Maximizing the Twitter Echo Chamber

In the wake of the Haiti disaster we again see Twitter taking on the role of informer, communications medium and he breaker of big news...First!

The real problem with Twitter is the noise of course. People start to tweet on the #Haiti hashtag. Everything from prayers to political notices, to ways you can help posts. If you were after news you would have to sift through it pretty carefully.

If you were after specific news, like about emergent issues or situations where immediate assistance is required, then this is not going to do you any good at all.

Noise can be a bad thing on Twitter, but you can also make it work for you if you are smart about it. But only if you have fans and not just followers.

You collect followers mechanically. It is not hard to do. But the value they add is infinitesimally small. Its like shouting into a noisy crowded room hoping someone will take notice of you.

Fans (or Friends? Not the Facebook type but the real sort.)  on the other hand, magnify your message.

Fans will take a hashtag you started, and if it grabs their attention, they will push it forward to their own band of fans.

Fans re-tweet you when you are entering a discussion on a popular hashtag, thereby increasing your chances of speaking to a wide audience.

Then using BudURL, Twitter Search and Google Analytics you can measure any surge in the hopes of repeating the performance.

Want to know who the followers are?

There the people who send out #FollowFriday (#FF) tweets with the twitter names of everyone they're following. No explanation, no sincerity, and absolutely no value except the attempt to ingratiate you to them in some fashion.

The ones who game he system via Refollow and other mechanical methods of upping their follower counts.

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Twitter for Marketing

Recent traffic stats from Hubspot indicate that Twitter's incredible growth came to a rather abrupt end during May. 


Consider these statistics on Twitter users from their newest report (PDF) on Twitter and the state of the Twitter phenomenon. 

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

You are left wondering whether this is a trend that has run its course, or whether this is just the tyranny of large numbers. (They are still topping 17 million page views.)


For me, it doesn't really matter. Twitter is (and has always been) a mainly broadcast medium. You may find some good relationships there, you may find some opportunities, but more than anything else - it is a medium for broadcasting to others. 


I posted on this a while ago, here. The heart of it? Facebook for friends, LinkedIn for B2B, Twitter for marketing.


And it is not entirely without results either. Dell has just come out to say they have made $3 million so far on Twitter, Forrester have been reporting the success of Twitter as a customer relations tool, and Ebay continually report 50% higher sales from those engaged in social media.


Not dead, not dying - just flattening out. If you already have a brand, and your brand is online (Plumbing isn't too much online for example) then Twitter for marketing remains a very valid broadcast tool. 


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Social media Experts and the curse of a little bit of knowledge

I have really had it with social media "experts". 


Over the past few months, as I have delved deeper and deeper into the world of social media, online marketing and web 2.0 technologies - it has become clear to me that there are a heck of a lot of charlatans out there.


Many (if not all) of the people I see online touting themselves as social media experts are nothing of the sort. They are people who have worked out a few tricks, and read some good advice, and then they pass this off to others in eBooks, seminars and courses.


I'm not talking about Robert Scoble or Chris Brogan, or the other bona fide experts who are playing as well as advising. I'm talking about the rash of people suddenly popping up on Twitter, or LinkedIn spouting their thoughts and opinions as if they mattered. 


There is a real danger in this...


If I give advice on LinkedIn it is because I have used it to generate 7 figures for my employer so far this year. You will notice I don't give advice on how to connect to everyone because I don't know anything about it.


If I give advice on how to get more followers on Twitter it is because I have (very publicly) worked out methods of doing that. I don't advise on how to make money or get leads there because I have no real idea. (Yet)


Coaches, mentors and advisors need to be the people who have been able to consistently do whatever it is you want to learn. Not somebody who read Seth's latest book and churns this out as their own advice.


Whats the danger? The danger is false hope, wasted cash, and more importantly wasted time - the only resource you cannot get any more of. 


Getting a great mentor or coach is a shortcut to learning. I advise it strongly and I mentor many people myself. But - make sure you get a coach who has played and won in the field before parting with your limited time or money.


A little bit of knowledge is dangerous... but not to them, to you!


Rant ends...


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Marketing 2.0 - It's all about trust !!

Marketing 1.0 was advertising. TV slots, Billboards, Radio spots and magazine (print) ads. These still have their place, and they're a lot of fun, but the game has changed. Cynicism, the evaporation of trust and changes in our reading and entertainment habits has given rise to a whole new swag of marketing techniques and practices.

Marketing 2.0 is all about trust. Using trust based avenues to reach the unreachable, and to do so in a way that raises the chance of them buying something from you, at some stage. This is more than getting your name out, it is getting your name out attached to something, some form of value or benefit that people want to possess.

Here are the top three marketing avenues available to you today.

1. Sponsored blog posts. Drawing on the trust of leading bloggers to reach their audience. These are great because bloggers will not risk their readership, or their credibility, by referring somebody who is not worth it. So the reviews are honest and allow you to be introduced to a large group of people by a trusted source.

2. Interviews and guest posts. The world is swimming with blogs, news sources and failing publications. In the increasingly commoditized world of news - scarce and stand out content is something to be fought over. You can make yourself this content for your markets. Another form of introduction to a large audience by a trusted source.

3. Permission based marketing avenues such as your own personal blog, your own personal email newsletters and your own channels on YouTube, or even Twitter. I think the most important element here is that the traffic you have, or the followers in the case of Twitter, need to be authentic . Not just the result of some following technique.

4. Referrals, but not as you have ever known them. Referrals are a different creature than they were even two short years ago. Today a Twitter Re-Tweet, if done by the right people, can have far more effect than a month of display ads on Adwords. Your LinkedIn recommendations,  if collected from the right people, are a permanent and public trust based asset for you. A record of trust  by those others may trust.

The world is changing. You can push against it and continue to employ old world gimmicks like TV spots, SEO advertising  and spam-type marketing. Or you can start to really try to leverage the trust that exists out there.

Amway, as I have noted may times on this blog, is built on trust. A network of sales reps all over the world selling to their family, friends, and extended circles of friends.

Amway turned over 7 billion last year. Thats a lot of trust...

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Click on the monkey and other traffic scams

Do you remember the "click on the monkey" banner ad?

Back in the pioneering days of the Internet advertisers fell for the same old traffic scam that they have been falling for since the very beginning of advertising. This is the notion that all traffic is good traffic.

The idea was that the monkey moved back and forth in an animated banner, with some title proclaiming that all you have to do is click on the monkey and you will instantly win $1,000,000. Once clicked of course the ad took you to some site that had nothing to do with winning a million dollars.

Somewhere along the line somebody thought that you would arrive, forget about the million you came to claim, and instead take out a high interest loan, or whatever other hair brained scam was being run.

In the old days it was a hot dog and a drink, and then you were supposed to suddenly realize that you really did want to buy a new car after all.

Today we see exactly the same thing but in different forms. The unending pursuit of traffic through increasingly innovative means. Here are some modern examples:

• Twitter auto - DM's  ("Hi great to see you, looking to develop a trust based relationship - Buy this from me!!")
  
• Misleading, outrageous too-good-to-be-true claims on banner ads
• Apparently interactive ads that take you to another site when you try to click the button or 
• Comment spam on blogs
• Link bombing on twitter (With outrageous statements normally)
• Discussion spam on LinkedIn
• Jiggling banner ads (Not misleading, just attention grabbing so they don't really belong here)
• Pop-after ads on spam websites
• "Accept all Invites " type posts on LinkedIn.
• "You have won a free..."

All aimed at driving traffic to a site, and hoping a percentage of it will convert.

Does this stuff work at all? Interruption advertising does have it's place, even if it has been demonized of late. Display ads also have their place.

But traffic scams that are inauthentic, (like Twitter follower count increases, Linking to everyone and anyone, or friending most of the web-surfing universe), just do not convert at the levels needed to be sustainable.

It is a BIG ratio game but yes, some people are foolish enough to fall for these scams. What's more - they are being tried out on an increasingly skeptical and jaded web-going audience.
But if the entire goal of your ad campaign is to drive traffic, any and all traffic, to your website with the hope of converting it to sales then you are fighting an increasingly uphill battle, and you are damaging your brand possibly beyond repair.

If ads are going to develop good traffic, the sort that is likely to convert at some stage, then there are some very simple rules to follow.

1. Realistic (read: believable) benefits, offers and claims. Preferably backed with provable testimonials at some stage for further credibility.
2. Relevance to the articles being read, the search that was performed or the site that you are surfing. Don't place affiliate ads for unrelated themes, they just don't work. (Period!)
3. Obvious locations (based on eye movement on a site) and repeat viewing. (The more times you see it the more likely you are to believe it is for real)
4. Readable and clear writing - written to catch their attention while remaining believable.

All display advertising has it's uses, and these are even more relevant with the advent of the Google-ization of the internet. But take them for what they are. A way to introduce yourself, a way to maintain or improve your brand, and a way to keep yourself at the tip of mind of your potential prospects.

Real traffic, focussed on relevant and real benefits or rewards, will always convert at a greater rate than scams. No quick fix and no sustainable easy path to riches.

In display advertising, as with everything else marketing, it is still more about "who" than "how many".

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Breaking The "Twitter Code"

A recent post on the Community Marketing Blog  talks about how more blog traffic comes from LinkedIn than from Twitter or Facebook.

For me this wasn't really news, as LinkedIn has always been a part of my traffic strategy. i stands to reason. The core of the worlds net-traveling business community is firmly entrenched on LinkedIn - and they are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. (Always means the end when somebody says that doesn't it?)

But the post really got me to thinking about Twitter and how it can be more useful in the marketing strategy for this blog.

We use Twitter as if it were like the rest of the social media tools we have out there. Even Joel Comm's book on it seemed to do the same - but it's not is it. It is actually far different. There was another post today on how 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of the tweets .

Twitter is not about friendship or nurturing a relationship - it is actually about sparking one off. Then email, Skype, Facebook and whatever other tool you want to use takes over.

I have met a lot of people there. But my real interaction with them has occurred off-Twitter. (Through blog posts and so on)

This is the real secret of Twitter I think, the real code. It is a many to many communications tool. It is not about relating and forming relationships, rather it is about broadcasting information.

And if you are going to be successful at it then your brand, or your micro-brand to be more precise, needs to have some gravity.

Seth Godin joins and picks up 3,000 followers. BUT - he isn't there tweeting away. It is just for his blog feed whenever he publishes. As always, Seth "gets it".

Many of the really successful Twitter members are news sources (or Oprah, but again - brand counts), CNN, Mashable, Tech Crunch, NY Times and many more.

They get subscribers because people are familiar with, and trust, their brand. And when they send stuff out some of us use groups on programs like Tweetdeck to capture that news and check out their articles.

Once you start to see things like that it changes the medium altogether. Instead of a Facebook for very pithy people it becomes another more sophisticated means of getting your messages out there. Like RSS but with interaction thrown in.

It also explains why follower drives, much like what I did over the past ten days (2,000 followers now . its hailing auto DM's here) are of little real value for driving up blog traffic or for internet marketing in general.

Why? No brand.. they didn't know me and I have very little idea who they are. They followed because they have auto following set up, and some of them think to sell me stuff - almost immediately if you can believe that.

When I send out a Tweet they aren't waiting for it. They have no clue what I blog about, and they are likely to miss it among the 30,000 other people they are following.

It is a smaller room - but I am still just shouting into it hoping someone will hear me.

The Code is also the reason why auto DM's offering gifts, books and whatever else don't work. I deleted mine today after two days of experimentation. Really left a bad taste in my mouth and I am glad I got rid of them.

Understanding and using the Twitter code is what will separate the winners of the battle to get revenues out of Twitter, from those who play around with it, get bored and give up.

Personal Brand + Twitter = Larger, broader audience to hear the information that you want to broadcast.

Twitter - Personal Brand = a social media toy to kick around for a while.

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1000 new Twitter followers in a week - this is how

My whole twitter experience has been far different than my experience with Facebook or LinkedIn. I ended up giving up on Facebook - just wasn't for me, and I have had some real tangible success  with LinkedIn.

Twitter has been more about fun than the serious side of things. Even so, I had to try to see just how well I could master this medium as another marketing avenue. As a B2C marketing forum I think is suits this blog, but I wasn't too sure that I would find other B2B types like myself there.

Wrong...

I started out last week with around 1600 followers. This week I am presently sitting at 2,694. I have embraced all sorts of things that I previously steered away from, and I cannot say frankly that I have been able to get to know very many of the new followers that I have picked up.

And I am pretty sure they have no real idea who I am either.

My blog traffic has stayed pretty static so far, Adsense earnings is also flat, and I am not seeing any increase in Sponsored Reviews so far either.

So up to right now the commercial side of things hasn't benefited noticeably.

But I did increase my followers by over 1,000 in a week. Maybe I can turn them from followers to friends over the next 4 - 6 weeks - who knows?

So here's how it was done.

First, setting out the search references on Twollow.com. I have set up Seth Godin, Consulting Pulse and Consulting as my keywords.

I review these every day and follow those that are not robots, auto feeds or spammers. Why? Because I am being mercenary about it. I want them to follow me, and I want (most of all) to capture retweets to their followers also.)

Second - I discovered Refollow.com. This is possibly the best relationship manager for Twitter that I have come across.

Using Refollow you can get a list of all the people following you, and of others who have high followings. I searched for the followers of Social media mavens like @Scobleizer and @ChrisBrogan.

Then I filtered them to show those with the highest following, who I wasn't following, and who weren't following me - and followed the top 100 of these.

The bet was that they would automatically refollow me...and the vast majority of them did.

The next step was one I have always thought better of, and I am not too sure that it helped much in this campaign. I went into Tweetlater.com  and set up a few things related to my profile.

I now automatically follow those who follow me, and I unfollow those who unfollow me.

I also set up a series of auto DM's. The beauty of TweetLater is that you can set up a range of DM's to send out when somebody follows you. Mine include a call to action related to my LinkedIn group for consultants , a note on the revenue generating power of LinkedIn , and one related to Missions and Mantras .

I have had two return tweets telling me that hey felt like they had been spammed... not too happy about that.

The Good news: I have 1,000 extra followers in a week.

The Not so Good news: Very few of them are following me because of who I am, what I write about, what I stand for, or for the value I can bring to their careers or companies.

They are just hangers on. The 3,000 + people following @ThisisSethsBlog know exactly who they are following, and why. My followers do not sadly.

So any tweets they see from me is a voice in the wilderness, among the several thousand that they already see every day.

The Plan From Here: I now have a good base of followers. My original followers who generally came from the blog and / or retweets, and those I picked up recently.

I am going to call a halt to the campaign during the following week and start to try to win over the followers I now have. With a view from converting them from followers to friends. Because as things stand right now - they are of little value to my commercial or reputational aspirations. (Sad as that may sound)

I will keep you posted.

Update: Oh yes, I also put a retweet button on the blog which I check via a search on Consulting Pulse  every now and then.

I think that is probably the best move I have made so far... feel free to retweet this post if you like!!

Free is NOT a business model

The newspapers of the world are slowly starting to come to grips with the fact that free is not a business model.

As classifieds and display ads drained away from print media, the push was on to try to take the best advantage of the web. Publishing for free, combined with the Google-ization of the internet, has turned a once sought after and trusted resource, (The News), into a commodity with little to differentiate each news source.

Check any breaking news story on Google and you will turn up at least a dozen versions of the same story. The one you click on has more to do with the headline than the source these days.

Web 2.0, in fact most of the internet, cannot continue to be supported by Adwords and similar type advertising models. It is just not possible.

YouTube - Ads
News online -Mainly Ads
Facebook - Ads
Twitter - Who knows, probably some form of ads
MySpace - Ads (Lots of ads)
Bloggers of the world - Ads

There simply are not enough advertisers to keep this going forever. And as more people turn to interaction style marketing. Through blogs, newsletters, forums, Ning-style communities and other means, ads are going to start to suffer even more than they are today.

You can see the same thing happening in the way people work. Everywhere I look there are examples of Daniel Pink's Free Agent Nation.

One man companies are springing up all over the place, offering nothing more than their view on things and the skills and abilities they have come to collect over the years.

At some point we (The West in particular) have got to actually do something! We cannot just bounce around connecting with each other, pfaffing around with social media, and earning money from telling other people how to do the same.

We also can't be out there selling services only.

These are death spirals!

For this reason I love companies who have used the Internet to make something, not just draw a crowd and sell advertising.

Amazon.com, eBay.com, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn - all great examples of companies who have generated additional revenue streams aside from ads and job postings. All doing very well, and all destined to outlive their respective competitors. (If they have any now)

Free followed by higher service payment - cool, that works and I am a big fan of DimDim.com as I have said many times here.

High volume low yield per transaction works. Salesforce.com is another great company that I would love to emulate more.

What can you do today that is more than just buying into the already crowded services marketplace? What can you do to actually buiold and deliver something of value? What can you do to change the model from free with ads - to consistent reliable revenue streams regardless of advertising?

Adwords cannot subsidize the entire internet, and we can't all be free agents offering only services or it is all going to fall in a heap very soon.

Why job boards should be dropped from your job hunting regime

When I was a lad I used to get the Saturday newspaper every week without fail. This was the one with all the jobs in it. The one which I could use to try to fathom what was happening with the local job markets, who was hiring, for which roles, and what skills they needed.

It was invaluable training for the proactive career management I have practiced ever since then.

After a while this time honored tradition was replaced by regular checking of online job boards. In fact job boards such as Monster.com and Seek.com.au (In Australia) all but replaced the job classifieds in newspapers. At least they did for me and I cant recall the last time I bought a newspaper for a professional appointment.

You could set up email alerts for very specific roles, and even apply online. (Imagine that!)

But after a while, it all got very tired.

When you advertise within a state or a city, you get local interest, local applications and there is a limit to the flood of resumes, even during hard times.

But the internet knows no boundaries. From my home in Newcastle, Australia I can apply for jobs all over the globe if I like. And definitely all over Australia.

...and so can everybody else....

So suddenly there are a flood of opportunities, not all of which are strictly relevant. And there are also a flood of people applying for them, not all of who are strictly relevant.

It was convenient, but started to become like the online version of pouring through the classified ads.

Overwhelming information, overwhelming responses to candidate hunters, overwhelming choice for employers... and when the number of decisions is too great - people choose not to decide!

Bad though that is, there is yet another reason why job boards are destined for the scrap heap of history...

Ever heard someone say that "80% of jobs aren't advertised"?

In fact every single survey I have ever seen on the issue, and my own career history, supports the fact that the best candidates, and the best jobs are sourced through professional networks.

And Monster.com/HotJobs.com/Seek.com.au, although great in their short time to shine, don't have "networks" - just jobs.

Enter the social media phenomena. LinkedIn contains the profiles of most people who matter in the business world today. From Bill Gates to John McCain and from the technician through to the CEO of most companies.

Everyone is there, everyone is connecting, and everyone is starting to get the idea that LinkedIn is a 24/7 trade show that everybody came to.

Alongside my profile I have jobs that relate to my main area of work.

I can search for significant people who are within my industry sectors and connected to me in some way.

Or I can peruse the groups I belong to - checking for relevant jobs in my area.

Recruiters can plumb the depths of their relationships to try to source the most suitable candidates, rather than troweling the job seekers market with a big net like a newspaper classified or Job Board post.

In fact the value of a recruiter in todays market can be directly linked (and now measured) to the breadth and depth of their sector or discipline specific network connections.

They can check recommendations in an instant, search for potential referees, and check out the candidates work history; all before they even establish contact with them!

And when they do they have one distinct advantage. This person isn't moving because they are disgruntled, unhappy, disappointed or looking for a step up. So any move for them will be positive with decidedly less baggage. Brilliant!

Job boards are suffering the same fate at the hands of LinkedIn and Twitter (to a lesser extent) that they did to Newspaper job ads less than ten years ago. I am sure there are still great jobs out there on job boards... but the odds of finding a great job, and being accepted for it are far FAR smaller than if it comes through your own network of trusted resources, contacts and connections.

Have you had any similar experiences vis a vis Job Boards and LinkedIn in particular?

Implementing Social Media - Not new platform old rules!

Every now and again I will tip toe over to AdAge or one of the other Advertising industry blogs or publications just to see what they are up to and how they are dealing with the sudden and dramatic assault on their livelihoods.

That was when I stumbled upon a recent post talking about how hard it is to implement Social Media.

The whole thing left me feeling a bit perplexed actually and feeling a bit sorry for them.

Here we have the ad guys, the ones who have made a reasonable living, and reasonable profits from their clients, by using the old advertising routines and tricks. Trade shows, TV ads, newspaper and magazine spreads, mail outs, you name it.

All aimed at, as Seth says, interrupting people while they are doing something else - and trying to snare their attention.

The more you do it, the more likely they are to take notice, the more they take notice the more likely they are to act... and so on. A workable, winning formula - until now.

So what do they do? They try to recreate what used to work on the new platform. In the very early days of mass electronic communications this took the form of spam. Ways to reach everyone they could using the most adequate and direct means. In those days (before CAN SPAM and other innovations) spam filters didn't exist, spam email was relatively new, and people were able to be interrupted while going about their email routines.

That didn't last long...

Today we see another version of this. Blanket blog writing, interlinked Twitter accounts, all blasting out corporate messages, all vying for your attention, and all trying to invade the new space where people can now be found.

But the world is different now. We have choice, and not all social media avenues are created equal, in fact they are vastly different.

If you are selling B2B, then a blog or twitter may not help you at all !!! In fact, they will probably just provide you with a pretty dramatic waste of time if you get the entire team into it.

Thats not always the case, I have a B2B blog on engineering and it helps me quite a bit; but if I wasn't doing it for fun, and for my own B2C aspirations - then I would drop it as a B2B marketing tool.

Social media is not a team sport, it is an individual pursuit.

Second, it can help drive B2C business - but not at first. In fact, often not for several months or more of blood sweat and lots of tears.

Third, the old "grab your attention" type of marketing is dying. We have choice and exercise it. Our trust is harder to gain than ever before in history, and to be frank we don't have time to get to know you so we can work out if we should trust you.

Success in social media is more about personal connections, personal brand building, personal relationships and personalized discussions.

If you want to succeed in social media marketing, then you cannot simply think that it is a new platform with old rules. Thats what the newspapers thought much to their chagrin.

It is a new platform with new rules; some of which we still don't understand as yet.

But it definitely is not about blanket coverage and trying to be everywhere your potential customers are... it is more about being what they are looking for (through personal brand building) and being extraordinary when they finally find you.

(Not an easy thing to say when you have a terrible blog template like mine is right now...sorry about that)

A great blog on Twitter

I came across an absolutely fantastic blog about Twitter today called twi5.com . The young guy who runs it, @NischalShetty is extraordinarily helpful - great one if you are keen on social media stuff. 

On Twitter: Only follow those that are worth following

I am using Twitoria  to find out who among the people I am following actually don't use Twitter anymore. (or never did)

It is a pretty cool little application. Basically you can tell it what to look for in terms of the period of inactivity, and then it finds these people so you can take a decision if you want to continue to follow them or not.

I am trying to be pretty ruthless and ditching almost everyone who no longer tweets, that way I can start following intriguing people who do.

I can't help wondering what happened to these people? Some never ever tweeted. It was a one shot advertising technique for them to Direct Message their followers with some "buy this" message. So they're out and good riddance to them.

Others tried to work it out but never really got it. Shame, it would have been good to get to know them, but it obviously wasn't for them - so they're gone also.

The last lot is the most intriguing. They are the people who used to Tweet regularly - but for some reason they just...stopped...

Their last tweets (doesn't that sound ominous) were things like:

• "Will somebody please send Pizza!" (Did he starve to death?)

• "Ten Ways to increase traffic - Part 1" (Seriously - no part two; ever!)

• "This has been a real Murphy's Law type of day" (I shudder to think how bad it actually got. No Tweets for over 6 months)

• "About to get a coffee and chill" (And never came back...)

• "Sammy the Whale Shark has been in captivity for 68 days now, I can't take anymore" (Again, I shudder to think)

• "U Guy with breast? Here is some steel for you!" (No clue...really. How did I ever get involved with this character?)

• "Getting set up with some social bookmarking sites" (And preferred them to Twitter apparently, no tweets for 6 months)

• "You geek!" (And presumably left the room in a huff)

• "Last day of the Singapore Grand Prix, last day of beer and street races ... :D" (Another "shudder to think" moment)

• "Back soon with upgraded content" (Ummmm no they didn't come back)

• "Anyone looking for a web project/team lead role?" (Some one must have said yes, no updates since October)
  

The whole process is a bit laborious. I started out with people who hadn't tweeted for a month, and then stretched it to two months because you have to manually un-follow every one of them that comes up. 

But all in all a pretty good way to start cleaning up your following lists. 

10 online tools for the eMarketers starter kit

A lot of stuff on the web is all about B2C marketing. In fact, my whole take on Facebook is that it is a B2C arena. (I could be wrong about that, often am, but I have yet to hear of a B2B success story on Facebook.)

For me, eMarketing is probably 30% of my time, and very little cash. I seldom advertise on Adwords unless I have a really good blog post to get out there. And I have never purchased any sort of banner ad, newsletter ad or anything of the sort.

Yet I have three blogs with high levels of traffic to each. One of them has been very successful in promoting a book I wrote in a separate area, and two of these blogs are in the B2B space.

So these are the 10 must have tools for every B2B eMarketer as I see it.

1. Blogger. I do not care what the technology elites say about WordPress, TypePad or Drupal. I have been using Blogger for years and as Google gets its fingers deeper and depper into the workings of this program - it is improving out of site.

The easiest, quickest, horizontally integrated and widely used platform for bloggers on the net. I wouldn't bother trying to work out how to use anything else.

2. LinkedIn. Undoubtedly the leading platform for professional networking. The only place where a lot of my contacts hang out, and the place where recruiters constantly sift through the profiles. I have made over 6 figures  from this platform alone, in less than a year.

3. Twitter Account. A tricky one. I posted some tips here about marketing with Twitter . But it is something that you really need to get into and enjoy if it is going to help you in your marketing and branding. it is possible, I would not write it off as a fad at all, but it takes time and determination.

I have yet to see the full potential of Twitter as a marketing and revenue generation tool. But I have done pretty well with it so far I have to add.

4. DimDim.com. I pump up this program so much I should have shares in the company! But what can I say, I really love and appreciate this webinar program. I am running a one very soon on LinkedIn as a marketing and sales tool.

That will be the fourth free webinar I have used to cement my relationship with readers, and to grow the Consulting Pulse brand and tribe. I am sure that you could do a heck of a lot more with it.

5 Feedburner and Google Analytics. Must have items. What gets measured gets managed. Period.

6. BudURL. I really like this link shortener. it allows you to track the number of clicks per link so you can really see whats working, what isn't working, and what you could do to repeat your success.

7. Aweber. Email marketing is something that I have neglected here on this blog. But we now have a decent audience, most of whom (80%) regularly read the newsletters that we send out, and we are growing steadily. I recommend newsletter marketing to everyone - but you have to follow the rules...


8. Slideshare. I only ever ran one presentation on Slideshare and it went really well for me. I need to set up a heap more, they are a lot of fun and I really get a lot out of it personally.

9. Squidoo. I am not too sure if this is going to be a concrete part of my eMarketing arsenal yet. But I do know one thing. It gets a lot of attention if you do it right, and it is a heck of a lot of fun. (Yes, I am a boring person.)

10. Positive mental attitude. You can do this, you really can. Why not you? Why me (a baggy shorts electrician from the remotest part of the world) and not you?

The reasons... there aren't any. Good luck!

Related Posts

• Turn your LinkedIn account into a powerful revenue generating tool 
• Starers Kit for Blogging Consultants 
• Check out our Squidoo lens on free Bootstrapping tools for Small Business 
• Redefining Consulting Success - A Slideshare presentation 

Robert Scoble, you are wrong about Twitter

I read a piece by Robert Scoble  over the weekend which really got under my skin. For a tech blogger he seems to miss a few really important lessons from history relating to how technology companies are successful.

His rant was really about functionality, and the fact that FriendFeed is a lot more functional than Twitter. To explain his point further he rants on about how easy it is to find a photo on the Hudson Plane Crash in Twitter and then on FriendFeed.

This is where it all starts to go astray... Robert, mate, everybody else would have used Google Images .

Maybe it is his Microsoft heritage, but while his stuff is good for discovery of new things on the web. He has almost never been very good at pointing out how businesses can use these new programs and new technologies to make more money. (Goal number 1, remember?)

So it is no wonder he missed the point.

First, very few programs or sites are successful based on functionality. In fact, practically none. This is a lesson that consultants learned a long time ago.

• Google was not more functional than Yahoo, Google Docs are not more functional than Office.

• Salesforce.com was not more functional than Hyperion (when it came out)

• LinkedIn is not more functional than Facebook.
  

The list goes on and on. In fact, people still debate the relative merits of Betamax and VHS or HD and BluRay.

Yet Google is winning the internet search game, LinkedIn is winning the professional networking game, and Salesforce.com is the clear market leader of CRM. Period.

Why is this?Because functionality doesn't count, not at the beginning anyway.

Focus. They focus incredibly intensely on their core business, they become very very good at it, and they start a bushfire of talk about it.

Then they invest in leadership. Then the start to pull away, to make sure that they will be the only reasonable choice, and to put additional barriers between themselves and their competition. Monetizing the Twitter serviuces has yet to come. But hopefully it will be more analytical than just additional searching type stuff.

(The entire internet cannot be subsidized by Adwords and similar advertising schemes - surely)

It isn't about functionality, not at first.

eMarketing Tips Using Twitter

My fortunes with Twitter have been pretty good.

I have met two CEO's of companies that I would like to maybe partner with at some stage, and I have picked up many subscribers to my blog and newsletter just through the Twitter relationships. I don't think it is the revenue generator that LinkedIn is , but it is definitely a cornerstone element of any eMarketing strategy.

Fortunately I enjoy it also. Some things that have helped me.

1. Make it easier for you to post content

Twitterfeed  is a great tool. It automatically checks your blog, or other RSS source, and then tweets the results. You can include the title and a summary, or just the title. Whatever you prefer. I have feeds set up for my blog, my newsletter, and I used to have it set up for my job board on a different account.

2. Make it interesting for other people to follow you

If all you do is broadcast stuff then your ability to make a connection will reduce dramatically. You aren't a TV channel, so don't just throw links to your blog.

Try to get a good blend of content, pithy comments, conversation, and external links. (Links to things that are not your blog) For example, I often throw links related to stuff I discover on the internet. Articles, cool sites, interesting web pages, and even the odd Wikipedia definition when it is really enlightening.

People seem to respond to this. If you just bomb them with links only, then the likelihood that they will click them, or engage with you on a personal level, is greatly reduced.

3. Track your results

If you don't have TweetDeck , then you should get it. I held off for a long time but once I finally downloaded it and installed it - well, it hasn't been turned off yet!

TweetDeck  is cool because you can set up search parameters to see, say, who is re-tweeting your messages and which messages are likely to be re-tweeted. (And by whom)

You can also set up groups so you can, for example, create a group of Marketers. Or a group on engineering if thats your bag. Or, and this is the important one, a group of people who you have a good relationship with. People you are more likely to engage with regularly.. And people who are more likely to re-tweet your messages.

Remembering that I have nearly 1400 followers, so I really need to categorize or it would drive me crazy.

Another way to track your results is via link shortening sites. BudURL.com is the one that I use. I can shorten a URL, and then track how many people clicked on it. That is so useful!

I put these into my LinkedIn news groups, into Twitter, on my newsletters, and for links in my blogs. So I am able to see, categorically, which of my sources are driving the most traffic. It takes a little more work - but it helps you to sharpen the sword a lot more.

4. Be sincere and authentic 

I wrote about this previously and think it is probably the most important issue related to Twitter use and social media in general.

People can recognize false sincerity a mile off. This is the early 21st century they see it all the time. People can recognize sycophancy when they see it, and in general they do not respond well to it.

And people can tell, pretty quickly, if you are trying to be something that you are not. The substance just isn't there and you end up looking the fool. So basic rule, be sincere and authentic.

For example. Twitter etiquette dictates that if someone follows you then it is courteous to follow them. (The Re-Follow Rule ) This is a disastrous strategy and one I have written about previously. It is neither sincere or authentic, just mindlessly following the crowd.

Also try to refrain from bombing people with free "gifts" when they start to follow you. Would you do this in person? And if you did what would you expect the other person to say? Again, neither sincere nor is it authentic. I don't like the practice anyway.

5. Have Fun

This is important. I have seen people sounding off about the whole Web 2.0 thing or the social media thing, bemoaning the need to "be online most or all of the time".

This isn't the case. I do spend a lot of time online and linked up, but I'm a little different to most people.

Social media is a complementary approach to your marketing, not a replacement approach . It is never going to replace marketing by walk about .

If it is a hassle for you to do it, then don't! Do something else.

For me consulting is all about relationships, all about people, and all about developing long term commercial connections with people. Becoming the trusted advisor. I see the social networking world as an extension of that. If you don't, maybe it is time to ask if this is really the game for you.

Enjoy, and if you want to follow me on Twitter  be my guest... !

For the modern marketing company - Twitter Farms !

I don't run a marketing/PR company. (Yet!) But if I did I would be realizing that most companies, especially SME operations, are taking a do-it-yourself approach to modern marketing.

And why not? Adwords, Pay-per-Post, trust based marketing, permission marketing - all available, all cost little, and all are pretty effective.

So the requirements for targeting display ads in magazines, newspapers and the TV is shrinking pretty fast. If they are going to survive, and they may go the way of much of the newspaper industry in reality, then they need to adapt very quickly.

Some are trying through reactive means. Setting search parameters for (say) "bride", or "Wedding" or "groom" and then contacting the person with offers of products and services related to their looming event.

Not bad, but a bit brutish and hit and miss really isn't it?

So they are going to need new products, and new ways of remaining relevant. For marketers, just like everyone else he magic formula still works - Trust + Scarcity + Value.

They might be able to hit the "Trust" and the "Value" part, but with the preponderance of low cost marketing avenues how can they regain their position as providers of "scarce" services?

Well... this is what I would do...

First: assemble a "farm" of Twitter users. People who have 5,000+ followers. People who have proven their ability to generate a trust based asset. (Their following)

Pay them a set fee per month. Say $1,500 each for 20 - 40 of them. (For a rough maximum of 200,000 followers)

Get them to promote products that they agree with, in their specific interest areas, several times per week. With several Tweets per campaign.

Sell this service to advertisers who are looking for a way to tap into the Twitter phenomena. You get to leverage the trust based assets that your farm members have fostered, and they in turn get an opportunity to monetize these.

As time goes on you can track and pay the more effective trust marketers a retainer commensurate with their real value.

Second: This is the part where the innovation is needed. Twitter analytics is a nascent art and one that has the potential to be incredibly powerful.

Imagine being able to measure the "spread". Imagine if you could tell with just a few queries, who was the most retweeted person on Twitter.

What could you do with that? And what if you could also see when they were retweeted and how many consequent retweets they received. (At what time, in what country, on which day and so on...)

This is only scratching the surface but there are some kewl things out there. But the ability to show a radar chart, which shows density against time, is still pretty far away. (I am going to post on this later, or maybe another Squidoo  page)

Third: Track clicks via something like BudURL.com, track conversions via landing pages, standard Google Analytics stuff, and (of course) track straight out revenue measurement.

This is pretty powerful stuff if it is done right. A real time graph showing the spread of an idea, Tweet, and link.

Measures showing the number of people who actually clicked on the link that was sent.

And an end result table showing how many of those clicks actually converted. Checking it with different members of the Twitter Farm and with different versions of the landing page.

The end result? A measure of marketing effectiveness within hours of launching the campaign. Now that's worth paying for...

The whole Web 2.0 thing does not have to mean the death of the marketing agency. it just means that a shift is needed from todays model to tomorrows model. Newspapers could have done the same but now it is too late.

What newspapers once held as a scarce and valuable resource is now seen as a commodity, don't let that happen to you.

The Twitter Re-Follow Rule

I'm not sure if it was Guy Kawasaki or one of the other Web 2.0 mavens who said it but there seems to be a rule in Twitter that if someone follows you  then it is only good manners for you to follow them back.

In fact I received a rather nasty series of tweets from a follower this week berating me for not following back. (I was flabbergasted)

I did this for a while. But I don't do it anymore. There are a few reasons for this.

1) Social media is not about how many but who, to paraphrase Seth Godin. I am not interested in notches on the laptop as much as I am interested in following interesting and preferably motivated people.

You don't want to waste a third of your 2000 allowed follows on people who don't post or don't post stuff you are interested in.

2) Lots of robots out there. Have followed some classics. Every now and then I see my Tweets turn up again with a different slant on them, or sen to me in a reply. This is a sure sign of a robot.

3) Some people are just dead boring, are looking to up there follower count when we have no interests in common, or worse -  they're just weirdos.

So the automatic re-follow thing for me is out basically. Sorry if that offends anyone.

What I will do, about once a week, is run through those who are following me and check their profiles.

If it is all private chit chat, or content I'm not interested in, or hey only have three tweets, or its just blatant spam - then I am not playing.

But if they seem to write regularly about stuff that interests me, then I will follow them. I think that if you want to get good followers, and want to follow intriguing people, then this is what I recommend.

1) search for people who speak about your themes, your authors, your software programs or favorite past times first. (http://search.twitter.com)

2) Check them out. Are they really talking about "your" stuff? Or is it just a random tweet that doesn't relate to the rest of their stream?

3) Follow them. Some of them will immediately follow you back, some will not even notice, and some of them will check you out first to make sure you are worth following. (We only get 2000 after all)

Feel free to check out my own profile , if there are tweets and posts there that you find interesting then it will b great to have you as a follower. I will check your own profile out also.

If you are new send me a tweet (@DarylMather ) to let me know you're new and I will be happy to take a chance on you.

Twitter Success = Sincerity and Authenticity

It took me about 6 months before I actually "got" Twitter.

Once I started to use the service in earnest - the results were pretty impressive. I tripled my traffic to the blog within the first week. And I have been able to attract some pretty significant people as potential referrers of my posts. (You can follow me here )

Today Twitter features as a structural element in my approach to social media marketing. I have experimented a lot with it, and learned a heck of a lot. (And I have met some pretty cool and influential people also, life is fun lately)

I am not going to tell you that Twitter is the greatest thing since sliced bread. There are many people out there telling you that.

But I can tell you what I have learned.

The one thing that stands out to me about Twitter is that insincerity and sycophancy are immediately seen for the self interested garbage that it is. It is, a hey say, a hard room.

Here are some tips that have helped me, I hope they help you.

1) Enjoy it! 

• Being successful with Twitter, or LinkedIn or whatever Web 2.0 medium you choose takes time and patience. So you might as well enjoy it. 

• This is no magic bullet, nothing is, it is just another way to immediately reach people who may have been unreachable for you a short time ago. 

• Get smart. The standard Twitter interface may be iconic but it isn't too engrossing. But Tweetdeck... now theres a great application for Twitter. 

• Tweet deck updates regularly so you can see all of the streaming information from the people you follow, and from the people who are following you. You can also create groups of people you follow, and a whole host of other stuff. (Not a tutorial on Tweetdeck)

• Get mobile. Twitterberry is a great little app for the blackberry. it has it's limitations but it has seen me through travelling across the deserts of the middle east. Several journeys across Australia, and even a few trips into the USA and Europe from time to time. So it has passed any tests I set for it. 

And lastly... if there is anybody reading this who hasn't yet realized that consulting is almost 100% about relationships. (real ones, not the "in it for me only" ones) then you are in the wrong game and reading the wrong blog.


Twitter is a fantastic way for you to interact with people who are like minded. People who share common interests and who you are likely to strike a chord with.

2) Follow "your" people.

When I started I had no idea what to do. So I used the search function to track down people who had similar interests.

First I went looking for people talking about consulting or consultants. Then I started with people who talked about Seth Godin or Daniel Pink. Then I moved onto general terms like marketing and other terms I have an interest in.

Check their Twitter stream, see if they are talking about stuff that interests you, and if so then follow them.

There is a cultural thing in Twitter to follow everyone who follows you. Well, you can kiss a lot of frogs that way. I tend to check out what they are talking about first, and if it suits me then I'm in!

And of course snowballs build. Among those who were following me for a while before I followed them include Mr Kevin Rudd (Prime Minister of Australia), Mr Malcolm Turnbull (Leader of the opposition in Australia), Tom Ziglar (Zig's boy)

3) Get leveraged!

Twitter is also a trust based asset.

As people who follow you become more acquainted with you, and as they become more acquainted with your work, they are more likely to re-tweet what you post.

This is a referral. A recommendation from a trusted source. The people following them may see it, may read it or follow the link, and if what you write or say is extra-ordinary enough, you may get another follower out of it.

Re-tweets is one way of leveraging what you post. But the best by far is when other people volunteer to post your blogs feed (say) via something like Twitterfeed  .

It's easy. Just log into Twitterfeed  using your OpenId, get them to place the URL of your blog (mine is...http://feeds.feedburner.com/ConsultingPulse) and get them to set it for each hour or whatever.

That way whatever you post gets posted by other people also. This is one of the secrets to Alltop's underground success, and it is something I try to use as much as possible.

Track your retweets. Check what works with your crowd and what doesn't, and err towards those issues that people find you to be referred about.

4) Be sincere and authentic

Twitter, LinkedIn and every other forum I have ever been a part of is all about relationships. And people recognize false sincerity and sycophancy in an instant. (Heck, there have been far too many books written by sycophants for us not to be cynical)

So be real. I personally don't tweet about my breakfast or what I am doing most times. But I do get into moods when I will post my thoughts on certain issues. or I will use Twitter to rave on about a specific theme that I am working up in my head. (Normally a precursor to a blog post)

If you want to be re-tweeted then you have to forward the information from others. Not garbage, but stuff that is worth forwarding. Trust does beget trust...

If you want people to look out for you then talk to them! Send them tweets, reply to what they are saying. Twitter is one of the first real many to many communications hubs, and for all the people in there it can be pretty lonely if you are just shouting into the noise.

Treat it like a shortened version of real life. Just as dynamic, just as personal - only 140 characters long. Would you give somebody a "free gift" just for meeting you?

Would you spam them with offers and other commercial rubbish just for the mistake of meeting you?

Would you just continually throw articles at them just because they met you?

Of course not...

Common sense again, treat it like any other real world relationship and you will continue to attract followers. You will continue to have high hit rates on links you send in. And you will continue to develop relationships that go beyond the virtual realms of Web 2.0. (And for consultants - that's what counts.)

Maybe, if I don't have anything better to do

This was the answer I got when I spoke to a group of mid-twenties marketers during a presentation I gave recently.

The question was: "Do you think you will be using Facebook in two years time?"

I asked for a few reasons. About 7 years ago I was big into Yahoo Chat. Then life took over, I ran out of time, and it all faded away. Nobody I know is there anymore, even though we had a really large local community.

It made me think. I have a lot of doubts about the sustainable nature of the present Web 2.0 bubble. (Great video) And I really had an Epiphany when I read Robert Scoble's Tweet saying "I am really worried about start ups in the valley supported by advertising". (Paraphrasing there.)


And he should be worried. We are not talking about Salesforce.com here, we are talking about a heap of sites and blogs that are all powered by advertising.


I think LinkedIn seems to have an idea about longer term revenue generation, or at least outside of the advertising model. But Facebook, MySpace and YouTube all rely directly on their traffic as opposed to anything else. And this means advertising.


How long can Web 2.0 continue to be funded by Google Adwords? What happens when advertising drops off? What happens when (like right now) the floor falls out of the market?


Remeber conferences and trade shows? They used to be fantastic places for generating new work and for generating leads. Still okay today, but nothing like they used to be.


Why? Because you go there and you are marketing to other marketers who have marketed to you and so on... you get the point.


Is that the future for MySpace / Facebook or LinkedIn? What about Twitter? Its already choking on marketing type stuff.


I used to read a lot of blogs about Web 2.0. And I used to download a lot of podcasts. But please... I couldn't take it any more. Some of the most inane self serving garbage I have read. (I still read and recommend Scobleizer.com, but he has a business edge to his writing. Dropped all of his podcasts though)


Don't get me wrong. I like the social media stuff, and I am pretty sure that there is money to be mined from relationships online. In fact, Seth Godins recent success has proved it to me beyond a shadow of a doubt.


But is it sustainable in the form that it is now in? And if not, then whats next?

And the world shifts again...

A fascinating thing happened the other day while the world was turning.

Web 2.0 transformed from "an interesting phenomena" into "the way we live now"

Ryan Kuder was a typical Yahoo guy who often twittered his day asa matter of course. For the uninitiated this means he continued to send "tweets" in to social networking site Twitter. So for him when he was laid off it was no change in the routine for him to continue twittering his day, even though it was a bit different.

And it was noticed...

In his words:

Henry Blodget excerpted my day on Silicon Alley Insider. That story hit the top of Techmeme by Tuesday night. Yesterday, my layoff was on the front page of the LA Times print edition and it was reprinted in today's Merc. I started Tuesday with 87 followers on Twitter. By Wedensday night, I had over 400. We're just a few shy of 500 now. Hopefully one of you is hiring ;)

Fascinating stuff. Where the daily drudge of the ordinary man becomes the news of tommorrow. Through no more than standard daily activities. The world is changing very quickly my friends, and I wonder how we are going to keep up.

Personally... I don't "get" the twitter thing. Seems like a lot of uneeded "noise" only to me. But others aparently do... maybe I should listen in for a while.

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