Archive for Twitter
Social Media Marketing – what a timewaster?!
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I just attended a very interesting webinar run by Jon Morrow (from the famous Copyblogger) and Laura Roeder (creatingfame.com), which went back to the basics of Social Media Marketing.
Looking at the comments during the webinar on Twitter (hashtag: #copybloggersm) some of the attendees expected to learn about innovative social media tools and secrets that no one knows about yet. Instead, Laura and Jon talked about the basics, that these people felt they knew already. But did they?
For me it was rather a timely reminder. How often do we “struggle” at keeping up with yet the newest and best Twitter applications and social media trends while actually we are wasting our time doing this. It’s not important to have a profile on every single brandnew social network just invented, it’s important to build deep relationship. Jon was very clear about that. How often do we feel we need to join every social network under the sun to be “in”? Not at all necessary, Jon explained.
Both Laura and Jon stressed that focusing on one or two channels is much more profitable when it comes to business. After all business nowadays bases on relationship building. Check where your target market hangs out – where are they? Are they on Facebook, Twitter or on MySpace? Concentrate your effort on this specific network and forget about others because they are not important to your target market. A little research is required (ask your VA to do the research if you are pressed for time).
If you have a blog, congregate your community there. Don’t get tempted to start lots of different channels to talk to your people, 
stay put and build the community of your blog before you rush out and build a forum because you heard someone else has a forum. How many “ghost forums” do you know that start off with a lot of noise and then develop into a ghost town with “new posts” dating back from half a year ago? Don’t create a forum when your community is less than 100 people, Jon recommended. Rather focus on your blog as point of contact.
Instead of getting nervous about having to create a blog post daily, rather write one really good one weekl. This will actually help you and your readership better than a lot of mediocre posts. Post this post out to your Twitter or Facebook friends, connect the social media channels. Your VA can automate this for you if you don’t know how to do it.
When you subsribe to other blogs to make new connections, don’t comment saying “good post” only. Give reasons or extend the subject of the blog post so that you add valuable information. This will give your comment an edge and start off new conversations.
Laura stressed that you need to remember that all social media channels are seen as customer service channels as well, so be sure you are contactable on your social networks. Check your messages regularly to avoid disappointment from your readership.
To eliminate the overwhelm in your inbox every morning, make a rule and send the notification of new Twitter followers to a separate folder. Go through these emails at a convenient time, not when you are already stressed out. Also make sure you don’t send direct messages from Twitter to your cellphone, otherwise you will be inundated with those, which will create overwhelm and stress for you.
Be authentic in social media. Jon mentioned Frank Kern and his personality. Frank is a character who shows what he likes and what he does. He is open about his life and what he is doing and his readers can easily decide if they like him or not. Not everybody may love you, but the people who have similar interests and behaviors will love you. So focus on being you, rather than being a bland nothing. Show your social media friends who you really are, what your interests are and what makes you tick. The deep bonding and relationship building will be much more profitable than being a bland marketer who sends out a lot of spam saying: “buy my products”.
Laura said that promotion is ok in social media and on your blog, but don’t overwhelm people. The 80/20 rule (80% valuable content and 20% promotion) definitely applies. Jon expanded on this saying that you even have an obligation to tell your target audience about valuable tools and products that are out there if it’s relevant to your audience. And I agree with this. If a social media friend tells me of a good program that would be beneficial for me I feel grateful. Promotion is not all bad, but do it right and be relevant with it.
Summing up, it’s important to go back to the basics of social media. Deep connections are better than shallow ones. Yep, we all know that, don’t we? But do we actually adhere to this?
Focus on a few networks or social media channels to learn all about your target market and the problems they need to have solved. Engage with people rather than sending out spammy messages. Show your personality, you will attract people who are like you and you can create a vibrant community.
Don’t jump on every new social network, go where most people of your target market are. Connect with people who are important to you and don’t try to reach “everybody”. Less can be more and quality goes over quantity. We all know that, don’t we? So let’s start doing it. 
Check out Jon’s Twitter profile on http://twitter.com/jonmorrow and Laura on http://twitter.com/lkr.
22 tweets a day? Are you serious?
Posted by: | CommentsLooking at this interesting article http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4594/Is-22-Tweets-Per-Day-the-Optimum.aspx it appears that posting about 22 Twitter messages daily is the figure to aim for if you are a serious Twitter user. Some people even send 150 tweets out daily. Where do they get the time from to do that? And what are they tweeting about?
If you are anything like me you probably don’t do that. I’m glad to have the time to post one (!) per day, so I’m a bit more like Barack Obama who posts 0.38 tweets daily.
The NY Times sends around 39.04 updates out daily, but I understand that, of course. They’d have a lot of things to post about and there are always fresh news in the pipeline. I guess if I was the NY Times I’d probably post even more! But then no one would buy their newspaper, so cancel that idea.
Over the past few days I’ve made an effort to tweet more often. The only thing I’m concerned about is the quality of posts. I don’t think a post saying “I’m having a sandwich” is great for networking. If you post a lot describing your daily life, starting from “walking the dog” to “giving the dog dinner” and “brushing the dog”, lots of people will take you off their list. Or maybe they enjoy perving into the intimate details of your dog’s life and help you count the flees he’s battling.
So what on earth do you post about when you need to send 22 messages into the Twitter realm? After all, you are looking at brand building, making a connection with potential clients and joint venture partners, driving traffic to your website or blog or trying to sell your services and products.
But be aware: a lot of Twitter fans don’t want to hear your sales talk anyway! I have to admit that I won’t follow people who post only one update about their “great” product, follow thousands of people and expect you to follow them. No way!
Then the others I don’t like are the people who have their sales pitch in every tweet they post. So boring! Actually, I prefer the “making a sandwich and cleaning the benchtop” crowd over the sales people who can’t even relax on the toilet without thinking about selling something to you.
How about you? What do you do? Do you send 22 tweets a day (sounds like 5+ a day, a New Zealand campaign about eating more veggies) into Twitter heaven? What do you say in all these posts? Where do you find all the content to post great information?
Facebook versus Twitter
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I have to admit that I’ve only recently started subscribing to Twitip.com, but I really love it! For every Twitter user there is lots of relevant information and discussion.
Today they discuss which one of the two giants in the social media world are the best and will be the most significant eventually after the first hype goes off: Twitter or Facebook.
I use both and as the Twitip blog says, they are very different. For me Facebook is a great tool to connect with people I actually don’t really know, like business connections. I have only a few real life friends on Facebook because not many of them actually use it. This is probably due to the fact that I’m from New Zealand and it looks like the Internet is yet not dominated by New Zealand websurfers. Consequently, I use my Facebook profile as a business and networking tool.
What fascinates me is the way you “get to know” someone on Facebook. Although I don’t know most of my connections/friends on Facebook, I feel I know them, especially the active ones. You see their family photos, they discussions, you read their words of encouragement, their feelings when things are a bit harder, etc. It’s amazing to be able to learn so much about strangers and feel connected to them.
Wwhat I value about Facebook: the connectedness and the kind of conversations you can lead with others. You are able to see parts of their work, their interests and networks, so you are actually able to connect better, which in return may lead to strategic alliances at some stage. I bet Facebook helped a lot of businesses to connect and I’m sure that many people bought business packages, like coaching and training, from some of their Facebook networks, so for these providers Facebook will be quite a lucrative option.
The Facebook business pages are a great idea, but many business pages seem to be deserted. Someone set them up at some stage, but then never bothered again to update them. This is very counterproductive, of course, so why bother even setting up a page if you don’t ever care to update them?
Twitter is more anonymous than Facebook at first glance. You can just sit there and watch. And you can actually stay in this position for hours without needing to do anything. You have a larger number of contacts and only a few are very familiar. Due to the nature of the tool, you often get either trivial posts, like “off to bed now” or links to other sites. This is good and bad. You see the “human” side of the industry leaders you follow and admire, and still you never really seem to get connected as no longer conversation can take place on Twitter.
You can learn a lot from reading a few posts of some of the well known social media celebrities (including famous bloggers) and you feel part of their life because you read some snippets of what they are doing right that minute you read their tweet. But often you experience being left out of the conversation because there are so many people you don’t know and don’t recognise. And they all seem to be in conversations with each other – and you really never know what’s going on. Sometimes you don’t even want to interrupt them, so for newbies it will be hard to get to know people on Twitter.
Is Twitter good for business? I think it may be for people who tweet regularly and who tweet valuable information. Thoughtleaders will benefit greatly. It takes effort, though, but the well known bloggers, for example, are used to putting effort in. I believe Twitter will take a bit longer and more effort to gain any monetary value from it. But if you are authentic, bring good information to the table and make an effort to be present several times per day, you will eventually gain at least a good amount of trust from many potential customers. And then this “I know, like and trust you” will probably lead to some business as well.
Another thing that is great about Twitter: if you ever feel lonely and you sit all by yourself in your office, log in to Twitter and you won’t be lonely anymore.
For the Twitter novice: How to make sense of Twitter without getting crazy
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Many small business owners join Twitter to attract more clients and get their name out there, but often encounter a confusing world of “insiders” and do not understand what benefits Twitter can actually offer them.
That’s what usually happens: if the Twitter novice gets an account and hopes to be able to dive right into the social network, she or he is in for a big disappointment. You hear that Twitter can be very effective to get yourself known as an expert of your niche, but how on earth are you meant to use it? At first glance it just looks like a crazy bundle of inane chatter about five million different topics. “What’s the fuss all about?”, you think, and want to log off again. But hang on… read a bit further.
What is Twitter? It is a microblogging tool with the aim to network with people who you either know personally or who have similar interests or business ideas. Twitter is a platform where you can tell the world (or better: the people you choose to talk to) what you are currently doing, what plans you have for the day or for your business in general. You can share tips and tricks or brainstorm, but all this has to be packaged into only 140 characters, which is good news for the busy small business owner!
You can actually learn a lot on Twitter when you choose your network wisely. Networking on Twitter is called “following” and it means you click on a person’s profile to “follow” them. Almost immediately you can see what this person tweets (talks) about. If you follow a market leader in your field of interest you can benefit greatly from the advice they post into cyberspace.
Twitter can also be a personal tool for people who like to keep in touch, without any business interests. This makes it a great platform for your friends and family, especially when you are busy and can’t always keep in touch by phone or email. Just get a Twitter account, follow your friends and ask them to follow you. This way they will know what you are up to in an instant.
Twitter at first is overwhelming, confusing and weird. But once get into it and have a followership that is a bit bigger (over 50) it is very interesting, but you need to filter through the rubbish. Unfortunately, there are spammers on Twitter, too.
A tip: If you get a follow notification from someone, you should check out their profile before you follow them as well, otherwise you have the whole Twitter homepage full of inane sales messages that at some stage will get on your nerves. Following someone is a voluntary activity; you do not need to follow them as well if you are not interested in what they are doing. It is good etiquette to follow most people who follow you, but if you feel the person has nothing you want to know about and maybe even appears a bit dodgy then just do not follow them.
Make sure you check out the person’s title, website, statement and the number of followers and followees. These should be fairly equal for most Twitter members. If you see a profile of someone who follows 5,679 people and only 23 people follow him (or her) then you know this person is probably not worth your time. Quite often this is the case with internet spammers who follow a large number of people, but don’t want to add value to anybody’s conversation, they just want a quick sale and usually offer only one update with a link to their sales page. This is boring! Sometimes, though, thought leaders and celebrity type Twitter users have a huge following, but do not follow a lot of people. In this case you can probably benefit from following because these people post a lot of valuable advice.
Go for the normal, genuine people who follow a number of people and who are followed by a similar number of people. And check out what they actually tweet about.
It is fine to follow someone who has only 34 followers and follows 50 people, in the same way as it is a good idea to follow someone who follows 8,754 people and is followed by 10,857 people. It means there is some equal sharing in place. People who do not follow anybody are probably too self-absorbed to be a good contact, but if you feel you can still learn from that person’s tweets (messages), by all means follow them, you can still decide later to “un-follow” them.
Twitter thrives on sharing and getting to know each other. Try to post messages that have some value to people. You can choose to send just status updates, like “working on a client’s new Wordpress website” or “going to a dog clicker training course” or “just heading up Mount Everest, will be back next year” because they reveal your interests or work expertise, which can help to connect with others. But remember that posts like “wiping the benchtop”, “eating a sandwich” or “going to the bathroom” might be a bit too trivial. The consequence of too many trivial posts could be that people decide to stop following you, and that can be disappointing.
So think about some interesting information to share with your followers. Think value. Be authentic, do not pretend you are someone you are not, do not use a fake photo and say you are Britney Spears’ baby monkey when you are not. You are, after all, on Twitter to grow your business.
Now get out there and have fun…
