Category: Social Media Magic Tricks

Have you ever considered what the difference is between your management of Twitter vs Email?  What makes them so very different? The answer lies in the definitions of synchronous and asynchronous.

I looked up the definition of synchronous and it said “occurring at the same time”, which I don’t disagree with. But you couldn’t say that Twitter is occurring at the same time, though Twitter is synchronous. So what does that mean?

Watch and find out:

If that gets you excited, come to one of our BC Clusters events and let’s talk marketing the entire day

Ever want to know who’s following you on Twitter? There are several services that will give you that information.

But if you’re just looking to find out who because it would be fun, you’re missing the real value. What you really want to be looking for are the brands and personalities in your niche (or related to your target market) that are following you. These are the people who can see your tweets and engage with you.

And sometimes it indicates researching you as well. Continue reading “Are Brands or Celebrities Following you on Twitter?”

Nissan’s Social Media Marketing campaign has the engine of a huge company, but the heart of small one. I was truly surprised by the sincerity, integrity and intimacy by which Nissan operates their program.

For a car company trying to make money in times that are extremely difficult, I I was surprised how little of the discussion was about sales, ROI, or monetization. It was quite obvious during the course of the discussion that sales were the goal of some other Nissan department. The social media marketing department was about customer experience and branding. Continue reading “Nissan’s Social Media Marketing Manifesto”

Arghh. . . Don’t just follow us on Twitter. . .

I got a 5K flyer in the mail yesterday, and the Twitter/Facebook logo duo caught my eye immediately. That’s probably strange to you, but I see them everywhere – and most of the time I take pictures of them or clip them out and put them in my ‘workshops example folder’.

So the entire flyer was about a 5K race coming up. Great imagery, cool logo and art. Then they had the date, race starting times and the “Register at Active.com” statement. And then to finish up the flyer, the footer including the host organization’s mission statement and the Twitter/Facebook duo.

I didn’t include an image of the flyer itself. It’s a local event for charity and I really just thought they didn’t need to hear this at this point. But I’ll tell you this is a perfect lesson in Marketing that I think all small businesses should heed.

To be blunt “Nobody wants to follow you”. Or me. Or anyone else for that matter. We want information. We want discourse, tips, strategies, etc. . . We just don’t want to follow you on Twitter for the hell of it. That’s no incentive whatsoever.  And I have “liked” so many companies with poor Facebook pages, I’m not inclined to visit too many more.

On the flipside, their Facebook page is 1000% better than most. They’ve got actual social interaction going on. They’ve got videos of people talking about their race last year, race maps, updates on training run times and practice race days. Just great stuff. It’s too bad their flyer doesn’t say that.

On top of that, they ask you to register at Active.com right on the flyer, when they could easily have had you get the link to the Active registration page on their Facebook page. In fact, their fan page is so good, I bet it would even improve their conversion rate over the Active.com order page.

1 more missed opportunity.

So my charge to you is: Don’t ask anyone to follow your business on Twitter. Don’t set up a fan page on Facebook and don’t put that “Follow us on Facebook” sign on your company invoices. Nope. Resist. Don’t do it. In fact, don’t even start a social media strategy unless you know what you’re going to do.

The 5K folks had a great plan in mind for their Facebook page. They should have said, “Get up to date information about the race, get registered for door prizes and hear what past participants have had to say about the race – all on our Facebook page. Also, become a fan and then get all the Registration Information.”

How many more fans would a race of 700 people get to their page with that marketing plan?  With only a week to go – they have 114 fans. That’s 586 fans shy of the number who registered directly through Active.com.

I would encourage you to jump over to this Social Media Examiner article where they interviewed the folks at Intel about how they manage their Facebook page. You can see here how important it is to have an objective – and how to drive people there using that objective.

Don’t ask people to “follow you on Twitter” – give them a reason.

Oooh. . . this is pretty exciting actually, especially for small business owners who would like to have a Twitter account, but really don’t have the time to keep it up-to-the-minute fresh. Here’s a free, great method to supply your Twitter account with great information about your niche.

Wait. . . does that even make sense? Isn’t Twitter a social media  property that really requires personal networking?  Despite every social media expert in the country saying the opposite, you definitely don’t need to be present all the time and you don’t need to be creating relationships.

To say that is mandatory is to ignore the usefulness of NPR, PBS, Wikipedia and the Weather Channel. All of those mediums are watched and subscribed to by people just looking for information. So be that source for those looking for information. This is one way to do that – send an RSS feed directly to your Twitter account.

In a short 5 minute watch you can see me lay the whole thing out in this short video clip:

Watch the RSS Feed to Twitter video

But the steps in prose are this:

• Figure out what it is you want to send to Twitter. Are you wanting your audience to get information, information and offers, advertisements, or entertainment.
• Find the information you’re looking for by searching Google and then clicking the “more” button for Blogs. Basically you want Google to find you information on your topic specifically having and RSS feed.
• In the URL bar, at the far right is an orange RSS symbol (see graphic in this post), click it and pick the one that says “Subscribe to RSS feed”.
• Copy that RSS feed URL bar address, and then open a new tab and go to TwitterFeed.com
• Create an account, including adding in your Twitter account log-in information. When it asks you to add RSS feed, paste the URL spot and give it a nickname.
• As long as you have a Twitter account, you’re done. If not, you’ll have to get a Twitter account first.Now go watch the movie before you ask questions. I think made it much clearer there.

Go watch this movie!

So I added the Facebook Like Button to my site today. And now I’ve got a couple hundred posts that haven’t been “liked”.  I wonder if I was better off a few moments  ago.  (pssst. . . I include “how to add the Facebook like button” at the end of this post.)

Contrary to the advice I give clients about starting Facebook Fan Pages, I didn’t tell anyone about it before adding it to the site. And let me tell you how embarrassingly awkward it looks when every single posts has the words “Be the first to like this”. . .  Arghhh. . .

So my mom came to the rescue and “liked” a few posts.  That’s what moms are for “Doncha know?” Now I’m wondering, will the “like” button cut down on the comments section? Will it actually increase the number of people who do something when they’re here – the ones who don’t even comment.  Maybe it’s just me. . . I’m curious.

So think about this daunting move before you decide to create a Facebook fan page or even add the button to your company site.  Fan pages are a bit “delicate” when it comes to the start up.  Ever show up at a fancy restaurant only to find you’re the only one there? What kind of impression does that give you?

So if you’re going to learn how to add the Facebook button with the intention of doing it, contact some of your existing fans and see if they’ll “Like” you before you announce the change. Don’t press the button yourself or get all the employees in the office to do it – ask your clients, fans and vendors. They’ll like it that you “owe” them one, anyway.

If you can get 10 people to “like” your blog post or 50 people to join your Facebook Fan Page before you really announce it, you’ll be looking really good. That ball will start rolling downhill immediately – and no one will feel awkward being the first.

OK, so how to add the Facebook Like Button to your blog – you can do one of two things. You can go to “plugins” and search for “Facebook Like button” or you can e-mail me and I’ll send you the zip file. But please, before you go, please, please, please. . . . press the “like button”.

You’ll make my mom happy. 🙂