Online Marketing can be a painful process, but it’s not to say it goes without its rewards. These days, companies, organizations, and even people can be made or broken with good online marketing or the lack of it. But what makes “good” online marketing? And here we need quotations to underscore that there isn’t really any good or bad marketing, there is simply what works in obtaining your goals and what doesn’t. Whether you want to increase traffic to your website, you want more dollars spent on your products, or, you simply want more Facebook friends, your “good” online marketing plan should be what obtains those goals for you. You might even go as far as to say a good online marketing program can sometimes behave a bit badly…
Enter the Fat Jew. And before you hall off and call the PC cops, the Fat Jew is a trademarked name of an online celebrity. Famous for… Well, absolutely nothing really… Josh Ostrovsky (aka the Fat Jew), started as one man with a Twitter account. Now, only a few years after opening that account, he is a multi-millionaire with TV contracts for shows in the works, and it all started for simply re-sharing content. Josh found funny things online. He would follow blogs and social media accounts of known comedians and repost their material without giving them any credit, but at the same time, not accrediting himself as the creator. He amassed over 1,000,000 followers online and leveraged his following for online advertisement deals, sold his time for TV interviews (Katie Couric, Yahoo. Etc.), and even had a brief offering for a tv deal from Comedy Central. “A brief” offering because of the fact that, after a large outcry from performers, celebrities and non, claiming the Fat Jew had actually taken original material (content) they created and posted on their social media, and simply reposted it onto his social media accounts without credit to their names, Comedy Central took back it’s contract. But love the Fat Jew or hate him, Twitter follow him or Twitter unfollow him, he exemplified the type on online marketing platform that worked, maybe even too well… Unarguably, this was “good” online marketing, even if you think what he had been doing was “bad.” Mr. Ostrovky is now wealthy, famous, and has amassed more Facebook friends than your state senator. Goals obtained, mission accomplished.
But let’s just say we aren’t all out there with goals of trying to get money and fame (infamy?) under the guise of the character name Fat Jew. Let’s assume for one moment we are just regular people, maybe business owners trying to increase customers and revenues. Can we take the positive aspects of what the Fat Jew was doing and turn that into something we can use? Ya, totally.
First, find an audience. When creating content, or reusing content we find online, we want content that has a wide appeal. Let’s say we are a home construction contractor. Most people might not be interested in the finer points of pouring a concrete foundation, or modern plumbing methodology… But most people are interested in issues facing first time homeowners, what it’s like to remodel a home, or any other ins and outs related to your business that a larger general public might find interesting.
Next, know where to go. Place your content in areas you hope your audience will find it. Our contractor doesn’t have to post his material on his own blog, he can post in construction industry blogs, plumbing blogs (yes, they actually exist), first time homeowners blogs, new family living blogs, sustainability blogs, the range is far and wide, and should be. Take the time to research your market to find out what will work.
Sit back and watch it work and rework. Once we create the content for that audience the web begins to grow once placed online, and what we have worked to build will hopefully go on to re-work itself as people 
share, post, and repost, our material. Sometimes, this comes as unexpected consequences. Look at the very serious film Fifty Shades of Grey. The films reviews were bad to say the least, but that didn’t stop the film from amassing a huge online following due to the comical memes (pronounced meems), and hilarious use of hashtags, that ultimately made the film widely popular and subsequently drove people and dollars to the box office. And true, not all of us are in the business of selling skin filled cinema scenes, but all of us, entrepreneurs or otherwise, wouldn’t mind whipping our content into shape and seeing it become untied and spread itself out to the worldwide web. Ultimately we all want content that gets worked and reworked (clips used, articles shared etc.), as time passes on. All the while, our SEO begins to climb.
And yes, online marketing can be painfully hard work. Months can go by feeling like you haven’t gain an inch of traction. But as in any industry, hard and persistent work pays off in time. It can be a painful experience research who to, how to, when to and where to post your content. The hours, days, and months figuring out the best ways to get your content out there, do pay off. Just as the lines of good and bad can sometimes blur, its also necessary to experience just a little bit of pain before our rush of pleasure.