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.
There surely must be some tension between the social media giants, Twitter and Facebook. After all, social media is a fiercely competitive and also very profitable industry. Once in a while, there is a blaring case of irony to make us laugh.
Irony:“… situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions.” (source: Wikipedia)
Maybe you will not find this as amusing as I do. After all, I laugh at a lot of absurdities that I discover online. Social media is fantastic for a laugh, and I may never get the pictures of people with back-boobs and front-butts out of my head. Yes, that’s right, I said back boobs and front butts. See for yourself at your local Wal Mart store, or follow the humorous links I provided.
NOTE: I know some fine people with back boobs and front butts, but let’s face it Snuggies are cheap, and they could disguise that stuff better than Spandex!
Now back to this social media irony of Facebook and Twitter. We have all heard that we should be using Twitter, right? Anybody in the marketing industry will, at a minimum, recommend reserving your brand name at Twitter.com.
Twitter grew like influenza since 2007, and millions of people flocked to the service to find out what a “tweet” is all about. I must say that it was not without merit, and I have participated quite heartily in the conversation surrounding Twitter.
Long before Twitter … centuries before Twitter (in Internet time, of course) we had Facebook. Facebook really hit the world by storm, and grew to over 500 million users in short order. Do you realize how big 500,000,000 is? It is big … very big!
Obviously, Facebook has a stronghold in the social media industry, but we still cannot overlook Twitter for its complex simplicity. I like Twitter enough that I wrote a book about the service, so this is certainly not a bash on Twitter. It is just an observation.
I also like Facebook, and I can spend hours spying on the lives of nearly everybody I ever knew. Then, of course, there are those many companies who do not even see it coming while I am compiling the information I need in order to crush their business with marketing intelligence that I pick up on Facebook.
A logical and meaningful bash against Facebook is like slapping a hungry grizzly bear with a slab of meat and then hoping I can outrun it. It is one of those things that sounds stupid even when smart people say it. Facebook is a winner in the information age. Knock Facebook if you like, but 500 million kind of speaks for itself.
No, this is not a bashing, but I question how they see each other. What is a good way to open a dialog of speculation on how the two social media giants view the others’ service? Make up your own mind on this (and please share your comments), but to me it seems that a look at each of their usage of the others’ service should say something. What it says could be taken different ways, and I will let you chime in with your thoughts.
Twitter on Facebook
Twitter has a Facebook account with hundreds of thousands of fans. My logical assumption would be that Twitter may actually have something more than 140 characters (the character limit on Twitter) to say to all of those adoring fans. Sure, they have a blog, and of course they have Twitter, but it seems that Facebook is not just “the competition”, and it could serve some great uses for Twitter. It seems that Twitter did not ask for, nor act upon my opinion … or the opinion of the 714,256 people who elected to “Like” them on Facebook. As the image below illustrates, “Twitter has no recent posts.” Surely they have something available if you click on “older posts”, right? No … nothing at all. They signed up for an account and did not use it, just the same way as the overwhelming majority of accounts created on Twitter. Irony? Just wait, because there’s more!
Twitter on Facebook
Facebook on Twitter
I guess I never really pay much attention to Facebook on Twitter, but they are there, and using the service. When I want to know more about Facebook, I either look at Facebook or find it on one of my favorite Facebook-focused blogs. Facebook really does not need Twitter, but they apparently found value in embracing Twitter as another tool. I commend them on the choice to use Twitter, and it just makes good sense to me.
In contrast to Twitter’s blank Facebook page, Facebook sends updates using Twitter. As illustrated in the image below, Facebook is not a huge user of Twitter, but has sent 683 tweets since their account was created in March 2007.
Facebook on Twitter
Does Twitter Really Hate Facebook?
I guess it is a stretch to say that Twitter hates Facebook, but it is pretty clear that they do not have anything to say to the people who chose to “Like” their Facebook page. It seems that they could at least try it out and perhaps come out and say “tweet”.
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:
Performance auto parts may not be on your agenda to buy, or to sell, but the automotive performance parts industry can still provide the basis for a useful marketing exercise. If you follow this exercise, I ask that you look for ways it can be related back to your industry, whether that is automotive-related or astrophysics.
Challenges of the Performance Auto Parts Industry
The performance auto parts industry, including an astonishing number of retailers, manufacturers, engineers, wholesalers, and users of automotive performance parts have each had a pretty hard time over the past couple years. The economy tanked, gas prices skyrocketed, and the world has tried to become more eco-friendly. The significance of these direct blows to the performance auto parts market makes it a great example of the importance of marketing.
Any of these challenges could single-handedly crush a small or shaky organization, but together, they have created havoc that puts gray hair and wrinkles on business owners. For those who are left while competitors drop off the RADAR, the market gets a little stronger. This creates an opportunity to generate brand loyalty from customers of fallen competitors, and use market failures to increase market share. Without addressing market share, a company will often be just a little closer to falling off the RADAR themselves.
Imagine for a moment that you are in the business of selling performance auto parts. The thought of having heavy financial interest in this market would send a lot of business people screaming and running for the exit, but not you. You are fearless, and you are in it for the long haul. Sure, it is largely a scared market with bad influences from many angles, but you are up to the challenges of looking long-term and setting a course to success. You want the kind of success that uses the lows to come out stronger than before.
Let us think about this as an exercise to stretch our minds and discover new success. I will be your partner in this example, and together we will do some thinking about how to keep our make-believe performance auto parts business bringing in the customers and giving them reasons to tell their friends about us. We need customers, but how will we reach them, and what will we do to place ourselves ahead of the competition? Come on, partner … we are in this together, so let’s get to thinking.
This will require a lot of ongoing work, but I will offer some ideas to get us started.
Maybe We Should Blog About Our Performance Auto Parts
Blogging is popular, and it can bring in a whole lot of valuable website traffic and build brand awareness, but what can we blog about? How much can we really say about fuel injectors, turbochargers, and race-tuned suspension parts? Wouldn’t that get pretty boring?
I am stunned by how many people I speak to who think of a blog in terms of simply reaching immediate customers, and neglect the blog’s contribution toward building a brand and creating a community of loyal readers. Many companies neglect blogging, because it all starts to seem like work, and they do not recognize the many benefits. So, if you don’t care about or understand all of the other valuable reasons to blog, just consider the enormous link building potential that will help your website rank better for more “performance auto parts” related search phrases.
Something we should perhaps consider is not just blogging about fuel injectors, turbochargers, and race-tuned suspension parts, but rather things like auto racing, race car drivers, automotive events, car maintenance, and a variety of other things car lovers are interested in. Maybe we could do a series of automotive performance “how-to” articles along with diagrams and YouTube videos. Maybe we could publish something about the American Le Mans Series Michelin Green X Challenge and how it is improving eco-friendly race technology. We could discuss how it affects consumers, now and into the future. Maybe we can create something interesting, informative, entertaining, or otherwise useful to our market influencers.
The racing industry and performance automotive engineers do great works to improve “greenness” of the automotive industry. If we get really creative, maybe we can even find some ways to grow our brand recognition for pointing out the good … and even great things our industry is doing to help people, economy, and our planet.
It is starting to seem like there could be a whole lot more reasons to blog than we thought. It seems like a good time to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” and keep the thinking cap on.
Do Facebook Users Like Performance Auto Parts?
The fact that over five hundred million people are using Facebook seems to indicate that Facebook is useful for reaching people. With half a billion people, there is sure to be a race fan, race car driver, racing team, automotive engineer, ecologist, popular automotive blogger, or speed junkie in there somewhere who would like our company. There must be something there for us!
A mistake many companies will make is trying to pitch a deal to people instead of creating a reason for people to know and like their “performance auto parts”, and the people and culture of the organization. It is wise to note that name recognition always comes with an attached mental image. A sales pitch usually leaves little or no image at all.
On the surface, it seems that nobody in our market is doing so great at reaching the Facebook speed junkies. Does this mean Facebook is not a good tool for building a community? After all, it is not working for most of the others in the performance auto parts industry. Maybe it is a waste of time.
Upon a closer inspection, it seems that this is largely because nobody is making significant creative efforts. Most of the performance auto parts people I found are only trying to advertise their performance parts like a bad used car salesman and do very little to create a genuine interest in their brand from people who purchase or influence the purchase of performance auto parts. It seems that since spewing advertisements fails so miserably for the majority of companies, many of the Facebook pages I saw have not been updated much.
Now, doesn’t this start to seem like an opportunity for us, or would we rather let other people’s failures of strategic planning and marketing creativity dictate our success? No? That is what I thought, my fearless performance auto parts selling partner … we are in it for the long haul, and that is why we will win the hearts and minds of Facebook. Let us go there and do something brilliant!
Automotive Performance Meets Twitter
Should we use Twitter to communicate with customers, potential customers, and market influencers? It seems like it may be just a big waste of time. Who is going to do that tweeting, and what will they tweet about? What if they tweet the wrong thing and make us look bad?
Have you ever looked at the competition to see just how terrible their marketing is? It is a pretty good place to find ways you may be missing the mark with potential customers. Sometimes it is a good idea to see what people are doing in some other random industry, because then it is even easier to be critical.
Maybe we should do some Twitter searches to see what others in the performance auto parts industry have to say, or what people are saying about them. Who knows, maybe we can pick up some good information and ideas as spectators. Then, maybe we can find an angle to help us build our market and find out what people like. I suppose that may be worth a shot, what do you think, partner? Should we see what Twitter is talking about and think about ways we could do better?
What Do I know About Performance Auto Parts?
I know that it can be hard to think outside of your own four walls, but with a little exercise, it can provide great benefit to your marketing. Most people, and most organizations do not have a really spectacular plan to improve their market. When you do, you can come out ahead, but it means that you have to try harder than them. You have to think differently than them.
I hope that giving a little thought to the performance auto parts industry will be helpful to you, whether it is actually your industry or not. I suppose I could be wrong with my automotive industry suggestions and analogies. Although, considering how many performance automotive parts suppliers’ logos I have put on brand new Corvettes, it would be a shame if I was wrong. 😉
YourNew.com Racing Corvette Z06: Driver Mark Aaron Murnahan
NOTE: There are winners and losers in every industry. Marketing is often the biggest determining factor.
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?
