Why Businesses Should Be On Twitter
Posted by Mitch on Jul 23, 2010
In deference to my online buddy Mike CJ, he wrote a post earlier in the week which he titled Why Businesses Shouldn’t Be On Twitter. His main point was that instead of businesses being on Twitter, they should have individuals representing the business on Twitter so that they can show some personality and communicate directly with people.
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Whereas I agree with the last point, I disagree with the initial statement. In my opinion, businesses definitely need to be on Twitter, and for multiple reasons. Let’s take a look at some of these.
1. Branding. Businesses having a Twitter account get to make sure their logo is out there front and center whenever something is being written for the company. One should never overlook the importance of branding.
2. Customer Service. Last week I had an issue with one of my affiliates not paying me so I kind of called that company out by name on Twitter. Within 5 minutes I was being contacted by the company, or whomever was representing the company account on that day, and we got my issue resolved. I’ve talked in the past about other companies responding to the same type of thing, and last week my friend Josh Shear brought it home again.
3. Protection of name. If a company doesn’t sign up for their name, you can bet that at some point someone else will sign up and start using it, and unless they abuse it there will be nothing the company can do about it.
4. Marketing. Yeah, we all say we hate seeing marketing on Twitter, but what we really mean is we hate seeing someone pounding marketing message after message. If Sony had a Twitter account and suddenly announced that they were having a special one day sale where their 50″ HD TV’s were going on sale for $200, who wouldn’t want to know about that? Okay, I’ll admit that’s one of my special pipe dreams. 
I agree with Mike that Twitter users should have personality. I’ve written about that often enough as well, how I’m looking for more “social” than “selling”. But I think any major business that doesn’t have a Twitter account is allowing their competition to get the leg up on them, and allowing those few people who might complain about them to get the message out without having the chance to offer any assistance and hopefully stem a bad situation.
SMM Countdown – Why LinkedIn Is Essential If You Want Business Or Work
Posted by Mitch on Jul 20, 2010
I’m two days away from my social media workshop, and I’m spending this week talking about social media aspects. Instead of linking to my sticky post about the workshop, I’ll link to yesterday’s post where I asked how social are you ready for.
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Today I’d like to talk a bit about LinkedIn. I realized in looking back that I’ve never talked about it all that much before, and I think it’s time to rectify that one. After all, I’m of the opinion that if you’re either someone who works for themselves, are looking for work, or already are working and hope to work for some time to come, that it’s essential for you to be on LinkedIn.
Why? Because LinkedIn is the place where true connections can be made with business people from around the world. It’s another opportunity to post something about your business, about your background, no matter what you do. It’s another opportunity for both advertising and networking. It’s another opportunity to talk to business people about topics local and international, talk to people within your industry or people who shares the same interests as you just like direct networking.
It didn’t use to be like that. In the beginning, it was just a place to try to get business links, but it wasn’t overly friendly an application. So I connected to a few people; then what? Then they added things like groups and applications and suddenly it was a more vibrant place.
For instance, something I do at least once a week, if not more often, is to go on LinkedIn and, in the area where I have 120 characters, mention something I’m doing or did earlier in the day. Those messages get out to people who either check in on you from time to time, or through the weekly email that goes out to every person on LinkedIn, but most specifically the people who you’re connected with have the opportunity to see what it is you’re doing. I also belong to a few groups, one for my local chamber of commerce, a couple for consultants in general, and the others having something to do with some of the business ventures I presently do. I have the opportunity to comment on what others have written, as well as create my own topics of discussion.
The best thing, though, are the connections. You can find local people you know and if you know their email address you can connect directly to them if they approve. If you don’t know their email addresses, or those of other people you might seek out for whatever reason, you see people in your network who might be connected to those people, and you can ask for an introduction, of sorts. For instance, according to the site, I have 237 direct connections, which means I have almost 22,000 people I can connect to in within reach via one person, and just under 7.5 million people I could potentially connect with if I branched out to try to meet more people. That’s phenomenal!
The other side of that, however, is that you need balance. That seems to be a theme of mine lately, so let me explain. One, you really only want to connect with people who you either know or who are in industries you’re in; at least initially. That’s because those are the people who will do you the most good. Trying to connect to everyone “just because” not only wastes your time, but if people you try to connect to visit your site and don’t see you connected to enough people who could potentially benefit them later on, they’re going to ignore your request. Like networking in person, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.
And two, even though you can do some minor advertising, you have to watch that you don’t go to far. Not only will people on this site object to being sold to, and trust me they will call you out (I haven’t been called out because I know the game, but others have been lambasted and reported for doing it), but you can get kicked out by LinkedIn for doing it. Since this is business and not pleasure, and it’s the best one around, you don’t want that occurring either.
Of course there are other sites which say they’re all about business, and they probably are, but if you remember yesterday’s post (did you follow the link?), to be effective you shouldn’t overdo it because there’s just not enough time to do it all. Of course, if you’re on LinkedIn, you can hook up with me there; just let me know how I know you if we don’t know each other all that well.
No matter what, if you work in some capacity, you need to be on LinkedIn.
SMM Countdown – How Social Are You Ready For?
Posted by Mitch on Jul 19, 2010
In 3 days I’ll be doing the social media marketing workshop that I’ve talked about for a few weeks now. Of course I’ll be doing it again come August, but for now, I’m looking forward to doing the first one. Instead of talking about it again, I’ll just refer you to the sticky post.
 Peter Worsley |
Over the next four days I’m going to take on a social media topic and address it in my own way. Each one will address a concept I’ll be bringing up at the workshop. I hope some of you participate in the process. I know the advertising posts don’t get many comments, though I wouldn’t mind a few Twitter retweets, but these are things many people can talk about.
So, how social are you really ready for? Whether you’re into social media for marketing or pleasure, you have to be careful when determining just what it is you want to do and how you want to do it. Social media can be overwhelming; if you don’t believe me, remember the first time you were in a live chat room, if you ever did that, and how difficult it was holding multiple conversations at once.
I only did that a few times before I realized how overwhelming it could be. One night I kept up 16 conversations for 2 hours, and I think I rarely blinked; I couldn’t even get to the bathroom! It was fun, but I couldn’t get to anything else I wanted to do. That’s how social media can be for some people when they overextend. Sometimes one can overextend with just one thing, such as spending hours upon hours on Twitter or Facebook or whatever social media option you’ve chosen. Sometimes you can overextend yourself by trying to get into too many things, then trying to find the time to do them all.
I see that when I read some people’s Twitter posts. Do you know there are over 100 different ways to track Twitter posts now, and that’s not even including mobile phone apps? Who has the time to try all these things out? Well, definitely not me, but some of the younger set does because they seem to be hard to please; yeah, I said it! Not that it’s a bad thing, because out of those things they want come new platforms, but it’s a never-ending search for perfection that just isn’t going to happen.
Then there are people looking for new ways to meet people in places other than Twitter or Facebook. That’s not a bad thing except some people sign up for everything, and once they’re there they send requests to all the people they talk to in other places, trying to get them over there as well. It’s the programs and websites that ask them to do this, but sometimes it’s overwhelming. I get probably 5 or 6 new requests a week for sites and applications I’ve never heard of from someone I may or may not know all that well. I also get repeat requests that I’m not sure the people know are being sent to me because I refuse to join.
The thing is that I’ve figured out my limits, and I’ve figured out my time and strategy for both business and personal use. I’m already pushing those limits while still trying to do other things. Introducing more things into my life that essentially are the same as what I already have isn’t in my best interest.
What do you feel is in your best interest when it comes to social media? Are you satisfied with what you’re doing now? Are you always on the lookout for a better way to do things? And do you feel stressed or satisfied with the amount of time you’re putting into your social media projects, which by the way includes blogging?
Goals For A Social Media Strategy
Posted by Mitch on Jun 16, 2010
Two posts ago I asked the question Do You Have A Social Media Strategy? I acknowledged that I didn’t have one, and a few steps I was going to take towards having one. I wanted to talk this time about goals, because without goals, a strategy is just a hope. I also wanted to clarify that these goals have nothing to do with this blog, but my traditional businesses.
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So, what would my goals be? How would I define these goals? And what about Naomi (that’s for the Electric Company fans in the crowd)? And finally, what are the ramifications of those goals versus my wish to do some other things just because I want to do them? For instance, if I set a business goal, will things such as this blog or some of my political and racial positions impede any benefit a social media marketing strategy might entail?
That last one is the most important one, believe it or not, at least as it pertains to Twitter. I have a definitive political position. I also obviously call out racism wherever I see it. Politics is dangerous because you never know who you might irritate on the other side; you also never know who might irritate you. During the 2008 election, I eliminated a lot of people from my Twitter stream because of some of the outright nasty stuff, including lies, that were being said about people I was supporting. I didn’t mind anyone taking a contrary view; we don’t all agree on everything after all. I wasn’t putting up with certain types of decorum, however. Because I don’t put up with certain decorum as it pertains to people I support, I also won’t act that way against anyone else; well, most of the time anyway. And that becomes a major issue; will my political beliefs, and my penchant for calling someone out on a racial issue, hurt my social media marketing? And if so, how much do I care?
Question answered; I don’t really care. I go out of my way almost always to be as kind as I can. However, there is idiocy in the world, and every once in awhile we have to call it out. The people who usually follow me believe as I do, and those that don’t usually don’t stick around. So, as far as Twitter is concerned, I’m okay with it all. Luckily, I don’t get into politics on either LinkedIn or Facebook, so it’s all good.
The next step is in defining my goals; what do I want to get out of whatever I do. That makes a lot of sense, because how can I set my goals if I don’t know what I hope to achieve. Me being me, I have a lot of things I want to achieve, and each of the three ways I hope to achieve it offers something different. But the overall defined goals are:
* More brand awareness of my businesses
* More brand awareness of who I am
* More consistency in clients and income
On the surface that might not look like a lot, but it is. I have two businesses, but I have many different services I can provide through those two businesses. One is set up for more success, the other isn’t. I also want to market myself, as I keep pushing on my goal of being a professional speaker and presenter, and I speak on a multitude of topics as well.
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The last part is every consultant’s dream, that being to make at least a consistent amount of cash, more money than we made working our regular jobs before we became consultants, so we can spend more time becoming more proficient as what it is we hope to do. The way I make my money is in short spurts; I make a lot of money very quickly, then I make a little bit of money for awhile until I get another opportunity to make a lot of money again. Sometimes those gaps between large money go much longer than is comfortable, so I need to shore that part up, and if I shore it up enough I won’t have to worry about the large gaps anymore.
This means that, at this juncture, the final piece is planning my goals, or steps, to achieve what I want to get to. I’m not putting that part down just yet. To me, this is the longest part, the part that needs more thought so that I’m not haphazardly throwing things out without the full plan. I also figure this is enough for anyone else who’s been thinking about setting up a strategy, who might be reading this and thinking that you want to try it along with me, to now sit down and plan your strategy as well. If you do decide to try something, I hope you share either here or on your own blog; I’d love to see where you’re taking it.
By the way, there’s a great possibility that I might be presenting a live seminar in July and August on this topic, which is why I’m now thinking about this entire thing. After all, it makes you much more convincing if you’re actually gone through the entire process as well. Right?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Do You Have A Social Media Strategy?
Posted by Mitch on Jun 14, 2010
I was reading an article by my friend Josh Shear titled Why Social Media Isn’t Working For Your Business and it made me start to think a bit more about social media and how it is or isn’t working for my business. I mean, I’ve written about using social media for promotion after all.
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I have to say that it’s worked great for my social life, which is why it came about to begin with. Because of Twitter, I’ve met some people at local tweetups that I’d have never met on my own, and there’s a lot of both nice and smart people around here that I’m happy to have gotten to know. Through LinkedIn, I’ve met one or two people over the years in person, but I can’t say it’s done a lot for me socially. The same goes for Facebook as far as meeting people locally, but I’ve gotten the opportunity to talk to people around the world that I’d have never met any other way. Same goes for Ryze, though I’ve actually met some of those folks in person, and talked on the phone with some as well.
But what about business? I have to admit that I haven’t had a consistent social media marketing strategy, although I’ve had fits and starts. I did create my LinkedIn page a very long time ago, and I wasn’t all that far behind the Twitter revolution. I even now have that Facebook marketing page for my businesses, which I was just able to double in “likes”, which they now use instead of “fans”.
So, the question is how would one go about creating a social media marketing strategy. I have an idea of how I’m going to create mine, or at least enhance mine. If you think this is something you’d like to think about as well, look at my points here; I always work well with outlines. This outline is going to mention the top three specific social media options I presently use.
1. On LinkedIn, I need to take more advantage of the area that allows you to let people know what I’m up to on a real time basis. The reason that’s a big deal is because LinkedIn sends an email once a week to everyone telling them what’s going on with the people they’re connected to. It always highlights the newest stuff first, then goes backwards, and once it reaches so many highlights it gives a link to go online to see more if you wish. However, I’m betting most people don’t wish, so making sure I take advantage of staying current will help to make sure my name shows up in this email on a more regular basis.
2. On Twitter, I already have my current blog posts show up. However, I have lots of old posts on topics that are still relevant, and I have articles in many places as well. If I want to increase my brand and show those following me on Twitter what I’m all about, I need to make sure that I’m posting at least one extraneous link either every day or every couple of days to stuff I’ve done in the past.
3. On Facebook, I did something a few days ago that I’d said I wasn’t going to do, or didn’t want to do. I decided to specifically invite some people, and I did, going through the people I’m connected to and inviting some very specific people. These were friends who I believed would get a kick out of seeing what I’m doing these days. Lo and behold, my subscriber base doubled. This proves that sometimes in marketing all you have to do is ask. I might eventually invite other people who I’m connected with there; we’ll see. Oh yeah, if you’d like to check it out, click on that little box there to the right.
I think this is a pretty good start. But what is it I’m trying to do? That’s the next post.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell
Facebook Says “Privacy? Pffbt!”
Posted by Mitch on May 8, 2010
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All the talk lately has been about Facebook, and with good reason. With just a few strokes and almost no real notification, Facebook has pretty much said none of us deserve privacy anymore.
Luckily, I was alerted to the first thing that they were going to do, which was releasing all of our information to their marketers. I even got a fix from one of my friends, which I posted as a comment, but now I’ll post here:
On the first one, go to your account. Under Privacy Settings for Applications, if you click there, you’ll see “Instant Personalization.” Unclick the box and you’re all set; supposedly.
At the time I thought that was that, but nope. The next thing I knew, I was on the site doing something else when this window pops up, telling me that I get to select which of my interests I want to link to some big pages that they were putting together. I didn’t think much about it, but selected two items and went about my business. It wasn’t until I read a post on a blog called Cre8pc Usability & Holistic SEO titled Facebook Removes Profile Choices (Kim must be big time; even Matt Cutts commented on this one lol) that I had to go back and see that indeed they had removed everything I had put onto that site 2 years ago that I said I liked except for the two I kept, one of which went to a fairly nonexistent page. That irked me so I went in and removed the other two, which wasn’t easy to figure out but I finally got it done.
At the same time they were doing that, they were creating community profiles for everyone to link to as well. I live in Liverpool NY, and they popped something up there for me, as well as where I went to college, the industries I listed on my business, where I went to school, etc. I only hooked up with one of those and canceled the rest, but to date at least they haven’t deleted any of my business information.
We might also end up having to watch out for some of our photos being used for purposes outside of our posting them just for our friends to see. That’s one of the rumors that’s going around, and based on everything else I’ve seen, I don’t doubt that could come. So, for those of you who have embarrassing images that you thought only your closest friends might ever see, you might want to think about whether you want to keep them on the site or not.
To say I’m disgruntled would be to minimize my feelings. To say I’m at the point that Dan of Rocket.ly is at, which he expressed in his post titled Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook is would be overstating things a bit. At this point I still get more benefit out of Facebook than how much they’re irritating me, but it’s getting close to a point where it’ll be Sydney or the Bush (anyone who’s a long time Peanuts reader will understand that quote). The idea that we were all lured into something just to build up numbers so they could spring all of this on us bothers me, especially if it was always the plan. Facebook has almost turned into Google, since neither one believes that anyone should have any privacy whatsoever (I wonder if Sergey or or Larry will share their bank account numbers with me for a few days ), only Facebook got us to give it up voluntarily.
Although I’ve had some interesting conversations with my buddy Blog Bloke over his post Privacy and Security in a Social Media World, I have to admit that he’s got it right on many aspects of what’s going on now. Not that I ever thought he was totally wrong; after all, Google has shown that it has the power to segregate whomever they decide they don’t like for whatever reason they don’t like (such as taking away my page rank), which destroys the aura of links and activity being the only determinant as to how well a person’s website is doing on the internet. It’s really just more of a warning to us all that Pandora’s Box is open, and none of that stuff is ever going back in.
For his part in this, Zuckerberg had this to say at f8: “It really has no privacy implications. I think this means people will be sharing less information when they don’t need to around the Web.” As Dr. Phil would say, “did someone write the word ‘stupid’ on my forehead?”
Decide now if you want to be online or not; it may be the only way you keep even a modicum of privacy in your life, because trust me, there’s a lot of information on almost everyone online already, whether you did anything or not.
Meanwhile, if you want to take a shot at protecting your information, check out the video below; if you’d rather read, follow this link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation site.
By the way, remember that tomorrow is Mother’s Day!
Facebook Changes And Alter Egos
Posted by Mitch on Apr 22, 2010
Facebook has been busy lately. There’s all sorts of changes going on, some controversial, some seemingly unnecessary, and all generating a lot of buzz and noise. Let’s take a look at some of it.
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The first thing they’ve done is announced that they’re going to be sharing our personal information with some of their advertising partners so those advertisers can “better serve our needs.” Frankly I don’t like this one bit, and the only thing I’m thankful for is that I have Firefox as my browser, so I have a script running that blocks almost all ads already. Still, the idea that they’re sharing my information, such as it is, with anyone else is irritating.
The difference between this and Beacon, if you remember that, is that you won’t be tracked all across the internet, which is what Beacon was going to do. So, you now have to make more decisions as to what you’re sharing on Facebook with others. I’m fairly secure; I have my business information, some stuff about books, and I occasionally post something either business related or funny; anyone tracking me isn’t going to know what to make of me.
The second thing they’ve announced is that they’ve partnered with thousands of sites to add a “Like” button somewhere on those sites. This means if you’re surfing and you see something that’s interested you or that you were intrigued by, you can click on that button and it will show up on your wall so your friends can see what you like. Once again, this is a choice you get to make, so I don’t have a major problem with that, since I can’t see this being anything I’m going to use that often. I say it that way because I’m known to go to Twitter and post links to things I’ve read that I find intriguing, so you never know. And, once again, if the partners are tracking my wall they’re going to be confused as sin.
Next, you saw my post about creating a Facebook fan page for my business a few days ago. Well, Facebook is now changing “become a fan” to “like” as well, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since I’ve always cringed a little about the fan thing. However, they’re also going into what’s known as “real time search”, which means anything you hook on to or say will be immediately searchable on Google, Bing, etc. Now, your words and actions will be able to be tracked on the search engines whether or not other people are on Facebook or not; ouch! For me, I have no problem with the groups I join, but for some, joining a group with a name such as “Big Breasted Babes In England” showing up on the internet if they’ve applied for a job and HR is researching their information isn’t going to be something they’re going to be able to get away from.
What all of this has prompted is some outrage, and some people having a bit of fun at their expense. Has anyone checked out Lamebook, the Facebook parody site? There’s over 100,000 people who are following it; just amazing. If you look at it, you’ll notice that it has a couple of things that are also on Facebook, such as “comment” and “like”, but it has something else called “dislike”. It turns out that many people are wishing Facebook would add a Dislike button, and indeed this guy has created an application for Firefox called Facebook Dislike Button. What people will think of, right?
What’s my opinion? We can’t be surprised anymore by some of the things Facebook is doing. They deserve to make money, and they’re still not going to a paid model like Ning. If they’re sharing your information with advertisers, well, if you put stupid stuff on there that’s on you. Something I’m surprised about is how many websites you can go to where they’ll allow you to sign into your Facebook account to comment, and even if you haven’t signed in if you’ve signed in on your browser and haven’t signed out, you visit sites and you’ll see people who are your friends on there and what they’re saying in their news stream, as well as other Facebook people who have intentionally signed in to comment on something on the page you’re on. In other words, we’re already being tracked to some degree, and we didn’t even get to see any terms of service on it.
So it goes; how are you liking social media?
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