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I threw a (Twitter) party and all these strangers showed up…

A fascinating series of conversations (and a couple of arguments) sprung up on Twitter last nite about managing your followers.  Some people, like my good friend Beth Harte are considering ‘resetting’ their Twitter account.  Beth’s rationale is that she wants to get back to following fewer people, and having strong connections with the people she does follow.  She lamented the fact that she doesn’t know most of the people that follow her, and have no idea why they are.

I have to admit, I have the same issue.

But while we were having this discussion on Twitter, Linda left this tweet:

That was the first time I can ever remember Linda sending me a message, and I followed her as soon as she did.  And Linda’s tweet explains perfectly why I could never reset my account.  If it meant unfollowing 99 spammers and 1 person such as Linda, who is following me because she gets value from my tweets, then it’s not worth it.

This is why I believe in following people back liberally, and then pruning followers later if they end up being spammers. And I guess I have always seen the power in the ‘little guy’, and I know that far too often, today’s little guy is tomorrow’s Chris Brogan.  Also as an introvert, I understand that just because someone isn’t connecting with me, doesn’t mean that they don’t WANT to.  They may just be looking for the opening that makes them feel comfortable doing so.

So moving forward, I am going to grow my Twitter network by liberally following back people that follow me, and following anyone that either RTs me, or replies to me.  The only exception would be someone would someone that’s an obvious spammer.  I think that method means I am following the people that are engaged in the type of activity I want to encourage.

What about you?  How do you manage your network on Twitter?  Would you be willing to reset your account and start over?  I will say this: I would be completely in favor of Twitter removing all mention of how many followers someone has from the site.  It’s mainly there to stroke egos, and doing so would make the site less attractive to those that are simply there to pad their numbers.

BTW if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent to your reader for free! Or if you would rather have posts emailed to you, please enter your email in the Feedburner email form above. I will never share your email with anyone! Thank you!

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Four reasons why Lady Gaga has fans and you don’t

Did you know there are over 2 dozen videos on YouTube of Lady Gaga crying during one of her concerts? Most involve her breaking down in response to something her fans have done, but then there’s this video. In that video, a teenager is in line to get Gaga’s autograph, and he’s crying because he’s about to meet Gaga. When he gets up to Gaga he breaks down, and Gaga reaches for him and hugs him for several seconds, then signs his CD, kisses it, and gives it to him. She then says ‘I love you’, and hugs him again.

If you are trying to understand why Lady Gaga is currently the hottest pop/rockstar on the planet, those 30 or so seconds explain all.

It also shows you what you are up against if you are trying to build fans around your social media efforts.  If you want to have REAL fans of your brand, or fans of your blog, or your company.

Here’s four more reasons why your efforts aren’t working:

1 – You aren’t participating in the community you are trying to build.  Believe it or not, communities do not form around the idea of being monetized.  Any community, even one as small as a blog, needs to be cultivated and grown from within.  That means you have to be a member of the community you are trying to reach.  You have to interact with them, and understand them.  More importantly, you have to WANT to do this.  If your prime motivation is to collect people in a spot so you can make money off them, your efforts are doomed from the start.  And the people you are trying to make money from will smell it a mile off.

You mean you’ve never answered a comment on your blog, and now you wonder why readers have stopped leaving them?  It’s the simple stuff, guys.

2 – You aren’t shifting control.  By definition, I believe a community is a group of people that have a shared sense of ownership in something larger than themselves.  Every member knows that they play a role, no matter how large or small, in shaping the larger community.  As your fan-building efforts begin to take root, some members will become more active and begin to take ownership of the growth and vitality of the community.  You want to encourage this because as you shift ownership to the community, they will feel empowered and energized.  But if you are too fearful and controlling, it’s like cutting off sunshine to a growing plant.

Find the people that are pushing your community forward, and put the spotlight on them.  These are YOUR rockstars, and they deserve their time on stage.

3 – Your efforts are focused on the product, not the customer.  Please tell me that you don’t think you can create a community of customers that want to come together and tell you how amazing your product is!  Seriously?  Focus instead on HOW your customers use your product.  What problem does it solve?  How does it fit into their lifestyle?  What benefits do they get from the product?

Focus your community-building efforts on the ‘bigger idea’ behind your product.  Here’s some ideas for reframing your efforts, do you want to focus on…

Your cameras……..or photography?

Your luggage for business execs……or travel for busy business execs?

Your eco-friendly outerwear………or conservationism and saving the environment?

Your home decorating products……or home decorating?

Reframing your efforts to create value for the customers you are trying to reach makes it MUCH easier to attract members, and have them take ownership in your community and evangelize it to others.

4 – You don’t embrace the people you are trying to reach.  We aren’t idiots.  We get that you have to make money off your efforts, but if you truly don’t care about us as people, we will pick up on that and your efforts are doomed from the start.  This one is really a ‘you’ve either got it, or you don’t’ proposition.  You can’t fake passion for us, and we won’t fake passion for you.

It’s very rare that companies have true fans and evangelists.  It’s not that they can’t, but it’s almost always because they aren’t willing to do the things necessary to spark enough of a connection in their customers that they would label themselves as a ‘fan’ of that company.

Hey if it was easy, anyone could be a rockstar…

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My one-day Twitter engagement experiment

As many of you do, I use Twitter as a tool to build awareness for my blog, and to increase traffic.  In fact the site is the top referring site for this blog, and has been since Day One.

Usually, I spent anywhere from 30 mins to a couple of hours on Twitter a day.  My activities include sharing links (here and to other sites), and interacting with others.  Recently, I’ve been spending less time on Twitter, and am averaging about 600-700 tweets a month for the past few months.  But when you consider that about 300-400 of those tweets come from #blogchat, that means that I’m not spending a lot of time during the week on Twitter.

So I wanted to conduct a little experiment yesterday with my Twitter usage.  I decided to amp up my usage, spending several hours, sharing dozens of links, and interacting with others all day.  I wanted to see how big of an impact it would make on this blog, and my Twitter network, versus the time required.  To measure the effectiveness of this strategy, I set four goals for Monday:

100 new Twitter followers (Avg is 20-50 per day)

75 retweets on Monday’s post (Avg is around 30 per post)

5 new email subscribers (Avg is 5 new subscribers in a MONTH)

300 visitors to this blog on Monday (Avg is around 150)

I wanted to first walk you through exactly what I did during the day.

First, over the weekend I set up HootSuite to tweet a link to a new post/article every 5 mins, starting at 7am, and ending at 9am.  At 8am, I linked to yesterday’s post for the first time.  I linked to yesterday’s post a total of 5 times yesterday, starting at 8am, then every 3 hours, ending at 8pm.

So as far as sharing links, on Monday I shared a total of 36 links, 6 were my own, 30 were other sites.  So that’s a 5:1 ratio of other people’s links to my own.

I left a total of 182 tweets on Monday, and for reference, I left 711 tweets in all of April.

Now let’s look at the actual results:

For new followers, the goal was 100, and I actually got 75.  That’s not bad and well above my avg, but still missed the mark.  I think the discussions that I was engaged in throughout the day probably played a role in helping get me followers, although the links at the beginning of the day helped as well.

The second goal was to get 75 retweets of Monday’s post.  I actually got 85 RTs.  I decided to link to Monday’s post 5 times during the day in order to drive more RTs.  I think this was effective in the morning and afternoon, but seemed to be less effective at 5pm and 8pm.  Tomorrow I am only going to link to Tuesday’s post 4 times, at 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 8pm.  I’m thinking that 2-4 times per day is probably the right range for linking to your new posts.

The third goal was 5 new email subscribers, and I actually got 5 new subscribers.  I did two things to try to encourage new email subscribers.  The first is I moved the email subscription form to the top of the blog on the first sidebar.  The second thing I did was ask readers that found the post to please subscribe, either by email or reader, and linked to the Feedburner reader subscription form.

The final goal was 300 visitors to the site on Monday, and there were actually 716 visitors, which was well over double the goal.  I was a bit surprised by how high the traffic was.  However, I wanted to show you the hourly traffic to point out two things:

First, notice that the 5 spikes in traffic came during hours that I linked to the ‘How I got 20,000 followers on Twitter’ post.  That’s understandable.

Second, notice that each spike is followed by a sharp drop-off in traffic immediately after.  But also notice that the drop-offs are much more pronounced after the 3rd, 4th and 5th times I link to the post.

Also notice that the traffic jumps from 6am to 7am.  At 7am is when I started sending links to Twitter via HootSuite, and did so every 5 mins till it stopped at 9am.  So the fact that traffic jumped a bit BEFORE I started linking to the ‘How I got 20K followers’ posts at 8am suggests that simply linking to OTHER people’s posts was actually driving traffic back to MY blog.

And from around 11am-3pm I was interacting with other people on Twitter.  This corresponds with the above graph and the sudden traffic drop-off that you see from 4pm through the end of the day when I wasn’t interacting very much.  Minus the two spikes at 5pm and 8pm from my tweeting links to the ‘How I got 20K followers’ post.

So ALL of this suggests that three actions drove traffic back to this blog yesterday:

1 – Linking to the ‘How I got 20K followers’ post five times.

2 – Linking to other people’s posts a total of 30 times.

3 – Participating in conversations on Twitter.

The first is obvious, but I think the second two are very interesting because by directly promoting others and interacting with others, it seems I was also giving people the incentive to check out my site.

But I think the biggest lesson here is to track and test your social media efforts constantly.  Even with this experiment, I will need to test further to  get a better idea of exactly what happened. And it remains to be seen how much of a cumulative affect spending this much time on Twitter EVERY day, could have. I got great results from yesterday’s experiment, but I probably invested 5-6 hours into it. That’s a big chunk of time to invest even every weekday, and the results would need to be pretty significant to justify the time investment, I think.

BTW if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent to your reader for free! Or if you would rather have posts emailed to you, please enter your email in the Feedburner email form above. I will never share your email with anyone! Thank you!

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How I got 20,000 followers on Twitter

Last week I hit a milestone on Twitter, reaching 20,000 followers.  Plenty of people, myself included, have said that your follower number isn’t as important as it’s made out to be.  I think the term ‘follower’ implies that 20,000 people are actively attempting to engage with me.  In reality, I would guess it’s only a small fraction, possibly as low as 1%.

But I know many people on Twitter want more followers, so I decided to share what I’ve learned in the last 3 years of using the site:

1 – Be helpful.  I use Twitter primarily as a tool to connect with others.  As such, I am always looking for ways to share something of value with others.  Twitter, most than any other social media tool I use, works amazingly well as a networking tool, and that’s primarily how I use it.

Thing of it this way; what if you were at an offline networking event in a room of 100 potential employers.  What if you could show everyone in that room one thing that would make them more productive the next day?  At the very least, you would suddenly have 100 potential employers telling each other about what a great guy/gal you were for helping them.

But what’s more powerful than that, you wouldn’t have to go around the room promoting yourself to everyone, they would be telling each other about you.

Sidenote: I swear as I typed that out I switched to Tweetdeck to check my replies, and this one just came in on Twitter:

2 – Connect with people that want to connect with you.  I am continually refining and changing how I use Twitter.  Currently, I place a premium on following anyone that either RTs or replies to me.  Because they are engaging in the type of behavior that I want to ‘reward’.  I want to interact and engage with as many people as possible on Twitter, so when people are trying to connect with me, I want to encourage that.

3 – Introduce people of value to your network.  One of the things I love to do is meet interesting people and help them connect with the people I already know.  One reason is because I am appreciative for this person, and another is that I know my network will value from their insights, so it’s also a way to say ‘thanks’ to my existing network.

4 – Help people get started.  I *love* helping people get their feet wet either with Twitter, or blogging, or social media in general.  More than once I’ve had someone tell me they were grateful for my trying to help them, that others just ‘told me I was doing it wrong’.  We need to remember that we have all been newbies at one time, and if you help someone take their first steps, they will be even more grateful down the road.

5 – Give back to your network.  Look for ways to show your network that you appreciate and value them.  For me, #blogchat is a good example of this.  I try to use #blogchat as a tool to help others become better personal/professional/business bloggers.

6 – Promote others.  Complete no-brainer.  As I write this post, HootSuite is sending a tweet every 5 mins with links to posts that I picked over the weekend that I thought my network would value.  My network is then RTing these posts to THEIR networks, and when I publish this post in a few minutes, it’s probably going to be RTed a few more times by the people that saw me link to their posts, and my network, which is (hopefully) appreciative of the great links I have been sharing with them this morning.

The upshot of all this is obviously, I use Twitter as a way to help others.  But there still needs to be a financial gain for me as a consultant, or else this is all a hobby.

Last year I made more income on a yearly basis than I have in my life, and roughly 50% of that income came from sources that I connected with via Twitter.  Within the last 12 hours I have received both work and speaking invitations from people via Twitter.

As with most areas of social media, Twitter is a great way to make things happen indirectly.  Help others and create something of value for your network, and your network will attempt to return the favor.  At least that’s how it’s worked for me.

Those are my tips for getting more followers on Twitter.  What’s working for you?

PS: I thought I should clarify the timeline for how I reached 20,000.  Simply to make the point that it took me a long time.

As of the fall of 2007, I had about 100 followers.  I started really ramping up my Twitter usage in December of 2007, and by March of 2008 I had about 500 followers.

I had almost 7,000 followers by March of 2009, and am at 20K now.  I add about 20-50 followers a day, on average.

BTW if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you can have posts from this blog sent to your reader for free!  Or if you would rather have posts emailed to you, please enter your email in the Feedburner email form above.  I will never share your email with anyone!  Thank you!

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The introvert’s guide to speaking

I wrote a bit about this in the last post at The Viral Garden but the first social media event I ever spoke at was SXSW in 2008.

Think about that for a moment; Here I am, an introvert that hasn’t spoken in a public setting for 5 years previously, and I am making my social media speaking debut at the Super Bowl of ‘social media’ conferences. I was scared to death, and the funny thing is, if this had been a smaller event, I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. But since it was SXSW it was ‘too big’ to ignore. I knew that being able to say I spoke at SXSW was too important to not have on my ‘speaking’ resume.

So I bit the bullet, and did it anyway. Now 2 years later, I have gone from being an introvert that’s scared to death of speaking publicly, to an introvert that actually LOVES it. For any introverts out there that want to start speaking, here’s what I learned to make me more comfortable with the process:

During the creation process:

1 – KNOW your material, do NOT memorize it. Extroverts are just naturally chatty people, right? They are more comfortable ad-libing and making ‘small talk’, it seems. I think we introverts want to more carefully plan out our presentations, so we know exactly what to say.

But the big problem with that approach is that we can come off VERY stiff, and look as if we are reciting to the audience. Nothing turns off an audience quicker than a speaker that’s disengaged.

So here’s what I do. When I have created a deck and am ready to start rehearsing my presentation, I will carefully script out my session, so I know exactly what I want to say, and when I want to say it. I’ll do this about 5 times so I have pretty much memorized the material, and the key points I want to make.

At this point, I throw the script away. And I keep rehearsing the presentation without it. I also break up the flow, if I have 5 points I have been rehearsing in order, I’ll now do them in a different order, just to force myself to break away from the script and actually TALK about the points I want to make, instead of reciting them. I’ll even be in the middle of rehearsing a point and will cut myself off as if someone asked a question, then after a minute or so I’ll try to remember where I was and go back.

In the end you want your presentation to be a conversation with the audience. You want to KNOW the material. Because something will ALWAYS happen to throw you off base. If you KNOW the material, you can get back on track, but if you don’t, then you’re in trouble.

2 – Tell stories. Everyone has case studies, and everyone has numbers that back up the points they are trying to make. Big deal. What you want to do is weave those case studies and numbers into a story. A story that is entertaining, but that also shows the attendees why and how Company X used social media, and gives them actionable takeaways for how they can take what Company X learned, and apply it to their own situation.

When you arrive at the event:

3 – Find the room where you will be presenting, and get a feel for the layout. Walk around the room. Make sure you know where everything is, where your laptop will be setup, where all the jacks are. Will you have a mic, will it be a clip-on or standalone? Walk around the room. Sit in some of the chairs and make sure the audience can see you from everywhere in the room. Simply familiarizing yourself with the room beforehand really helps, especially for an introverted soul 😉

And try to attend sessions in the SAME room before yours. This gives you a chance to see how other speakers do. Are there some problems with the audio/video? Watch how the audience reacts to the session and the speaker. What does the speaker do that gets their attention, what does she do that they don’t like? Incorporate what you learn into your own session and delivery.

4 – Attend any pre-show meetups/tweetups. Most conferences will have a tweetup/meetup the night before the event kicks off. This is an excellent chance for you to connect with speakers and attendees. Try to connect with the attendees, especially the ones that will be attending your session. If you meet someone that’s planning on attending, ask them what they are hoping to learn, and why they are interested in the topic. And this also gives you a way to incorporate that into your talk. Like “Now let’s talk about getting more comments on your blog. I was actually talking to Carla last nite in the lobby about her blog…:” Suddenly Carla and all her friends at her table will immediately perk up and pay attention (if they weren’t already).

5 – Get to your session at least 15 mins early, so you have time to setup everything. This gives you plenty of time to get the laptop connected, your deck ready to go, and make a last-second bathroom run. Also, make sure you have a glass of water on hand. You’re going to be talking for 30-90 mins probably, and if you’re like me, you WILL be nervous, so not having dry-mouth helps 😉

If you have any extra time before you start, what I like to do is walk around the room and introduce myself to some of the attendees and thank them for coming. Good way to connect with them, and increases the chances that they will pay attention during my session.

Oh and one extra tip, if you are SUPER nervous right before you are to speak, eat a couple of saltine crackers, it will help settle your stomach and calm down the butterflies.

During your presentation:

6 – Thank everyone for showing up and MEAN IT. When I spoke at #optsum a couple of months ago, I was a bit worried about the topic, which was Think Like a Rockstar: How to Build Fans and Community Around Your Social Media Efforts. I was afraid that it might not be what the audience (mostly property managers and apartment complex owners) was looking for, and was a bit worried about how well it would be received.

Somewhat to my shock, the session was literally standing room only, and we were still bringing in chairs to accommodate everyone 5 mins into the session. I was beyond grateful for the turnout, especially considering the caliber of the other speakers and sessions at that time slot, and made sure everyone knew how appreciative I was.

7 – Let the audience know exactly what’s coming. Tell them exactly what you will be talking about, the exact order of the talk, and tell them how they can get involved. Most sessions have a talk, then questions at the end. I generally encourage the audience to ask questions as they think of them, rather than waiting for them to wait till the end, when they might forget the question. But if you do this, you need to be mindful if the question-asking is cutting into presentation time. If you realize that after the 5th of 23 slides that you’ve just spent 10 mins answering questions, then you probably need to tell the audience that you need to move on at that point.

8 – Move around. At one of the first events I spoke at, the speakers were provided a podium up on stage, above the crowd, with lights shining down on them. No matter what they were talking about, having them chained to that podium having to stand in one spot behind a microphone made the session seem less interesting. The audience seemed less interested as well, I think the unintentional message that the format sent was ‘this is a lecture’.

When it came time for my talk, I told the organizer ‘You’ve got to mic me up, I can’t stay up there’. So I was the first speaker that didn’t present from a podium on stage. I was down eye-level with the audience, away from the lights, and interacting with the audience. The guy that was in charge of videotaping the sessions didn’t like it, but by simply being ‘ground-level’, the audience perked up. They paid attention, and that made them more engaged.

One thing I also like to do is get to the CENTER of the room. I’m sorry, but I just hate staying in front of a group for an hour. Chris Brogan had a great point one time about the difference between an audience and a community is the way the chairs face. I want to spend some time in the middle, interacting with people where they are.

9 – Realize that you WILL screw up, and likely no one will notice. Remember my first point about knowing your material, and not memorizing it? Here’s an example where I screwed that up. In preparing to moderate that first session at SXSW in 2008, I made a COMPLETE script of what I would say to each panelist. I knew the exact questions to ask, etc. I even made two scripts, one was detailed, and the other was a ‘loose’ script to keep me on track. I kept the detailed one to my left and the loose one to my right.

So as our session started, I set the groundwork for what we would be talking about, and the format of the session, closely following my very detailed notes. All was going off without a hitch.

Then I moved to introducing the panelists, and went back to my detailed list, and carefully started reading off who each panelist was. Then….it happened. I read the bio for one of the panelists off my detailed list, and looked up at the crowd to tell them about the panelist. Then when I looked back down…..I looked at the ‘loose’ script, instead of the ‘detailed’ one. I was expecting to see the detailed bio for Mario that I could read off, and instead I saw ‘Introduce Mario’.

At this point, I was completely confused, and after what seemed like 20 years (in actuality it was probably a couple of seconds), I realized I had stopped talking, and mild (read: OH SHIT!!!!) panic set in. After another second or two of literally being scared to death, I finally found my place in the script, and went on. The rest of the session went off without a hitch.

But the FIRST thing I did as soon as the session ended was apologize to my fellow panelists for the disaster I made during introductions with that seemingly 5 min pregnant pause. They had no idea what I was talking about. So I assumed they were just being nice, so I found a few people that attended the session and asked them about it, and they didn’t know what I was talking about either.

So in reality, I thought I had totally ruined the session 2 mins into it, over an ‘error’ that apparently no one noticed but me. That’s usually the way it goes when you are speaking, and I think introverts take even minor mistakes much more seriously than extroverted speakers. But the reality is, most people won’t even notice them.

10 – Engage with the people that are engaged with you. Another big advantage to knowing your material is that you can talk about it, and while you are, you can connect with the audience. I spend time looking around the room as I am speaking to see who I am connecting with. The woman at the front left table that nods along when I make a point. The guy in the middle right table that laughs when I tell a joke. If they are paying attention to me, I am paying attention to them. And they see this, and that makes them more interested in what I am saying.

11 – Close the presentation by thanking the audience for coming (and mean it), then tell them how to get in touch with you. This is where you can pimp yourself and your site. Make sure the audience understands that you want the session to be the START of a connection between you and them, not the end. Encourage them to email you if they have any questions, and I always give out my Twitter name and tell the attendees to please follow me, and I will follow them back.

12 – Let the audience ask questions. Even if it means you cut your presentation short, the audience deserves to ask you questions. And this is a little trick I picked up (actually it’s more about being considerate of your audience), but if someone in the BACK of the room asks you a question, walk TO that person and answer them. First, this keeps them from having to shout at you, and two, it means you don’t have to shout your answer back at them. Also, it makes other audience members around her more likely to ask you a question as well.

Doing things like this and thanking the audience for coming might seem trite, but by doing this you are showing the audience that you care about them, and are genuinely grateful that they came. This makes them far more likely to pay attention to you, and be interested in both you AND what you have to say. Simple common courtesy goes a long way.

After the event:

13 – Stay connected. One of the first things I will do is check feedback on Twitter. I will thank those that leave feedback, and pay close attention to what they are saying. Which points resonated with them. Did I do something that someone didn’t like? Did a particular story really hit home for attendees?

But the bottom line is that I am living proof that introverts can not only have successful speaking careers, but that you can learn to ENJOY it. Seriously if you had told me in high school and college that I would love speaking, I would have thought you were insane. But I really do, and I think you can as well. Fellow introverts, what tips for speaking do you have?

Pic via Jeremiah

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Forget optimizing for Google’s search engine, are you optimized for MY search engine?

When I travel I am obsessive about having all my paperwork and directions in place beforehand.  I even print out two copies of my boarding passes.  So last fall when I was traveling to Chicago to speak at the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer, I knew exactly what to do.  Fly into Chicago, leave the airport, go across the street to the shuttles, find the one for Hyatt, and they would whisk me off to my hotel.  No problem.

I land, leave the airport, find the Hyatt shuttle, get on board and then get the bad news.  Apparently there are TWO Hyatts in the area, and I don’t know which one I need!

So I fire up Social Scope on my Bold and ask my buddies on Twitter if anyone knows which Hyatt is hosting the Mixer.  A few friends are kind enough to tweet me replies that tell me which one it is.  Awesome!

Then someone sends me a DM with the name of the Hyatt I need, as well as its address and phone number!  And the phone number shows up as a link I can click on and dial directly from my phone.

Whoa.

As valuable a tool as Google’s search engine is, it would be impossible for it to do a better job of getting me the information I needed right then, than my network on Twitter.  This is the new reality for businesses that are attempting to reach a customer base that is increasingly hyper-connected, and in turn utilizing those connections to turn inward for its information needs.

Our search engine is no longer Google, it’s our own social networks.

So if you’re a business that’s invested in SEO, how can you connect with your customers if they are increasingly turning to each other instead of a search engine?  Here’s some ideas:

1 – Understand WHY we use social search over search engines.  For the most part, we turn to our networks when we want real-time information.  Help, advice, etc.  For example, if I’m about to go see a movie, I might tweet my followers to ask them if Iron Man 2 lived up to the hype or not.  Or if I’m at an event, I might look for the event’s #hashtag on Twitter of Facebook page to see who’s attending and maybe where everyone is headed after the days sessions are over.

What can you do? Help people find you.  If you’re planning an event, make sure you create a hashtag for the event and communicate that early on to everyone.  Because if you don’t, the attendees will pick their own, and it might not be the one you want.  Publicize your social sites at your business and post new information about your products and events at these sites.

2 – Be accessible and be responsive.  If your customers are connecting via social media, then you should be too.  But ‘being there’ isn’t enough, you have to find me.  If I mention you are your competitor, you need to be aware of that conversation, and jump in if you can.  Now that doesn’t mean you reply to every SINGLE brand mention, but if I mention your company and it’s obvious I am asking a question or wondering about something, there’s an invitation for you to reply and give me the information I am looking for.  At least.

What can you do?  Be aware, and be engaged.  Closely monitor online chatter about your brand, especially among the more popular social sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Interact where you can, but understand that there’s sometimes a fine line between being helpful, and being a pest.  View every brand mention as a chance to help, not to sell.

3 – Make it mobile.  As smartphones become cheaper and mobile devices like the iPad and Touch become more popular, more and more people will have a device with them that can send and receive data at all times.  And this ties back into the need to turn to our social networks for real-time information.  I may not have my laptop with me (or even if I do, there might not be an available wifi connection), but if I have my Bold with me, I have access to my social network, and can get information from them.  Or if I have an app, like say the Yelp app on my Bold, then I can use it to get restaurant reviews right from my phone.

What can you do?  Give me the ability to access your information on mobile devices.  Or give me information that I will need to have with me if I am out and about.  A good example of this could be a local news station that provides a smartphone app that will alert me via my phone when there’s severe weather in my area.  Or that will text me when there’s a weather warning in its viewing area.

4 – Have FUN with it!  Most of you have probably heard of FourSquare, the service that lets you communicate to your network where you are at any given time.  Jimmy Choo used FourSquare last month in London to have a real-time treasure hunt.  They had a pair of shoes ‘check in’ at various locations across the city, moving every few minutes.  The first person to ‘catch’ the shoes at their current location, won them!  Great example of taking an innovative approach to social media marketing, but also doing so in a way that entertains and excites customers!

What can you do?  Think about the ways that customers are using social media, and tap into the functionality of the tools when crafting your social media marketing.  Keeping with the location-based theme, you could do similar treasure hunts but instead of using FourSquare, you could use Flickr, posting different pictures of the location where the item is hidden.  Or tweet clues to where the prize is hidden.

What about you?  Have you noticed that you are turning to your social networks more for information instead of Google?  If companies have connected to you via your networks, how did they do so?

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Five non-bloggy ways to showcase your smarts via social media

One of the most popular reasons for using a blog as a professional or business tool, is to establish you or your company’s expertise.  A blog is perfectly suited as a place to create a knowledge base of content that lets others know just how smart and qualified you are.

But what if we take blogs out of the equation?  What other tools/ways could you establish your expertise via social media?  Here’s some ideas:

1 – Commenting on items shared in Google Reader.  Lately I am spending a LOT of time with Google Reader.  Specifically, I am spending more time checking out the items that are shared by the people I subscribe to in Reader.  Every day I read dozens of interesting and informative articles and posts from my friends.

But as I was reading these the other day, I noticed that only a small fraction of them had comments.  When you leave a comment on an item sharedin Reader, then that comment will be seen on the post/article by all the people that are following you.  For example, I have around 130 people following me on Reader.  If you see an item I shared, and then comment on it, that means that your comment can then be seen by those 130 people.  Or if the item is shared by more than one person, you can choose which ‘version’ you want to comment on.  Like if Chris Brogan shares the same item I do and has more followers than I do, comment on the version he shared!

This is a great way to expose yourself to a new audience!  Here’s a screenshot of a comment I left on a recent entry by Jay Baer.

2 – Answering questions on LinkedIn’s Q&A.  This not only helps establish your expertise BUT it also exposes you to a new audience.  From my experience, the people that are active on LinkedIn, usually are a bit different from the people that are active on Twitter or Facebook.  So if I go to LinkedIn, I’m not bumping into the same friends I see on Twitter and Facebook.  Another great thing about answering questions on LinkedIn is that it gives the person that asked the question  the ability to rate your answer as a good or best answer, and it gives them a chance to contact you directly.

For every 10 questions I answer on LinkedIn, I get 1 or 2 replies directly from the person that asked the question.  Think about that, if you answered 10 questions from 10 potential customers/clients, you could have 10-20% of them contact you directly about your answer.  That’s not too shabby!

3 – Participating in Twitter Chats.  Oh you knew this was coming!  Seriously, I think Twitter chats are an amazing networking tool, and very underutilized as such.  Now there are well over 100 chats, so there’s bound to be a few topics that interest you.  Pick some that interest you, and share your ideas.  Make sure you let chat participants know how to get in touch with you, and most chats now set aside a time so you can introduce yourself to the other participants.  And make sure you check out #blogchat every Sunday nite!

4 – Comment on industry sites and blogs.  This is a great way to get exposure, and again, with the ‘right people’.  For example, people that work at agencies are going to be reading stories on Ad Age’s site, right?  So if you wanted to work for an ad agency, leaving thoughtful and informative comments on the same entries that these agencies will be reading and sharing, can only help you get noticed, right?

And if it doesn’t help you get a job, who knows, it could help you get a writing gig!  This is exactly how I got my blogging career underway, I was active on a recruiter’s message board, that recruiter decided to start a blog, and invited me to be one of the founding writers!  The same thing could happen to you!

5 – Actively participate on a company’s Facebook page.  Here is the Marketing Profs’ page on Facebook.  If you were an active member of that page, leaving wall posts, interacting with other members, it could have several advantages.  First, it would be a way to establish your expertise.  Second, Marketing Profs is constantly having events, so it becomes a networking tool with attendees.  And three, Marketing Profs is constantly looking for writers, so by demonstrating your ability to write well, you can not only connect with potential clients/customers, you just might get the chance to do some writing for Marketing Profs!

You can extend this to participating on board for industries, or events, or companies you want to work for.  Anyone that you’re trying to connect with, and any group you’re trying to get the attention of.

Those are just a few ideas, but what has worked for you besides blogging?  What are some unusual ways that you are leveraging other social media tools to connect with others and share your smartitude?

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Social Media is not an ‘all or nothing’ proposition

We’ve all seen the studies and have heard the hype.  Social media is taking over the world and every company will have to have a full-blown social media strategy by 2011 (originally it was 2008, then 2009, then 2010…), or they will be obsolete and left behind.

Give me a break.

Right now CEOs and business owners all across the country, no all across the world, are wringing their hands about social media.  Because they don’t understand it, but are being bombarded with messages that claim they HAVE to understand it in order to succeed in the future.  These are people that like carefully crafted plans with predictable outcomes, yet we are telling them to get moving NOW with a set of tools that are completely new to them.  AND on top of that, we are telling them to use these completely new (to them) tools to do something that they likely aren’t comfortable doing; communicating directly with their customers.

So the end result is that we are scaring these companies into standing still.  They want to wait until they can use social media on terms that they are comfortable with.  Or many are thinking/hoping that social media is ‘all a fad’ and will ‘go away’ if they wait long enough.

To these companies, I apologize.  It’s unfair for us to ask you to dive headlong into social media like this.  We are asking you to run, no to sprint, before you can walk.

Here’s the deal; Yes, social media is a big deal.  Yes, you need to be aware of how/if your customers are using social tools to connect online and share ideas.  No, you probably won’t be out of business in 12 months if you keep ignoring social media.

So instead of worrying about how you can go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds, let’s do something different.  Let’s make a deal: I agree not to push you to jump into social media full speed ahead without any idea/plan other than ‘just do it!”  And you agree to go at your own pace, BUT….to keep moving forward.

That doesn’t mean that we’ll have a blog up and running for your company in a week.  But what that does mean is that you’ll need to start making yourself familiar with social media, and how your customers are using these tools.  Start monitoring social media for company mentions, something as simple as Google Blog Search can help here.  See who is talking about you.  See who is talking about your competitors.  See what they are saying, and notice the tools they are using.

The bottom line is, learn at your own pace.  If it takes you six weeks or six months to start to grasp what social media is about, that’s ok.  If you have a boss that’s skeptical about social media, or know someone that owns a business that’s worried about social media, please share this post with them.

Moving forward is what counts, and it definitely beats being too scared to move.

Pic via Flickr user Bouzafr

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Don’t blame the blog if you are the idiot

This is one of those classic ‘You can learn from me being a dumbass’ posts.

I launched this site/blog almost a year ago because I wanted to get serious about marketing my business and services.  Also, I wanted to use this site as well as all of my social media interactions to make people aware of who I am, and what I do.

And for the most part, it’s been very successful.  Referrals and simple contacts from potential clients come in regularly now, where a year or so ago, they were infrequent at times.  As part of this, I’ve learned to do a better job of promoting myself, there’s now information about who I am and what I do, and even a price stuck here and there.  I’ll admit that I was once in the ‘it’s a sin to promote yourself via social media’ camp, but luckily, I got past that.

Still, one of the things that’s been nagging me for months is that I really don’t have a good handle on how much business this blog is DIRECTLY bringing me.  So I’m left to wonder how much business it is INdirectly helping me get.  I know it is, as are my efforts on Twitter and other places, but I don’t know how MUCH.

Then, as if God decided to take pity on me and reach down and slap me upside the head, I realized something.  I have no products available for sale DIRECTLY on this site.  You can email me from here, you can fill out a contact form, hell you can even call me from here.  But if you come here and are ready to buy something RIGHT NOW, you can’t.  The best you can do is contact me about my services, then we can go from there.  But I don’t have any set products at set prices that you can purchase HERE.

So then I started thinking if there were any of my services that I could let customers buy directly from the blog.  I thought of a couple, and then I started thinking about other types of products in other forms that I could sell here.  Then the wheels really started turning, and I started thinking about once I create a few products, then I could have giveaways involving the products, maybe start awarding a ‘Commenter of the Week’, or a ‘Reader of the Month’, or who knows.

But this all started because I realized that I was asking my blog to solve a problem (generate sales directly), without giving it the ability to do so.  So that’s my plan for the next couple of weeks, to investigate ways that I can start selling products directly from this blog.

If you are already selling products directly from your blog, I’d love to hear about how it’s going for you.  Please leave a comment with your story, and please link to your blog so we can check it out for ourselves!

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Five common (business) blogging problems and how to fix them

Yesterday we looked at fixing five common problems with personal blogs.  Today, let’s tackle five common problems with business blogs:

1 – What information should I have on my blog?

First, there’s contact information.  If you have a retail location, you should have the address.  If you’re a franchise, a locator.  If your business is online, you should have links to your website.

Second, you should have pictures of your bloggers, preferrably on the FRONT of the blog, or a small pic of the blogger with each post they write.

Finally, you should have a way for me to contact you.  The more information you can include here, the better.  A stale contact form is the bare minimum.  Think phone numbers, emails, Twitter handles.  Give me as many options as possible.

2 – Our company blog has no sense or direction, how do we get it on track?

Start with WHY you are blogging?  What are you trying to accomplish via the blog?  Are you trying to provide CS to customers?  Are you trying to establish your company’s expertise in your industry?  Are you trying to sell stuff?  Too many companies just decide to launch a blog, without a plan to guide their efforts.  Get that plan in place, then the direction will come from the goal you are trying to reach.

3 – Ok, what the hell should we blog about?  We need to sell stuff for the blog to be a success, but I keep reading that you can’t promote yourself on your blog!  Help!

First, you CAN promote your company via your blog.  The success is greatly dependent on the CONTEXT of that promotion.  The context greatly shapes the effectiveness of the content, as well.

In general, when it comes to creating content on your blog, focus on the ‘bigger idea’ that makes your content more valuable and relevant.  Don’t focus exclusively on your products, but WHY people or companies buy your stuff.  What do THEY get from your product?  Focus your content on THAT.  If you sell cameras, blog about photography, and try to teach your customers to be better photographers.  If you sell spices, blog about how your customers can use those spices to become better cooks.

Don’t craft your content as being ‘here by our stuff’, but rather write content that will help/inform/educate your customers and in the CONTEXT of that content, you can promote your products.

Remember that blogs are a great tool for making things happen indirectly.  Craft your content so that it INdirectly promotes your products, and it will resonate with your customers.

4 – Ok it hasn’t happened yet, but I am scared to death that a customer is going to leave a comment saying we suck.  How should we handle negative comments?

This is probably the biggest concern that companies have about blogging.  What if customers use the blog as a tool to slam the company?

First, if a customer leaves a negative comment on or OFF your blog, follow these steps:

1 – Be RESPECTFUL of the commenter, THANK them for reaching out to you and LISTEN to what they are saying.

2 – Address their issue, and let them know what the next step YOU will take to resolve it will be.  If possible, try to move the communication OFF the blog.  Have someone contact them OFF the blog.

3 – Invite other customers to leave their feedback, and again thank those that do.  Give them ways to get in touch with you, and clearly identify who you are, and your position/relationship to the company.

Do NOT get angry with the commenter, or attack them.  You have to understand that when a customer leaves a negative comment about your company, the exchange between you and that person isn’t the most important thing happening here.  How EVERYONE ELSE views that interaction is what counts.  If the commenter is a jackass and you lose your temper, your company will STILL look bad to everyone that views the exchange.

I have written some other posts on handling negative comments.

5 – We need more comments, how do we get them?

Here’s some ideas for getting more comments:

1 – If you moderate comments, approve them as quickly as possible. This is a simple courtesy to your readers that shows them that you value their input.

2 – Post regularly. This encourages visitors to become readers, and readers are far more likely to leave comments than visitors that have found your blog for the first time.

3 – Reply to comments from your readers! Another no-brainer, but so many companies overlook this. It shows your readers that you are actually paying attention to their comments, and want to hear what they have to say. And the more comments a post has, the more likely readers are to check out the comments.

4 – Read the blogs of your regular commenters, and comment on THEIR blog as much as possible. This is a wonderful way to build community for your blog, and it’s another way to show your readers that you value their input. Then after you’ve discovered these wonderful blogs that your readers have, why not add a link to them on YOUR blog’s sidebar?

5 – Add a “window” to the comments. Let’s say you leave a post, and Laura leaves an absolutely amazing comment. Almost immediately, other readers start commenting on Laura’s comment! So a great way to ‘thank’ Laura for that comment, and to let your readers know about it, is to add her comment to the bottom of your post! Just add at the bottom of the post ‘Laura says in the comments’, and then Laura’s comment. And remember to ‘thank’ Laura, by also linking to her blog when you add her comment to your post! I do this by adding the blog link to the person’s name. You get to thank a reader for a great comment, and also let your other readers know about the party that’s happening in the comments to that post!

6 – Ask your readers for their comments!  Not just their opinions, but ask them to please comment.  However, note that this doesn’t work as well if you aren’t already replying to comments and commenting/linking to the blogs of your regular commenters.

There’s five common business blogging problems, and some tips for fixing them.  Which ones did I miss that you need help with?

Five common (business) blogging problems, and how to fix them