Thanks for stopping by Jay. You’re right. It’s easy to lump all unpleasant comments together. But ignoring the ones that might actually help improve your company or brand doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Being transparent generally is a promotional tactic, so I wouldn’t separate the two. If they’re doing it solely to build brand trust, than there’s an underlying business goal there. That said, from the consumer perspective I still prefer to see that. I think there’s a difference between promotional tactics and inappropriate promotional tactics. Being transparent is a good option in my opinion (as is good customer service or special offers that really appeal to the target buyers). So if the brand is on social media, assume they’re doing it with some kind of promotional goal. If they say otherwise, they’re lying. Just remember that alone isn’t a reason to dismiss them. They’re in business. Of course they’re going to want to promote their business interests through various marketing, advertising, and PR tactics.

I’m not sure why there’s an assumption that brands have to be a trend on social media to get press coverage. There are plenty of other ways to get press coverage. If a company’s primary tactic for achieving that is to become a trend on Twitter or something, I’d be concerned that they don’t have anything better to do with their resources that would be truly newsworthy. When it comes to social media, keep the focus as much on your customers as you can. Answer their questions. Tell them things they might be curious about or interested in. Share links and resources they’d find useful or amusing. Do whatever you can to give them what they want or need within the scope of what the company can handle. Don’t over-promise for example if you don’t have the authority to make real changes.

If you really want press coverage and trending status on social media sites, do something newsworthy outside the social media space. Then use social media tools to help spread the word.

My $.02.

It is apparent that companies do need to have a presence on social media, but how can a person determine that everything that is supposed to be transparent is not promotional? If a brand needs to be a trend on social media in order for it to be considered for press coverage, then how does a brand get to that point without resorting to extreme measures?

I have tried to deliver quality content… at least I have a product to show, if you look at the people who are ranking for managed account blog, you will see most of them are trying to show you how to trade or make you sign up for a news letter, they are not even offering managed accounts. I am just trying to give them actual managed accounts, with good managers, without making them jump through hoops. Anyway, I would take any suggestions to make my content better and any suggestions to make my site better. Thank you so much.

But still even if my content is miles above my competition… how will anyone know if I have 0 traffic, I am a networking retard.

I look forward to your post.

As for SEOs, I believe in ignoring 99% of them. I’ve met some decent ones through my work who I’ve learned a bit from. But in the end, I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve been telling people for years, and the only thing that’s held true consistently over those years:

Give people quality content.

It’s that simple. I know “quality” is subjective, but if you don’t feel like you’re giving 110%, it’s not enough. That can mean educational, informational, or just entertaining content. It can be text, audio, video, images, etc.

You’ll do some initial work spreading the word — I find good old networking is the best. It’s not a quick process, but it’s the only consistently sustainable one. That content is what makes you successful in social media (it’s the kind of thing people want to share), just like it’s the one thing making sites stable in the SEO game (especially with Google finally going after shallow content sites like mills, which some of us have been asking for for years now).

The biggest thing I would suggest is turning a basic site or blog into more of a resource site. I have a post scheduled to go up here tomorrow, so I’ll write more about that and a few other suggestions for improving content for better long-term traffic via sm and seo and post it tomorrow morning to give some more specific advice.

Thanks again for the link.

Damon