Jim Connolly Marketing

Social media smoke blowers: How to stop them hurting your business

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I recently wrote a post asking you what your main marketing challenges were, so I could cover them in future posts.

One of the most common questions, was to do with the ocean of information being offered online, by people claiming to be social media experts. Today’s post is all about how to tell those with genuinely useful information, from the fakes.

Social media smoke blowers

It’s extremely easy for someone with little social media skill, to pretend they are a social media expert. All they need is a blog, a photo of them in front of a screen (looking ‘dynamic’ and preferably wearing a headset) and a few social networking tricks.

Here is a selection of what I have personally experienced from some smoke blowers:

  • I was emailed by the author of a book on how to make money on Facebook, who didn’t know what to do as he’d sold fewer than 100 copies. This social media marketing expert had no idea how to market his book, via social media or anything else.
  • I was called by a social media trainer, who is well known on the speaking circuit. He wanted to know if I had any work I could give him. This guy specialises in telling people how to attract high quality sales leads.
  • I was emailed by a blogger, author and speaker, who wanted to know if I could get her a free version of my blog theme. I explained that it only cost $60 and she told me that times were tough. This same person is selling online courses and ebooks on how to grow a successful business. She offered to repay me, with retweets!

So, how do you tell the genuinely informed experts from the rest, when you are new to social media and seeking to use it effectively for your business?

Protecting yourself from smoke blowers

I believe the best way to protect yourself from taking bad advice is to do a little research first, then apply some common sense.

For example:

  • If the only testimonials they offer are from others, with similar Pinocchio business models, be very cautious. (A Pinocchio business is one, with no visible means of support.)
  • Always remember that the rules of business apply online, just as they do offline.
  • Don’t let their numbers fool you. 100,000 Twitter followers means nothing. You can buy followers. You can buy software to build massive follower numbers. You can just randomly follow thousands of people, get a subset to follow you back, unfollow them all – then repeat until you have a huge following. If someone seems to lack credibility or you think they are promising impossible results, don’t let their social numbers fool you into ignoring your instinct!
  • Someone claiming to be a social media author or radio host/personality, still needs to be checked out:
    • Thanks to self publishing, my 7 year old son can claim to be an author.
    • Oh, and thanks to free services like blogtalk radio, he can claim to be a radio ‘personality’ too.
    • In both cases he would be telling the truth, but it would have nothing to do with his ability to help you improve your social media results!
  • If it seems too good to be true, it almost always is (yes, even on the Internet).

Consider the source

Always check the source of information before you act on it. Never let easy to fake social media numbers or lofty titles fool you into taking damaging advice or get you to part with your money. Not every social media expert or social networking ‘superstar’ is a fake. Some offer useful information, which makes commercial sense and offers a logical return on your investment.

Just be extremely careful of those promising amazing results, with no logical business path.

Your answer to this question, will tell you in advance how 2013 will look for your business!

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The opportunities in front of you today are amazing.

You have the tools to:

  • Get a targeted message in front of your ideal profile of client, in seconds, with their full permission.
  • Create a blog, which will allow you to build a massively valuable community around your business, with limitless potential.
  • Build and nurture a targeted network of wonderful people, who you can connect with daily through social networks.
  • Develop a newsletter and grow an extraordinarily valuable reader community, which grows in value every single day.
  • Increase the conversion rates of all your marketing and sales activities.
  • Attract more word of mouth referrals in a week, than used to be possible in a year.

What are you going to do with it?

The big question right now, is; what are you going to do with all that potential?

The final weeks of 2012 offer you an amazing opportunity, to lay the foundations of what could be your best year ever in 2013.

Take some time today to look at the elements of your marketing that are under performing. Write them down. Include everything that is not generating the results you need. Each item on that list needs to either be improved or replaced with something that works.

Cause and effect

What you can’t afford to do, is go into 2013 with the same strategy and tactics as 2012, and expect to see different results. The law of cause and effect tells us that to get the right effects (results) we need to put the right causes (actions) into play. The same old approach will result in the same old outcome.

Thankfully, you can set the right strategy in place whenever you make the decision to. The challenge, is making that decision. It takes courage. It means being one of the few, who is prepared to do what’s required, rather than what’s easy. Once you have the courage to take control, all the help and information you need is there, waiting.

If you are ready to take control, I’ve got you covered.

Why I welcome and value your emails

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I recently added my email address to every page on this blog. Very soon after, lots of you asked me why I did it and what the results have been. So, here’s your answer.

Why I value your emails so much

Ever since I started this blog, I have published my email address (and my office address / phone number) on my contact page. This means I was already used to receiving email from readers.

My decision to publish my email address on every page, was to make it easier for you to contact me and also to demonstrate that I welcome and value your emails.

What type of emails do readers send me?

When people email me, they tend to do so because they either want to share something with me (around 95%) or to make an unrealistic request for free, specific marketing advice (5%). I can’t do the latter, it simply doesn’t scale because of the time required.

The variety of emails I receive, is huge. For example:

  • I get emails from readers who want to update me on the progress of their businesses and emails that let me know when a reader has spotted a typo.
  • I get emails asking if I will cover certain topics and emails thanking me for something a reader learned from the blog.
  • I get emails asking why there are no advertisements here and emails from people who want me to share their stories with you.

A wide variety of emails, from all kinds of people. I value them enormously!

The value of a 1-to-1 connection

Although every email I receive is different, they ALL have one very important thing in common: They open up an intimate, 1-to-1 communication between you and me.

If you want to connect with me, you are welcome to do so and it has never been easier. I look forward to hearing from you.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

When we work through gritted teeth, it shows!

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You can always tell if someone is really enjoying what they do or if they are simply phoning it in – just going through the motions.

I spoke with the owner of an independent jewellers recently, who clearly loved her work. I was buying my wife some earrings and asked the owner for some help. She spoke with genuine passion and interest and her knowledge was incredible.

As I paid for the earrings, I told the owner that it was clear that she loved what she did. She replied that she has been fascinated with jewellery since she was a child and had always wanted to work in the profession. She started off working in a jewellers as a Saturday job when she was a kid, then got a full time job, slowly working her way up to store manager, before buying her first shop.

When we are not interested in what we do, it also shows

Just as a passion for what we do is reflected in our performance and results, when we do something we don’t really enjoy it also shows.

For instance, I love using Google+ and have a network of 17,000 people there. Google+ drives more visitors to my sites than all the other social networks combined and is a constant source of creative inspiration and business leads. I also love to use Twitter and 7,000 people connect with me there.

Then there’s Facebook. As anyone who knows me will confirm, I really don’t like using Facebook. And it shows! Just 1,000 people have ‘liked’ my Facebook page, because I deliberately do very little to promote it and chose to focus my energy on Google+ and Twitter instead. I know how to develop great social networks, but when it comes to Facebook, I dislike the experience too much to spend the time required there.

An alternative to doing what you dislike

If there are areas of your business that you don’t enjoy, consider replacing them with better alternatives. If you dislike selling, do what I do and attract leads instead. This blog drives sales of my audio program and client inquiries every day. If you dislike doing the paperwork, hire someone who loves it and watch your productivity and profitability improve.

In short: We have two options. We can learn to fall in love with the elements of our business that we currently dislike. We can find better alternatives. Simply going through the motions is a low leverage approach.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!

How to get the wrong kind of attention!

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I watched recently, as someone on Twitter asked his followers if they would recommend a blog for him to read. He specifically asked people not to send him a link to their own blog.

I asked him afterwards what feedback he received. He said all, except one person, tweeted a link to their own site.

There were 2 things there, which were of interest to me:

  1. I found it interesting that he would need to ask people not to self-promote.
  2. I also found it interesting that these people were prepared to make themselves look so desperate and needy.

What drives business owners to do that?

So, why does this happen? In my experience, business owners pester you when their marketing isn’t compelling enough to attract your attention. In other words, instead of fixing their marketing so that it’s attractive, they push broken marketing at you.

You see it all the time:

  • When no one is subscribing to their newsletter, they subscribe you to it without your consent, then spam you.
  • When no one is visiting their website or blog, they bombard you on social networks with links to themselves.
  • When no one is calling them, they interrupt you with unwanted cold calls.

Commanding attention works better than demanding it

A more effective approach, is to command attention rather than try and demand attention by being a pest. This means developing marketing, which people will embrace and share. It means having the courage to stand out.

Of course, this requires a change in strategy and tactics, but the upside is huge.

You command attention.

You attract interest.

You capture people’s imagination and gain word of mouth referrals.

You generate opportunities.

Most importantly of all, it works.

Keeping you in the picture

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Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a slight change in the format of last weeks posts. They didn’t contain any images.

For years, I have invested a great deal of time trying to find interesting images for blog posts. I was of the opinion that posts needed images, yet as I discovered last week, that’s not always the case.

Images suck up lots of my blogging time

In recent months I have become increasingly aware of how long it takes me to find the right image, edit it so that it’s the correct size, then compress the image so it loads quickly, then position it so that it’s in the ideal spot within the post and then get the correct attribution, so you know who actually owns the image.

I found that I’ve been spending hours of my time on images every week, when I could be using that time to share useful ideas with you.

So, I decided to see what would happen if I posted for a week, image free.

Here’s what I learned:

  • Either no one noticed or no one was bothered, as not a single person mentioned the lack of images.
  • I have been able to add a new dynamic to the blog, by getting ideas to you a lot faster than before. Last weeks posts were all written on the day they were published. Previously, posts were written well in advance, then edited (including image work) the day before they were published. It feels a lot more natural to share ideas with you, whilst they are still fresh in my mind.
  • I’ve had more time available for blogging, allowing me to share more ideas with you than I would have been able to.
  • Posts load faster now because they use a fraction of the data they did before. This is especially useful for those of you with slow, mobile connections.

Social shares

I was expecting to see far fewer people share my posts on social networks. This didn’t happen.

It’s a fact: The image pulled from blog posts into services like Facebook or Google+, is a big factor in people seeing and resharing them. Previously, I tested this and saw a direct drop in shares when posts were on Facebook with no image associated to them. People are visual, after all.

I was able to overcome that problem by using a great little WordPress plugin, which grabs my avatar image and inserts it into my posts, when you share them on social networks. This approach has worked fine for me so far. It’s also used by brands like The Wall Street Journal and by some fellow bloggers, including Seth Godin.

The idea of going a whole week image free was to measure the impact over a full, working week. I am still going to use images in posts, but not in every post – just when one is needed.

Don’t try this at home

[quote]Blogging without images isn’t a good idea for most people reading this and I am not suggesting you try it.[/quote] I believe that a great image does add something to a blog post. This is especially the case if you need to show products regularly in your posts or if you need to show images that are linked to the visual nature of your services. Also, if you only blog once or twice a week the time saved will be minimal – across my 4 sites I sometimes publish as many as 40 posts in a month.

Images are also useful if you are big on SEO and want to optimise all your posts using image alt tags.

As I never optimise images for SEO and I don’t offer a particularly visual service, these reasons are less compelling for me. They could be a lot more relevant to you and your blog though, so please don’t copy this approach unless it’s in line with what you want to achieve.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!