By Toff Ward, on August 15th, 2010,source http://opensourcemarketer.com
Ok, folks, I’ve finally heard it enough that I needed to share it. Yet, again, I was requested by a client to help them “use social media to get more customers”.
I explained how the process of reaching out with Social Media works and the fact that you really don’t sell, but simply make connections with people.
The relationship is more important than a one time used car salesman pitch. This is not like an MLM where it’s a numbers game and you are told to simply churn through the people until you find the right ones.
Social Media is organic. The more you care about your network, the more your network will respond to you.
That’s when the truth came out.
“yeah, but I don’t want my name to be shown. I just want it for my business.”
This is not a Halloween Ball where everyone gets to wear a mask. It’s about people making real connections with other people. The more anonymous you make yourself, the less you’ll get out of it. Everyone knows that actual human beings run businesses. When you refuse to let anyone know who you are, you immediately beg the question , “what is he hiding?”
Honesty and transparency are the keywords of today. If you’re open about how you’re trying to earn a living, then people can respect that. If you hide who you are, then everyone, will think that you’re trying to sell them something that you don’t believe in and most likely won’t like the outcome of buying your product.
If, on the other hand, they know and respect you from previous talks, then they will know they can trust what you say is true and that you will back up what you say, especially, since your own reputation is on the line.
You can’t make real friends by hiding behind a fake mask. Even the Phantom of the Opera had to show his face eventually.
Toff Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com
Accelerate your business online using social media.
By Cammie Swegman, on July 5th, 2010,source http://ipresort.com
On August 27, 2010, we are attending an historic event in Addison, TX. It’s called OpenCamp, and if you are a webmaster, web developer, blogger, podcaster, social media enthusiast or someone who is interested in web content creation you should be there too.
OpenCamp is the first multi-platform web conference to be held in the Southwest, and some of the most notable people on the web are speaking there.
Just a few on the list:
- Brian Clark of CopyBlogger fame
- Doug Vann who travels all over sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm for Drupal
- Chris Pirillo founder of the blogging platform Lockergnome, is a Tech Expert on CNN, and is on the Board of Directors for UstreamTV
- Trey Ratcliff whose travel photography blog “stuckincustoms.com” is the #1 blog of it’s kind on the net, getting approximately 350,000 visits per month
Unlike other conferences that focus on only one platform, there will be sessions on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Blogger and many other tools for web development. In addition to the various content platform sessions there will be general sessions regarding best web practices. There will also be parties, networking, information sharing and the opportunity to make lots of new friends who share your passion for the endless possibilities provided by the Internet.
If you are not familiar with Addison, TX, you should know that it is a beautiful suburb of Dallas and attendees of OpenCamp are encouraged to book a room at the newly renovated Crowne Plaza Hotel in Addison, where there will be parties as well as the learning sessions. Rooms are very affordable if you book while the OpenCamp block is still available. They are also quite nice. You can take a video tour of the hotel here (scroll about halfway down the page): http://openca.mp/blog/get-a-tour-inside-the-opencamp-venue-video/
If you’ve been reading our blog posts, you know that last year we attended WordCamp Dallas, which was truly an impressive event. But this year’s OpenCamp promises to be even better and we can’t wait!
No related posts.
By D.W.C., on June 13th, 2010,source http://directwebconcepts.com
Building a website is alot like building a bricks and mortar site, unless you are content with the occasional passer by dropping in, you have to tell people about your site. They need to know what your purpose is, what you are selling, and where they can find you.
That is why we recommend using a combined marketing approach.
Direct Mail Postcards
 One medium that stands out for its versatility and cost-effectiveness is the postcard. Postcards are a great medium for brief messages, such as announcements for newly opened businesses or promotions for new products and services. Used as reminders or invitations, they are a great way to gain new customers and to keep in touch with existing ones. They can also work well for special offers and coupons. The concise nature of the postcard’s message makes it more likely that your audience will read the whole thing.
Postcards have a lot going for them. They are an economical and good-looking way to get your message to a targeted audience. Whether you want to keep in contact with your customers, or you’re looking to drive traffic to a website, you can make your message pop when you use postcards.
For more information on the advantages of postcards see Putting mail to work for you – Postcards
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is an excellent tool for branding in the business-to-consumer market. It is an effective way to maintain a connection between a company and its customers. However, like all marketing tools, SMM works better for reaching some goals than others, and works best as a part of a larger marketing campaign. One of the more prominent forms of branding today is getting your customer base to personally identify themselves with your product or service. For example, every time you see a car with one of those Apple stickers on it, you’re seeing branding at work. That person is saying, “not only do I love my Mac, I consider it a part of my own identity. Hello, I’m a Mac.”
This is the kind of thing SMM excels at. Since Facebook has opened its doors to commercial websites, just about every major company has established a presence there. Even before the corporate presence, people would willingly answer polls with questions such as, “Do you prefer Coke or Pepsi?” But with the corporate presence firmly in place, people seek out the companies they like and add themselves to their fan lists.
For more information on the advantages of social media marketing see Social Media Branding
SEO Search Engine Optimization
 A lot has been written about the art and science of search engine optimization or SEO. It is a constantly evolving and moving target. As one expert has said it’s all about gaming the search engines. The search engines, google, yahoo, bing… design complex logarithms to try and deliver to the searcher just what they are looking for. You want to get to the top of their list so you spend time trying to get them to think you are it. Bottom line, it takes a lot of work and time to improve your ranking. The game is always changing but one constant remains and that is content. The more often you add new relevant content, the better your ranking will be. Open Sorce Marketer has some excellent, easy to follow information and training materials on the subject of SEO marketing. Direct Web Concepts has packages available that include training through Open Source Marketer.
For more information see Open Source Marketer
By Toff Ward, on May 19th, 2010,source http://opensourcemarketer.com
Are you better off having 2% of 1,000 people respond to you in Twitter or having 20% of 100?
I just started leaning into Twitter and I just reached 50 followers. Wow, that’s really unimpressive. The thing I really like, though, is that when I Tweet a link, I get a 50% response rate. As I follow people and more people follow me, can I maintain this ratio?
Bragging about how many people are following you seems to be popular. Ok, popular for those who have over 1,000. This seems to be a magical number that sets you on the road to success. But how do you define success? What are you trying to accomplish? If you just want to artificially inflate your numbers with groups of people who never read what you write, then by all means, grab the automated tools and go for it. It can be done rather easily, but I don’t honestly think that it will lead to the brand recognition or positive opinion from your customers that you are looking for.
I’m here to prove that point.
I’m going to pick a very specific niche and use every Twitter tool I can find (feel free to recommend some). I’m going to try and create an artificial Twitter list of 1,000 in 1 week. I call it “artificial”, though, “superficial” is probably a better term. Building a list of people who don’t care about you isn’t a difficult thing to do. There are billions of people out there that literally don’t give a crap about me. All I’m looking for is a list of 1,000 users.
Doesn’t sound too hard, does it?
Here’s my plan of action:
No rocket science here, just a straight forward test to see if Twitter can give me the results I am looking for. My expectations (hypothesis?) are :
A. I can get 1,000 people on my twitter list in 1 week
B. Only 2% or less of those people on the list will take action
- 2% will click the link
- 10% of the clickers will sign up for a newsletter
I am going to post good content that is valuable and relevant to the keyword topic. There will be no sales pitches of any kind during the week, just links to good content. The main difference here is that I am going to automate how those tweets get out to the users. Rather than letting people come to me, I’m going to grab the big stick and go Blunt Trauma Marketing on them.
I’ll let you know how that goes ; )
Toff Ward
Open source Marketer
Accelerate your business online using LinkedIn.
By Toff Ward, on May 18th, 2010,source http://opensourcemarketer.com
I just ran across these two accounts on twitter:
The first one only has a single tweet, and its a sales pitch, yet 431 accounts are followers. The second account has 3 tweets.
At first, I felt like I was really missing something. I have 39 followers (oh wait, now its up to 42). I asked @CharlesMcKeever how you would get that many people to follow you without offering anything of value.
His response was, “That’s easy. They’re not worried about creating real value. They’re just accounts, not actual people. There are lots of tools that will automatically follow, unfollow, or tweet for you. It’s not uncommon for someone to automatically follow you if you follow them. Obama auto-followed people during his Presidential campaign. That means you can follow people, have them follow you and then unfollow them later. It’s less common for people to automatically unfollow so your follower numbers grow artificially.”
Wow. Ouch! So this person, scratch that, Account, most likely signed up and immediately started following other people just to get the automatic follow in return. Since managing thousands of followers takes up too much time, and since the tools for Twitter are so prolific, its faster, easier and more efficient, to just let your tools handle the madness. Using Tweetdeck, you can filter who you want to read and the rest of the people just tweet into oblivion. Following you is evidently just a tip of the cap or wink as they continue walking by.
I’m only following 41 people and I feel like I’m always reading (granted, one of the people I’m following is @lizstrauss and she’s probably tweeted the same number per day, that I did all week).
So, which is more valuable, a small number of people who read what you tweet, or a massive number of people who never read anything you tweet (that’s assuming you actually tweet)???
The difference, if you are looking at things from a marketing perspective (which the single tweet person seemed to be trying to do), is like creating a TV commercial and only airing that commercial at 3am on a Sunday, on cable channel 997, in Swahili. A commercial TV ad during the Superbowl 2010 is approximately $3.01 million. The price is high because there are a bazillion people awake and watching (I’m referring to half-time, before the booze kicks in).
During the Superbowl people are watching the screen. At 3am on an obscure channel, is anyone really going to pay attention. The person with 1 tweet is obviously trying to sell their services. Do you really think that this Twitter campaign is going to work for them? I’m honestly curious. I have some clients that still insist spam works.
I’ll admit, I’m new to Twitter. I haven’t figure out what to say or how to say it within 140 characters. But, my gut tells me that you need to offer something of value (good information, links to articles, good recommendations, putting people together whose needs and services match, etc.) or why would that person read what you have to say? I hear the phrase, “content is king” over and over yet, there seems to be a lot of individuals that aren’t hearing this.
Feel free to let me know if I’m totally off base on this one. There are many people who post phrases like “going to dinner, now” or “Just saw Fred”. Obviously, these folks are using Twitter as a conversation tool to connect with friends and have no need to marketing anything. I’ve been using Twitter to learn and share what I learn, so I guess its up to the user as to whether they are getting what they want out of it.
How are you using it?
Toff
OpenSourceMarketer.com
P.S. Someone smarter than me just mentioned that I should probably put my Twitter account at the end of this post. @peddlewin
Accelerate your business online using LinkedIn.
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