What Are the Most Important Social Networks for Business?
Posted on 09. May, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social networks
If you’ve been involved with marketing on the web for 10 years or more, could you have imagined what the web looks like today back in 2002? Considering the changes over the past year between Google, Facebook, Pinterest and Mobile, looking ahead just 12 months can be a challenge. The state of constant change requires an adaptable approach. One that involves a cyclical process of planning, implementation, scale and refinement.
During that process of continuous optimization, it’s important to take the temperature of trends for your specific target market as well as at a broad level. I’d like to use this post to take your general social media temperature when it comes to the most important social networks for business. This is a gut feeling check for how you perceive the list below of social media/network properties that companies are currently using for business purposes.
Please take a few seconds and take the following poll about mostly U.S. centric social media and networking sites. Pick up to 3.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
Of course a proper digital marketing strategy that includes a social media component would identify specific social networks relevant to the target audience, but I think there’s some value in tapping into general trends and perceptions as well. I think there’s a bit of a rub between the idea of using a social network for fun as a user and using that same social network as a business. Therefore, it will be interesting to see which social networks, besides the obvious, are perceived as best for business use.
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5 Reasons Linkedin is Boring in a Good Way
Posted on 03. Apr, 2012 by Anthony Juliano in Blog, Guest Posts, linkedIn, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, social networks
Anthony Juliano is the Vice President of Marketing and Social Media Strategy at Asher Agency, a Midwest-based marketing strategy firm. Anthony speaks and writes about a variety of social media and marketing topics, with a specific focus on LinkedIn. Connect with him at AnthonyJuliano.com.
LinkedIn has a reputation for being… well, a little dorky. In fact, if social media sites were high school kids, Pinterest would be the prettiest girl, Facebook would be the most popular kid, and Twitter would be the cool, edgy dude with a knack for setting trends.
What would LinkedIn be? Remember the nerdy kid who got straight A’s but who didn’t go to the prom, mainly because it was on the same night as chess club? Yeah, that’d be LinkedIn.
This has certainly been perpetuated in the media. Tech Crunch has called LinkedIn “the boring social network that won’t find you a date but may land you a job.” CNN’s Victor Hernandez said on Twitter that “LinkedIn is boring’ is fast becoming its corporate motto.” And Business Insider took things a step further by saying that “LinkedIn’s lousy sex appeal could end up killing it.”
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman: too sexy for this post. 'Reid Hoffman' by jdlasica on Flickr
So, are they right? Is LinkedIn boring? The honest truth is that it can be–certainly as compared to the likes of Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. But is LinkedIn’s lack of “sex appeal” a bad thing? In reality, the fact that LinkedIn is boring may actually be one of its greatest assets. Here are a few reasons why.
1. LinkedIn’s audience is focused on work, not play.
If you want to talk about shopping, books, movies, hobbies, or you personal life, you won’t find much of an audience on LinkedIn. Most LinkedIn users, you see, are laser focused on their professional life, looking for resources that can help them grow as professionals or help them grow their business. That makes LinkedIn a lot like real-world business networking events–which can be, admittedly, a little boring (especially in comparison to the pool party that is Facebook). The advantage, though, is that if you focus your efforts on LinkedIn on how you can be a resource to your connections, your approach will likely be well received.
2. No photos or videos means more focus on words–including your words.
If you look at what generates conversations on Facebook, you’ll quickly see that photos and videos get more attention than text-only status updates. On Pinterest, of course, photos are the whole point. LinkedIn is much different. The only photos on the site, other than those in ads and stories, are users’ profile photos. The only videos are the rare few you’ll find embedded in company pages or member profiles (like this one). That makes text dominant–and presents a great opportunity to keep the audience focused on what you have to say, if you say it well and make it relevant.
3. Less activity overall equates to less noise–and a better chance for you to stand out.
Because relatively few LinkedIn users update their status, the news feed is pretty quiet–especially as compared to Facebook and Twitter. That presents another opportunity for you to stand out simply by being willing to share what you know.
4. Unlike Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, LinkedIn won’t likely lead you down a rabbit hole.
I’ve heard friends talk about getting “sucked in” to Pinterest, and losing “hours” on Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone make the same statement about LinkedIn. From my perspective, one of LinkedIn’s biggest advantages is that users log in, get what they need, and log out. There aren’t a lot of people using LinkedIn just to kill time, and that means they’re more action oriented and intentional then they are on other sites.
5. No “wall” and no “tagging” means you have control over your message.
The great thing about your Facebook profile is that it’s shaped by the people in your network as much as yourself. It’s all about interaction, and letting others define the terms of the conversation by mentioning your name in status updates, for example, and tagging you in photos. But what if you don’t want others to chime in, or what if what they say isn’t helpful to you? What if, for example, you want to focus your Facebook page on your profession, but your friends mention you in statuses and tag you in photos unrelated to your work? That’s where LinkedIn users have an advantage. There’s no wall, and no tagging, so the opportunity for others to publicly engage with you are limited. Pretty much the only way they can jump in is by liking or commenting on your status updates, and it’s unlikely they’ll say something wholly unrelated to the conversation you’ve started. That makes for less engagement–but a more focused message overall.
The truth is, LinkedIn does offer a lot of things that are pretty exciting. A great window into your contacts’ world and the chance to make an impression on them every day. The opportunity to understand–and leverage–the interconnections within your network. An unmatched conversion rate. And just like that nerdy high school kid, a lot of untapped potential.
So, if you’re looking to hang out with the cool crowd, LinkedIn may not be for you. But if you want to focus your efforts and connect with an audience that’s equally as focused, you’re likely to get exactly what you want out of LinkedIn–as long as you’re willing to put up with a few yawns along the way.
Social Networking Spam – 5 Rules for Marketers
Posted on 20. Mar, 2012 by Josh Mackey in Blog, email, facebook, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media measurement, social networks, spam, Twitter
Josh Mackey is General Manager at PeekAnalytics, a Social Audience Measurement Platform. (More importantly, a family man and sport loving Aussie who loves life).
There has been a lot of talk recently about social networking spam – inactive and bogus accounts on social platforms. While I agree inactive and spam accounts can raise unwanted questions for platforms, these claims should not discourage marketers away from the platforms themselves. Instead of admitting that this “social thing” is not as easy as all that, some are pointing fingers at the platforms, saying SPAM! SPAM! Bad ROI…Spam! Bad CTR…Spam!
The rhetoric above might make for a great headline, but for me it’s lazy sensationalism. Anyone who claims that Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook do not have robust ecosystems, full of amazing insights and opportunities for brands as well as individuals alike, is simply delusional. That said, marketers who face pushback on social networking spam issues need to be prepared to respond head on.
The advice below comes from insights that I have gleaned from being neck deep in social audience measurement product development for the past year and a half.
Rule #1 – Don’t mix the water with the wine.
Instead of focusing on the spam or inactive accounts, marketers should just accept there is some “spam” mixed in with the “bacon” on every platform, channel or network. It’s about finding tools, best in class techniques and smart marketers that will allow you to get to the bacon, “smell” the bacon, get to know the bacon, and in the end, get the bacon to buy your product and then tell their friends to also buy your product. Mmm bacon!
Don’t skew your analysis with incomplete data. You are better off dealing with a quality subset of audience data to analyze rather than a much larger mess of incomplete and questionable data. Set yourself up with a “minimum cutoff” point that excludes accounts out that don’t have a certain amount of information you require to form a complete analysis. A Twitter account with nothing more than an @name, sharing dating site links every hour on the hour, provides little usable data and obviously stinks of spam. Analyze your audience with a tool that allows you to filter out incomplete and junk accounts.
Rule #2 – Seek out real people.
Social Networking Spam – You Are What You Tweet
Go out of your way to engage with people who are transparent about their identity (I personally think Google+ has this right). Someone who unites their online and offline identity is much more likely to not only engage with people they have met offline (e.g. building stronger relationships), but will also generate a more trusted and larger network online than people using only fake identities and/or usernames. In very few cases do I trust a person or content when that is hiding behind a fake name with no digital footprint or identity. Unfortunately, many marketers have been duped and lured into buying followers from sketchy sites. Trust me: this is not the way to social media success and will only create a false economy by skewing your ROI metrics to unattainable levels.
Rule #3 – Engage with others as you would like to be engaged with.
Remember that a quality audience will always trump quantity. There are many theories that all you need on social media is “100 true fans” to get a message started. The definition of a true fan can be debated, but in reality, for the viral effect to happen, all you need is good content and a few raving fans who have trusted networks of their own for a message to go far and wide. Therefore, focus on building a community of people who will support you as you support them.
Rule #4 – Be humble and honest with yourself!
Take a realistic view of your audience. If you have 10,000 followers, don’t use 10,000 in your click through percentage calculations. Understand that some accounts are inactive, some are social networking spam, very few people sit on Twitter all day waiting for you to tweet. Use tools that try and measure the true size of your audience at any one time and tweet during hours that your audience is potentially awake, engaged, etc
Rule #5 – Remember and respect the meek! For the meek shall…also buy your products.
Every fan matters! 40% of active users don’t tweet! Find a tool that can measure your entire social audience and don’t just focus on the active (talking) audience. You have customers who have chosen to follow you (which may be the only action you see from them on Twitter) but they still have the ability to purchase your products after they read about a sale at the local store from your tweets!
Conclusion
Who doesn’t remember naysayers who claimed: “spam will kill email,” “IM is killing email,” “Social will kill email,” etc? Guess what: Just like the humble text message, email is fine; the value that it delivers for users and marketers remains because it is a powerful and imminently affordable communication platform. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ all have spam issues, no different than every other valuable communication platform that ever existed. Each platform is currently taking unique and aggressive steps to ensure the average user experience is not marred by spam. Social networking spam filters are still in the relatively early days, but big progress is being made.
The value is there; you just need to know where to look and how to create value and a reason for consumers to care about your brand. Get over the “spam” siren call and focus on finding the bacon! If you can’t or refuse to, please feel free to build a platform that is user friendly, has millions of users and is spam free…we will all come join your platform and make you super rich! It will be awesome. Really.
Social Pros Podcast 5 – Chad Pollitt, Kuno Creative
Posted on 01. Mar, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media research, social networks
This is Episode 5 of the Social Pros Podcast : Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media. This episode features Chad Pollitt, the Director of Inbound Marketing for Kuno Creative. Read on for insights from Chad, our “Work It Out” advice segment, and Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week (this week: are we unfriending each other more than ever?).
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Please Support Our Sponsors
Huge thanks to Argyle Social for their presenting sponsorship, as well as Infusionsoft and Jim Kukral at DigitalBookLaunch. We use Argyle Social for our social engagement; we use Infusionsoft for our email; and Jim is our guest host for the podcast and a smart guy).
Social Pros Transcript For Your Reading Enjoyment
Transcription services from our friends at Speechpad.com
Jim: Hey everybody. My name is Jim Kukral, and I am guest hosting today for Jay Baer on the Social Pros Podcast, and I am joined by co- host extraordinaire, Eric Boggs. Eric, how are you doing?
Eric: I’m doing just fine, Jim. I’m glad that you’re guest hosting. I was getting kind of tired of Jay.
Jim: Well, you know Jay. You can only take so much of Jay.
Eric: Small doses. Small doses.
Jim: Exactly. So I’m glad to be here today. This is something that Jay had approached me about a couple of months back, putting together this podcast, and I thought it was really interesting. I’m obviously very involved with the world of social media, as we all are, and I thought it would be really interesting to come on and talk about this. Then I got to meet you and it sounds like a really fun show to do.
Eric: It has been a pretty fun show. Jay, as you know, is a really smart guy, and he’s brought on some great guests and the conversations have always been timely and relevant. So I have a lot of confidence in your ability to fill Jay’s shoes.
Jim: Well, that’s a lot of shoes to fill in there. So I will try my best. So, where do we start off here? Kind of guide me around here because this is my first time. I will just maybe just tell people out there quickly who I am, if you don’t know who I am, probably don’t because I’m a Z lister. My name is Jim Kukral and I write books and I speak and mostly books in the non-fiction world of business and marketing, very similar to what Jay does. I do a lot of consulting, but I also own some businesses. Most currently I own a business called Digital Book Launch where I help people figure out how to do book marketing. That’s really about me. That’s really the short version of what I do.
Eric: That sounds great. So we like to start with a thought of the week, which is kind of a rant on whatever is on your mind. So I’ll let you start us off.
Jim’s Thought of the Week
Jim: The thought of the week. I thought long and hard about this, and I thought, should it be something really poignant and important? And I thought, you know what? Let’s do something fun. I said, “What would happen if you were deserted on an island? Would you rather have Twitter, or would you rather have Facebook? If you could have one thing that you had to deal with, would you rather have Twitter or would you rather have Facebook?” It sounds like a completely silly question, and it is, but I’d be curious to hear your answer, Eric.
Eric: So I am immediately reminded of one thing, and I guess it’s like the quote from somewhere on the Internet, or it may have been the interwebs. Facebook is the people you used to be friends with, Twitter are the people that you are friends with, and LinkedIn, I think that’s people you want to be friends with. I’m not really sure, but it’s some blend of that, and when I run it through that filter, I would have to say that Facebook is most important to me. Not because I think it’s more useful, but that’s where my mom hangs out and my wife hangs out, and the people that I love the most are active on Facebook. So I would hate to give up Twitter, but it would probably have to be Facebook for me.
Jim: Yeah. I’ve got to agree with you there. Twitter is, as early adopters, I’m assuming you’ve been on social media since the beginning, right? I’m assuming you’ve done that, right?
Eric: I suppose. Yes, you can say that.
Jim: At this point, who isn’t really kind of like an expert? We’ve all been doing this a long time. There are really no experts in this industry. We’re all just experienced. Some more than others. Twitter for me has really evolved. When I first started, I didn’t get it. Then I got it. Then I didn’t get it again, and then I got it again. I’ve kind of come to this place where I just think Twitter is this kind of weird acquaintances of people that I know. I think you actually described it best. I guess what I’m trying to say is I agree with you. Facebook is that one thing that you can just do so much more with the photos and the ongoing threads. I think having discussions with people on Facebook is so much easier than it is on Twitter. Since the discussions are limited to just the people who are watching them, for example, if you try to have a discussion with somebody on Twitter, it becomes really annoying to everyone else following you. Doesn’t it?
Eric: Oh, yeah. For me it always ends with email me at eric@argylesocial.com.
Jim: Exactly. The big difference to me is that one, right there – the ability to continue discussions and build meaningful relationships and engage with people on a level that you can just do it, not privately, but just between those people. On Twitter, it’s like this one to many, no matter what. Right?
Eric: Yeah. Well, so when you run that through the filter of a business, I’ll turn this question back to you. Instead of Jim the author and super cool guy, pretend you’re Jim the Social Media Manager at a software company or a brand. Which would you rather take with you to a deserted island, Twitter or Facebook?
Jim: It depends on the company. I’ll put it to you this way. If it’s a company that really does a lot of customer service, then I’ll take Twitter every day of the week. I think Twitter absolutely excels for customer service and just hands down beats Facebook out with that regard. If I’m doing a ton of customer service, I have Twitter all day long. If I’m engaging with people and want to drive promotion and awareness and actually have conversations with people, it’s Facebook all day long.
Eric: Yeah. I would have to confirm with Jill, who helps run marketing at Argyle, but I’m pretty sure we’d take Twitter, seven days a week. Maybe even eight days a week.’
Jim: Really? Wow.
Eric: We’re a B2B software company. We use Twitter for lead gen and awareness, and our audience on Twitter, it might be actually an order of magnitude bigger than our audience on Facebook. It might be two orders of magnitude bigger. I’m not exactly sure. Twitter’s been much more valuable for us as a company.
Jim: Well, we’ll have to ask our guest coming up, Chad, about that as well. I think that there are comments on the page. If you’re listening to this on the Social Pros page, you can leave your comment below and give us your opinion as well, because we’d love to hear it.
Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: 63% of Social Media Users Have Unfriended Someone
Eric: Yeah. So let’s move on and we can talk about the stat of the week. This is sort of my pet piece of the podcast. At Argyle, we’re very much a data driven marketing company in terms of the way we do our business and also the way we think about our customers and our product. So the stat of the week is something that aligns with my own personal interests.
The stat of the week for Episode Number Five, I believe we’re on here, is from the recent survey from Pew. The Pew Internet & American Life Project did a survey. I think it was published February 24th or 25th, so it’s pretty recent stuff. There’s a big pile of information, and there was one bit that jumped out to me as most interesting. It’s basically about unfriending. Again, this was buried down deep inside of the study. There’s a lot of fascinating macro data about adoption and usage, especially around privacy. But this data on pruning really jumped out at me. Essentially, pruning or unfriending or deleting friends or deleting comments and photo tags is way more popular than it was just a couple years ago. So from the survey, let me make sure I’m telling you correctly, two-thirds of the profile owners that were surveyed, actually a little less than two-thirds, have deleted people from their networks or friends lists which is up from a little over half. So that’s basically a 20 percent increase in just a couple years. Forty-four percent have deleted comments that people have made on their profile, which is up from a third two years ago. Same thing, a rise in people removing their names from photo tags. Again, just up from a couple years ago. Digging into this by age demographic, it gets even more interesting because the older and actually the more educated you are, according to this data, the more privacy centric you tend to be.
Jim: Right. This reminds me of a cartoon I saw on Facebook, appropriately. It was a cartoon and it was something like, remember in 2000 when getting emails, you were like, “Wow. I’ve got email.”
Eric: You got mail.
Jim: Right. And then it was like today, “Oh, crap. I’ve got a thousand emails.” This just seems very right on target with what we’re talking about. Social media has gotten past the hump. We’ve gotten to the teenage years, or whatever years you want to call it, and now it’s kind of like, “Oh my gosh. This is too much.” And I think that’s probably why a lot of these people are like, “Well, it was really fun in the beginning to have all my photos tagged and to be part of all this stuff, and now it’s like, ‘Well, wait a minute.’”
Eric: It’s work. It’s becoming work.
Jim: It’s work. You’re right. It’s annoying when people tag you with things that you don’t want to be tagged on. Also, people are worrying about what their boss is going to see or what a recruiter’s going to see, or things like that. I tell you right now, I’m 40 years old. I’m thankful that we did not have Facebook and video cameras when we were teenagers in high school and college. Can you imagine?
Eric: You are not the first person to say that to me.
Jim: Can you imagine all of the stuff that your idiot buddy from 1989 drags out, scans, and starts putting pictures of you up. It would be horrible.
Eric: I shudder to think what would be on Google if it were so easy to publish photos online when I was in college.
Jim: Exactly.
Eric: Heck, even just three or four years ago.
Jim: Right. So this makes total sense to me. Sixty-three percent of people have deleted people from their networks or friends list.
Eric: Are you a defriender?
Jim: I’m a little bit unique to my Facebook, to most people, because I use Facebook and I use social media as a business tool for me. My business is me. So the more connections I have, the more opportunities I have to get people to read my books and hire me to speak and consult and things like that. It’s a total business tool for me. So I don’t defriend. I only defriend people who want to spam me or want to send me naked pictures or ridiculous stuff that is just a waste of my time. But I don’t defriend, but I totally get it. Absolutely.
Eric: That’s interesting. So from the perspective of you, the business, you’re not a defriender. What do you think about the people that are subscribed to you? I guess I’m just trying to flip this. People are defriending from their friends. Most certainly they’re defriending and blocking and unfollowing businesses and brands. I think that’s a pretty reasonable jump. Don’t you think?
Jim: Absolutely. People are getting tired of it. Here’s the thing. As more businesses learn how to do this stuff, and any social professional will tell you this, this is the Social Pros Podcast, any professional in the business will tell you, the more and more businesses who try to inject their marketing into the social sphere, the more people start to get weary of it. Social media at its core is a social thing. I always tell this example. I teach classes for the University of San Francisco Internet Marketing Program. I always tell people when I teach the Social Media class, I say this. I go, “Look. If you walked into somebody’s Super Bowl party and just walked up to every single person you know and said, ‘Buy my book,’ and ‘Download my white paper,’ and all this stuff, you’d never get invited back to that party.” It’s a social environment. Facebook, Twitter, it’s the same exact thing. You can’t just go out and put that stuff in front of people and expect that they’re not just going to unfollow you.
Eric: Yeah. Let’s hold on to that thought. The Work It Out segment of the podcast that we’ll do at the very end, kind of gets back to this idea. I think you’re on a good path there talking about the crowdedness of mainstream networks. So we’re going to talk a little bit about niche social networks when we get to the Work It Out portion, but this is good stuff. Good stat of the week.
Jim: Yeah, it was fun. Don’t defriend me.
Eric: I don’t know that I’ve friended you yet, but I’ll track you down. I must admit I’m a defriender. But I’ll give everybody a shot, Jim.
Jim: Okay. Well, I will try to stay in your good graces on that. So you don’t have to defriend me.
Special Guest: Chad Pollitt, Kuno Creative
Eric: All right. You want to introduce Chad? Chad are you there?
Chad: Yeah. I’m here, Eric.
Eric: Right on.
Eric: Jim, can you introduce Chad?
Jim: Chad Pollitt is somebody that I’ve known for a couple years now. He works for a company called Kuno Creative out of Northeast Ohio here, which is one way of saying in the Cleveland area. Chad and I have become friends over the last couple of years, and I’ve really gotten to know him because he’s really good at what he does, which is he works for a company that does a lot of inbound marketing. If anyone’s ever heard of a company called HubSpot, a little small company called HubSpot, Chad is one of the partners, one of the biggest partners for HubSpot, and his company takes those solutions and helps people do search and social and leads and all that stuff. Chad, it’s great to have you on the show.
Chad: Well thanks, Jim. That was a great introduction. Makes me sound better than what I possibly could have anticipated. Thank you.
Eric: Nice to meet you, Chad.
Chad: Definitely, Eric. Definitely.
Jim: Chad recently spoke at an event that I was at and really brought down the house with some amazing statistics and numbers about the whole world of inbound marketing, and look, it’s all connected. We’ve got search, we’ve got an affiliate, we’ve got social, we’ve got the whole thing in internet marketing, it’s all connected. So that’s why I want to have Chad on, because I know he’s going to have some good insight on what’s going on in social media. First though, Chad, the audience needs to know, the desert island question, Twitter or Facebook?
Chad: Well, Jim, I’m going to have to go against both of you and say Twitter.
Jim: Oh, really? Why?
Chad: Twitter is the most fun for me. I find Facebook work, and one of the great things about what we do is most of it doesn’t feel like work. It’s fun stuff. But Facebook tends to . . . I have to be a little more cautious with the content that I distribute on Facebook simply because I have personal and professional connections in Facebook. So I’d say Twitter. It’s more fun for me. It’s more real time. Plus I’m a little bit of a news junkie, and I find that I’m informed more on Twitter than on Facebook.
Jim: Ooh. That’s a really good . . . you know what? You’re right, because I get the majority of my news from Twitter, man. I forgot about that. Ooh. I might have to think about my answer. So Chad, it’s great to have you here. Let’s talk a little bit about social media and what’s going on in your world with it. You do inbound marketing. What parts of social media come into place when you do inbound marketing?
Chad: Well, Jim, that’s a great question. I have, I like to think, a unique approach to social media, but there are some others that have the same approach that I take. I look at social media as really two things. The first, and some people who are listening to this are going to disagree, but the first, I like to look at it as a content distribution channel, because at its core, that’s what we do. We distribute content. Now whether that’s a blog post, or whether that’s a meaningful conversation, whatever that is, it’s a content distribution channel. And then on the other side of things, you have the relationship aspect. So what I want to do is work with companies out there and develop the distribution channel and develop content for that distribution channel, which drives traffic to their website, and then I try to coach them or we will provide services that allow people to, excuse me, that allow people to do the more personal type conversations. So that’s the approach I take. I start with the business side, and that’s the content distribution, and then we coach and provide services to listen and to have conversations, so on and so froth.
Eric: Chad, what are the usual business objectives that you and your clients are trying to nail down, when you begin an engagement and you start . . . I don’t disagree with the framework, at all. I think that social is an amplifier, and if Jay were here, he would say the same thing. He’d say that content is the fire and that social is the gasoline or the fuel. I’ve actually heard him say that a few times.
Chad: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. The business objectives that we go after is the companies that hire us, they want leads. They want good actionable leads. So we approach content two ways. One, we try what we call a generation two or generation three website. We try to deploy content creation engines, machines that are somewhat like magazines. They’re constantly publishing content. Then on the other side of things, we want to create what we call advanced content. So this is content that would be considered highly valuable, that solves people’s problems, and that people want to download. So they go into this quid pro quo transaction where they provide us with their contact information and their email address, and we give them what they came for, and that’s advanced content, whatever the business is.
Eric: What type of clients do you typically work with?
Chad: It’s really a mix, from B2B to B2C. There’s a fairly large brand in the United States and Canada that we work with on a regular basis that is primarily B2C. They’re our biggest B2C. With them, we do a lot more multimedia type advanced content, from videos and text message reminders and things like that. Then on the B2B side, we work with software as a service type companies, consulting companies, tech companies. It really runs the gamut.
Jim: I have a question. Maybe other people probably have the same question. I kind of have my own answer, but I want to hear what you guys think. How do you get somebody to friend a software company? I know that you use it as a distribution channel. I get that and I totally agree with it. But it’s easier for me because I’m the company. But if I was . . . why would anyone want to be friends with XYZ Software?
Chad: Well, that’s a great question, Jim, and I’m going to steal a quote I learned from you, years ago, where you said, “People only go to the Web for two reasons – to solve a problem or to be entertained.” If you take it to that and you really believe that, which I do, I know that people have problems that that business can solve. They’re out there. If they weren’t, the business wouldn’t be in business. So you have to be able to communicate solutions to problems as a B2B company, for example, or a B2C even, and do it in a valuable way. So, your content, if it’s not valuable content, if it’s not a video that’s real good or a podcast like this, that’s real good, nobody’s going to want to consume that content. So it starts with the content. You have to create valuable, problem solving, and/or entertaining content.
Eric: Yeah, I’ll echo that. I don’t follow very many brands or companies online. The handful that I do tend to be very either funny or helpful in terms of the content that they share. That said, I do follow the CEOs and visit high visibility employees from quite a few companies in our industry, and I think that gets down to a second question. In your experience, Chad, do your customers tend to invest in the brand presence or the presence of the people around the brand, when they’re launching social campaigns?
Chad: It’s mostly the brand that, in the client’s that we work with, although I’ve seen lots of examples of what you just described. But in the clients that we work with, a lot of them the senior executives don’t want to put that foot forward. And that’s fine. That’s their choice. I think here in the years to come, you’re going to see less and less of that.
Eric: Less and less of the apprehension?
Chad: Apprehension.
Jim: I’ve seen some really cool ways people have been doing this. I share space in this loft with a photographer, and he realizes that people really don’t want to hear about what he’s doing. So he tweets and he does Facebook updates from his dog’s perspective, because his dog’s always with him. So he’s like, the dog is always talking about what Hal’s doing. It’s kind of funny. So you follow the dog, and you learn about what’s going on about the owner. I’m doing a lot of publishing now, self-publishing, and I’m learning a lot of fiction authors, this is really interesting, they are creating the characters from their books and turning them into Facebook accounts and Twitter accounts. Imagine Indiana Jones tweeting. Your favorite characters from your . . . I’m a big fan of the James CLavell books, so imagine if I had an engine from the Shogun tweeting, I could follow them. So, it’s interesting how other people are taking content and adding personas to it.
Chad: Yeah, very cool.
Jim: So what else you got for us, Chad? I know that you got a lot going on with your business. Anything else that’s on your mind these days about social media that you can share with the audience?
Chad: One thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about, writing a lot about is the convergence of social media into search, and I’m pretty excited to where this is going. If I knew exactly where it was going, I’d be a millionaire here shortly. But it’s exciting to watch the world of SEO, because that’s where I came up from, evolve into what it is today and what it will be tomorrow. That’s really search engines like Google and Bing scouring social media and building social media platforms in order to have access to what I’ll call votes of real people and real content. That’s what I’ve been working on.
Jim: I got to tell you, I agree and it’s mind blowing. As a matter of fact, Google has come out and said, I don’t know how long ago, it’s like six months ago or something. Matt Cutts, or somebody, came out and said that social is a huge part of how Google is going to work in the future.
Eric: Well, that was pretty much a directive from Larry Page.
Jim: There you go. Even better.
Eric: The CEO, he kind of refocused the entire company, cut a ton of products and said, “We’re going to do social come hell or high water.” If that’s a substantiation of what you just said, Chad, then I don’t know what is.
Chad: Yeah, exactly.
Jim: It really does make sense. If you go search things on Google now and you’re logged in, you’re starting to see . . . I did a search the other day for something, and I started to see results come in that probably wouldn’t have been there before, but they showed up because somebody I was connected with on Google+ tweeted about or posted them on Google+ or something like that. So they’re actually injecting results directly in. So I think you’re right on, Chad. I think that they realize, smartly so, that people would rather have recommendations from people that they trust. I always put it to my students this way. The logic is, if you are connected with somebody, so you have 5,000 people you can connect with on Google+, if you’re connected with somebody, then most likely you like that person. Isn’t that a fair argument to make? Why would you connect with somebody who you dislike or don’t trust, right? Therefore, if they are recommending things and liking things or + 1′ing things, you probably will be happy when you see their recommendations show up in your Google search. I think that’s their logic, and it makes a lot of sense to me. What about you guys?
Eric: I don’t disagree.
Chad: Yeah, Jim. The way I see it, over the whole search landscape, is that you’ve got a PageRank algorithm, where it looks at backlinks. Now I’m not saying that’s going to go away tomorrow, but I think this is something that Google would favor over their PageRank algorithm over time. Google got pie in their face when The Wall Street Journal wrote that article about JC Penney cheating their algorithm. (Note: New York Times did that piece) I think that black eye definitely set this . . . if it didn’t set the wheel in motion, it accelerated it.
Jim: Yeah. It’s really interesting where we’re going with this whole social thing. When I teach that, when I talk about that to students who don’t really know about everything, they don’t have any search background, they don’t know anything, they’re just learning and they’re just . . . the immediate thought is, “Well, Jim, why don’t I just, if I’m a business, why don’t I just go out and get as many people in my Google+ network as I possibly can and then tweet all my own stuff?” When you really look at it, there are a lot of businesses that are doing that.
Chad: Yeah. Absolutely.
Eric: Guys, we’re running up on our . . . so we try to target these to be under 30 minutes, and we’re going to be cutting it pretty close. I want to dive in with our last segment, and we’re going to let you answer this, Chad, if that’s okay with you.
Chad: Yeah, sure.
Work It Out
Eric: I didn’t prep him with the questions. So here goes. This actually comes from Jill, who is an Argyle Social customer, actually. She works for a small software company and she asks, “My company is already active on Twitter and Facebook. There are lots of new niche social networks popping up, like Pinterest and Instagram, for example.” She wants to know what she should consider before putting in the effort to build a community on one of these new sites.
Chad: Boy, Eric, that’s a great question. I tend to be pretty, I guess you could say, time averse when it comes to these new social platforms. I let other people get out there and kick the tires a little bit before I dive in head first. So I take my time. I read a lot about them. Well, first off, let me take a step back. Pinterest, for example, obviously, it’s going to depend on your niche and your customers, so who your target market is. If Pinterest represents, there’s lots of demographic data you can find online. If your target demographic represents that particular niche that’s represented on that platform, then, by all means, set up your account. That’s something I always do out of the gate, I go ahead and set up an account, and I toy around with it a little bit. But I take my time in developing a strategy. It’s not necessarily a gold rush. Although every once in a while, maybe every five years, there might be a gold rush type platform, but I’m always cautious about that. That’s the approach I take. I get on there, I identify the demographics, and if it makes sense, I slowly roll out my strategy over time.
Jim: Yeah, I’m with Chad there. Look, I’ve been doing internet marketing for over 15 years, and one thing I can tell you for sure is that if you want to get results, you go where the eyeballs are and you go with what moves the needle. There’s a reason why everyone just talks about Google as the search engine. Nobody ever mentions Altavista and Yahoo and maybe Bing. Everyone always just refers to search as Google, because Google has the most eyeballs.
So every time one of these new networks come up and everything, I like to let them vet out a little bit. I do believe that there is a handful of people who turn them into immediate success stories overnight, and they get written about in every blog. But at the end of the day, not every social network is right for every single business. Every social media professional knows this, who’s worth their salt. You can’t go into a business and just say, “You’ve got to be here, here and here.” You need to be where it makes sense and which ones are actually going to get you the eyeballs and move the needle for you. Otherwise, you are literally just wasting your time.
So it’s smart to start building a presence there, but to invest any significant amount of time into something that you know you’re not sure is just a bad business decision. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re social professionals. We’re in business to help our clients figure out how to generate more sales, more leads, and more publicity, and that’s the advice I always give.
The last thing I always tell people is, “Look. You don’t have to be everywhere. You can be in just some places. We’re going to figure out which one works for you the best, and then we’re going to hit that one hard and then we’re going to work the other ones in as we can.” What about you, Eric?
Eric: I think you guys have answered that question about as well as it can be answered.
Jim: Wow. Okay.
Eric: Yeah. I agree with both of you. I think, Chad, you basically said start slow, and Jim, you basically said go where the audience is. I agree wholeheartedly. To Jill, I would say, pick one, test it for a few months, see if you gain traction, and go from there. Obviously, you need to make your biggest investments on Facebook and/or Twitter because that’s where most people are. Maybe other platforms, but you definitely, it would be unwise, I think, to abandon the mainstream platforms in search of new opportunities on the niche platforms just because they’re not there yet.
Jim: Yeah. That’s really good advice. You know what? This has been a lot of fun. I do a lot of podcasts, and this is one of the more fun ones I’ve done in a long time. But man, every single time, they go so fast, don’t they?
Eric: This one’s fun because Jay’s not here.
Jim: Well, I didn’t want to mention that. Eric, I wasn’t actually going to say that on the recording. When we got off the recording, I was going to tell you that.
Eric: That’s the new theme, “When Jay’s not hosting, it’s make fun of Jay.” I’m sure I’m going to miss an episode either, I think, next week or the week after, and I hope that Jay returns the favor by saying mean things about me.
Jim: It’s been a lot of fun, and Chad, I want to thank you for coming on and talking about this, because I think you’ve got a really unique perspective from a company that does really big stuff in terms of inbound marketing and integrates search and socials. So I appreciate you coming on. I know Eric does, as well.
Chad: Well, thanks Jim. I appreciate you having me.
Eric: Yeah, thanks Chad.
Chad: Yeah, Eric. It was great meeting you, and I will be following you on Twitter, if I’m not already here, shortly.
Jim: Chad, real quick. How do people reach you and what’s the company?
Chad: Certainly. I work for Kuno Creative, an inbound marketing agency, just type in Kuno Creative on Google and you can find our blog, is where I write most of my stuff. And you can also reach me on Twitter @cpollittiu. That is my Twitter handle, cpollitiu.
Eric: All right, folks. That’s it for Episode Number Five of the Social Pros Podcast. Special thanks, as always, to our sponsors, Argyle Social, makers of data driven social media marketing software and Infusionsoft, email marketing automation for small business. Tune in next week for Episode Number Six. We’re hosting Jonathan Wichmann of Maersk. Thanks everybody. See you soon.
5 Reasons Pinterest is Addicting and 4 Weaknesses That May Kill it
Posted on 19. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, infographics, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social networks
Like Google searches for M.I.A. after her Super Bowl middle finger salute, the growth of Pinterest is positively ferocious. A 329 percent increase in unique visitors in 90 days is the kind of rocket ship acceleration that is usually far more myth than reality, even in social media start-up circles.
Why this newfound obsession with Pinterest? What’s fueling this rocket? There are actually several factors and features that have made Pinterest on par with Twitter as a traffic driver (according to a Shareaholic study).
1. Focused Functionality
Unlike many other contemporary social environments that seem hell-bent on adding features like ornaments on a Christmas tree, Pinterest does one thing, and does it well. They have embraced the less is more ethos that initially propelled Google search and Twitter to the forefront of their respective fields.
2. Intuitive Interface
Ease-of-use is the killer app. Pinterest would never have crossed the chasm to become the darling of the often non-technical crafting and fashion crowd if it was a hassle to figure out. It’s drop-dead simple, possibly because of its focused features, as is impacting Web design best practices in widespread and profound ways.
3. Passion Pit
Pinterest allows us to chronicle and share what we love. Our hobbies. Our desires. Our aspirations. I don’t have data on this (it would make an interesting study), but I’d wager a considerable sum that there are 10x more pins of things we want, compared to things we have. It’s akin to the Facebook “like” phenomenon, but with a far more visceral psychological anchor.
4. Massively Browsable
You can enjoy Pinterest without reading anything. Let that marinate. In a world where the tweet and status update have reigned supreme for years, you can now can fully immerse yourself in a powerful community experience that is 100% visual. It’s no wonder that Pinterest broke out at roughly the same time as Instagram, Path, and other social sharing opportunities that revolve around pictures, not words. (see post from Ekaterina Walter on whether photo apps will kill the written word) It’s the natural evolution of communication. A picture may not be worth 1,000 words, but it’s definitely worth 140 characters, and when the vast majority of the population began possessing a camera at all times via their mobile phone, this type of photo-driven culture was a natural byproduct.
5. Equality
There are no Sneetches with stars and Sneetches without stars on Pinterest. Brands have pages and access to the same features that individual users have. This democratizes the community in an important and powerful way, making Pinterest the only major social opportunity (other than Twitter) where people and companies are singing from the same hymnal. Strangely, Twitter aims to eliminate their edge in this area by rolling out brand pages to companies.
Is This The End of the World as We Know It?
Those are the five primary reasons for Pinterest’s success. But I advise that you temper your passion for Pinterest, as there are four reasons why the site as we know it today may not survive.
1. Link Spam
One of the digital marketing advantages of Pinterest is the fact that all links on the site are followable by Google and other search engines. On a pin, the from link, the image link, and even the description link (if you insert one) are all followable by Google, passing juice back to your site. This is too good an opportunity for SEO pros to pass up, and link spam on Pinterest will pick up significantly in the next few weeks. Pinterest will likely have to change links to no-follow, or risk SEO spammers dragging down the quality of the user experience.
Image From llsocial.com
2. Shopping Spam
On a related front, the affiliate marketing opportunity on Pinterest is astounding. Already, you can set up an API feed of Amazon’s top sellers (or other products) onto a Pinterest board, create a potentially lucrative, automated revenue stream. This is going to explode soon, with a potentially overwhelming number of low quality, affiliate boards cropping up like mushrooms. Even Pinterest itself is getting into the act, inserting affiliate links automatically wherever it can do so, using Skimlinks. Again, this commerce-first shift may threaten the idyllic user experience that has made Pinterest successful.
3. Copycats
The fact that Pinterest is so focused is terrific (see #1 above), but also makes it far easier to copy it’s offering. Like daily deal sites aping Groupon, Pinterest is massively prone to other sites chipping away at its user base by creating more relevant offshoots. Already, you see clones like Gentlemint.com vying for the “Pinterest for dudes” audience, and angel investor online community Angel List includes several companies that describe themselves as “Pinterest for Architects” “Pinterest for Beauty” and so forth.
4. Too Good to Stay Solo
The most likely reason that Pinterest as we know it today will disappear is that it’s simply too ripe for acquisition. Suitors are plentiful, as Pinterest makes tremendous strategic sense for many social behemoths, but for different reasons.
Google could buy Pinterest to add pins and repins as a social signal for photos, serving as a de facto +1 for images and adding an entire new layer of relevancy to Google images search results. It would be a tidy add-on to Google Plus as well, and give it a meaningful advantage over Facebook.
For that matter, Facebook could buy Pinterest and make it the core of its still nascent social shopping efforts, giving Facebook pages an easy way to monetize “likes” at the product level.
Twitter could buy Pinterest and make boards and pins part of users’ profile page, taking today’s uninteresting ”Recent Images” to an exciting new place.
Groupon could get into the game, using what you’ve liked and pinned as a relational database to improve the relevancy of deals you’re offered.
Certainly, in the interest of possessing a revolutionary new social commerce front-end, Pinterest would be attractive to Amazon, and probably eBay as well. Even Wal-Mart – which has quietly been getting very serious about social - would be an interesting and viable candidate.
I’m not a crafter or a fashionista (my first Pinterest board was favorite tequilas, and my most popular board is social media infographics), so I don’t fit the profile of the typical Pinterest freak. But, I love and very much appreciate the site for the five reasons I’ve mentioned. However, for the other four reasons I’ve articulated, I fear our relationship will be short-lived.
What do you think?
(post originally published on the Monetate blog)
Social Media Lessons From the Offline Real World
Posted on 17. Oct, 2011 by Harrison Kratz in Blog, Guest Posts, location based services, mobile, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media listening, social media marketing, social media strategy, social networks
An interesting report released from Pew Internet Research about the use of location-based services among adults found that only 28% of American adult cell phone owners use services such as maps or recommendations based on their location. In addition, 4% of all American adults use check-in apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla.
Conversely, in the social media community, checking-in is a frequent behavior, and legions of blog posts are written about location-based services.
Is this disproportionate enthusiasm among the cognoscenti? Are we so entrenched in this bubble that we’re forgetting what the “norm” really is?
I have recently become fascinated by the way that people who don’t work in social media use social. Previously, I spent a great deal of time trying to meet everyone in the world’s of social media and PR. I’ve discovered that world and the real world don’t always intersect.
Here are three ways I’ve started listening to and learning from those outside the social media bubble:
Facebook Stalking
Facebook is primarily a network of your friends, and in most cases not all of your friends have jobs in social media. Our friends come from different industries, locations, and have different interests. If you go look at your Twitter stream, the majority of the people you follow are most likely talking about the same types of issues. Facebook on the other hand offers more demographic and topical variety.
By studying and listening to what your friends post, you are able to look into the pulse of the public’s use of social media. What apps are they sharing to Facebook? What stories compel them to share with their networks? What Facebook campaigns are they responding to? What pages do they post on?
Find Some Storytellers
I don’t mean read your RSS feed or scour your Twitter stream. I mean reading blogs that individual people set up to tell their stories. This is a great way to see how people outside the professional social media world communicate, and why they take the time to blog. Reading non-industry blogs has broadened my understanding of why people use the Internet, what speaks to them, and what content they actually care about.
Want a great example of story telling from someone who has never been into the social media game? Check out my best friend’s blog about his cross-country bike tour this summer.
Listen Offline
I think this is something we always have in mind, but don’t necessarily remember to do. I’m always curious why a particular business is actually using social media. Why are they using their budget and resources on social media? Does it have a return? Has anyone scanned that QR code? Are people actually checking-in?
These are all interesting questions that we don’t ask enough in three dimensions. The best way to find out these answers is to ask real people. Ask the owner of your favorite bar how their social media specials are going. Ask your dentist if their Facebook page is worth the effort. Ask your dog groomer if they look at their Yelp reviews.
Sometimes in social media we become so enamored with the speed and power of online relationships and information that we may be forgetting that all of this ultimately has to have an offline impact too if it’s to be truly successful.
Are you keeping an eye on social media outside the realm of social media?
Guest post by Harrison Kratz, the Community Manager for MBA@UNC, an MBA degree online program from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He sticks to his entrepreneurial roots as the founder of the global social good campaign, Tweet Drive. Feel free to connect with him on Twitter, @KratzPR!
Social Media, Pretend Friends, and the Lie of False Intimacy
Posted on 05. Sep, 2011 by Jay Baer in Amber Naslund, Blog, Jason Falls, Mark Schaefer, olivier blanchard, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social networks
It’s not an illusion. We really are doing more with each 24 hours, as technology enables (or forces) us to interact and intersect and do and consume with unprecedented volume and vigor. We live our lives at breakneck speed because we can, because we feel we have to keep up, and because every macro and micro breeze blows in that direction.
I remember the days before social media when I would get 20 phone calls per day and 50 or 60 emails, and felt exhausted by the pace of communication. Now we’ve traded the telephone for other connection points (I only get 2-3 calls per day), but the overall number of people ringing our doorbell through some mechanism has ballooned like Charles Barkley.
The number of “inboxes” we possess is staggering: Email (3 accounts for me), public Twitter, Twitter DM, public Facebook, Facebook messages, Facebook chat, Linkedin messages, public Google +, Google + messages, blog comments, Skype, text messages, Instagram, phone, voice mail, and several topically or geographically specific forums, groups and social networks. That’s a lot of relationship bait in the water.
The Lie of Opportunity
How do we justify this? How do we convince ourselves that slicing our attention so thin the turkey becomes translucent is a good idea?
We do it because we believe that more relationships provides more opportunity.
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
“Social media makes a big world smaller.”
“Linkedin is for people you know, Facebook is for people you used to know, Twitter is for people you want to know.”
All of these chestnuts are passed around like a flu strain because they make intuitive sense. But common among them is the underlying premise that interacting with more people is inherently better than interacting with fewer people. I have always believed this to be true, and in fact have delivered the lines above in presentations and on this blog. But today, I’m no longer convinced.
Instead I wonder, what if we have it ALL wrong?
You Don’t Know Jack
In addition to despair and shock and surprise, what I felt most about the death of Trey Pennington was confusion. I found myself saying over and over “Geez, you think you know someone…” I had a similar reaction when another colleague committed suicide a couple years ago and very few people saw it coming.
The reality is, we don’t KNOW hardly anyone.
I interacted with Trey quite a bit online, and twice spent time with him in three dimensions. Trey was one of the kindest, most interesting, generous people I’ve ever met. He was truly one of the good guys in social media, and his background in theology and storytelling gave him a refreshingly different outlook on all of this. He will be missed, and if the outpouring from the social media community is any barometer, his impact on others was perhaps far greater than he knew.
I considered Trey Pennington a friend. I suspect many of his 100,000+ Twitter followers considered him a friend. Clearly, most of us were not his friends, as his death came as a complete surprise despite the fact that he had a prior suicide attempt earlier this summer, and had been discussing his problems with confidants.
But if you’d asked me yesterday morning, I would have said Trey was a friend. Social media forces upon us a feeling of intimacy and closeness that doesn’t actually exist.
I met Amber Naslund on Twitter and we wrote a book together. But, I’ve never met her daughter.
Jason Falls is one of my closest colleagues in social media, but he’s never been to my home.
Mike Stelzner and I have collaborated on many projects, but we’ve never had a private meal.
I consider these people (and many, many others) to be friends, and I’m thankful that social media has brought them into my life. But in comparison to my pre-social media friends (many of whom I’ve known for 30+ years), I know almost nothing about them.
Is that what we want – spending considerable time building large networks of shallow connections, potentially at the expense of deepening a few cherished friendships upon which we can truly rely?
I recognize this is not purely an either/or scenario, and relationships that began with a Twitter exchange or series of blog comments can flourish into treasured real-world ties. Mark W. Schaefer was a real friend to Trey, and had tried to help him through this difficult period. Mark and Trey met on Twitter, and Mark describes the impact of this connection in his excellent book The Tao of Twitter. (Mark also has a tremendous post about Trey’s death, and Olivier Blanchard’s tribute to Trey is moving and important).
But those situations where we “meet” someone through social media, have the opportunity to interact in real life, and then develop a relationship that creates true friendship are few and far between. And as social media gets bigger and more pervasive, this chasm becomes even more difficult to cross. As my own networks in social media have gotten larger, I’ve ended up talking about my personal life less, because a large percentage of that group don’t know me, or my wife, or my kids, or my town, or my interests. I don’t want to bore people with the inanities of the everyday. (Facebook is the one exception, as I’ve always kept my personal account relatively small).
To some degree, I think this explains the popularity of Google + among people with very large followings on Twitter and/or Facebook. Google + provides a chance for a do-over, to create a new group of connections that are more carefully cultivated.
But that’s just medicating the symptoms, not curing the disease. Fundamentally, technology and our use of it isn’t – as we’ve all hoped – bringing us closer together. In fact, it may be driving us farther apart, as we know more and more people, but know less and less about each of them.
Trey gave us a glimpse of this in his last tweet:
and Trey’s friend Jim O’Donnell underscored it with his message on Trey’s Facebook page:
“To my friend Trey Pennington, one of the worst things about social media is we can be surrounded by so many and still feel completely alone.”
Making Friends Out of Connections
Maybe we should be focused less on making a lot of connections, and focused more on making a few real friends? I’m going to try to work on this, to identify people (including the three above) with whom I want to develop real friendships, and make a concerted effort to do so, even if it means answering fewer tweets and blog comments from a much larger group of casual connections.
We have to take at least some of these social media spawned relationships to the next level, otherwise what’s the point beyond generating clicks and newsletter subscribers?
You think you know someone, but you don’t. And that’s social media’s fault. But more so, our own.
Guy Kawasaki, Cristal, and 19 Facebook Webinars
Posted on 24. Jul, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Examiner, social media training, social networks
Facebook best practices change about as often as Sean Combs/Puffy/Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddy/Diddy Dirty Money monikers, and keeping up on Facebook for business can be a significant time investment. Lots of newsletters, blog posts, and case studies to consume.
But now you can get the straight scoop on what’s happening on Facebook for your business, and you don’t even have to leave your office. Put on a little Beyonce in the background, grab some Cristal and join me at Facebook Success Summit (http://bit.ly/learnFacebook)
Produced by Social Media Examiner, this is the biggest and best Facebook education event ever. 19 Facebook pros (including yours truly) will help business owners and marketers improve in the wild and wooly world of Facebook. This Summit’s focus is to empower you to implement successful Facebook marketing tactics, track and measure your Facebook ROI, and see how successful Facebook campaigns were executed.
Check out this line-up:
Guy Kawasaki (author, Enchantment), Mari Smith (co-author,Facebook Marketing), Dave Kerpen (author, Likeable Social Media), Paul Dunay (co-author, Facebook Marketing for Dummies), Jesse Stay (author, Facebook Application Development for Dummies), Robert Scoble (co-author, Naked Conversations), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner), and experts from Intuit, PETCO, Applebees and Intel.
Plus Chris Treadaway (co-author,Facebook Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author, Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies), and Andrea Vahl (co-author, Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies).
I’m doing a session on the many ways Facebook and email marketing are similar, and how to tie the two together strategically and operationally in your organization.
Who Should Attend?
Attendees at the previous Summit came from companies like General Mills, American Express, Intel, San Francisco Giants, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Intuit, Harvard Business School, 3M, Kellogg, Staples, General Electric, MetLife, HP, Fox TV, LexisNexis, and the U.S. Army.
But you don’t need to be a big business. All companies will benefit from Facebook Success Summit.
Massively Convenient for You
This is a 100% virtual event, so you can pick and choose what you want to attend. All sessions are also recorded, so you have up to ONE YEAR to watch the presentations at a time that’s convenient to you(which is where the Cristal comes in)
Session start October 5, and the 19 presentations are spread over four weeks. But again, you can watch them down the road if you miss any.
Save 50% for a Limited Time
If you sign up soon, you’ll save 50% on the registration fee, giving you a per-Webinar price of something like $16. Sixteen bucks for a Guy Kawasaki presentation? Umm, yeah! For Mari Smith? Definitely. Robert Scoble? Certainly. Heck, 16 bucks for a presentation from me is a pretty darn good deal. And this will sell out. The last Summit we did had nearly 3,000 sign ups, and 98% of attendees said they’d sign up again.
And if you sign up soon, I make a few dollars too. I appreciate your support. Tell your friends and colleagues about Facebook Success Summit and this URL: http://bit.ly/learnFacebook
If you’re like me, sometimes you hate Facebook with the intensity of a burning sun. And then you start to love it again. I guarantee you’ll take away several ideas and tips from this Summit that will help you and your company boost success on FB.
I’ll see you there. If you have any questions about Facebook Success Summit 2011, shoot me an email or ask me on the new Facebook fan page for Convince & Convert (launching this week).
Also: As a way of saying “thanks” for signing up soon, there’s a gift just for marketers called “Facebook News Feed Optimization: How to Dramatically Increase Your Visibility and Engagement” by Mari Smith (valued at $59) waiting for you. It’s great content. Go get it here>
Popularity and Reciprocity are the Enemies of Connectivity
Posted on 13. Jul, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, facebook, Mark W. Schaefer, Mitch Joel, personal branding, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social networks, Twitter, video
As I spend increasing amounts of time playing with Google Plus (see my analysis of it here), I’ve come to recognize that the success of social networking eventually brings about its demise. Twitter originally felt a lot like Google + does today, where you recognized most of the people in your stream, interactions were more conversational, etc.
But popularity changes the game. When lots of people flood into a social network, the personal connections that made it attractive in the first place get overwhelmed sometimes.
Further, Twitter’s big mistake was perpetuating the notion of reciprocity. That if someone follows you, you should probably follow them back. If you don’t, you risk being labeled as aloof and elitist. (I really enjoyed the debate on this point from two guys I respect immensely, Mitch Joel & Mark W. Schaefer)
With its built-in Circles component, Google + may have solved these problems. You can have many participants, but engage with different groups in different ways, and you can reciprocate without overwhelming your own interactions on the network.
Has Google + defied the Dunbar Number problem (the research that posits you can only maintain 150 relationships)?
If you’ve played with Google Plus, how do you find it comparing to Twitter and Facebook in its ability to connect you with others?
(video editing and support from my friends at Real Simple Video. Quality video help from quality people and affordable prices. If you need video editing and spiffying up, check them out here)
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