Small towns, social networks, and communicating

December 28, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 14 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Business Networking, Communities, Social Networking 

During this time between Christmas and the new year, I’m doing a lot of thinking about what I plan to accomplish in 2009.

I am narrowing my focus and will be concentrating on just two areas: 1. affiliate marketing and 2. promoting businesses in Murphy, NC.

That means I will stop doing many of the things I’ve been doing. I’ll stop blogging on a lot of different topics and I’ll close down blogs and websites in January that are not related to my two primary areas of interest.

It also means that I’m going to be much more active in my community than I’ve been able to be for the last several years – both online and offline. Yes, that means that I’m actually going to leave my cave and talk to real people in the real world, again.

I really love living near Murphy, NC. I love the people, the small town atmosphere, the scenery, and being away from the big cities.

I don’t like how hard it can be to meet new people and to earn a living here. Sometimes, I think the two go hand in hand. In order to earn a living, perhaps new people in our area need a way to tap into the changing social networks and to make friends with people who know where the jobs are and can hire them.

Today, I was reading an interesting article at SocialMediaToday.com, How Small Towns are Social Networks, and it sparked some ideas I wanted to share with the author.

I agree with her observation that small towns are social networks and the photo of the bulletin board with all the business cards reminds me of several similar boards in Murphy.

I was wondering how one can best combine the offline networks of bulletin boards and newspapers with the online networks of Twitter, Facebook, and local portals and forums.

If the businesses are mostly promoting offline and the potential customers and employees are increasingly going online, how do we combine these networks so that it is easy to connect and to get to know each other?

Maybe I’m a bit uncommon as compared to most of the people here in western North Carolina. Instead of reaching for the yellow pages to find a phone number, I search on Google. Only if I can’t find what I’m looking for online would I consider going offline.

Yet, I believe most of the people in this area approach this type of information gathering first from the offline world, and many of them never go online for local searching.

I don’t have any data to back this up, it’s just a feeling from having talked to people.

With the price of offline advertising going up and online advertising going down, how long will it be before the businesses bring most of their marketing activities online?

How long will it be before the residents of Cherokee County take their local information gathering activities online, primarily?

How can I position myself and my services to help put these two groups together so we can all benefit?

As I said, I had some ideas I wanted to share with the author of the blog I was reading, so I was ready to comment and saw the following: “To Comment on this post, you must first register. Click here”

Sigh…

I really had something I wanted to say, so I registered, something I am doing much less of now than I used to do.

Over an hour later, I’m still waiting for the authentication email so I can post my comment, and you know what? I’ve lost interest. Even if I get the email now, I won’t bother activating my account just to post a comment.

Yes, I was a hot prospect then, but I’ve gone completely cold, now.

I even clicked on the link to the original post, but it, too, requires registration. That link takes me to Reddit, and that’s not what I’m looking for. I want a way to contact her directly.

Wait a second, that’s not accurate. Over an hour ago, I wanted a way to contact her directly and carry on the conversation. Now, not so much.

No more. I’m no longer interested.

I think back to just a few months ago when I changed my primary blog to this one with the main goal of making it easier for my friends and visitors to join in the conversations by commenting. It is working out very well, and I’m making friends with fellow bloggers around the world.

I would have enjoyed exchanging ideas with the author of the article I mentioned, but I can’t even see her profile without registering.

To top it off, there are links to the Twitter profiles of three people in the article who are referenced only indirectly, but there is no link to her Twitter profile that I can see. I did a search on Google, and I think I found her Twitter profile, but the photo is different and I’m not sure it’s her.

So, while she makes some good points about social networking, the way I found her has been time-consuming and frustrating.

It turns out that I followed the URL on her Twitter profile to her website and confirmed that she was the author of the article. To her credit, her own blog has links to her email address, Twitter profile, and Skype accounts. Not only that, but the article makes it easy to comment and she even uses CommentLuv. See it here: How Small Towns are Social Networks

Had I found the article on her actual blog instead of a syndicated version of it on SocialMediaToday.com, I would have been much more likely to have joined in the conversation and I would not have felt so frustrated trying to find a way to communicate with her.

Now, I’ve opened up at least one door by following her on Twitter.

Perhaps I’ll even find the motivation to share my thoughts with her on her blog – if I can remember what they were.

In the long run, what will I remember about this experience? Will it be her insights on local networking or will it be the frustration of trying to communicate?

So, how does this apply to affiliate marketing?

What are you doing to make it easy to establish conversations with your visitors? How well is it working?

Maybe you are doing a good job of conversing on your blog, but what happens when your content is syndicated elsewhere? Are roadblocks thrown up needlessly? Why? What can you do about them?

If you recommend a product or service as an affiliate, do you make it easy for prospects to contact you to gather further information or to clarify any points you’ve made?

Do you respond to those requests in a timely manner? Do you provide additional information? Do you answer the specific questions that are asked?

In my opinion, the main point of having a blog is to start a conversation.

What are you doing to make it easier for your reader to respond to you?

What are you doing to make it more difficult?

Are you even aware of things that may make it more difficult?

Truly, I don’t want to pick on her, because she’s doing the right things on her own blog. Still, I found her article on another site that is syndicating her content, and finding a way to join in the conversation was difficult and time-consuming.

Is that her fault, or is it the fault of the site that syndicated her article?

I don’t see it as her fault, at all. It seems to me to be the unintended consequences of social networking extending our reach to other sites that may not make it so easy to participate as our own sites do.

In the long run, it will probably be worth an hour of frustration, because I found someone who shares some of the same interests I do. Now that I’ve found her blog, and just now subscribed to it, I’ll look forward to reading what she has to say, and it will be easy, then, to join in the conversation, should I want.

I’m going to take a short break and see if I can work up the enthusiasm I originally had to join her conversation, now that I’ve found it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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