blog: WingnutSEO.com

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The Obsession All Marketers Should Have…

Written on
January 23rd 2008
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by Dave Winget  |
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protest.jpgThe first step is admitting you have a problem and I have one, a big one.  I am obsessed with gaining followers.  Every time I see I have a new one - I get excited. New minions that do my bidding and all it takes for me to send my legions where I want them is a simple hand gesture - thumbs up or thumbs down.   

Social media is the new big web buzz word.  Sure, it has been around for some time now, but halfway through last year is when I finally climbed on the bandwagon and got stuck.

It all started with StumbleUpon.  I installed the toolbar and stumbled around aimlessly for a while until I received an email that said “Someone has sent you a message on StumbleUpon.”  How nice, I thought, my first message.  I went to check it out and saw I had 8 people that were fans of me.  What?  I have fans? 

At this time I hadn’t viewed any other profiles on Stumble so that’s what I did.  I started following like-minded people and soon my random Stumbling became focused.  My new friends were sending me to some great sites that I probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. 

That’s when the marketing light bulb above my head clicked on – The more friends and fans I have the more powerful my stumbles are - duh.  In the past month I went from 8 to 70 friends and followers.  My thumbs-up now sends 300-1000 people to wherever I want – with a single click of the mouse.  For an internet marketer that makes good money from traffic to his sites - that’s power.  

Now this power is great and all but that isn’t the end-all be-all of social media and it isn’t the full reason for my obsession.  There is something else that happens, and is much more powerful than traffic – you make real friendships and connections with people.

My favorite social site for doing this is Twitter. Twitter, if you haven’t heard, is pretty much “social media 2.0.” I say this because all Twitter is, is being social.  You chat with people about everything from what you are doing to what you like/dislike and every now and then you tell people about that cool new site you found.  Everyone that is following you sees your messages so the more you have, the more useful it becomes (Read more about why I like Twitter here). 

Thanks to a mention on MarketingPilgrim about the “75 Marketing gurus on Twitter (updated to 200)” I now have 120 followers.  Before this mention I had about 50 friends and followers but it was still great.  I had chosen to follow the big names in the internet marketing world - some followed me back - some didn’t.

I was learning a lot of stuff from the people I was following and I was getting to see a lot of great content suggested by them.  That’s not why it is so amazing though and still not the full reason why I am so obsessed with it. The largest reason for my obsession and what happened is I actually started talking with people in my field that I looked up to - and they were talking to me! 

I was networking like never before and making connections I never would have otherwise.  So far I have only met one of these big names who I originally only knew through social media, and Twitter made it happen.
 
What excites me the most about this kind of networking is when I go to my next big conference (SMX West) I will be able to use Twitter to find out who is going/who’s there, make plans with people, and meet some of the biggest names in internet marketing – and they all know who I am (and want to meet me) thanks to Twitter.  This is amazingly powerful – going from being relatively unknown to chatting on a daily basis with the biggest names in your field – is incredible.

As far as obsessions go I think this one I have with social media is a good thing.  It is an obsession that we, as internet marketers, should all have.  Being social is the direction the web is heading in 2008 so if you aren’t on the social train already you can start your own obsession by following me on Twitter and/or on StumbleUpon…

Just be sure to send me a message so I can follow you back!



Reader Comments.

Hey Dave,
It looks like your Twitter link is going to a guy named Joshua?
Your link: http://twitter.com/Wingnut
I’d like to add you, so here’s mine:
http://twitter.com/johnherrington

Posted by John Herrington | 1:45 pm on January 23, 2008.

Every time I read these kinds of posts I ask myself where the ?!#$ have I been and why don’t I have a bigger presence in these networks. Keep them coming and eventually I’ll be motivated enough :-)

Posted by Marios Alexandrou | 8:59 pm on January 24, 2008.

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