That’s an adaptation of a question I responded to the other day on LinkedIn.

Among the other answers was a comment that the questioner had definitely been scammed (he’d dabbled in what he thought was Social Marketing and hadn’t got instant results), that social marketing was a fickle opportunity and a bottle of snake oil.

Isn’t diversity great..?

So I thought I’d set out my thoughts here, which are similar to the ones with which I answered that question.

Let me fess up first, though: I am not an expert at Social Marketing. Not by a long shot. However, I have studied it a lot in recent months and I am determined to become an expert, because I want to escape the cost and tyranny of Adwords.

The more I study Social Network Marketing the more I realise that it’s actually thousands of years old.

It’s no different than being the best baker or best butcher in the village. The one that everyone trusts and goes to.

The difference is that the village is now a global village and the community is now several hundred million people and growing rapidly.

What makes it a buzzword now is that it’s coming off the back of an Internet that for a long time really only enabled one way communication. That made marketing to people over the Internet not much different from marketing on TV, radio or the press.

Basically you had to shout louder or more often than your competition to get people’s attention.

Think about the origins of the Can-Spam Act. Once email became mainstream, marketers everywhere saw it as a super cheap alternative to the Direct Mail campaigns that used to clog up our mailboxes. Junk mail became junk email (shouting more often for less cost) and that spawned the Can-Spam act.

And then along came blogs and social networking, bookmarking and media sites. These enabled two-way communication on the Internet - just like in the real world.

Which means that not only can we now avoid people who shout too loudly or too often, but we can diss them to others. Not good for the traditional marketing approach.

Word of mouth and recommendations now work on the Internet even more effectively than they do in the real world. When something goes viral it does so at warp speed to hundreds of millions of people.

The thing is, though, marketers have always known that marketing to a warm market was way more cost-effective than to a cold one. So a lot of Internet Marketers’ attention got focused on building a list.

And here’s the thing: when you build and maintain a list you’re doing Social Network Marketing.

You’re building trust and establishing credibility with a bunch of people, which makes them more likely to buy from you.

That’s all Social Network Marketing is.

So why all the fuss about Social Network Marketing on the Internet now?

Probably because the new technologies have provided people with an alternative (and better) way to develop a warm market.

In fact, I foresee email marketing declining as a means of building the relationship.

I think it will be used for specific jobs – such as delivering an eCourse – and that blogs and the social networking sites will replace email as the way marketers build their warm market.

So what are some of my experiences with social network marketing?

It takes time. It takes work (a lot at the outset). It doesn’t run on autopilot. It doesn’t cost money – well not much, anyway, and it’s certainly dirt-cheap compared to Adwords.

But I firmly believe that it’s the best way to build a sustainable long-term business online. One that will bring increasing returns in future years.

Has it worked for me? Yes. And here’s the evidence.

What about your thoughts on Social Network Marketing? Leave a comment – even if you think it’s snake oil!

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