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Tag: social media marketing

  • Tweet and Grow Rich – Identify And Amplify Your Ideal Followers

    Twitter, a popular microblogging service and social media platform, can be an extremely valuable asset when conducting your internet marketing campaign.

    Through Twitter, your company can find and build relationships with prospective clients, promote your products and services or quickly draw traffic back to your website by adding links in the twitter stream.

    On the other hand, Twitter can be an absolute waste of time if you aren’t following the right people or engaging enough people.

    So to assure you’re getting the most out of Twitter for your internet marketing campaign, we’ve identified the top ways to grow your network on Twitter.  They are as follows:

    1. Identify WHO is your prospective client or customer.  Do you sell a product nationally or are you a local practice?  Do you market to moms, the “green” community, the over-40 crowd, etc.?   Do most of your clients live within driving distance from the practice or can they order your products online?  The answer to these questions will determine how to proceed in step 2.
    2. Start looking for “ideal” followers on Twitter using the “find people “link at the top of the main web page or through Twitter directories.  If you are looking for local consumers or clients, try typing in your city or state (i.e. NJ, LA, NYC) and see who pops up.  However, if you are looking for something more specific (i.e. people that tweet about health), use directories such as Twellow (http://www.twellow.com) or WeFollow (http://wefollow.com/) for a better match.
    3. Once you’ve found people to follow- do so, but slloooowwwwllyy.  Especially when just starting out, you don’t want to follow more people than those that follow you.   Instead, find a handful of people, follow their accounts and wait a few days to see if they follow back.  Thank the ones that follow you publicly and quickly unfollow the ones that don’t respond to your request.
    4. Pay attention to the people your followers are talking to.  You’ll be amazed at the wonderful people and potential clients you can find by following “friends of friends” on twitter.
    5. Finally-be sure to TALK to the people you are following!  Comment on their status updates or just make small talk.  It goes along way when people feel like you really care about them and what they have to say.  That’s when your twitter following will start to grow naturally and beyond your wildest expectations!

    On a final note-DO NOT SEND AUTO DM’s (Direct Messages) to people that follow you back.  Auto DM’s are private messages that basically spam your followers with company information or links to your products/services.  This does not make for good “social networking” and can actually cause you to lose followers very quickly.

    Just remember-the point of social media is to be social. Use this service to create a “face” behind the brand and you’ll develop recognition and loyalty for life!

    Editor’s note: “Tweet And Grow Rich” is an allusion to the famous “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill and not some evil online money-making scam.

  • Social Media Club of New Orleans 1st Meeting

    I’ve posted pictures online of the first meeting of the Social Media Club, New Orleans.

    It was a good time and I’m hopeful to see it evolve into something worth doing.

    More from the Social Media Club of New Orleans:

  • Twitter is a 1978 Fax Machine – Metcalfe’s Law and The Twitter Nielsen Data

    First things first: this post is a bit of inside baseball – it may be conceptually interesting but it likely won’t help you market your business.

    Metcalfes Law And The Network Effect
    Metcalfe's Law And The Network Effect

    What’s interesting to me about the recent Nielsen data regarding “Twitter Quitters” is that it makes a prediction based on current data without looking at how this technology is like others before it.  Surely Nielsen

    doesn’t have data on adoption of all technologies since the beginning of time, but if they thought a little harder they might find some similarities.  Or perhaps they just want the attention of controversy.

    Metcalfe’s Law

    states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.

    The most common illustration of this is the fax machine.  One fax machine = paperweight, two fax machines = dialog, ubiquitous fax machines = global communications in the pre-email era.

    So what’s the point?

    My contention is this: Twitter (per the Nielsen data) is a 1978 fax machine. If you had one you thought you were really cool, but the reality is you were probably only impressing yourself.

    If you’re not aware of the concern, here’s a little background:

    Fax Machines - Theyre Everywhere
    Fax Machines – They're Everywhere

    I mean think about it.  If you’re not one who is naturally tapped into online communication you sign up, cruise around without an instruction manual or map and it’s boring.  “Where to now?” you must think.  Then the phone rings, the teapot whistles or the dog barks and you’re outta there.

    Unless you’re already in the know it’s hard to find the great resources there are out there:

    It’s no wonder there’s a 60% dropoff rate.

    If you believe TechCrunch, at the end of April there were a few more than 1 million users of Twitter with only around 200,000 really active.

    From TC :

    March 2008

    • Total Users: 1+ million
    • Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
    • Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

    So let’s look at that in context.  With around 1 million users worldwide 40% of whom are in the U.S. that means that only about 400,000 U.S. folks are on twitter.

    Its Lonely Out There
    It's Lonely Out There

    So… if you’re not one of those 400,000 you’re one of the other 299,600,000, or thereabouts, U.S. folks who aren’t yet on Twitter.  That means you’re not one of the 13/100ths of 1 percent who are already hip.

    That’s a really small number.  I mean really small.  You might be lonely.

    So, I come back to likening Twitter to a 1978 fax machine.  Currently Twitter lacks mass utility — so did a fax machine in 1978.  Where’s the fax now?

    The Fax is ubiquitous

    .

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