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Most ReTweeted

April 10, 2009 by Jim Connolly

I received a very interesting email on Tuesday, which will be of interest to ANYONE who is using Twitter as a way to market their business, but not getting the kind of results they need.

First off, for those of you who do not already know, I used to be the 3rd most followed person on Twitter in England and one of the world’s top 50 most followed people. As a marketing professional, I quickly saw the total lack of value in having such a massive, yet untargeted network and got my Twitter account reset to zero! After this, I started achieving amazing marketing results from Twitter – In total, I have now generated around £50,000 in new business, via contacts I made on Twitter – using the service for an hour or two a week.

Bob’s Twitter problem

Bob, not his real name, wrote to ask me for some advice. He said that he spends around 3 hours each day on Twitter and that he has over 50,000 ‘followers’ – BUT that he has nothing to show for it; other than regularly appearing on various lists as one of the most ‘retweeted’ people that day. Bob wanted to know how to transform what he referred to as “all this popularity” into income for his small design business!

Twitter is NOT the end game – It’s just a tool

Many people, who start off using Twitter as a way to market their business and make new contacts, end up quickly forgetting this and instead, become obsessed with attracting as many followers as possible.  Building a large following on Twitter then becomes their end game – instead of building their business with the help of Twitter.

I took a look at Bob’s Tweets and they are mainly just him sharing other people’s favourite links.  As a result, his ‘following’ is untargeted.  He explained in his email that his ideal follower is the owner of a small business.  As far as he knows, very few of his followers are in that position.  Those who are, are usually following lots of other designers.  He went on to explain that the additional traffic his website gets because of his Twitter use, has been of zero value to him. No sales, no new clients and no referrals.

100 followers and 2 new clients in a month

Yesterday afternoon, I was speaking with a client of mine, who’s an Accountant.  He has only been using Twitter for a month, (around an hour or two in total spent Twittering) – YET he has already attracted 2 new clients directly via Twitter, using the same approach as me!

In February, I made over £7,500 from a project I undertook, for a contact I met on Twitter.  In total, I have made in excess of £50,000 via contacts I have made via Twitter.  I achieved this, even though I only invest around 20 minutes using Twitter, 3 or 4 days a week.

How come?

Professionally marketed businesses achieve great marketing results because they use an effective marketing strategy to develop their business.  The other 99% of small businesses ‘play it by ear.’  Most marketing carried out by small businesses is undertaken simply because it’s free / low cost – like email marketing, blogging or using Twitter, FaceBook or LinkedIn etc.

These businesses will send out emails, purely because they have a ‘list’ of names and it’s free to send these messages.  They will write a blog, without a clear idea of exactly what they are seeking to achieve. I had a comment on this blog from a reader, who has been blogging for 5 years, and has yet to acquire a single client through his blog!

Understand Twitter’s limitations

I have mentioned a few times already, that I have generated tens of thousands of pounds in business from people I MET on Twitter. The key word here is MET – I met them on Twitter – but I did not get to know them or try and market to them via Twitter. Twitter was exclusively used as a method to meet interesting people.

Twitter is a very poor tool, if you want to develop a relationship with someone.  Because of this, I make it super-easy for people to email or call me.  I advise my clients to do the same.  The contact page of this blog, for example, has my full contact details; postal address, phone number and email.  THAT’S where I ‘connect’ with the people I ‘meet’ via Twitter – NOT via Direct Messages!

Twitter is a great place to meet, but once you have met, if there’s any synergy between you and your new contact – GET THE HECK OUT OF TWITTER AND START TALKING!

For marketing, Twitter is NOT about numbers

Bob spends 3 hours a day on Twitter, ReTweeting other people’s links and communicating with a few dozen ‘regulars.’  That’s why his business is seeing no return for all his efforts.

From a business perspective, it’s far more profitable to have a smaller Twitter following, made up of people with a genuine interest in your core business.  These can either be prospective clients or prospective ‘introducer’s’ – People, who will recommend you to their contacts.

When I had tens of thousands of followers and followed over 20,000 people back, I was wasting a stack of time dealing with messages and direct messages from people, who had zero interest in me or my business.  They just wanted me to ReTweet links to their website, ask people to follow them or whatever, but they were really just sucking hours of my time each week, with no return on my part.  I occasionally got 600 direct messages in a single day!

Quality is key – not quantity.  Today, I have 2000 followers and I follow around 80 people.  However, I have spoken to or met way over 100 of the people who follow me. Add those I have sent / received mail from and that figure is closer to 1000.  NONE of these relationships have been built on Twitter.

Conclusion

You would not dream of meeting someone at a networking event, who was interested in your services, and then refuse to follow that up with a call or a meeting would you?  Just because you meet that same person via Twitter, the rules stay the same!

In my experience, the most profitable way for a small business to use Twitter as a marketing tool, is to use it as a way to connect with targeted people.  Once you have connected, if there seems to be a synergy, treat them like ANY other business contact and talk to them.  Show them that they are worth more than 140 characters to you.

Also, focus on quality and not quantity.  If you want to attract people with a potential need for your products or services, keep your Tweets on topic as often as you can.  I have people who I study on Twitter, like Bob the designer, who make it impossible to easily find out what they do for a living, based on their Tweets.

Your profile might say what you do and link to your website or blog, but remember; if your Tweets do not get people interested enough, they won’t check your profile out!

Filed Under: Business Development, Social media marketing Tagged With: followers, Marketing, micro blogging, social media marketing, Twitter

It’s remarkable

March 11, 2009 by Jim Connolly

Earlier this week, I was writing an article for my newsletter; all about how to generate valuable, word of mouth recommendations and have the marketplace saying great things about you.  I was writing the article, whilst sat in the lounge of a London hotel, where I had been staying for a couple of days.

Word of mouth marketing

word of mouthWhilst writing article, a fellow guest asked me if I knew where there was a power supply, so he could plug in his laptop.  I told him that I didn’t, because I was using a netbook, which has around 7 hours battery life.

I explained how I charge it in the morning and that I don’t need a power source for the rest of the day.  After looking at the machine for 5 minutes and asking a few questions, he asked me for the model number, which I gave him (it’s a Samsung NC10) and promptly got his office to order him one!

It struck me afterwards, that I must have recommended the NC10 to around 20 people, since getting it just over a week ago.  This is a great example of the power of word of mouth!  By the way, I have no association with Samsung or anyone who sells their products. The reason I have told so many people about the NC10, is that I know how valuable that amazing battery life is to people like me; who often work away from their office and not always within reach of a power pocket.

Remarkable

It also struck me that in the 12 months I have owned my other laptop, I have never recommended it to anyone!  My other laptop is bigger, faster and does everything really well.  However, unlike the Samsung, with its amazing battery life, the other machine doesn’t do any one thing that is REMARKABLE.

‘Remarkable‘ is the key word here. People will only remark on you, your product or your business if you are remark-able in some way!

Just like my older laptop, which does everything really well, a business needs to offer more than a good quality service if it wants to attract stacks of word of mouth recommendations.  People EXPECT a business to offer a really good service, so it’s not remarkable when they get it.

That great service you offer your clients / customers is extremely valuable – it will help you to keep their custom and encourage some of them to recommend you to their friends.

However, if you want to have thousands of people or tens of thousands of people shouting your name from the rooftops, you also need to get creative and offer YOUR marketplace, YOUR version of the NC10’s amazing battery life!

Filed Under: Business Development Tagged With: recommendations, referrals, samsung nc10, word of mouth

Dear Google

November 14, 2008 by Jim Connolly

An open letter to the Google algorithm

.
Dear Google algorithm,

I see from what you have done that I have REALLY offended you.  You have reduced the amount of traffic you send here by 50%, so you must be very angry with me.

In view of this, I just want you to hear my side of the story…

I know you like to see blogs post content every single day, regardless of quality.  I know you have ‘issues’ telling great content from crap, because you are just a piece of software, and that you use how regular someone posts to a blog as a way to determine the quality of that blogs information.

You really need to understand that the Google way of deciding value seems insane to us humans!  If we used the Google quality model, a blade of grass, for example, would be of higher value than a flawless diamond. Grass is really common you see Google, but flawless diamonds are extremely rare.

I ‘could’ have written a few more posts this week, just to keep you happy Google, and I would have – only I decided to spend all my ‘blog time’, actually communicating with the people who read and comment in this blog!

Google – If you ever decide to start ranking blogs based on the quality of the writing, the quality of the comments and the number of people who actually read and comment there – we can be friends again.  There are flawless diamonds in the comments section of this blog – if only you knew!

However, whilst you continue to rank blogs based volume over quality, you can take the worthless 0.4% of traffic you generate for me and poke it up your software driven, clueless *@*!$
.

Love and hugs,

Jim Connolly

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Development Tagged With: blog content, blog marketing, google, internet marketing, marketing blog, marketing tips, search engine opitmization, search engine optimisation, SEO

WordPress.com and business blogging

September 25, 2008 by Jim Connolly

I wrote a post a while ago, saying that WordPress.com was a good place to host your business blog, if you were just starting out and wanting to ‘test the water’ as it were.

However, since then I have been emailed by a reader; who pointed out some poorly publicised, but extremely important limitations to a WordPress.com hosted business blog!

I looked into this and found 3 REALLY IMPORTANT reasons why I believe you should NOT use a WordPress.com hosted blog for your business.  Here they are:

1. WordPress.com insert ‘hidden adverts’ into your blog

Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com), inserts ‘hidden advertising’ into the blogs hosted on their servers.

Hidden?

Yes, the ads they place into your blog are hidden from you – so you can’t see what THEY are advertising to YOUR readers in YOUR company’s name! Because Automattic use Google Adwords for these ads, they could be advertisements for your competitors products or services!  This is perhaps why they feel the need to hide these adverts from their users?  Anyhow, many of their users have no idea these adverts even exist; because they will not be able to see them when they look at their own blog. The ads are only displayed to their readers!

As of last week, you can pay to have these adverts removed, the fee is currently $30 a year.  This is an improvement, as until last week you were stuck with them! However, there are two far bigger problems with hosting a business blog at wordpress.com!

2. WordPress.com won’t let you advertise anything

I have been in marketing for over 20 years and I own and run a very successful international marketing business.  I don’t know a single company, which has a commercial blog and does not use it to promote their business or market their services in some way.  The whole point of a commercial blog is commerce after all!

Although Automattic actually encourage people to host a commercial blog at WordPress.com, they forbid any form of commercial advertising!  So, if you have any desire to advertise your services in your blog; you simply can not use WordPress.com – full stop!

3. WordPress.com won’t let you link from your posts to your website

One of the major marketing benefits of having a business blog, are all the links you get from the blog to your main website.  These links can be really useful for a business blog!

For example, the newsletter button at the foot of my blog posts is a link; however, it would be BANNED from use on a wordpress.com hosted blog! Also, links from your business blog to your main website can really help with the sites Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

However, these links to your main website (what Automattic refers to as a ‘third party’ website) are forbidden on a WordPress.com hosted blog.  Their terms of service state that by making content available on your blog, you warrant that it:

“does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites

Although it is impossible to understand what they mean by ‘unwanted commercial content’ (as this is always going to a matter of opinion), the threat itself is clear.  If someone at Automattic sees that your posts link to your business website – you could have your blog suspended until it is removed!

Conclusion

Even if you pay Automattic to have their adverts removed from your blog, you are still left with a blog that:

– You cannot link from as you wish
– You cannot market advertise or promote your services on or even insert adwords
– You cannot customise fully
– You cannot advertise other people’s products or services on
– You cannot add commercially useful plugins to

A ‘free’ business blog on WordPress.com, with the ads removed, your own url added, some slight changes to its look and some extra space will cost you between $70 and $145 dollars a year.  For not much more, you can enjoy full control of a blog and (most importantly) use it to market your business; by hosting it with another provider.

I love WordPress software and the people in the wordpress.com user community are fantastic! WordPress.com servers are really reliable and very secure too.  However, if you want a commercial blog that you can advertise your services on and you want the freedom to link when and where you wish – I believe you need an analternative host.

UPDATE: Because some people are commenting here, without checking the date of the post (September 2008), I have disabled comments.

2 years later, changes to WordPress.com Terms and Conditions make it slightly more business friendly, but ultimately it is still a platform over which someone else has control.  WordPress.com these days says you CAN link from the blog to your 3rd party site (or main website) though they decide if you are OVER linking!  Any time you elect to put your time and effort into building something, which someone else can suspend or delete, you are taking a risk.  If you are happy with that risk, WordPress.com is still the best free platform out there.

Think long and hard before you build your marketing on a platform they do not control.

Jim.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Development, Copywriting, General marketing Tagged With: automattic, blog advertising, blog links, blog marketing, blogging, sales, small business, wordpress, wordpress.com, wordpress.com advertising

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marketing advice, marketing help Hi! I'm Jim Connolly and I help business owners to make more sales, boost their profits and build amazing businesses. You can find out more here.

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