My social media vocabulary is continuously growing; yesterday “net seeding,” today, “link bait” and “link juice.”
When I told a friend about the social media course I was taking, she enthusiastically pointed me to a site called honeybeebuzz.info. The site is for Honey Bee Buzz Marketing, a company that makes its living by charging other companies to spread the buzz about their product or message through online “pollination;” that is through social media tools and buzz marketing. Their call to action is “We’ll spread the buzz and you’ll be rolling in the clover.”
It was here that I found these new words and some interesting examples in their website blog. “Link juice” is the ability to boost search engine rankings by generating web traffic. The term “link bait” refers to videos that are so cool that bloggers and forum hosts want to link to them from their own sites, thus increasing their own cool factor by virtue of the link itself.
After reading a few of their blogs, it became clear that the tactic was part of creating their own buzz. Interestingly, there was not a lot of opinion or analysis, rather, self-congratulatory testimonials, examples of their own work, and not one comment on any of the blogs. Falling prey to the concept of “link bait” myself, when I clicked on button to share what I thought was a very clever viral video, I was given no less than 12 options to share their blog, most of which I have never heard of: reddit, stumbleupon, delicious, propeller, bebo, hi5, and technorati among others. It seems companies like Honey Bee Buzz Marketing are probably rolling in the clover cross-pollinating for tech-unsavvy companies who are just as confused as I am about which social networking tools are worthwhile. Instead, I found the video on YouTube and have included the link. The YouTube comments confirm the video’s cool factor (and with any luck, my own).
It was also in one of Honey Bee’s blogs that I came across an endorsement for a new Twitter app called Tweet Later. The idea of this application is to speed up one’s ability to tweet, since it can be “mundane and time consuming for today’s busy tweeple.” The app allows you to upload tweets in bulk, schedule tweets, or save and reuse tweets. Now, I’m all about getting rid of the mundane but is this for real? Twitter only allows you to use 140 words…140 WORDS… far from what I would consider mundane and time consuming unless of course you’re one of the followers reading the mind-numbing tweets of the thousands who think they’re tweet-worthy.
Maybe I’m starting to show my age, but I wonder whether we need all these apps. I’m not so old to think we should go back to the party phone days, but keeping in touch with friends or following those we think we like is getting very complicated. And it’s a lot of work. For organizations that want to invest in their relationship with the people who use these apps, the market it fragmented by these peer-to-peer apps. How many of them will still be here this time next year, or maybe the more appropriate question is how many more?
“Link bait” today, “tweedle de dun” tomorrow?
This is great Robyn. I agree. For my part I liked those early cellphones shaped like bricks. They never broke when you dropped them, helped build bicep muscles, and you could rest your coffee cup on it. Plus you could never lose one of those, and they were too long to reach the water if dropped in the toilet.
I think there are some parallels to be drawn between a lot of these new applications and reality TV. When it first came out reality TV was all the rage. Millions watched as people squabbled over mundane things like putting the cap back on toothpaste. But this fad has petered out – granted there are still some of these programs around, but I doubt they’re as popular as they were a few years ago.
I think applications like Twitter will also wane in time. No doubt there will be something to replace it. Who really wants to be known as one of the “tweeple” over the long term?
Denise