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Blog posts tagged Twitter
Get personal with marketing
July 14, 2010
I read with great interest this week the news that Twitter is getting into the ecommerce space.
In an idea copied from the very popular US-based service Woot, Twitter will be advertising time-sensitive deals via a dedicated account (@earlybird). In a reversal of traditional marketing norms, you will only receive the daily deals by following the account.
Sites offering time sensitive deals, vouchers or private sales clubs have rarely been off the front pages of tech or retail blogs for the past year. It seems almost every day I am reading about a Groupon clone springing up. Even the old man on the digital high street, Amazon, is in the game with their recent acquisition of Woot.
I can see the attraction. As humans we like to feel special, we like the sense of getting a good deal or “beating the man”. Sites like this play as much towards our egos as they do our budgets.
We can learn from this. Why not experiment with your online or traditional marketing or sales processes? Make things personal, spend time researching your customer base and tailor the offering. I love it when I walk into our local fishmongers and they know my name and what I normally buy. I always get offered something special that they know I would like. It may sound gimmicky, but it works.
Technology is enabling us, ironically, to become more personal. Why not give it ago?
Automation, repetition and laziness make for a healthy blog
July 01, 2010
Here are three steps to making sure your content is seen by an interested audience.
Automation is good
It performs a small but significant task for your carefully crafted text. Sign up to the dlvr.it service and add the RSS feed of your blog to the system. dlvr.it will detect when you have published a new blog post and then seed it into your status updates across a range of social networks. This leaves you more time to get on with all the other jobs you need to do and draws in your interested audience wherever they choose to have a presence.
Repetition is good
Not only is it perfectly acceptable to repeat your status updates, it is encouraged. Your audience will not be on the web all the time. You may have an international audience where time zones come into play. If you publish a blog in the morning it is good practice to update your Twitter status and any others later in the day with a link to your blog post.
Laziness is good
Do not panic if you get ‘Blogger’s Block’. If you do not have any inspiration for writing content do not force yourself to write. Your audience will thank you for the quality control. Regular updates keep a blog alive but writing content for the sake of it will do you no favours.
I can’t claim that I can solve the Vuvuzela crisis, but…
June 16, 2010
The Vuvuzela can be pretty annoying. It is the noise and talk of the World Cup. The constant barrage of that atonal hum is enough to drive anyone loopy. Just imagine what it is like in the concentrated bowl of a stadium setting, amplified and focused. Everyone broadcasting into the middle with a relentless stream of trying to be louder than the Vuvuzellist next to you may make for a charged atmosphere, but at the end of the day it is all noise and no respite — remind you of anything?
Now picture this. A large number of people all wanting to be heard and throwing out their constant and near identical marketing message — all in one concentrated area or bowl, such as Twitter — just hoping that in a sea of similar noisy messages someone will listen, take interest and give you some money for your product or service.
I can’t claim that I can solve the Vuvuzela crisis, but I can certainly recommend that we all take a look at our own trumpeting.
- Consistency of message is very much different to sending out a constant message.
- Broadcasting is not this year’s model. Today we engage. Why? Because it works, is more involving and the tools we use are geared up for a two-way communication.
- If everyone makes the same noise then we are all the same. Be different and make your ‘difference’ stand out clearly.
- If the Vuvuzela had some tonal variation it would be less irritating. How can you make your message have more than one note?
The 11 Commandments of social media
June 09, 2010
Whether you’re a creative type, a business owner or an experienced marketer, the proliferation of social media recently can confuse, bemuse and excite in equal measure.
It’s no longer enough to send out monthly newsletters or email campaigns to talk to potential customers – now we’re supposed to actually engage with them, talk to them, and respond to them in real-time across social media platforms.
The worst thing? You can’t escape it.
Facebook has more than 400 million users, Twitter accounts have increased by nearly 1,382 per cent in the last 12-month period alone, while Technorati currently monitors more than 133 million blogs across the Internet. To survive online, social media involvement appears to be a must-have activity. Businesses are being told to go where their customers hang out.
There are, however, some basic considerations for effective social media engagement. Here’s my Top 11 Commandments for social media:
1. Thou shall not spam
Whatever you do, don’t spam your customers or target markets. They won’t appreciate a barrage of poorly-researched, irrelevant and inbox-clogging spam emails. Spamming inboxes – whether it’s company email addresses, Twitter accounts or Facebook will win zero brownie points and alienate you from any further contact. Once credibility is lost, it’s not coming back anytime soon, if ever.
Hyperlinking and acknowledging external sources on your blog makes common sense.
2. Thou shall not steal
Stealing links to stories, news items, funky new websites and wonderful products from another source and passing them off as your own is a huge social media no-no. For example, on Twitter the re-tweet or RT function is an essential part of Twitequette, while hyperlinking and acknowledging external sources on your blog makes common sense. It engages and links you with the world.
3. Thou shall not covet your competitor’s blog
One of the most unattractive and unprofessional social media rules to break is that of taking your competitor’s content, services, products and online offerings – and copying it. And there’s a lot of it about. After all, ideas and innovation do have a commercial value. Advice? Brainstorm and generate new products and services within your own creative team instead. It’s actually good fun, too!
If you sell directly to them via your social media channels, you’ll lose them. Instantly.
4. Thou shall not sell – anything, ever
The whole point of social media is to attract and engage an audience – hopefully a significant one – who will them promote your business on your behalf. Your audience are NOT there to sell to. They are there because they value your content, insights and advice. If you sell directly to them via your social media channels, you’ll lose them. Instantly. Play it smart – give, give, give. Never sell.
5. Thou shall not kill
Nothing is quite as bad in social media-land as an account which is established and then sits there. Dead. No content. Nothing contributed. Setting up a social media space, such as a Facebook fan page, Twitter feed, or company blog, and then not adding content to it regularly is a sure-fire way of killing your social media credibility in front of a global audience. Add content. Add value. Just add!
6. Thou shall not take the name of social media in vain
Remember that despite the fact social media can seem quite light-hearted, harmless and fun, your inputs on social media networks are on the web for time immemorial. So be careful what you post. Add value, contribute to the flow of conversation. Think carefully before you post anything, anywhere, anytime, which can be viewed as an attack or negative comment in your industry.
7. Thou shall not commit adultery
Social media adultery can be committed without thinking, but the effect and long-term damage is hard to recover from. Because many social media networks operate on an informality level which standard marketing does not recognise, the rules of engagement are still the same. Remain professional, polite and polished at all times. Remember your social media content is your legacy.
Make sure you cater for your audience’s requirements, needs and wants.
8. Thou shall honour thy audience
Simple really – without an audience, your social media inputs are little more than an exercise in commercial vanity. Without followers, readers, commentators and fans of your social media content, being there is effectively a waste of your marketing budget and time. Make sure you cater for your audience’s requirements, needs and wants. It is, unfortunately, all about them. Always.
9. Thou shall not forget the Sabbath Day
So, you think social media is a Monday to Friday exercise? Afraid not. In our 24/7, always-on, on-demand culture, social media plays an essential part of the online marketing mix, and your inputs need to cover the full seven days of the week. The good news is that you can pre-schedule posts, tweets and social media content using established tools to maintain an ever-present presence.
10. Thou shall not worship any false gods
What this means, essentially, is that just because an individual or company has oodles of followers or friends on a social media network, it doesn’t make them God. Challenge them, make them think, debate their content, get involved. This adds to your credibility and also hooks you into the audiences of the big players. Think of it as a subtle way of piggy-backing for exposure. Classic tactic.
11. Thou shall not forget Commandments 1-10
Simple really, this one: be mindful of Commandments 1-10.
Do I need social media monitoring?
May 13, 2010
So you want to get involved in social media – you’ve read about it, about how it’s going to help your business, and you’ve got some time at the end of the day to do something with Twitter and Facebook. But now the guy says you ought to be monitoring – and that could well cost you money. Do you need to do it? I say monitoring of some sort should come before you make your first post, and this is why.
A while back, there was an idea going round that social media was like a cocktail party, and you had to find the right people and talk to them. But when you got in front of the girl, it was like speed-dating with the next guy trying to muscle in on her – you had to act fast. Though I haven’t heard the analogy in a while, it is as true now as it was two years ago – if not more so, as the number of people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn has grown, and the forums and networks have multiplied.
In today’s crowded online space, it’s more important than ever that your message goes to the right place. But when you are starting off, how do you know where the right place is? You may join Twitter and Facebook, but how do you know who is interested in what you have to say? Who is blogging about your particular area of business?
And that’s where monitoring comes in. When I go to a function, or a networking event, I stand in the doorway for thirty seconds, looking around, checking who’s there and who I want to talk to. In the same way, with social media, you should listen first – for mentions of your business area, for people talking about your subject.
Online there isn’t a doorway that you can hide in and watch; you need a tool. Plenty of others have listed the wide range of social media monitoring tools, from Social Mention, Giga Alerts, or Google Alerts, which are free, through Simple Web’s MediaGenius, Alterian SM2, and all the way up to Radian6, with many more on the side. These tools – to carry on a tired analogy – will help you to identify which part of the cocktail party to head to, and who to talk to when you get there. But without them, you’re going to be standing around, a lost and confused Billy-no-mates, on your own.
- Nigel Legg is an independent social media monitoring and marketing consultant based in Bristol, UK.
#Donut24 was brought to you by cake, coffee, charity and conversation
May 10, 2010
24 hours of general election live blogging and Twittering and for what?
In a bleary-eyed state, this was something I was questioning. Did Simon and I really just type through the night until our fingers were numb, only to find that the British public (those that were able to vote without being turned away, that is) had deemed not one party suitable for a majority rule, but instead had condemned us to a weekend of conjecture, sucking-up and uncertainty?
Why yes, we did - and it was absolutely worth it.
The Twitterblogathon was an idea we dreamt up a month ago. It started as a dare, but the closer it got to May 6, the more real and organised it needed to be.
We didn’t want to commit to 24 hours of election coverage that would just regurgitate what anybody could see on any of the TV channels. We needed to bring a little bit more to the table.
We opted for unmoderated panellists and also encouraged comments from readers in order to build up a conversation. Without flogging a tenuous small business angle, we also discussed the election campaigns as marketing strategies, among other relevant topics. And in the morning after the night before, while Dimbleby & Co were getting some well-deserved shut-eye, our editorial team was sourcing small business reaction to the result.
Of course, we didn’t think 24 hours of work lent itself to just being 24 hours of work. Oh no, this was also an opportunity to raise some money for charity. As a feat of endurance, not too dissimilar to the exertion of a marathon, this warranted a supplementary fundraising effort.
We had known for some time that The Children’s Trust were to host a National Doughnut Week and, if there is one thing that we can get behind, it’s a week celebrating donuts (whichever way you want to spell it). Thankfully, our readers wanted to get behind this effort, too. So far (‘So far’, because YOU can keep giving) we have raised £319. We were doubly delighted to be featured on the JustGiving blog as their fundraising event of the day.
We are very grateful to all those that donated money and to everyone who got involved in the live blog. We had 400+ reader comments and the #Donut24 hashtag was just the job for creating a hub for conversation on Twitter.
Our thanks go to our fantastic panellists: Emily Cagle, Benjamin Dyer, James Gurd, Eamonn Moore, Bryony Thomas and Anna Kirby.
An extra special mention goes to Claire of Claire’s Handmade Cakes, who generously donated a stunning and oh-so-delicious cake for through-the-night fuel (pictured at top).
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