Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

It’s the dawning of a new age. 32.4%* (or perhaps more) of the people  using the Internet are “social media experts”. They promise you riches  beyond your wild dreams, so long as you open a Twitter and Facebook  account.

(*Yes, I completely made that statistic up…much like many of those experts are making things up as they go along too!)

While I absolutely don’t dispute the positive influence social media can have on a business, I am  alarmed by some of the advice that flies by me and  countless others in the course of their day.

Let’s take this past Sunday as an example. As I lay in bed, I opened  up Twittelator on my iPhone. It’s what I do when I’m bored, feel like  seeing what people are up to or when I feel like making some silly  observance or remark.

Although the problem I speak of is ongoing, two things stood out on  this lazy Sunday that were particularly alarming.

#1 Myth: Email is a Dying Art

A friend tweets about what could be a useful guide on backing up  your Twitter account. But the marketing was misleading and one  statement stood out like a sore thumb (like a thumb that had been  bulldozed over and over, at least 436 times). The sales page said:

“Email is a dying art.”

I could make this a long-drawn out post, extolling the power of opt-in  email marketing (it’s direct, everyone has an email address and the effectiveness of a targeted opt-in list has not diminished in the last 8 years I’ve been using them)…but  let’s forget about that for a bit.

We all know (or we should know) that the best way to make more sales  is to sell to existing customers…instead of putting all our efforts into getting new ones.  When people purchase from you, you get an email address and that’s how  to keep in touch with them. It’s how you follow up…it’s how you sell  more.

Let me repeat – everyone has an email address, at least anyone who is going to make an order from you (i.e. YOUR customer). That’s why you ask for an email address when someone buys  from you. You can suggest they follow you on a social media site, but  Twitter, Facebook or X social media site will never become the  standard of communication. Email is a standard that runs across all  kinds of platforms, plus it offers:

• Private communication: It’s how your customers can ask questions and get support. And even if you use a ticket system, it’s still in conjunction with email. And yes, while some companies provide basic help to customers through Twitter and other platforms, detailed and private help comes directly through you.

• Privileged communication: Let’s face it, our customers should be treated in a privileged manner. They’ve shown they’re interested and that they are willing to spend money. You want to give them special offers, advanced access and other perks you don’t give to just anyone who becomes a Facebook fan. You can make a TON of cash, just by treating your customers better than everyone else.

• Direct communication of any length: No 140 character limits with email. Say what you want and how you want to say it…no extra clicks to the sale required. THAT is priceless.

• Continuous access: Not everyone checks email every day, but you can bet  that IN GENERAL the consistency with the average individual checks it is more consistent than with social media accounts. Of course, there are exceptions for those who live and breathe social media, but we’re talking about the general public here. And yes of course, you need to understand your own market to know what is best for you and for them.

We Heard This Dying Song & Dance Years Ago

All these email marketing is dead myths seem all too familiar.  Rewind about 4-6 years ago and people were saying it then. At that time,  they said RSS would obliterate email. But that never saw the light of  day, for many of the same reasons social media won’t replace email as  a marketing tool. Let’s look at the RSS thing:

i. Not everyone uses RSS or even knows what it is. Same issue with  social media today.

ii. As a business, you can’t directly market/sell as well through an RSS  feed. What you blog about and what you email about is not likely to be the same. Email allows for direct marketing and  selling…and you should take advantage of that. Today, social media lacks the same powerful direct marketing possibilities.

#2 Myth: Social Media Can (or Should) Be The Backbone of Your Business

Another friend posted a link to some guy who was looking for case  studies that would prove “social media cam be the backbone of a  business”. Nope, not a baby toe bone or even a little knee cap…a  full-on backbone! He said he felt businesses could run most of their  daily operations through social media. I assume (although his blog post didn’t clearly say), he meant that sales, support and customer relations could be run completely through social media.

Now I must admit, starting my business prior to this golden age of  tweeting, gives me a different perspective. I can empathize if it
feels like social media is a relatively easy way to get some bites for your business. I think it’s very valuable for that, but if you get stuck on social media as being the crux of your business, you put your business in the hands of other companies who have other agendas in mind.

So here’s my advice to you, if you are relying on social media to  build your business, make sure you have a core business plan in place to ensure proper growth and maturation of your business on your own terms. That is, if you don’t want to work like a slave and have a business  that grows and thrives over the long term.

You need mailing lists (including a highly-treasured CUSTOMER list), you need to focus on marketing methods that don’t have you sharing  this morning’s breakfast for hours on end. And most of all, your business is yours. It depends on you, your assets and skills…it  should not depend on the latest social startup.

We’ve all heard the news/rumors…ahem…thinly disguised pitches that sales letters are dead. Some even say that copywriting is dead.

It’s a social web. Everyone’s on Face book, on Twitter and they’re all talking to each other. They look to these places as their source of news, recommendations from friends and more.

So…if they’re getting recommendations, why would we need to sell anything, right? They buy what their friends tell them to. All we need to do is infiltrate the social networking thing and we’re golden, right?

NOT LIKELY!

Consider a few things:

• Facebook has approximately 300 million users (source).
• Twitter has approximately 79.7 million users (source).
• The Internet has approximately 1,668,870,408 users (source).

All of the Internet is not connecting via social networking. You miss a ton if you focus on the social web. Of course, a large chunk of your target market may be available on these social sites, but you still can’t get away from the need for copywriting skills.

Look at the reality:

• Of those Facebook and Twitter users, you can bet  many are not active.
• And many of those who are active, may listen for opinions (so a good reputation amongst social network users is a good thing)…but they will still do their own research on what product is good for them.
• And even those who may follow friends like lemmings on a regular basis, still need to be persuaded to open their wallets.

In other words, you’ve got work to do beyond chatting it up on Twitter.

While sales copy always has its place in online selling, it’s not all we’re talking about when say say “copy” or “copywriting”.

Ultimately, copywriting is about PERSUASION. We are constantly persuading our prospects to listen, click, sign up and buy. That doesn’t change whether you’re posting a Facebook update, tweeting from your mobile phone, blogging or demonstrating your product.

Without persuasion, no one listens.

And if they aren’t listening, they aren’t clicking, signing up or buying. That’s not good for business, now is it?

Some Quick Persuasion Tips:

• Speak with authority, but relate to your audience.
• Know what you want people to do. In other words…have a plan, a desired call-to-action.
• You can still be social, while being direct (think of a big sister giving advice to a younger one…she’ll do it forcefully, but with love).
• Use power words (NEW! Get a handy-dandy list of 115 power words here) and add oomph to what you say.

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This hands-on, practical program with one-on-one guidance will help you become more persuasive with your words and get more people to take action…no matter what your call-to-action. Register.

Man, I thought safelists were dead. Seems they’re back with a vengeance and a new twist on Twitter.

You probably know I’m not the type to go all crazy for social networking sites, but I LIKE Twitter. Well, I used to like it a lot more. Now, I just think some Internet marketers have gone a little nuts, cheapening the experience for everyone.

I’m also not one to tell people how they should Twitter. I may have my opinions, but I think people should use it the way they’re comfortable. HOWEVER, I draw the line when people’s use of Twitter (or any site) impinges on the ability of others to enjoy their experience too.

The cool thing about Twitter, until recently, is that you had complete control over your own experience. If you get annoyed by spam followers, don’t auto-follow back. If you don’t like all the welcome DMs…don’t follow so many people. If you don’t like what someone tweets, unfollow them. It’s as simple as that.

But then I realized something the other day (and forgive my naivity until this time – I was enjoying my Twitter bubble). Here’s how it happened:

On Monday, my father-in-law said to me, “So I joined that Twitter thing because you said it was simpler and better than Facebook.”

I said, “Oh yeah?”

He replies, “But I think I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Yeah, I made a mistake and followed you because as soon as I did, I had all these people following me. [My wife] was wondering who all these people were and wanted to know why I had so many friends!”

He was joking on the wife thing (my MIL wasn’t annoyed or anything, but curious!), but I realized. Damn! People are mining my follower list (some near instantly) and following people that follow me.

Now it would be one thing if people were looking at his profile after seeing him following me and decided he was follow-worthy. But here is his profile (I’ve blacked out some information to protect the innocent and not-so innocent):

Why the heck would people be rushing to follow him? There’s NOTHING there. NOTE: He’s down to 2 followers because it’s been several days and I guess the people who auto-followed him have removed him for not following back.

What is This Madness?

Are people really this desparate to look popular or have they truly been duped into thinking that random people are going to increase their business? Hmmm…I’ve got an email list of 30,000 I can sell you for $20 if you’re interested. LOL!

Of course, this is all still just my opinion, but I think it’s downright rude and slimy. Think of the average person coming on Twitter who happens to follow an Internet marketer. BAM…suddenly, they’ve got all these followers who are so obviously trying to sell something. Not cool.

I was really surprised by the people who are doing this, but then I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s often people with really high follower counts who also follow tens of thousands of people (but obviously, this isn’t a instant indicator of such activity).

What I’d Like to Do About It

The other day I asked:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To which I got the kind reply:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And LOL, I did check Asfaq’s profile to see if he might guilty of such actions, but he looks like a fully human Twitterer to me.

So I proceeded to block those who were using this technique. I was really upset by one of them as I enjoy her tweets, but when you start to make others who know me feel uncomfortable – sorry. You gotta go.

So Please, Do Me a Favor If You Use This Technique

If you use this type of script that mines followers, post a comment here with your Twitter ID, so I can block you. Or simply send me an @ message on Twitter, so I can block you.

Yes, I’m serious. I won’t say anything bad about you, single you out or anything. I just don’t want to participate in your numbers game. Now, I don’t care if you try to amass a bunch of followers and look at my follower list to see who might be of interest. But this automated garbage isn’t cool with me.

NOTE TO MY LEGIT FOLLOWERS:

I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed by the noise on Twitter for a while. At first, I just followed everyone who followed me, but then I got to 900 people I was following and I realized:

• This is TOO much noise.
• I’m following people who really have no interest in me. They just want to pump up their follower numbers.

To help me manage my Twitter better, in the next few weeks, I will be unfollowing people I don’t immediately recognize. This is NOTHING personal. If you’re a subscriber, blog reader or customer of mine, just @ me and ask me to follow you (we will be searching names against our database before removing, but we may make some mistakes). I’ll be happy to do so. I simply JUST want to hear from people who have some interest in conversing with me.

After visiting the Sparkplugging CEO blog, I noticed Kelly had posted CollegeHumor’s Real Life Twitter video. It’s pretty darned funny. I searched around for more Twitter stuff and thought you might like this.

I swear…I never do stuff like this guy in this video. I’m much more interesting (well except I’ve never been to Paris with Paris!

Whether you get your news from CNN and traditional medial or directly from social media, many (but of course, not all) have learned about the epic battle between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to reach 1 million followers on Twitter. It was all a publicy stunt with good intentions and to raise/send money to Malaria No More.

Interestingly enough (but not really surprisingly), Mr. Kutcher beat the huge, long-time news organization in the race to a million followers. In a recent post, Joel Comm talked about the power of new media and compared CNN’s social skills (or lack of)  to Kutcher’s ability to engage his followers.

Joel wrote:

“After all, isn’t Twitter made up of over TEN MILLION citizen journalists who are always on the scene and able to report breaking news before CNN has a clue what is taking place?”

And he’s right…but is the WORLD receiving that message yet? As Joel pointed out, there are only 10 million + users on Twitter.  However, those 10 million users do share what they learn on Twitter on their blogs, with their friends, etc…so the reach goes beyond the actual users. But I simply wanted to share an interesting story about two 30-something women and how they got their “breaking news” last night.

Last night at about 10 PM PST, I hopped on Twitter and learned a couple of things:

• Kutcher was trying to beat CNN to 1 million followers in support of Malaria No More.
• Oprah was going to make her first tweet on Friday.

Several hours earlier, my friend learned the same information from CNN and other traditional media. My friend is the same as age as me, uses a computer at work (but doesn’t have one at home). She recently purchased an iPod and goes to her sister’s house when she needs to update her iTunes.

Now, it doesn’t matter that she found a few hours earlier – obviously, she connected to her media of choice earlier in the evening than I did…but I find it interesting that we found our news in two COMPLETELY different ways. So while some claim the downfall of traditional media…it ain’t dead yet.

Now, is there a marketing lesson here? Not much – other than there are many ways to reach a target market. I just mostly find it really interesting that my friend and I had the same news to share with one another today (and that she finds news about Twitter interesting, even though she’s never been to the site), but our sources for the information were completely different. We may be in the digital age, but not all of us have gotten there yet.