A lucid account...
The power of interaction... and why it's essential for Twitter lead generation
Reading around online about social media, you'd be forgiven for thinking all you need to do is bung a few Tweets into an automated Tweeting tool, sit back and watch the new business flow in.
Hmph.
Having experimented with Twitter in some depth, I know it's not that simple. You can Tweet until the proverbial cows come home but if you don't interact with your community, you can forget about generating leads from the process. It makes sense when you think about it. Social media are about being sociable, communicating and interacting, not just pontificating.
That's the problem with the term 'social media marketing'. It's an oxymoron. Marketing often tends to be a one way street and in actual fact, social media are about networking, not marketing.
As such, it's a time consuming business. If you're planning to engage in social media for business purposes, it's no good creating a one way street. Like any networking medium, online or offline, you need to give as much back as you give out. That means:
- replying to people's questions straight away
- responding to complaints immediately and honestly
- responding to the things people in your community have Tweeted
- re-Tweeting stuff you enjoy, or feel is relevant
- 'favouriting' people's Tweets to help build a friendly, positive relationship
- making the first move yourself by messaging people in your community
A few words about the latest social media phenomenon, Pinterest
Unless you know your marketing onions, you'd be forgiven for panicking if you're not on top of all the latest social media marketing opportunities. But hold your horses. The SMM landscape is still fraught with unknowns and assumptions.
All you need to do is join Twitter or Facebook to see thousands of small, medium and large brands desperately collecting as many followers and 'likes' as humanly possible, apparently without thinking through what they're going to do with all their fans once they're on board.
As I mentioned in my last post, the social media marketing jury is still well and truly out. But just when you think it's safe to relax, the next big thing raises its head and the people at the sharp end of online marketing go haring off, in a howling pack, in the direction of... Pinterest!
So what's Pinterest all about?
Pinterest is a place where you collect together images you like from the internet, or images you've created yourself, for other people to follow, share and enjoy. On the face of it, although it's an amazing phenomenon enjoying the fastest growth of any website on earth so far, its marketing potential is limited.
Every image you 'pin' in Pinterest automatically includes a back-link to the image's source. So if you pin your website header to a board in Pinterest, it'll include a link back to the site page where your header lives. Back-links are valuable things when they come with some authority, in other words originate from a trusted source. But in Pinterest's case the links are 'no-follow', which means search engines ignore them when calculating how high up in the search results your site belongs.
No follow links can have positive effects, if you're lucky. When thousands of people click on your image in Pinterest every day and visit your site, search engines take the extra traffic and activity into account. But unless it is targeted traffic, ie. warm leads, visitors who are specifically interested in buying the stuff you sell, it isn't much practical use and is unlikely to have an effect on your bottom line.
It's fun if you're into that kind of thing. But like every social media site, Pinterest is designed specifically as a place where like-minded people can interact on a social basis. It isn't about making sales. So have fun with Pinterest, by all means, but don't expect it to generate loads of extra targeted traffic, drive zillions of positive responses or increase sales for your online business.
Just call me a spoilsport!
Keeping social media in proportion
I work at, if not near to, the sharp end of online marketing. I like to keep abreast of new stuff, test driving fresh marketing opportunities and new media whenever they arise.
If you're also in the thick of it, you'd be forgiven for thinking SEO is dead and social media marketing is the only show on earth. But it's wise to take a step back and think things through a bit more carefully than most people seem to.
A sense of proportion is vital if you want to avoid marketing disaster. All too often, inexperienced marketers are prone to snap decisions. They like to move on to the next big thing before the last big thing has proved its worth. It's a worrying trend, but it's always been this way. When telly came along, marketers swore it was the end of radio advertising. They were convinced the internet would completely kill printed media and bring about the total and immediate demise of the high street. But in reality, all a new marketing medium represents is another string to your marketing bow, an extra tool in your marketing kit.
Take social media marketing. A large survey has shown that 45% or so of UK social media users don't want to 'interact with brands' through their social networks. There's no real evidence that Facebook 'likes' translate into extra sales. And in my experience, having trialled it extensively for eight months so far, Twitter is an excellent way to do online networking, but marketing? Nope.
At the moment, too many businesses are ditching boring old search engine optimisation in favour of bright, shiny social media marketing, presumably following the advice of their online marketing agencies. In my opinion, with almost a quarter of a century of direct marketing experience behind me and having worked online since 1998, they're making a huge mistake.
Yes, search engines appear to be including so-called 'social signals' these days to help them decide how to rate and rank websites in the search results pages. But as far as we can tell, Google and co are still including fresh, unique content, on-site optimisation, inbound links and all that good stuff in their search algorithms.
It makes sense when you think it through properly. There's no way search engines are going to drop every other useful means of classifying sites in favour of social signals when the vast majority of businesses don't use social media for marketing, and many are unlikely to ever do so. It wouldn't be fair or sensible in an extremely crowded online landscape, where fairness and logic score high and search engines need all the information they can gather in order to deliver the most relevant and appropriate results to searchers.
If your marketing agency starts making noises about shifting your budget into social media marketing at the expense of search engine optimisation and traditional lead generation initiatives, stand firm. As I've said before, variety is the spice of successful marketing life and chucking the baby out with the bath water is just madness.
Google and 'social signals'
Two years ago social media were mostly just for fun. Now Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on are used by millions of businesses across the world to drive traffic, win loyalty and build brands.
Google and other search engines are starting to take 'social signals' into account when ranking websites in the search results pages. But are they using social signals per se? No. It's actually subtler than that. When you Tweet a link to your Twitter community, for instance, and a bunch of people click on the link, your site experiences extra traffic. Apparently it's the extra traffic that search engines respond to, not the social signals themselves.
So it's important to make sure your website benefits from social signals. How? When you Tweet a link on Twitter, make sure the content you're linking to sits on your website. If you upload a photo to Twitter instead of your site's own directory, for example, all that lovely 'link juice' flows to Twitter, not your website.
There are countless social networks to choose from, and they wax and wane in popularity. If you're running a small business there's no way you can get down and dirty with all of them. It takes time, effort and creativity to do it properly. It's best to choose your weapons and stick with them rather than trying to spin too many social media plates at once. Pick a maximum of three networks and stick with them, and you'll stay sane as well as eventually making a decent-sized impact!
Here's a list of the types of content that you can broadcast in an effort to encourage traffic, bookmarks and back-links:
- blog posts
- articles
- white papers
- ebooks
- images
- infographics
- fresh site content and redesigns
- landing pages
- competitions
- new products
- bright ideas
- revolutionary information
- contentious stuff
It's all about link bait. Link bait is the kind of content that people love to link back to, re-Tweet or whatever. If you choose Digg as one of your social networks, people will 'Digg' content they like, which pushes it to the top of Digg's front page. Much the same goes for Reddit. StumbleUpon lets you 'stumble' around on the internet and 'like' content based on your interests. Every network performs differently, and each has their own personality.
Happy networking!
Google begins to add 'social signals' to the natural SEO mix
Until recently Social Media Marketing was little more than a craze, a new marketing medium that might or might not help businesses win new prospects and customers. But now Google is taking an interest, launching their Google + community and apparently taking 'social signals' into account when deciding how to rate and rank websites.
The result? Social Media Marketing, once an option, looks like eventually becoming a necessity. Especially if you're dedicated to natural SEO and would rather not pay for search engine exposure via AdWords (Pay Per Click).
Luckily things are still at an early stage although, as you'd expect, a myriad of tools have already emerged that help you measure and keep control of SMM campaigns, your social 'reach', your relative level of influence and whatnot.
So what should small businesses do about this frighteningly fast-paced marketing revolution?
First, don't panic! When you're engaged in SMM as part of everyday life like I am, it's easy to get the impression that everyone's doing it. But the vast majority of small business owners haven't even set up a blog yet, never mind grabbing the coat tails of the SMM bandwagon as it thunders by. If you feel you're being left behind, you aren't. You're actually in very good company, with billions of other businesses around the planet.
Second, remember that the people deeply involved at this stage are mostly marketers and geeks; people testing the water. Nobody can say with any authority than SMM is a real money spinner... yet. Or, by the same token, that it isn't.
Only one thing is certain. Social media marketing won't be going away any time soon. Luckily unless you're mad keen to jump aboard in the very early stages, it's still OK to wait and see.
Having said that, I recommend setting up a Twitter account for your business so you're ready to roll if and when it goes mainstream as a marketing medium. Facebook is more of a faff but it might be worth setting up a rudimentary page, again so you're ready to press the button if needs be.
Lastly, while it's useful to remember that Google is including social signals in its algorithms, social is only one tiny part of the gloriously complex method by which Google decides who belongs where in the search engine results pages. And it's likely to stay that way.
Silver surfers take social networks by storm
Recent stats say there are more silver surfers - people aged 50-64 according to the study - than ever before taking to the social network water. 60% more than last year in fact. And they're loving it.
There's no reason why not, of course. I'm coming up fifty soon and I've been involved in social network sites since they first appeared. Which leads me to an important point about marketing to older people.
If you qualify as an 'older person' you'll already know this. But if you're younger you'll probably find it hard to imagine how little you change with age... on the inside. You don't hit your 50th and suddenly turn into a grey haired, doddering type with a completely different attitude to the day before when you were a mere stripling of 49. Despite what insurers, holiday companies and so on would have you believe, there's very little if any difference. Just more grey hairs and saggy bits.
What are the marketing implications of more silver surfers joining in the social media revolution? There aren't any. Whatever age your target market, they want to be treated the same way; we all want:
- clear, attractive, interesting, fully-functioning websites that are easy to navigate and use
- site content that covers all the information we need to make sensible, fully informed buying decisions
- plain English, entertaining copy that we enjoy reading
- honesty, transparency, trustworthiness and likeability
- great web design
- great products
- great value
If you're into social media marketing, chill. As long as you do a good enough job of your SMM, abiding by best marketing practice, bringing creativity into play and exercising common sense and whatnot, the oldies will respond just as well as your youth segments. Trust me... I'm almost one of 'em!
How to make money out of Twitter
I'm a ex-long term Twitter sceptic. Along with a large proportion of folk with a direct marketing background I spend a couple of years being very doubtful it could return a decent investment. Most blue chips were testing with brand building in mind rather than trying to make it work as a direct response medium. Most businesses just tweeted a load of nasty urls, not bothering to say anything interesting in the tweet itself. Large companies were throwing vast chunks of ready cash at social media marketing and very few, as Marketing Week's Mark Ritson reported a couple of weeks ago, could honestly say SMM was a money spinner.
But nevertheless it was worth testing as a potential direct marketing medium. After all it's still early days. So six weeks ago I set up a Twitter account and started slowly but surely following interesting folk and gaining followers. This morning I had a call from a guy who had just read one of my Tweets, visited my site and been inspired to ask for a quote for his new business, consisting of a main site, a blog and a handful of feeder sites.
As far as I can tell the project will generate at least £500, potentially a couple of grand. I've spend 30 working days doing five or so tweets a day max. My time so far has cost about £300. That's a decent ROI in anyone's book. Now I've got the bit between my teeth and have a good feel for how to run a successful Twitter direct response campaign, I'm home and dry. If I can pull one bit of business, I can pull more. How exciting!
Here's what I've done so far to make money out of Twitter:
- stuck to growing my account by hand rather than resorting to automating the process
- only followed people and organisations I'm genuinely interested in
- blocked spammy followers - you can usually tell because they don't include any information in their account, just photos of scantily clad ladies with weird names!
- thanking people for following me... without any form of obvious 'sell'
- tweeted at regular intervals around five times a day
- collected a lot of local followers in and around Brighton so we have something fundamental in common
- generated goodwill by re-tweeting people's tweets every time I felt they were interesting / useful / entertaining / funny enough
- un-followed businesses who tweeted so often and boringly that they obscured my view of the interesting stuff
- tweeted about everyday life as a freelance copywriter, direct marketing insights and copywriting related stuff, inserting one link a week into a tweet for an extremely low key sell
- generated more goodwill by replying to tweets from followers asking questions or wanting advice about anything and everything as long as I know a bit about it! So far things like self publishing, Brighton restaurants and wild flowers
- made a conscious effort to build trust
The rise (and fall?) of social media marketing
There's two kinds of marketers. Those who constantly change tack in a bid to beat the crowd to the next big thing. And those who exercise more caution.
My money's on the latter.
Take social media marketing. It's an exciting, fresh medium. It's covering ground-breaking territory. But that's no reason to ditch your marketing plans, blithely neglecting them to head off into the social media marketing wilderness.
For a start, as we've said before, it's never a good idea to put all your marketing eggs in one basket. Just in case some bugger knocks it over. Social media marketing is relatively new and empirical data about return on investment from campaigns is still thin on the ground. And, probably more importantly, there are rumblings of discontent in three key areas.
One, Facebook has finally started to lose members in some countries and cultures. Industry gurus are worried it signals the end of the network's prominence. Which doesn't bode well for businesses investing over-heavily in Facebook marketing.
Two, members of social networks might already be getting fed up with being marketed at. Social networks are, after all, meant to be about social stuff. Not selling.
And three, the marketing industry itself is raising concerns. Apparently junior marketers, inexperienced marketers and non-marketers are at risk of bringing about the demise of social media marketing because they're... well, so crap at it, to be frank! According to one high level, blue chip marketing executive they've completely forgotten about marketing wisdom. They're just hammering it.
How long before Twitter becomes less of a social network and more of a business network, with businesses selling to one another and a dwindling bunch of disaffected consumers hanging on for dear life? Not long, in some people's eyes.
If there's the slightest chance SMM is indeed heading for a fall, it's probably a good idea not to throw the baby out with the marketing bath water. Multi media marketing is best, no contest.
If your media agency is clamouring for more social media marketing budget, temper their excitement. Or find an agency that's not so easily distracted by shiny new things!
Recent Posts
- Local-ness becomes an important marketing factor in the search results
- What is link bait, why is it useful and how do you create it?
- How to create perfect web page content
- The writing's on the quality wall - Google's next algorithm updates
- Why bother with great web design?
- 30 ways to 'do' marketing without social media!
- The power of interaction... and why it's essential for Twitter lead generation
- Google's latest algorithm changes cause SEO consternation!
- A few words about the latest social media phenomenon, Pinterest
- Keeping social media in proportion
