Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

How to get word of mouth working for you

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Word of mouth is powerful. A prospective client, for example, will expect YOU to say how great your product or service is, but when Bob or Sue tells their buddy how brilliant you are, that REALLY has an impact!

With websites and blogs, word of mouth can also be an extremely powerful way to get your message to a wider audience. However, to benefit from it, you need to do 2 things:

1. Avoid generic content

Thanks to “Social Media Guru’s” telling bloggers they need to blog as often as possible, there’s a lot of generic content ‘out there’.

However, when you think of the articles, websites or blogs that YOU have recently shared with people, they will be the ones that stood out in some way.  That was what made them worth sharing!  Maybe it was an article that made you laugh out loud or a blog post that made you think about something in a different way. Maybe it was a powerful piece of advice or some information that gave you an answer you had been searching for.

What it probably wasn’t, was one of those awful, generic posts that get written when someone follows their Social Media Guru’s list of “50 things to blog about!”

Focus on quality, not frequency. I often blog just once or twice a week, because I will only write when I have something to share, which I believe is of value.  I refuse to blog just to feed Google or fill someones RSS reader with crap.

As a direct result, this blog already has over 11,000 inbound links and an amazingly high number of readers / comments for a 4 month old blog!

2. Make it easy to share your work

You need to make it as easy as possible for people to share your content. If you look at the bottom of this post, you will see the ‘sharethis‘ link. With one click of that link, you can share this post with your friends via all the major social bookmarking websites. You can also ‘tweet‘ this post from there and even email it to a friend. I now get a stack of new readers from social bookmarking sites, often over 2,000 a day.  By the way, I have no connection with the people who make sharethis, I just use it and like it.

I hope you found this useful – if you did, share it!

Twitter: How I attracted more traffic and more followers by doing less

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As a marketing guy, I am always testing ways to make things more effective.  What follows is my experience, after a simple 5 day Twitter experiment, which was just a bit of fun, yet led to some interesting results and totally changed the way I use Twitter!

Here’s what I did and what the results were:

I elected not to tweet any links to this blog and then see what impact it had on my traffic.

Here is what happened.  By the way, you can join me on Twitter here.

Traffic from Twitter

Before I started, I expected to see a slight drop in traffic from Twitter.  Surely, if I am not Tweeting links here, fewer people would know about my posts – right?

Wrong!

Instead, traffic from Twitter increased by close to 300% over those 5 days.  This is reflected in the diagram later in the post.  Now, on the first few days, I sent a tweet out, which alerted people that I was not tweeting links to new posts here.  Obviously, those tweets had no links in them and didn’t generate additional traffic, as I monitored real-time traffic from Twitter and there was no measurable increase.  The reason was simply to let people know that nothing was wrong .

So, why the increase in traffic?

It seems this blogs readers and my Twitter “followers” picked up the slack!  Knowing I wasn’t tweeting links to my posts here, they did it for me.  Now, I am not sure how this would pan out if I carried the experiment out over 6 months, but certainly over the 5 days, my online network were a lot more active in promoting my posts.  I also saw lots of new faces showing up in my Twitter stream; people sharing my posts, who I had never heard of or seen previously.

Tuesday saw the highest traffic day to this blog in its history.  This was the result of several factors, ranging from some well connected Facebook and Twitter users sharing that days post, (which ironically was how to get more traffic using Twitter) and that post being featured on a number of popular sites, including webpronews. I have looked to see if these events could be traced to the experiment and it’s impossible to say yes or no with 100% certainty.

I am not a big believer in coincidences and I believe it’s entirely possible that with so many new people sharing my posts this week, it brought my blog to the attention of those publishers, Twitter users and Facebook users.

Here’s what happened to traffic as a result, compared to the past 6 months:

Blog subscriber numbers

One of the challenges with using Twitter to inform people of your latest posts, is that you eliminate the need for your followers, to subscribe to your blog.  In essence, you are training them not to subscribe to your primary social hub! If they decide to stop using Twitter or you decide to drop it for the next big thing, you can lose a lot of readers, very quickly.

For me, this alone is a good reason NOT to train people to use Twitter as the way to subscribe to your blog.

Some caveats

This was just a fun experiment, carried out over a very short time-scale; rather than the kind of marketing research I would carry out to get the heavy detail required for a fully-fledged project.  You should NOT use these conclusions as the basis of a change in your own Twitter use!

It is also extremely important to mention that the results would have looked VERY different, if I did not already have lots of great people, who regularly share this blog with their followers.  In addition, Twitter accounts for a tiny amount of my daily visitors here, behind; Google, RSS, Facebook, back links and Stumbleupon.  Once my largest source of traffic, Twitter has grown slower than all my other marketing channels.  In other words, I wasn’t risking much.

As I hope I have made very clear, this brief experiment was intended to see what the short-term results would be, by not using Twitter to share my new posts each day.  I had no idea that the results over such a short period, would be so interesting; which is why I intend to change my Twitter use over the longer term now, as I explain in a moment.

I find it interesting that the past 5 days coincided with my best traffic day ever and a sharp increase in follower numbers, see below.  Note, the numbers were increasing fastest from the 13th, not the 12th, which was the heavy traffic day.

Conclusions

For now, I have decided to only share posts on Twitter, which are related to Twitter (like this one) or posts that I believe have particular relevance to the people I connect with there.  Previously, I shared every post on Twitter twice: Once in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening.

I’m really curious how the numbers will look, over a longer period.  Any marketing professional worth their salt will tell you that you need good data to reach accurate conclusions.  On something like this, you need to be working with a larger set of data.  I will, of course, share my findings with you.

So, for the foreseeable future, I will be using my Twitter time primarily to share YOUR great posts and connect more with you.

IMPORTANT:  If you usually catch up with my latest posts via Twitter and don’t want to miss anything, subscribe to the blog or get new posts delivered direct to your inbox, using the “Free Updates” box at the top right of this page.

Business blogging: The “get rich slow” approach!

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A successful business blog is a great marketing and communications asset.

It’s no surprise then, that so many business owners start blogging.  However, many of them stop blogging after a few months, because they have not seen the kind of results they had hoped for.

It’s like a farmer planting her crops and then trying to harvest them too soon.  The farmer may have planted the crops correctly and tended the soil perfectly, but her crops might take 6 months or more before they’re ready for harvesting.

Building a blog that generates regular sales, leads or opportunities for your business often takes up to a year or more.  Pulling the plug on a blog after just a few months is like giving up on your crops before your seeds had a chance to grow.

Blog development takes time

My first blog post here was read by just a handful of people on the day it was published.  Over the next 2 years, I worked hard to make Jims Marketing Blog as valuable as I possibly could.  I wrote several hundred blog posts, replied to comments, improved the blog design and marketed it to new readers.

Why?  Over the past 12-months alone, this blog has repaid me, by generating over £100,000 in profitable, new business.  Had I stopped after the first few months, because I only had a relatively small number of readers, none of this would have happened and I would have missed what’s become one of the most fun elements of my business too!

Numbers are less important than quality, but you do still need the numbers.

How many readers do YOU need?

That’s easy.  You need enough targeted visitors to your blog each week or month, in order to provide you with a steady, predictable stream of high quality sales or business leads.  Now, in some industries, that may be 5,000 a day.  In most industries you will need nothing like that many! Lots of successful business bloggers do amazingly well with 500 unique visitors a day and others with half that number!

To get you from wherever you are right now, to that magical place, aim for developing a growing, targeted readership, through providing useful, focused content and embracing a good Internet marketing strategy.

The bottom line: Don’t get disheartened by comparing your visitor numbers with anyone else and allow your blog the time it needs in order to grow. If you are looking for a quick fix, business blogging is probably not for you.  However, if you are looking for a way to build an amazingly powerful marketing and communications asset in the medium to longer-term, I suggest you embrace blogging.

What have your experiences been of starting or growing a business blog?  I would really love to hear your feedback!

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

Just because Bob can, does not mean he should!

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One of the great things about being in business today, is that we can get an idea, write it down, click a mouse button and get it in front of thousands of people in seconds.  Better still, we can reach all these people for little more than the cost of our time.  However, instant communications also present us with a challenge.

The marketing challenge of free, instant communications

Not that long ago, it would cost a small business owner a lot of money, to send a traditional mail shot via the postal service to a few thousand people.  It would take ages to print out all those letters and even the ink was expensive.  Then you had to fold them, stuff them into envelopes and either stick a stamp on each envelope or frank each one.  Because the cost in both time and money was so significant, people thought long and hard about what they wrote and who they sent those letters to.  Every letter needed to count, when you were paying hundreds or maybe thousands for each mail shot!

Today, Bob can write an email during his coffee break and send it to his list, with the click of a mouse button.  It will cost him nothing and take seconds.

As a result of this shift, you and I now find our email inboxes and social media streams, regularly littered with a lot of low value crap, from people like Bob.

Of course, the smartest business owners and marketers out there, are even more focused on the quality of their messages today than they were a decade ago.  They know that in order to stand out in a world full of “Bobs”, their messages have to be professionally crafted.  They also ensure that they only send their messages to people who are interested and who have given them permission to get in touch.

While people like Bob are filling the marketplace with low quality, badly targeted messages and getting added to an ever increasing number of blacklists, the savvy business owners and entrepreneurs are taking a different, less common route.  They are focusing on value first, volume second.  For them, quality comes before quantity.  They send the right message, to the right people. It’s such a simple concept, yet it’s becoming increasingly rare.

Just because there’s little financial cost attached to sending emails or using social media sites, doesn’t mean we won’t end up paying a hefty price for using them ineffectively.  If we get it wrong, we risk simultaneously damaging our reputation and missing out on an avalanche of new business and opportunities.

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

Social media marketing – A more social approach

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Some people have asked me, why I place so much emphasis on building a community rather than a following.  Yesterday, within a 30 minute period, I received 2 emails from people enquiring about my services.  I believe the way these emails begin, (see excerpt below), demonstrates the marketing value of community.

Email 1:
“Dear Jim,
You don’t know me, but I feel I know you very well through reading your blog for some time now.”

Email 2:
“Hey Jim,
I read your marketing blog and although we have never met I feel like I’ve known you for years.”

Clearly, in both cases the person enquiring felt comfortable writing to me.  There was no barrier in the way – I was approachable.  Equally, in both cases, the writer said that they felt like they knew me.

This is REALLY important!

Why?

Because one of the reasons so many business owners and marketers fail to transfer their online networks and social media activity into bankable results, is that they place too much distance between themselves and the people they network with.  Even if they do try and build a community, it’s a community that has them positioned as the leader, rather than a host.

I’ve written about the host approach to social media before.  Here’s a brief overview.

Social media hosts

For the past few years, business owners and marketers have been told to build a following or tribe and then market to them.  I’ve always been uncomfortable with that.  So, I use a very different approach, which is based on the idea of a level playing field, where everyone is equal – No tribal leaders.

Think of the host at a really enjoyable party.  He or she greets guests when they arrive and spends the evening mixing with everyone and making sure that a great time is had by all.  The host of the party is not the leader, but rather an attendee; with a responsibility to ensure that everyone has the best experience possible.  They are eating, drinking and dancing alongside you.  They are talking with you and laughing with you.  When you leave the party, you leave with a great, positive feeling.  My approach to social media marketing, is based on that same host model.

The pay off?

The pay off for the kind of approach I advocate, was demonstrated in those 2 emails from yesterday.  By developing a network of people around your work, who feel that they know you and that you are approachable, you also build a deep and wide prospective client pool.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on the whole idea of social media rock stars.  Is it time for a more social approach to relationship building?

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

Using Google Buzz?

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I recently took the plunge and started using Google Buzz.  My initial thoughts are that it has a lot of potential, which is why I wanted to mention it here.

Google Buzz: So, what does it do?

VERY briefly, Google Buzz is a micro blogging application, which comes as part of Gmail.  It lets you post comments or share links, like you can on Twitter, but without the 140 character restriction.

Google Buzz also lets you share rich content (video, pictures etc) with other users, without having to leave the application.  Just like on Facebook, you can comment on what you see and add a “like” to items etc.  Unlike Facebook, each item you post can be made public or private, giving you control over who sees what, on a per-post basis.

You can also aggregate (or feed) your blog posts and Tweets straight into Google Buzz, as well as items from your Google Reader, Picasa, Flickr etc.  The platform is clearly still in its infancy but improvements are being made regularly, by a development team who are active members of the Google Buzz community. I like that.

All you need to get started, is a Gmail account and then to set up a Google Profile (here’s mine) and you’re good to go.

It’s way too early to say if Google Buzz will fly or not, but it does have the finances and talent of Google behind it; so it may be worth you checking it out and then making up your own mind whether it’s right for you.  I think that right now,  it maybe something for early adopters like myself, rather than the wider population?  I’d like to know what you think.

If you use the service or decide to join, you can connect with me on Google Buzz here.

Existing Google Buzz users

Are you already a Google Buzz user?  If so, what are your thoughts or experiences regarding it?

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

Facebook privacy: Your feedback please!

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Facebook Privacy – Feedback request

I’m in the process of writing a post about the concerns many people have expressed, regarding the way Facebook handles it’s user’s privacy.  This is becoming a very big issue right now and I would like to know what you think.

If you have any feedback you would like to share with me, please get in touch.  Either leave a comment here, send me a Tweet or email me at jim (at) JimsMarketingBlog.com  Please state if you would like your feedback to remain anonymous.

Thank you!

Twitter can be amazing: Check this out!

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I just fell back in love with Twitter!

As some of you might remember, I was once one of the world’s top 40 most followed people on Twitter.  Then, in January 2009, after being swamped daily with hundreds of DM’s and junk emails via Twitter, I left.  I later rejoined after totally wiping my account; zero following and zero followers.  Over the past year I have built a small Twitter network, which as you are about to see, is massively more valuable!

Here’s what happened and why I fell back in love with Twitter yesterday…

Twitter contacts

I was in a small village pub last night, when David Spinks from Scribnia.com contacted me via Twitter.  David and I have never met in person, though we have spoken on the phone a few times.  Anyhow, David wanted to know if I could help him, to help a Twitter contact of ours, who is having some real challenges right now.  By the way, you will be hearing all about this very shortly.

I called David and within an hour, I had spoken with a number of my Twitter friends, to see about getting our mutual friend the help he needs.  Everyone I spoke with was eager to get involved.  Each of these relationships were initially formed, via contact made on Twitter and I’ve never met any of these people in person.

Twitter at its best

In my experience, Twitter is at it’s best (from an interpersonal point of view) as a way of connecting with people; rather than as a way of building relationships.  Once a connection is made, it’s super-easy to take that connection away from Twitter, so you can get to know the person better; either face-to-face, via the phone or email etc. 

For example, each of the people I called after speaking with David Spinks, were people I met initially via Twitter, but had built a relationship with away from Twitter; including Scott Gould from Like Minds and The CEO of Headway Themes, Grant Griffiths.

The community of people I know via Twitter, are of massive value to me and last night, the way many of them wanted to get involved and help a guy they have never met, was breathtaking.  REAL people, who right now are about to make a REAL difference to the life of a fellow Twitter community member.  I have never been more impressed with the value of Twitter or more delighted that I rejoined it.

I’m no social media guru, but surely “people” are what it’s all about?

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

Twitter junkies and social media addicts

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word picturesI’m sure you have heard it said many times before; “people think in pictures.”

In written marketing, the words we use have a massive impact on the kind of mental pictures we paint in the minds of our prospective clients or customers.

These pictures help shape how people feel about us and those feelings have a major role in whether they decide to; trust us, buy form us, recommend us etc.

With many, many businesses now embracing social media and putting an increasing amount of information into the public domain, here’s a question to ponder:

“Have you ever stopped to think about the kind of pictures you create in the mind of your prospective clients or customers, when they ‘check you out’ online?”

Social media junkies and Twitter addicts

I’m a passionate user of social media.  I’m also excited about the opportunities available via social networking sites.

What I am not is “a social media junkie” or “totally addicted to Twitter / FaceBook etc.”

I notice lots of social media users, using terms like those above, in their online profiles.  I’m certainly not suggesting that using these phrases will somehow confuse people into thinking that the profile belongs to a junkie or an addict. I am, however, saying that there’s little to be gained by someone suggesting (even tongue-in-cheek) that their use of social media is out of their control.  From a marketing perspective, it’s far better to leverage your profile, so that it’s working 100% for you!

Remember – It’s not just people who use the services who can see your profile.

Your Twitter profile on Google

If you are a Twitter user, when someone does a Google search for your name or company name, your twitter profile is usually on page one. Here’s an example, using a Google search for my name.  Notice that it gives my full profile on Google, without anyone having to even visit Twitter to check me out.

jimconnolly google

Of course, this means if you maximise the positive impact of your Twitter profile, there’s a superb opportunity to have it working for you far beyond the reach of Twitter.

When someone checks you out, make sure that your various online profiles show how totally brilliant you are and what a fantastic investment you are.

Don’t copy your social media guru

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I’m a marketing man, not a social media expert. However, because some social media tools are excellent for helping small businesses market their services, I’ve spent years studying the marketing potential of social media.

Here’s an important observation I would like to share with you.

Don’t copy your social media guru

It’s all about why you should not necessarily use the same social media strategy, as your social media guru.  Whilst their advice might be superb, simply copying what you see them do, is not always the right thing to do.

Let me explain.

In my experience, most social media professionals make their living selling a mixture of; books, downloadable products and ads or sponsorships on their blogs. Some of the better known social media figures also offer seminars / workshops internationally too.  Unlike most of their readers, they are not geographically limited in what they provide. Someone buying their latest book or eBook in the same street is no different from someone making that same purchase, on a different continent 10 time zones away.

If you run a business, which provides services (or sells to) a particular geographical area, you are going to need a far more geographically targeted approach to your use of social media.  You will need to focus your efforts in a way that attracts and develops opportunities in the area that’s of commercial interest to you.

For example, if you are an accountant or lawyer, it’s unlikely that you will be seeking business leads or referrals on an international basis.  Apart from anything else, your qualifications will restrict what you can offer internationally.  If you work in insurance, your products may have geographical limitations too.  Same again if you operate a franchise business, with a set territory.

Tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and FriendFeed are known for making it possible to easily develop an international network of contacts.  However, they also make it possible to search for (and connect with) your target audience too – people where you do business.

Your social media feedback

I know that a lot of my readers are big users of social media, some with great success!  If you have developed a social media strategy, which has a geographical element, or you have any tips for a more regional approach to social media; please share it with your fellow readers and myself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Growing and securing your online network

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This post is all about how to safeguard and grow your online network.

How frustrated do you feel, when you’ve just washed your car, you take it out for a spin and a massive truck goes buy and covers it in dirt?  What about when you’ve been working on a document for 20 minutes, your computer crashes and you suddenly realise you lost all that work!

Frustrating isn’t it?

Then just imagine how frustrated you will feel, if that social network you have spent months building on your favourite social networking site, gets trashed; following an unpopular acquisition or mass user exodus!

I wrote a post yesterday, about FaceBook buying FriendFeed.  Within hours of the acquisition, many established FriendFeed users told me they will stop using the service.  Others are posting messages, telling people how to get in touch with them – because they believe FriendFeed will be closed by the new owners.

No one outside FaceBook know’s what they are planning to do with FriendFeed, but that’s not the point.

The point is, this perfectly demonstrates how exposed we can be, is we decide to rely too heavily on any single, third-party, for the development of our online network.

I believe there are two lessons here:

  • Firstly, make sure you have at least 2 places online, where you can connect with your network – not just one!
  • Secondly, develop a central hub for your online presence, which YOU control – Not something governed by a third-party, who could pull the plug on you, suspend your account (or go broke) at any time.

My online network is spread between my blog, my FriendFeed account and my Twitter account.  I am reviewing adding another contact point shortly and I will let you know more closer to the time.

Self hosted blogs

In my experience, the best hub for your online network is a self-hosted blog.  By hosting your own commercial blog, you maintain control. Host it for free on someone else’s platform and they control it.  Through your blog, you can connect with people, share ideas and grow a community. Plus, with plugins and tools like Google Friend Connect, you can enjoy many of the features of a social networking site, on your blog.

No matter what happens with your account at; Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn or FriendFeed – your blog will remain a constant contact point for your online community.

If you are investing a lot of your time and energy developing a single, online network, this might be a good time to consider how future-proof your strategy is.

Customer service and social media

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This is a quick update to a recent post.

I wrote here last month, about the added importance of customer service these days – because of the growth of social media and the massive reach this now gives your customers.  My blog post detailed the poor experience I had with o2 customer service – my mobile / cell phone provider.

I explained how a disgruntled customer today has access to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, via social media tools like; blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook etc.  Just a few years ago, an unhappy customer typically had very little influence or reach. The power was all with the provider – but that’s all changed now!

Update

Since writing that post, I started noticing lots of people arriving here from Google, after searching for the term “o2 customer service.” At the time of writing this, my o2 post appears on page 2 of Google for that search term!

o2 customer service 02 customer service

I have no idea how many people have since read about my experience, but it certainly shows the influence consumers have right now and why great customer service is more important than ever.

I would like to give o2 the chance to respond, but I have heard nothing from them since publishing the original post.

Customer service in the Twitter age!

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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

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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!

Twitter and me

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As you might already know, I stopped using my @jimconnolly Twitter account on 31st of January; one of the top 50 most followed Twitter accounts in the world.  The reason for this, was that following tens of thousands of people took up way too much time – largely because of the hundreds of Direct Messages I received each day, (usually over 500 a day and occasionally over 1,000).

By trying to’ do the right thing’, I got it all wrong!

I got it wrong.  As a community builder, I wanted to follow everyone who followed me.  This worked initially; until the numbers grew so huge, so fast, with SO MANY people feeling the need to Direct Message me! The reason the numbers grew so fast, is because I wrote a LOT here about Twitter and this is a very well-read blog.  Each post is read by thousands of people and I have posts here with 200, 300 and in one case, a post about Twitter which has over 600 comments.

In just a few months, I attracted over 23000 followers.  At the time, even Chris Brogan (a Social Media genius), had taken 2 years to attract just 15,000 more followers.  My Twitter account grew too big, too fast.

Following back

Following so many people back is what caused my problem.

I would still have seen ALL the @jimconnolly messages sent to me, without following everyone back – and these were almost always the most valuable. PLUS, I would have had MORE TIME to respond and connect with more people, because I would not have been ploughing through several thousand Direct Messages each week. But it was too late – So, I decided to leave that Twitter account.

Tweeting again “small time”

I had a ‘chat’ last Thursday with Laura Fitton @pistachio, and explained what had happened with my account and why I was no longer using it.  Laura is a REAL expert when it comes to Twitter and has always been super helpful to me. Laura explained that I could actually clear the account, so I could keep the same Twitter user name (which is my actual name,) and use it to follow friends, clients and contacts.

In 5 minutes, I had lost well over 23,000 followers.

I had an account with 0 following and 0 followers.

As a result, my @jimconnolly account is active again – BUT this time, I am only following friends, clients and those who actually want to chat with me, (which will be quite a large number in itself.) If I am not following you on Twitter and you want to get in touch without sending a tweet to me (for whatever reason) – you can contact me WITHOUT being limited to 140 characters.  After all, I have always been extremely easy to get in touch with.

I’m VERY contactable without Direct Messages!

  • You can call me on 01427 891274 if you need to speak with me.
  • You can email me via the blog, if you want to write to me.
  • You can get in touch with me via a comment on the blog, if you want to share your feedback with thousands of other people.
  • You can send a message to @jimconnolly via Twitter if you want to share your message in 140 characters.
  • You can even write to me via snail-mail – My FULL postal address is here.

I think you would agree, I make it very easy for people to get in touch.

The ‘right’ way to use Twitter!

It’s weird – we live in a society where it’s ‘cool’ to say “I’m learning all the time,” yet it’s ‘uncool’ to say; “I made a mistake and I’m putting it right!” So, I’m about to be very uncool!

I believe that each person should feel free to use their account however they want; so long as it’s not breaking any of Twitter’s rules.  For me, it’s all about the value of the connections I make and NOT how many people I have following me.  The value is in the quality, NOT the volume!

Robert Scoble @scobleizer follows 65,000 people.  Darren Rowse @problogger follows around 9,000 people and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams @ev follows around 900 people. Each uses Twitter the right way FOR THEM.

All I know for certain, is that following over 20,000 people was wrong FOR ME.

I hope you can appreciate my decision and maybe even learn something from my experience.

Focus on results – NOT hits!

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One of my favourite sayings is; “start with the end in mind.” In other words, make sure you know what your outcome is, before you decide to take action.

I was thinking about this earlier, when I received an email from a reader, who had just realised that the time and money she had been investing in marketing her website and blog over the past 18 months, had been pretty much a total waste of time!

Yes, she had seen ‘traffic’ into them increase from zero to around two thousand unique visitors a day – but it hadn’t generated anything tangible for her or her business.  In fact, it had actually hurt her business; because her time spent blogging, online networking and doing SEO had limited the amount of chargeable work she could do for her clients.

Marketing goals

This lady’s original marketing goal for her website and blog, was to showcase her skills as a business finance expert to a new audience and then convert some of these readers into paying clients.  However, she became so focused on producing regularly updated content and getting her Search Engine Optimisation ‘just right’ that she was using these numbers to track her success – rather than the actual number of new clients and enquiries she was getting.

This is a common scenario, when someone gets so involved in the mechanics of a marketing activity, that the activity itself becomes their goal – rather than a tool to help them reach their goal.

Taking stock

marketing results outcomesIf you have a commercial website or blog, how focused are you on the tangible or bankable results you get from it?

I am not talking about hits, metrics, comments or subscriber numbers – I’m talking about actual, business results, what your accountant would call your ROI (return on investment).

Here are some examples of questions we all need to ask ourselves, if we invest our time and/or money on a website or blog:

  • If your site/blog is there to generate enquiries for your business – how many is it generating each day and what quality are they?
  • If your site/blog is supposed to be generating advertising revenue, how much money is it making for you each week?
  • If your site/blog is supposed to be positioning you as an authority in your area of expertise, how many more calls are you getting from newspapers, trade publications and the media – wanting your opinions?

It does us all good from time to time, to take stock of where we are and to ensure that everything we are investing our time, money and energy in is actually taking us toward our business goals.  Otherwise, we run the risk of rowing our boat REALLY hard in the wrong direction and suddenly wondering why we are in the wrong place after all that hard work.

Why I’m leaving Twitter!

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It’s sad, but the time has come for me to leave Twitter.  At the time of writing this, the three most followed people in England are; John Cleese, Stephen Fry and then me.  I have made some great connections because of Twitter and met a lot of interesting people too.  Twitter has been a great experience for me – BUT it’s time for me to go!

Twitter’s technical problems highlighted one of my own

My Twitter account was one of many to have recently suffered from the dreaded caching error. After 5 days, it was manually fixed by Crystal in Twitter’s tech support team.  This was a blessing in disguise!

For 5 days, whilst my account was waiting to be fixed, I was unable to follow anyone or see who had followed me.  I noticed that I suddenly had lots more extra time each day, so I decided to do some Twitter research! I wanted to know just how long I actually spent using Twitter each day.

I was amazed to see that even during a fairly quiet period, I was investing an average of 2 and a half hours each day!

Even more amazingly, less than half of that time was spent actually ‘tweeting’ with people!

The rest of my Twitter time was spent dealing with the hundreds of Direct Messages I get each day and filtering through the hundreds of people who follow me each day; to see from their profile whether or not to follow them back.  This is an increasingly time consuming problem, as so many people are now doing that follow / unfollow trick, to attract auto follows and make it look like they have lots of followers.

Most of the Direct Messages I get on Twitter are people asking me; ‘please share this link with your followers Jim’ or asking me to look at their blog / website and give them some tips.  I’m also getting stacks of spam sent to me via Twitter’s Direct Message.  This all takes time to review, answer or delete. Yes, almost all of these Direct Messages are from people, who have never tweeted with me or commented here!

The 1000 people on Twitter who connect with me

Although I have over 23,000 people following me on Twitter, I found that only around 800 / 1000 or so are in regular contact with me.  These are the people you see in my Twitter stream and commenting here on the blog.  These are the people, who I built this blog and my Twitter network for.  These are the kind of people, who make Twitter the best social media site / app on the Internet (In my opinion.)

The reason I am leaving Twitter, is that it’s the other 22,000 people, who never connect with me, who require the vast majority of my time!

The sensible thing to do, was for me to find a way to focus all my energy on the people who actually ‘connect with me’  – And that’s what I will now be able to do!

How I solved my Twitter problem

One of my options, was to delete 22,250 people from my Twitter account.  This would take forever and it still wouldn’t stop the flow of new people every day; who follow my account and require filtering. Yes, I could just set up an auto-follow, so every spammer on Twitter could target me, knowing they will get an automatic follow back – but that’s not why I invested my time in Twitter and it would only help with part of the problem.

FriendFeed and Twitter

Thankfully, I have found an excellent way to communicate with everyone, who wants to keep in touch with me – WITHOUT me having to waste all those hours each week on those who don’t!

I have decided to replace what I have been doing on Twitter, with FriendFeed.

Whilst FriendFeed is not as instantly usable as Twitter, it doesn’t come with the same insane focus on followers / following either.  Just like Twitter, you can interact with people without following / subscribing to them.  However, unlike Twitter – on FriendFeed the follower / subscriber thing is far less of a big deal!  There are also no issue with Direct Messages, which ate into so much of my time each day.

This means I can focus massively more of my time on the ‘social’ side of social media.

FriendFeed will allow me to have proper, threaded conversations with all of those who want to join in or share their content with me. 

I hope to see as many of my regular Twitter pals on FriendFeed as possible; so we can continue the conversation.

However, even if you don’t want to join with me on FriendFeed, you can still find out what I am doing via Twitter!

You will still see me on Twitter, via FriendFeed

Even if you don’t have or want a FriendFeed account – you will still be able to see what I post via Twitter anyway! I am going to keep my Twitter account active; so people who want to, can still follow my stream without having to do anything. One of the great things about FriendFeed, is that it will automatically send all my updates direct via my Twitter account – so anyone following me on Twitter will be able to see them.

This is not one of those; “which is best Twitter or FriendFeed?” arguments. It’s just that FriendFeed is the best option for me right now.

UPDATE:

Over the past 48 hours, I have found that most of the people who were regularly tweeting with me, have now found me on FriendFeed; with others introducing themselves all the time! Thus, I shall not be sending my FriendFeed updates through my Twitter account.

I don’t want to just broadcast via Twitter – Twitter’s supposed to be about communicating NOT broadcasting!

Google and me!

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As any of my regular readers will know, me and Google have a very strange relationship!  I decided to write this blog exclusively for people and develop it’s readership via ‘social media marketing.’  As a marketing professional, I wince when I see blogs, which are clearly written primarily to score SEO points; with the actual readers needs placed second.

So, I decided to develop this blog around a ‘100% human-focused approach’ – rather than writing for SEO and then relying on Google to provide me with a readership.

This saw me break a few SEO rules. For example, I provide do-follow links to people who comment here, even though I was strongly advised NOT to, because it would harm my Google ranking (It didn’t by the way!) I also decided to only write posts when I have something I want to share – rather than posting every day just to keep Google happy with the “regularly updated content” we are often told it needs.

Google rewards quality content

When I announced how I was going to build jimsmarketingblog.com‘s community, a few SEO professionals said that because I was focusing on providing good quality content, Google would actually still provide ‘targeted traffic’ to the blog. They said that Google was getting a lot better at identifying high value content.

After looking at the stats for the past month, I can confirm that these SEO professionals were 100% correct!  Even though I write in my natural style and often don’t blog for a few days at a time, Google now sends legions of people to this blog every day, with very relevant search enquiries.  Moreover, it has given the blog a revised PageRank of 4 (up from 3), after just 4 months of blogging and with me offering do-follow links.

Writing for Google and SEO

The lesson here is that despite what some might tell you, it seems that there is no real need to “write for Google” in order to attract new visitors via their search engine.

My experiences have shown that if a blog is SEO friendly and well written, lots of people will link to it. Once you get the links and you keep your focus on high quality content, it seems Google will figure the rest out!

It also shows the effectiveness of good SEO and the importance of the work provided by SEO experts, like those who have guided me in recent months.  I especially want to thank Gregor Spowart from MMD.

Twitter photo shock from PhotoShop

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We have all heard those stories, where someone has used PhotoShop to make themselves look younger, more handsome or thinner – right?

Well, what I am about to share with you here is what I call photo-shock!

It’s the shock someone experiences when they meet someone for the first time, who they have previously only seen very heavily PhotoShopped pictures of.

A twitter connection

I spoke with a friend last week, who told me about her shock at meeting a man for the first time; whom she had only previously communicated with via twitter.

They agreed to meet in person; as this guy is a designer and my friend had some design work, which he wanted the chance to quote for.  So, they decided it was best to meet in a public place and chose Starbucks. My friend arrived a little early, grabbed a coffee and waited.

Noticing her twitter friend was about 20 minutes late, she decided to give him a quick call, just to make sure he was OK. The weather was extremely bad and she was concerned he may have had an accident.

Imagine her surprise, when he answered the phone and told her he was already there; sitting upstairs enjoying a coffee!  Now, my friend had sat downstairs, close to the door and she watched each person come in. She told me:

“At this point Jim, I just assumed he must have arrived before I did; because I watched the door like a hawk, so that I could welcome him and ‘break the ice’.”

Even after being told where he was sitting, she STILL couldn’t spot him – until he called over to her!  Suddenly she figured out what had happened!

The picture used by her twitter friend had been so heavily PhotoShopped that it was basically a different person! As a professional designer and an expert with PhotoShop, he was able to create an amazing set of pictures of himself for his website and twitter profile; which look great – but are nothing whatsoever like he really looks.  She was genuinely shocked!

Most noticeably, the man she met seemed to be around her age (she’s 52), yet the pictures he uses online look to be closer to someone in their late twenties. He had doctored the images to change his age by around 25 years.  As she told me;

it’s one thing to pick pictures of yourself that show you in your best light or to remove the odd zit / spot; but this guy looked like the father of the guy I was expecting to meet. It instantly destroyed any trust I previously had in him.

Although this might sound like a funny story, there’s an important issue here.

What about trust?

Before someone will do business with us, they have to trust us.  They need to believe we will deliver on the service we promise or that the product we supply really will do whatever we claim it will.  If someone starts off a business relationship, behind a heavily doctored picture of them self, is it REALLY going to impress a prospective client when they learn it’s a fake?

Over to you!

If you met someone for the first time and saw that they had been using heavily doctored images of themselves online – would it create a ‘trust issue’ for you?

Do you believe, as my friend does, that this is a form of dishonesty or is it OK to use software to make yourself look as good as possible? Is there a limit, beyond which it’s unacceptable, if so, where’s that limit in your opinion?

Let us know what you think!

Link love, Google and spammers

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The results are in and I can now let you know what’s happened since I started this exciting marketing experiment!

As many of you already know, jimsmarketingblog.com offers everyone who comments here a special reward; something called a do-follow link.  This is great for my readers, as it means when you comment here, your link actually tells Google to visit your website or blog; which can help boost your Search Engine Optimization.

link love google spam internet marketingSadly, over 99% of blogs and almost every well-read blog, offers the exact opposite – they offer ‘no-follow links’; which tell Google NOT to follow the link to your website or blog.

The 2 main reasons people give for not offering do-follow links are as follows:

1. Google ‘penalise’ sites like mine, which offer them, by lowering our page rank.
2. Blogs offering do-follow links are more likely to be targeted by spammers, because links from do-follow blogs are so much more valuable to them.

So, what REALLY happens when you offer do-follow links?

I have seen no drop in traffic from Google. This blog’s only a few months old and it gets around 50 – 60 unique visitors each day via Google. When I started the experiment, I was getting around 40 a day. There are lots of reasons why this number has gone up – but for a very new blog that only posts a few times a week, that’s an ‘ok’ response from Google. I can’t see that I am being punished for offering the links; not yet anyway!

Spam? Well, 99.9% of the spam here is the kind of automated spam that every blog gets and it goes straight into the blog’s spam filter.  There has been no increase in this kind of spam at all.

Spam from people using my comments section to pimp their website/blog has increased very slightly – but mainly because spammers know how well read this blog is. They see posts with over 200 comments and that’s like a magnet for comment spammers.

Thus, I can say with a high degree of certainty that the blog has suffered no ill effects from Google or from spammers, because of my use of do-follow links!

So, I am going to keep offering them to you – every time you comment here!

Benefits of offering do-follow links?

There are a lot of very compelling reasons to offer do-follow links. If you look at the kind of comments I got here when I announced what I was doing, you will see how warmly it was welcomed by the online community.

This blog is all about developing a community, based around our mutual interest in marketing and social media. So, what better way to show my commitment to our community, than to reach out and help promote everyone who comments here?

I have also seen a massive surge in visitor numbers, RSS subscribers and in the number of people who contact me via jimsmarketingblog.com. I believe a big reason for this, is that people really embrace the concept of a blog that actually gives them something tangible every time they comment.

We live in an age where marketing and social media guru’s keep on talking about how important it is to connect and share – yet they do so behind blogs that deliberately tell Google NOT to visit YOUR website or blog!

I really like the phrase that’s used to describe do-follow links.  They call it Link Love. As we approach what is sure to be a very challenging year for small businesses in 2009, I hope more people reach-out to THEIR readers with links that are actually worth having.

Over to you!

So, what do you think about ‘Link Love?’  Do you find yourself more likely to comment on blogs that show they value your comments?  Do you offer link love to your readers already – if so, what has your experience been? Whatever your thoughts are, share them here (and get some Link Love too!!)