Social media marketing Archives - Page 58 of 60

What if Twitter suspended YOUR account?

By Jim Connolly | June 19, 2009

I was just telling someone about a chat I had a couple of weeks ago, with a VERY stressed out Twitter user. This person, who shall remain nameless, had (for no reason) seen his Twitter account suspended.

He was absolutely distraught and called my office (here in the UK) from his office in San Francisco.

He introduced himself to me, explained what had happened and then told me that he relied on Twitter for 75% of the traffic to his company’s website and most of their sales enquiries.

“If I can’t get my Twitter account back Jim, I don’t know what I will do!”

In case you don’t already know, the reason he asked for my help, is that I write a very widely read Tech News Blog, have a few influential friends and almost 20,000 people following my Tech News Blog on Twitter @thetechnewsblog .

The reason I mention this guy’s predicament, is that it’s a PERFECT example of two common marketing mistakes.

Too many eggs in one basket is a bad idea

Firstly, he was relying too heavily on just one marketing activity. It’s always better to have a broad marketing mix, with at least half a dozen, high leverage marketing activities. By the way, I recommend you take a look at FriendFeed and add it to your marketing mix!

Your house, your rules!

Secondly, he placed his company’s primary source of new business, directly out of his control. This blog is owned by me and I have a community of brilliant people, who comment here, email me and recommend the blog to their friends. So, as long as I work hard to provide interesting content, the success of the blog’s community is within my control. It can’t be suspended in error, like this poor guy’s Twitter account.

If you are in business and have developed an online community that you value, I strongly recommend you encourage them to engage with you on YOUR TURF! Get a blog or add a forum to your website – or do both. Don’t allow all that hard work and value to go to waste, just because some third-party screws up your account or goes broke!

Customer service in the Twitter age!

By Jim Connolly | May 12, 2009

I just received a text message from O2, my mobile / cell phone provider. It turns out that they wanted to let me know that they were about to withdraw one of the benefits of using their service.

However, rather than just admit that, for whatever reason, they were about to withdraw this benefit – they decided to try and “sell” this drop in service as something for me to get excited about.

Here’s what they did!

I get a great service from O2. So, I called them and was treated to a recorded announcement, from an over-enthusiastic voice actor. He wanted to tell me about some great new changes. The ‘great change’ is that O2 are removing a free service that I value and replacing it with, well, nothing!

It gets worse – because what followed was a sales pitch, to try and get me to buy things from an uninspiring list of companies, which O2 has deals with. In my opinion, these were simply the kind of regular ‘offers’ you get for free in the press.

So, O2 have stopped me receiving a service I wanted and used the removal of this service, as an opportunity to ask me to go and spend money with their “offer partners!”

So, I thought I would share my experience with my readers….

…and that’s what this post is all about!

Old style customer service

Until recently, big companies could get away with this kind of behaviour. Their customers had no voice and were largely powerless to do anything. Yes, they could move to another provider, but for a fairly small inconvenience like this, very few customers, if any, would go through he considerable expense of buying their way out of a phone contract.

Social media empowers customers like never before

But, in 2009, customers have a voice. If companies treat customers like fools, under-deliver or fail to back-up their promises, they can pay a hefty cost. Today, people have blogs, social networks and in many cases (like my own), they have access to the attention of hundreds of thousands of people.

In an interconnected world, it pays more than ever, to ensure your customers expectations are met or exceeded.

Samsung NC10 – It’s brilliant!

Companies can also benefit massively from their customer’s use of social media. For example, I wrote recently about the amazing Samsung NC10 netbook computer and it’s ability to work all day long, on a single charge! My glowing endorsement of this wonderful machine was all the more powerful, because I have no association with Samsung and gain nothing from endorsing their machine.

That makes this kind of endorsement super-powerful – far more powerful than a paid-for commercial or sponsored post. I know for a fact that people have now bought that computer, because of what I wrote.

If you want to drive up sales and boost the reputation of your brand, make sure you treat people better than they expect and better than your competitors do.

If you want to lose customers and hurt your reputation, just do the opposite!

Most ReTweeted

By Jim Connolly | April 10, 2009

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!

One small word

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