Kris Jones of Pepperjam Talks About Social Media - Part 2

We are really excited that Kris Jones, President & CEO of pepperjamSEARCH has agreed to be the inaugural interviewee in our social media optimization series.

Pepperjam is an industry leading full-service internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing privately-held businesses in the United States.

We broke the interview into two parts because of its length. Yesterday Kris discussed how Pepperjam uses social media tactics to distinguish itself in the market. Today we will talk about how Pepperjam’s clients are using social media to grow their business online.

How Pepperjam Clients Are Using Social Media Tactics

1. Pepperjam has a lot of high profile brand clients. Are they asking you for an SMO strategy? What social media tools or tactics are you seeing them use? What works?

Yes, we perform SMO for many of our clients. Well branded companies tend to back into social media (versus request it) because they want to manage reputation. As a starting point many clients want a MySpace and Facebook profile; however, once we are able to demonstrate the power of SMO, beyond just managing reputation, clients get really excited.

Some of the tools we have at our disposal include building backlinks and generating traffic through Digg & Stumbleupon, creating viral videos on YouTube, and generating buzz throughout the blogosphere. In short, we use various strategies to get other people to talk about our clients stuff and we are very good at what we do.

2. What are some of the opportunities in social media that you see that marketers are not taking advantage of?

First, everyone should have a blog. Second, many marketers do not realize that the demographics of websites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook have shifted. YouTube includes viewers of all ages, while MySpace & Facebook in fact have many demographical populations outside of young kids. For instance, did you know that MySpace allows marketers to target ads by just about any demographical characteristic possible and that Facebook is not only for high school kids? It’s true, it’s just that you need to know how to target those populations. Third, everyone should have a MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Facebook, and Stumbleupon profile, for starters.

3. Social retailing is one of the hot buzzwords in 2007. How are your clients using it?

Still too early to tell. Websites like Shogging.com (a Pepperjam Company), ThisNext, ShopWiki and others were launched within the last 12-months or so, but I can’t convincingly say that they have changed the dynamic of how people shop……………..YET. I think the best is yet to come.

4. Which SMO techniques that you think are wastes of time?

I think they are all worth trying at least three times since you’re not likely to succeed the first time.

5. Tell me about the biggest blunder you’ve seen in SMO?

Rand Fiskin’s post about the financials of his company SEOMOZ was probably one of the biggest blunders I’ve seen. The news went viral only to spread around the fact that SEOMOZ isn’t as big and successful as we’ve all thought. If I were Rand I would have kept those numbers under lock and key until they were in a range that wouldn’t make others question your success.

I should mention that Rand is an extraordinary buzz marketer and maybe he knows something I don’t know - maybe the old adage of “any press is good press” is taped directly above Rand’s computer?