I have been reaching out to some friends today, and it reminds me just how simple, yet valuable, saying “hi” can be. Some days, the networker in me takes over and I make time for just saying “hi” to people.
I often look through my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn connections and seek out their telephone number to call and say hello. It often surprises people that I called them, because in many cases they were just “online acquaintances” prior to my call. When they hear a friendly “hi”, it can break the ice and open the door for a more meaningful and memorable connection.
Sure, you could say that you just don’t have time for it. After all, when you break the barrier between the broadcast effect of social networking and enter a more personal networking space, it takes more time. You may only reach one at a time with “hi”, but isn’t it worth a try?
How important can this be? I am not offering return on investment figures for this, but I can certainly say that it has been beneficial to me in many ways. Sometimes I find that people are really pleased that I took the time to connect by voice, and other times they wonder how I got their number (Tip: A WHOIS search can be very handy). I have often been met with kind questions about how my wife and kids are doing, or about something I recently wrote. However, I have never been met with insult.
Stop Overlooking the Value of “Hi”
“Hi” is a basic essential of networking, and yet it is so easy to neglect when we get busy or rely too heavily on a broadcast mentality. Networking with others and being friendly with a simple “hi” can have some very unexpected benefits. If you don’t believe me, just try it.
I love helping people to find what they are seeking. Whether they are looking for friends, customers, a job, or pink ponies, I try my best to know the right people to refer them to. That is the networker in me, and I have always enjoyed being able to connect people. Of course, that means knowing them, first.
It can be extremely refreshing to reach out to others and learn more about them. It is a great way to learn what motivates them, and that can be very motivating. With an attitude of seeking what they want, and how you can help them find it, you may be surprised how receptive people can be. When it is done without self-seeking, it can create some unexpected results. It can also create some great friendships and business alliances … you never know.
Are Twitter’s networking and conversation possibilities still compelling, or is Twitter mostly for link sharing and SEO now? The experience of Twitter is different for each individual, but maybe there is also a collective answer.
If you have used Twitter as long as I have, you have surely seen a lot of change. I opened my first Twitter account in April 2008, just over two and a half years ago. I used Twitter to announce my racing starts and results, and to let people know when my auto racing webcast was live. I was too busy on race tracks to use it for much else.
In the beginning, I was pretty unaware of the great value of Twitter, as most of us were, but then I decided to take a little closer look when I created my @murnahan account. Twitter’s usefulness really struck me after I learned about a fire that happened on the roof of my kids’ school, about 100 yards from my home, in a Twitter update. No, I didn’t learn about that fire by hearing the fire trucks or standing in my driveway and seeing flashing lights. I discovered it on Twitter. This was when I decided that Twitter was really worth a closer look.
Witnessing the Twitter Boom
There was a time, about a year and a half ago, when you were “nobody” if you didn’t use Twitter. It was a sudden craze that dragged celebrities in by the hundreds, and all that publicity coaxed people to check it out. Many of the huge boom of Twitter users were pretty skeptical of Twitter, but they just had to know what it was all about. It was a really amazing tool back then, for those who learned how to use it to meet people and build a network.
The Twitter boom was in full swing, but the majority of new users did not return more than a few times, and Twitter experienced massive losses of users. The number of new users was still skyrocketing, but the number of people actually using the service looked bleak. The loss rate was high.
Twitter is still pretty close to the same service, overall, and the tools surrounding Twitter were made better since that time. What has changed is in how it has been used, which is unique for each of us, but has a collective affect on Twitter as well. Like any tool, it can be used in productive ways, or in unproductive ways. A hammer can build a home, or it can destroy one. Unfortunately, many users have been influenced by the “dark side” and have been less than productive for themselves and the community as a whole.
There are many people who will choose to use Twitter to “build a house” rather than destroy one, but there are enough hammers swinging that it can be pretty challenging to recognize the difference. The confusion and frustration showed many Twitter users the door, and they left.
Twitter made it really easy to meet people, but this had a downside, too. I have met a lot of great people using Twitter. I have also met thousands of people who have no more use for me than to add another number to their Twitter follower count in hopes that I will click their link and buy something from them.
Are the Good Days of Twitter Gone?
Twitter became the easiest network of all for gaining a following of people. I called it the Twitter Follower Frenzy in an article from June 2009, and it just kept growing from there. I found that for a lot of users, it felt like an obligation to refollow anybody who loved them enough to follow their Twitter feed. Heck, I never sought followers, but somehow I ended up following over 20,000 people, mostly just because they had followed me and I wanted to seem politely accessible.
The Follower Frenzy led to a huge pitfall. Call me an ass for pointing this out, but it is really true, and I can tell you why. Twitter gained a lot of it’s popularity among marketers because it was fun, interactive, informative, and because it was a really easy way to bring thousands of people to a website. Once people seemed to “figure out” that anybody and everybody can be a “marketing expert”, Twitter was the low hanging fruit. Twitter would become the place where anybody could be a success by pushing out advertisements, or so they hoped.
How extreme was the lure of Twitter? Back in early 2009, when I would send a Twitter update I could watch anywhere from 500-2,000 visits to my blog from a single “tweet”. Less than 300 unique visitors attributable to a given tweet meant that Twitter was down.
It was apparent that anything worth a tweet was going to be quite visible. Twitter was really useful for bringing attention to websites, thus it became highly abused. It can still be useful for sharing information, but nothing like early 2009. It was really very astonishing.
I had a lot of fun with Twitter back then. Here is a video I produced reflecting the fun I had: Twitter Kids
Is Twitter Really Damaged, or is it Just Me?
It was easy for me, at first, to question whether I had just become less useful or interesting. I ruled this out, because all of my other networks and my blog were still doing fine. Perhaps I have become less interactive with Twitter, but that was actually more of a reaction than the cause. I slowed my use of Twitter as a conversation and networking tool when it started looking more like just another link sharing network.
I questioned whether it was just me who noticed a lot less interaction on Twitter, but I can definitively answer that this was not the case. There was a collective damage by many users, and there was actually a defining moment when Twitter started going down hill for me, and for a lot of others. Ironically, it was right about the time I launched the book “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends” which so many of my Twitter friends urged me to write.
I still find usefulness to Twitter for it’s search functions and for communicating with a few friends. I like Twitter, I really do, but where I have noted troubles with Twitter is in the number of people who took their follower count too seriously and it became a shouting contest where millions of people tried to get their 15 minutes of fame or to sell their goods and services. It started to look like a huge business opportunity to millions of people.
Collective Benefit of Reviving Twitter
The question of whether Twitter is worth “reviving” is a matter that is up to each of us to answer. We each use Twitter in our own ways, and we each see different results. A revival of Twitter is something that we each do on an individual basis, and it largely affects only our own experience with the service.
At the same time, I still hold some belief that if enough people took the initiative, there would also be a collective benefit. It took a collective effort to cause the damage and subsequent loss of interest in many people. Similarly, doesn’t it seem possible that there could be a collective repair and restoration of people’s interest if we reversed some of the damage?
I think there can still be a lot of great conversations and relationships built, but it will take effort. It will likely require close attention to follower/following connections, and making lists to manage all the information.
The days of massive website traffic and huge allure to inexperienced and shotgun-blast marketers has dwindled. The allure to spammers is still there, but it seems less pervasive because they realized it is no longer the goldmine they hoped for. The useless garbage is easier than ever to filter out if you make the effort.
Perhaps now if people will concern themselves less with unrealistic popularity and inflated numbers, and more with purposeful popularity within a core group of interesting people, Twitter can still be a great networking tool. That is, if we can bring back some of the interest of those great people who just became bored, irritated, and deaf from the static.
Well, what are your thoughts? Don’t be shy!
P.S.
I hand-picked a small group of articles I have written about Twitter over time. I hope you will enjoy these:
The majority of the world’s population do not need sex drugs. Likewise, the majority of the world’s population do not need SEO and social media marketing. If you try to convince a spammer of this, their ears turn off. They just don’t get it, because they know that one in “X” squillion people who receive their message will respond.
It is easy to compare the propagation of false and misleading information about SEO and social media marketing to the false and misleading spam of sex drugs and Nigerian banking scams. It is also easy to compare the changes of social media’s growing spam to the way email turned spammy. A huge problem I see is that social media propagates the spam of social media. When SEO and social media is flooded with deception, it devalues the industry and creates much skepticism of these useful services.
I suppose I should define what it is that I am comparing to sexual aids and Nigerian bank scams. In case you have not seen the same kind of spam I see every day, I will just give you a quick note on each of these “sex drugs” and “Nigerian scams” of modern day.
SEO is search engine optimization, and it deals with creating higher ranking in search engine results, increasing website conversion, data analysis, and much more. Most of the world’s educated population do not have any idea what SEO means, or what it involves. This fact opens the floodgates for abuse and fraud by “SEO experts” who will stop at nothing to get your money and provide disastrous results in return. There are a lot of crooks out there actively selling SEO with a pitch consisting largely of “You need meta tags on your website to improve your listings in search engines.” Of course, that is a lie, and I can prove it, but I guess lies are easier than the truth for some people.
Social Media Marketing means marketing. Most of us realize that Twitter is not just for spouting off about what you had for lunch, and that Facebook is not just for talking about your kids, your spouse, or how drunk that dude got at the party last night. They are also not just for making more “friends” to pitch your goods to. Against popular adoption of the term, social media marketing does not mean spewing your latest specials and acting like a used car dealer. It means respectful, targeted, creative marketing and other customer communications that can withstand the scrutiny of others and provide sustainable value to a brand.
SEO and Social Media Are Like Futuristic Sex Drugs
The sex drug market took off like a rocket and ridiculous numbers of (low-life, sleazy, bottom-feeding, law-breaking, unethical) people wanted a piece of that market. It was presented as a fast way to get rich, and for a relatively tiny few, it came true. People like sex, and they like money, so this seemed like a perfect plan to get rich. You have probably been a victim of this dreadful pandemic.
If nobody has ever hit you up with their sex drug specials, you are an exception, and I will kiss your ring and address you as my Supreme Leader!
Perhaps the biggest craze to ever hit the Internet is the lure of easy money, and there are squillions of people who will insist that easy money is out there for the taking if you just sign up for their “plan” and give them a credit card number. Many will even tell you that they can make anybody rich with little effort and in just a few hours per day. SEO and social media are the obvious vehicles of choice for carrying out these get rich quick plans, and so they have become extremely popular. The glimmer of hope to have more tomorrow than they have today is just enough to create a spark in people that sets off an explosion.
I have to question the course of seo and social media marketing over time. Of course, it is my job, so it matters to me. It should really matter to a lot of the “innocent” people out there, too. I realize that most people have not been around the Internet or as utterly consumed by it for as long as I have, so the question may seem a bit innocuous to some. A lot of things seem pretty harmless until they get as annoying as a swarm of mosquitoes or actually reach out and cause you direct harm.
I have a lot of questions about the direction of this Internet space we all love. A concern that regularly comes to mind is how it seems that social media is moving the way of email. I remember when email was simple, and required relatively minor adjustments for email spam. Of course, that did not last long. As the use of email spread wide and fast, a lot of sleazy people found ways to make it far less productive, and eventually very costly to consumers. Once the sex drugs reached the market, email hit a really rough spot that it has still never been able to fully overcome. Now it is estimated that over 97 percent of email is spam. The overall percentage of unwanted business social media communication is likely even higher, as the world has been introduced to the “everybody is a marketer” craze and more people are dying to get their hands on all of that easy money available on the Internet.
The truth sucks for a lot of people, but I like to share it anyway. There are millions of people trying to market millions of products, while only a small percentile will take the care to be successful at it, or develop the required marketing talent. There is often no way to prove this to somebody other than to just give them time and watch them give up and fail. Tragically, this demographic are often lured back in when along comes another “plan”, another great “deal” that will make them successful … but this time it is different, and it is a “sure bet”.
I certainly love to dream big, and I never want to squash anybody’s dream. Instead, I just wish for them to have more dedication and better planning for their dreams than to assume it is as simple as what many people will claim.
The allure of easy money is strong, and because of this, it is easy to prey on people’s emotions by offering them an easier solution. That strong demand for a perfect answer to making more money has driven the need for SEO and social media marketing. In reality, SEO and social media are useful marketing tools, but unfortunately the candy brought in a lot of cockroaches.
The majority of the unwanted and spammy social media communication that I witness are attempts to either sell SEO and social media marketing services, or to recruit others to do the same spammy things with an expectation of earning a profit. With an eye on the future, does this really seem like a good plan for success? Sure, we can say that it will die out as more people figure out that it is largely fraudulent, but then, I seem to still find a lot of sex drug offerings in my email every day (thousands per day).
Is Social Media Going The Way of Email?
Social media has revealed and honed some brilliant creative marketers, and the gap between good and mediocre is constantly widening. Pareto’s principle of 80/20 will always apply to marketing, just as it does in any industry. The tragedy is that there is a constant spread of misinformation that SEO and social media marketing creates easy profit and that anybody can do it just as well as the next. I believe that as long as there are still people falling prey to these lies, the integrity of the industry will largely be shrouded in mystery and doubt.
What are your thoughts? Are you fooled by the “easy money” hype of today’s social media?
Car dealers are infamous for their marketing short-sightedness, so they make a great social media example. New and used car sales organizations live or die in short bursts of business, and it creates huge anxiety for them – but this is not just about car dealers. This principle applies to many industries. I’m just using our auto-peddling worst nightmare as an example so we can all relate.
In the auto dealer scenario, as with many other retail industries, the inventory is often financed using a “floor plan”, and if the inventory is not selling, the bank will make it very uncomfortable for them. This creates a challenge that is not so unlike the urgency felt in any other businesses. The sales must keep coming, or somebody is going to need some creative answers.
It causes a lot of companies to focus more closely on an eight percent increase in new business and overlook the eighty percent increase they could achieve if they look ahead and give people reasons to buy from them.
Topeka, Kansas has fourteen pages of car dealers and related automotive ads in the telephone book Yellow Pages. I had to ask my wife if we have a telephone book, and I was delighted to find that we actually do. I do not know how many car dealers still advertise in the Topeka newspaper, because I do not subscribe. The last time I saw a newspaper, it was a lot thinner than it used to be. The auto industry was hit hard by the economy in the last few years, and car dealers sought a better way to reach their market, just like everybody else.
It is not surprising that there are at least half as many results for car dealers in Topeka, Kansas returned in a Google search than there are residents of Topeka. A car dealer without a website would be like a car dealer without cars for sale.
Everybody knows that the Internet is where people buy things, right? The automotive industry caught on, and all of the sudden the job of Internet marketing shifted from the part-time receptionist to the “Internet Sales Manager”. That is often the fancy title for the guy who fiddles with a computer all day and tries to sell cars online. He emails his buddies and asks them to come and test drive a car, just so he looks busier. He is afraid for his job, and it is really important to show the boss that the Internet is a good investment.
After a few more doughnuts, he will put the latest finance rates on Facebook. After lunch, he will plan to tell Twitter users how he can save them a ton of money if they get there for the big tent sale this weekend. The successful car dealers are on Facebook. At least that is what they said at the last Car Dealer Internet Sales Manager’s Convention. Wait, maybe it was LinkedIn … I forget. In any case, getting the latest advertised specials out to the people is of the highest importance, right?
This Marketing Style is Not Limited to Car Dealers
This mentality is not only about car dealers, so make no mistake. I am just using them as a fun example. If you read carefully and think about this, you can probably relate it to many other industries.
What drives me absolutely crazy is that I watch far too many companies treat their business like my example of the Internet Sales Manager urgently trying to get the boss off his back. They do all that they know to make their advertising visible and be sure that everybody knows their name when they are looking for a car.
Companies frantically try to shorten their sales funnel while the importance of brand recognition and brand loyalty lose ground to immediate needs.
You could blame the Internet Sales Manager, but much of his focus is imposed by managers above him, the general manager, or dealership owner. Dealers are car guys, not marketing guys, and not Web Guys. Under the pressure of a competitive market, they completely lose sight of what motivates people to buy things.
Following the car dealer theme, many companies will look at the Internet the way they look at the big inflatable gorilla and colorful balloons dealerships put out on Saturdays to make passing traffic do a double-take (and if they are lucky, crash their car right out front). These are all fine and dandy, but they lack the sustainable value of social media.
These companies usually have about 90 friends on Facebook and perhaps 14 Twitter friends to tweet stuff to. They are so wrapped up with search engine optimization (SEO) that they never understood how SEO and social media are inextricably paired with the more challenging factors of understanding what their customers want, need, expect, deserve, and demand.
They neglect that social media makes SEO a whole lot easier and more effective. They do it the hard way and just know that with enough SEO, the Internet will deliver more hot leads and they will sell more cars – and it will, but it lacks forethought.
They try to learn from their peers who are making the same mistakes, and then wonder why it did not work – while overlooking what their customers are already trying to teach them.
Is Your “Car Dealership” Being Creative?
Thinking is often underrated and undervalued. Marketing takes a lot of effort, and the numbers matter. What you do with the numbers also matters. Instead of just looking forward to the next email blast or rewriting your h1 tags, it may be useful to think about a social media strategy.
Everybody is using tactics, but strategy takes real marketing talent, creativity, and looking beyond the next 30 days. It takes guts, and regardless what others tell you is an easy fix, guts are where success grows.
Consider your own examples in place of the car dealership. Have you thought about why people love their cars? Have you considered holding a poker run with your Facebook fans and friends? Have you thought how cool it would be to integrate Foursquare when you do a scavenger hunt with potential buyers? Have you ever thought of holding a ride-along with a race car driver at your local race track? Did you ever consider that you could build more incoming links if you were the first to craft a story about something important to your industry … important to the people who care about your industry? Did you ever think to monitor social media to see if somebody is talking about your dealership, your products, or your industry?
I started thinking about this after two different instances of friends in the automotive industry who told me of two different car dealerships in the Topeka area in need of a better marketing plan. I looked at their online efforts and found lack of strategy. It appeared that they approach their online efforts and offline efforts as two completely divergent markets, rather than integrating them. Although there were some pretty websites, they were hard to navigate and lacking a call to action. Worse yet, they display their companies about as interesting as a car salesman in a leisure suit rushing across the lot to shake my hand.
Maybe it is time for me to perform a social media and SEO case study on a Topeka, Kansas car dealer. I think it could be really interesting to share what would happen when one of them led the way. On the other hand, in Topeka, we have what I see as the worst stereotype of car dealers. I would probably do better to poke my eyes out with a Chevy bumper than try and explain something car dealers refuse to hear.
Save your dealership – stop acting like a car dealer!
To Car Dealers: Car dealers always express urgency to buy today, so let’s spin the table and see how urgent you are about increasing your car dealership’s profit using effective social media and SEO. Subscribe to my blog today and I’ll let you read it for $0 down and $0 per month.
UPDATE: I have a funny update to this blog post. Shortly after publishing this, I received a call from a Topeka area car dealer who was referred to my services. The man on the other end of the line wanted to hire me to actually work for and work at the dealership … selling cars. It seems that somebody bumped their head … really hard.
I told him what I do (marketing consulting), and he kind of had that “duh, I don’t understand” glazed over effect. Many people just don’t understand that they will not improve their dealership’s new and used car sales volume until they stop trying to sell cars the way their father, and his father sold cars.
The world has changed, and car dealers seem to think they can hold back the change. This is why so many of them are going out of business. They do not want good advice. They just want another person to explain how “right” they are. It is a sad loss for them.
Tactics and Strategy Are Not The SameI look around the Internet and see a lot of social media tactics without any overall strategy. It often leaves me shaking my head when I see so-called social media marketers who offer nothing but setting up a couple of social media accounts then find a handful of people for their client to spout advertisements to. Maybe they even offer to do the spouting, but often without a real sound plan. It leaves little wonder why so many people are left to question the usefulness of social media in their business. It is a sad fact for many companies, but it can be fixed.
For the purpose of this article, let us look at the words tactic and strategy like the military does. A military tactic is an action that is implemented by a group of no larger than a division. A strategy addresses the planned outcome of the entire military operation. In social media terms, one way to look at a tactic is sending tweets on Twitter, while a strategy addresses how those tweets fit into the overall business plan and marketing objectives.
I suppose it should not be surprising that many people do not understand the difference between a social media tactic and a social media strategy. After all, most of the people implementing social media today are not marketers by trade, nor have a significant stake in the outcome. Many will say that they are marketers, but most really are not. They are technicians of marketing tools, but not practitioners of the trade. If this insults you, it shouldn’t. It is not saying that the receptionist who was put in charge of tweeting is any less important, or that the guy in accounting who created the last ad campaign is any less valuable as an accountant. We all have our own skill sets, and just because it is popular, you can still be cool if you are not a marketer.
Social Media Tactics Examples
I witness many social media consultants who promote setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts, fancying up the profile pages, and helping customers to find followers or fans. Sadly, this is about as useful as a hammer without a carpenter. These tactics are just creating tools, and without a strategy … an actual understanding of what to do next and why, companies are often left to receive terrible results and disappointment. A tactic without any function or objective in place is only useful on a very short term basis, and that is if they have luck on their side.
A common tactic I see is the social media consultant who tries very hard to reach a lot of people with entertaining messages like a funny video, a joke, or inspirational quote. They tell their clients to be fun, interesting, and engaging. They promote making a lot of friends by being themselves and making it personal. This is all just fine and dandy, but it is only a tactic. In the end, you may have a lot of people who like you but still lose a lot of time and money. The overall strategy of this social media tactic is that if you have a bunch of friends and they like you, it will be easier to sneak in your advertisement now and then and get your friends to help you spread it to the world. The problem is, these are only tactics, and there is really not a sound strategy. Friends are great, and we can all benefit from having more friends. I love the friends I meet via social media. I met my wife back in 2000 using social media. All the friends are fantastic, but those friends alone are not likely to come running make your mortgage payments. You need more to your strategy than this.
In an upcoming article I will show actual statistics which I have compiled regarding the effectiveness of tactics in contrast to strategy, but for now I want you to think about strategy more in terms of short and long-term objectives, and how you can improve yours.
Social Media Strategy: A Plan for Success
Let’s just say that you have a bunch of people following you on Twitter and a squillion fans on your Facebook Page. What are you going to do with that? Will you provide something that nobody else is doing? Do you have a strategy that is sustainable beyond the next Facebook update?
Let us use a restaurant as an example. If you have a restaurant, will you blast out your specials every day and hope people come to see you, then perhaps just keep lowering your sale price until this tactic begins to work? I hope that you don’t think that is a useful strategy. Try to think of strategy more like this: Create a contest among waiters to see which one will have more customers tag your restaurant in a Facebook photo or upload a picture of their good time with your awesome waiter on TwitPic and send it to you as a reply on Twitter. Create a special inauguration party for your latest “Mayor” on Foursquare. Integrate these tactics into an overall strategy to produce a sustainable marketing force of people who love what you do and love to tell their friends. Reward them with something fun, interesting, and preferably delicious. These are things people will remember, and ways to have other people interested, rather than just wasting time with basic advertising tactics.
Even Good Strategy Fails Without Implementation
A good strategy will still not benefit your company without implementation. If you find that you have a handful of tactics without a really solid and productive strategy, stop and take another look. It is not too late to start doing things better, but each day that slips by will mean more money down the drain.
Here is one more example of a strategy. My strategy is to provide something useful. I want to give you something you did not get elsewhere. I want to give you something valuable that you can use today and receive benefit. Using this strategy, a small portion of my readers contact me when they are ready to create and implement a strategy using tactics that work.
