The Social Media Strategy I Executed to Drive Over 1.3 Million Pageviews in 4 Days

The internet marketing tips i picked up from from all the links to the Make $500 a day on a white-sand beach while sports illustrated swimsuit models pick the toe jam out of my feet, got me a help desk job, Bellsouth, $9 an hour.

Women screaming into my ear that their internet is down while their husbands are shooting possum in the backyard; “uhh, my internet’s down and why is it that when i turn on this contraption i get popups of Oscar de la Hoya in panties and a executioner’s mask; getting whipped by Heidi Montag and lady gaga.

then you hear the shot gun blasts!

blow! blow! “you got ‘em honey” “yeah, i got ‘em baby. get the kids in the house; we gon’ have ourselves some possum tonight”

anyway i started working on my ppc affiliate landing pages and adding keywords into title elements and meta descriptions; Neal the SEO boy is born.

fast forward to 2006; a few thousand search referrals later a few hundred a week in affiliate sales of databases to paid surveys and ebooks on how to get rid of genital warts from the privacy of your own couch; page one google for a few companies, donald trump, george foreman; the Google logo, some luxury brands and at this time a private jet company – i went from eating doughnuts and running Cat 5 to eating pizza and champagne on a G4.

around the same time i heard social bookmarking was the next internet marketing hard on, so i join Digg for no logical reason whatsoever; same reason a kid throws change on the floor to look up a woman’s dress;
- throws change
- looks up dress
- “Ahhh! Tarantula!”

I didn’t do anything with the account:

ignored it completely; treated it like a pelican caught in the bp oil spill. nobody’s interviewin’ the pelican; i spoke to one on my recent trip to florida and he’s like “i can’t go fishin’; i stick my beak in and come up with tar balls and sea weed with jerri curl.” it’s 2010, i don’t need no soul glo all i want is clean fish that don’t smell like a roll of dollars pulled out a prostitute’s behind.”

Anyway my ranking for a keyword was slipping down google front page; $100 mass directory submissions and free press releases weren’t working anymore. i tried to get a final answer from slumdog millionaire, but indian police were still knocking his teeth out.

So i posted a story offering Ron Paul a flight on a private jet – 146 diggs it got buried but i got like 50 links pointing to the site; and over 1,000 visitors in the 1st hour; now that site is pasted on google page one for the most competitive keywords in its industry; as if the owner of the private jet company gave larry and serje their private jet with a stripper pole, a gorilla costume, Kendra Wilkinson, and a camera man.

Months passed, i learned how to use digg and made the digg top 100 when it only took about 100 popular stories to make it. i join a media conglomerate; and they’ve got a whole division writing stories and willing to sell their kidneys to get some traffic to them. anyway michael jackson dies; fans are jumping off buildings. people are getting downsized; everybody’s wondering what the fuck do i, neal rodriguez, mutant seo specialist do but tell them that they suck because they’ve got duplicate content and 50,000 404′s that need redirection.

I say fuck it; let the search engine spider choke on all the flash, redirects to redirects, canonical issues; 404′s. me and my diggas throw on ski masks and turn into social media special forces if we’re navy seals social media platforms are the water – when they start shooting @ us with ak-47′s and ginsu knives we dive back into the water – in this case the water is digg

Case history:

Problem:
no traffic

Solution:

Story hunt – a story hunt for something which will resonate on major social communities is about as rough as changing channels on a tv i had when i was little with a wire hanger as an antenna; you want to change the channel you’ve got to crank that dial – crackitcrackitca – GIJoe ain’t on yet; back to Mork & Mindy crackitcrackitca nanoo nanoo.

My grandfather’s from the Colombian civil war so he thinks its machine gun fire; so i’m like its 4:30; time for Transformers – crackitcrackitc! – my grandfather throws himself on the floor; “a tierra!”

I’m like no abuelito those are munequitos that m-16 is photoshopped

See in Colombia you don’t know if its machine gun fire or mosquitos. you hear them whiz by your ear and be like – slap your ear – you look at your hand and see your palm’s got a red paint job; “like damn that was a fat one – he stocked up.”

Then you look down and be like, “yo, that dog’s chewing on my ear, man” the dog grips the ear between his paws and stretches his teeth.

Like, “hey, dog! that’s not a flip flop – gimme that damn ear, man.” then you get the shoe man to glue that shit back on; “juancho, u poquito de goma alli.”

Anyway here’s the story i found:

Story:

Michael Jackson Death Photos Sold for $500k

I’ll tell you, you play around on Digg long enough – you see a headline like that and you start shaking, you want to get to the submit button as expeditiously as possibly but you go into slow motion like you getting chased by Freddy Kruger in a Night mare on Elm street.

You walk in the hood they think you want to cop some dope.

Like you want to suck your own cock;

I’m your mother, i’m yo daddy, i’m yo digga in the attic; need a digg im me; i’ll give you an fp; you know me i’m yo friend; reciprocity is key; i’m yo pusher; i’m yo digga

So i submitted it; i had no karma because i hadn’t logged in in months; so i sent it out to my contacts – it made it to the front page of Digg.com – i would refresh the digg bar every 30 seconds and i’d get an additional 500 views; and pdnonline gets paid by cpm so that’s like $70 for every 1,000 impressions; my eyes are like; cha ching! cha ching! gawker picked it up 90k views in total.

That’s the beauty of social news; you could singlehandedly do damage without having to sell some big social media initiative for which employees are going to have to sell umbrellas outside of the subway on rainy days and fried zepoles with powdered sugar during san genaro festival just to finance it.

Let me give you an example: case study!

Problem:

digg stopped driving traffic to typical news stories and more stories are getting buried off the front page.

I promoted ozzy osbourne is bestowed the cokehead burnout of the year award;

“i’m honored to sniff i mean accept this award”

I show a friend of mine that it gets like 300 views; he’s like, “stop putting a gun into kevin rose’s mouth to get these front pages, man”

I’m getting hair implants to cover up the bald spots where i yanked my hair out of its roots.

We start work on the bestofthe2000s.com and build the biggest mashup of the funniest commercials of the 2000 to 2010 decade – on youtube. i sub it as a video; title: The Most Epic Commercials of the Decade

I pass it to a few bloggers and bam!

1.3 million pageviews

They make $70 cpm on this microsite; so thats $70,000 cpm after the 1st day; and about $90k in less than four days.

Even Ashton Kutcher twote it! – you’re not getting punk’d – i can’t do photoshop – that tweet added up to about 19k views.

Although you don’t hear it on the mouth of every CNBC commentator talking social media; news aggregation is not a limp dick. this is a real digital asset through which you could drive a shit load of traffic not just for yourself; you could provide this favor for many people on the planet build relationships; it’s not like Twitter you could get 100 retweets and get like 5 visitors; man u get a hundred diggs u may have to pee on your server so it doesn’t blow up in your face and you end up looking like you’re taking beauty advice from leatherface in texas chainsaw massacre.

I hit these quote unquote social media conferences and they’re like what’s your twitter? i’m like i’m on digg, baby

They’re like, “eww you need to be spayed.”

But diggers don’t die we multiply!

Let me give you a quick run down of some links which make using social media less like paying tiger woods future alimony payment.

This is a thread on webmaster world where members share how they ask for links from other webmasters; this is so when you go out on your blog outreach; it wont look like you’re a sidewalk beggar that smells like piss with a sign which reads will give head for crack.

Di66.net, socialblade.com, and friendstatistics.com allow you to study the popular section of digg and all kinds of stats on other users.
Think of it as a second life version of that lady with rollers in her hair sticking her head out of the window who tells you when your neighbor gets teabagged by her hairy landlord

These mashups list niche social sites you could use to build your own platform. some of these sites may not drive too much traffic but you may find that you’ll get more subscribers after participating.

Remember, each and every one of you are a mini new york times.

This is people media – if we are the people and the internet is the most revolutionary form of media since hieroglyphics – we are the internet

This is the people media movement; it’s not about just joining Twitter and Facebook to find out what soul glo Ron Jeremy uses to keep the hair on his back shiny before a jailhouse gangbang; it’s about finding where your people congregate online and communicating with them to help keep them from jumping off the ledge until 5 pm;

I thank you for watching;

How valuable do you think is the use of social news aggregation channels like Digg and blog outreach? please leave your responses in the comments below;

My name is Neal Rodriguez.