Did I miss a meeting or something?

Today we've had several character building opportunities, as my friend Tim would say.  It started this morning when I read on my Hootsuite (awesome program by the way) that the Twitter feed to my home page generated by HS was going to fail due to a change in the Twitter API (application programming interface).  Okay so Twitter has changed the way it delivers it's app to other web programs.  Great.  "Hey Chris, we need to check the Twitter feeds for our social clients and make sure they are working on each website correctly...." I said to my faithful programmer as he came in the door.

Next, I go over to Pinterest, looking for appropriate pins for clients, pinning client info and spreading the social love when my Pinterest tells me they have a new layout with larger images.  Of course I want to put that in place and when I get the new look I also notice an expanded category listing.... now I need to check the categories against the way I have my client boards categorized because if there is a better option - I need to make a change.

While working on the latest change in social realm I come across a pin from Pam the Marketing Nut (she's awesome too by the way) and guess what? Google+ decided to give us all WAY bigger profile banner images.  This means I need to update all the banner images for our clients to the much larger size - get out the photoshop!

This all takes place before noon today.  I'm just wondering, did I miss a meeting? Did all the social master minds get together and decide that they would all roll out changes today? And if I missed the meeting, maybe Facebook & LinkedIn did too because I haven't seen a dramatic change there. . . yet.  What happened to "if it ain't broke don't fix it!  I'm knocking on wood.

Hope you all have a great day!!

Like, Follow, Share! Phase 2 is here!

If you haven't read my first blog on Like, Follow, Share, you might want to go back and read if first.

Now that you have your friends and employees following you, it’s time to get your clients, customers and potential customers to follow you. Hopefully, if you’ve had a website for a while, you have printed your website on everything from invoices to Frisbees to get it out in front of people. Getting people to your social media isn’t quite as subtle a message and you don’t want it to be.

Adding “Follow us at twitter.com/yourcompany” and “Like us at facebook.com/yourcompany” to all your forms, letterhead, and promotional items is kind of overwhelming and somewhat tacky. If you have a store or office where your customers visit you can very easily create a sign to sit out with your social media addresses on. Another option for stores is brightly colored bag stuffers.

There are other great options that everyone can use. If you are a company that sends out paper invoices, you can include a brightly colored slip of paper (a 1/3 a sheet of paper will work) with your social media information on it. If you have a physical or email newsletter you send out to your customers, include not only your social info, but an article getting them excited about your social media.

Watch for Phase 3: Gaining followers outside your friends, employees and customer base.

Dan on Google+

A Twitter Conundrum

I was thinking about this last night. Why is it such a great thing to have thousands of followers on Twitter? Who can keep up with it all? And why are there people with thousands of followers who don't follow any back? Why do they have klout?

I was looking at the followers I have yesterday, those I follow, those I don't etc. and thinking about who these people are, do I really know them? Have I conversed with them. It's nothing like Facebook where I can tell you exactly who each person is and why I am their friend and vice / versa.

Twitter can be great for making new friends but I think that it's getting to the point that there are far more people on twitter who just follow everyone for the sake of following and a lot less who follow only those that are of true interest to them. For example, last week I was followed by a large number of chess related tweeps. I don't talk about chess anywhere in my posts or my profile. Sure I've been known to play a game or two but nothing that would warrant follows from chess players, naked chess players included.

So is being on twitter and talking about your product or service a bit like throwing spaghetti on the wall or akin to advertising on tv - hoping your exact target is watching while your ad is running? It seems to me that it's getting that way.

In the beginnning the people who followed me actually talked to me. I followed people that had businesses I was really interested or people who had something to say worth reading. I wonder if the people following me really care anymore. I know I care about who I follow!

For example, I don't follow people who's profiles tout get rich quick schemes or promising to get you thousands of followers on twitter (go figure). I don't generally follow people from other countries unless they are really interesting because honestly, I won't ever have an opportunity to do business with them or they with me.

I also don't follow all those people who say they work in social media or internet marketing right after they tell you they are a teacher, a sales person, etc. I think all of us that really are in internet marketing know that you can't be one on a part time basis - you either do it all in or you're not successful.

I follow people who have something worth reading, who offer something I'm interested or who might be someone beneficial to work with / know. Sure that sounds selfish, but I would expect the same from any other tweep.

Here's the real conundrum, and interestingly there was a post I saw today that looks at this from a slightly different angle as well: If I don't have thousands of followers, people who want to hire someone who is good at social media will think I don't know about it...

Actually I know a lot about it. I am just choosy, not just for myself but for my clients as well, they aren't following everyone on the planet either. . . But the purpose behind that concept that will probably fall on deaf ears.

The Person or The Company?

Today I was talking to one of my clients and I was telling him about the importance of social networking.  As many have already learned, the idea is to become transparent and real to your potential customers. I was giving him ideas of what to put in his blog and what I was working with on twitter and Facebook.

He asked me this question, "Don't people want to know there is a company behind the person?" What he was saying is that he was concerned that if he was blogging as himself and being transparent would he loose his "corporate" image, people would assume that it was just him and not a company. I pointed out other company owners and ceos that tweet like @Zappos

Here is my response: People want to know there is a person behind the company, not that there is a company behind the person.

My reasoning is that people don't by from websites or companies, they buy from people. Who would you rather buy from? The cold corporate image or the guy that you know from his blogs, tweets etc?

Personally, I'm more apt to buy from the people. For example, I recently purchased a new piece of luggage for my upcoming trip because I became introduced to the product through a person on twitter, decided to check out the company that she worked for and saw that the had some good buys. It was because I had been following her, liked what she had to say and the biz philosophy she personified.

Apparently I'm not alone because 78% of people stated they would make purchases based on the recommendation that they've received from co-worker, friend, tweet, blog etc. (Nielsen, “Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool”)

So, remember when you blog, tweet, etc. Be real because people want to know the person behind the company.