Glen Allsopp is a young, highly-driven internet marketing pro with a background in social media marketing and online reputation management. He has done some substantial social media research as well as consulting work for international brands. His articles have been featured on front page of top sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, SEOmoz, and Copyblogger.

Tell us a little about yourself…?

“I’ve recently turned 19 and I’m currently living in South Africa. I’m actually from the UK but I got offered a job here just over a year ago. I got into internet marketing and SEO when I was 16 and I’ve branched out from there. I have an account on the Webworkshop SEO forums where you can see my naive posts from over 3 years ago ”

Glen hiking near Cape Town, South Africa

Why do you find social media fascinating?

“Search (SEO) is becoming so social these days, especially in terms of getting backlinks… so that’s what first got me interested in social media. I also love that a new site can grow rather quickly via networking and traffic from the top social media sites.”

What aspect of social media has been most difficult for your corporate clients to understand?

“The most difficult thing for them to understand, without a doubt, it is that something has to be interesting to go anywhere. Clients will come to us with a boring and static website and expect us to get them thousands of visitors because they’ve read about the potentials of social media somewhere online.” Another one is that networking is key. There’s nothing like networking for traffic and links. When you work in a niche in which you have no experience then it can be difficult to build any relationships or connections. Personally I like to advise clients how they can interact with others in their niche and if they don’t want to do it, how we will do it for them and see if they approve.”

Glen says that “Networking is key.” – image by Brian Solis

A few months ago, you said you were leaning towards quitting client work and focusing on your own ventures. Why?

“My contract with Shake Interactive in South Africa ends in a few months, I haven’t made a firm decision about exactly what I’ll be doing next. I have vowed not to take on any more (client) services in this stage in my life. The main reason is that I believe you can only get so far doing consulting / working for others. I think I could of had a lot more success working on my own. Success in both the income potential and the joy you get for working on sites you are truly passionate about.”

What projects are you working on now?

We’ve been working on some big projects in and around South Africa, and some exciting ones for a famous alcoholic brand. Personally, I’m writing for ViperChill & PluginID – a blog about personal growth – and have some other projects I would like to start putting more time into.

What habits and characteristics do you notice that the most successful professional bloggers seem to have?

“There’s a quote I like that seems to answer this well:

Success seems largely to be a matter of hanging on after others have let go

If you look at all the big bloggers now they’ve been consistent in what they are doing. Darren Rowse at Problogger has been writing almost daily for years and Brian at Copyblogger always makes sure there are updates from guest bloggers if he isn’t writing much. Success doesn’t happen overnight so it’s definitely about hard work and consistency. As a society we are constantly looking for the magic pill and the ‘quick fix’, I see bloggers getting discouraged because they aren’t getting many visitors or making much money and they simply give up.”

As far as content that you’ve written, what has been your “greatest hit” so far?

“My greatest hits have often been for clients and I’ve taken down quite a few servers in my time. One of the personal posts I’m proud of is my ‘Analysis of the Top 100 Digg Users‘. For an internet marketing blog it can be hard to do well in the social media space so when this made the Digg homepage I was particularly proud, although I had obviously biased the content to be attractive to that audience.”

Tell us about some viral campaigns that impressed you?

“I loved the Elf Yourself campaign about a year ago and you can’t forget Lyndon Antcliff’s credit card story that took a lot of the world’s media by storm. I’m a huge fan of the film Superbad and I think that Shoemoney & Neil Patel’s ‘McLovin ID Generator‘ was a very clever idea based on such a simple concept. Not everything has to be over the top and amazing, the simple things that people can connect to can work just as well.”

How do you manage your own time effectively?

“Every morning before I do anything ‘productive’ I check my email, check out Digg and spend some time there. See what my friends are stumbling and vote for their discoveries if I like them. I don’t have set time limits for my tasks, I just try and spend it wisely and when I’m free or have some minutes spare I’ll either network with others in a particular niche, some of the top social media users or even just my friends on niche networks. I’m usually a morning and night task worker which actually works well when I connect to people in the likes of America due to time differences, and then I get my real ‘work’ done during the day.”

Which social website is your current favorite for generating buzz?

“Definitely StumbleUpon, mostly through the quality of traffic it sends and the relationships you can build with members of the site. I also like the fact that you can promote content in pretty much any niche and it has a chance of generating some nice buzz.”

Can you recommend any specific tools, scripts or shortcuts that you use in your daily workflow?

“I use TadaList.com to handle my to-do list. I put down even the most basic of tasks like ‘Email XXX’ or ‘Create a MyBlogLog account’ and then go through my list one by one, doing the most important first. I also check out the social networks and see what people are up too before I open my email in the morning and then I start to focus on that. I have StumbleUpon set-up so that I can use keyboard shortcuts to use it quickly and I also have my Firefox VERY organized with folders for things like forums I read, Google services I use and tools I like. This is all simple stuff but when you are active online, every little thing helps with overall efficiency. I’ve had custom scripts and tools built or sent from contacts in the industry that, unfortunately, I couldn’t share as they would no longer work or be useful… ”

Do you think social media sites will still be an important part of popular culture in 20 years?

“I’ve been asked 5 and 10 years, but never 20. I don’t think anybody knows what the internet will look like then, for-all we know it could be full of censorship or we could all be interacting socially on our touch-screen monitors and voting for stories with our palms . There has to be some social aspects online and they are all going to link from the devices we use like phones & mp3 players, maybe even our cars as a few are coming out with internet access so something might happen in that space. People use sites like Facebook because they are useful, you can keep in touch with others. I don’t see that going away but it’s not going to be ANYTHING like we have it today.”

How ‘aggressive’ is your internet marketing strategy?

“I’m not a spammer but I’ve definitely tried my share of gaming the systems, mostly to push the limits. I’m not one of those people that just follow the rules and hope it works, I like discovering new loopholes or sites that drive traffic.”

Anything else you’d like to add?

“Don’t be an internet marketer for the ego. I think at times we all love to share how good we are but it is not about how many visitors you can send but the results you can get from those visitors in terms of subscribers, buying products and clicking on ads. If you want to get in this space because you want to appear like you know it all and get some e-fame then you are wasting your time, but if you really want to help people get traffic to their sites then I fully respect that.”

You can connect with Glen on Twitter or StumbleUpon.