September 5, 2010

Some notes on affiliates & referrer marketing

I like referral programs and I love freebies. They are great ways to gather some customers at low cost and generate buzz. A friend, Sohail Somani, was questioning me late last night (one of those late night entrepreneurial fire chats) on referrer / affiliate programs which got me thinking. The problem with most referral programs, especially with non-digital companies, is that they are not ranked against traditional marketing metrics.

Why don’t people provide give-aways to Tweeters?

I think there are a few reasons. As a marketer, if I know you are willing to pay me money for something then I’m going to take your money. The role of a company, primarily, is to maximize profits.

Secondly, Twitter is still niche; although one can argue it is getting more and more mainstream. It is a dangerous precedent to give something away now, only to have the community expand and expect freebies. If not done well it can destroy the mental value of your product. See my post on decision anchoring. Customers unwilling to pay are not always worth keeping.

Finally, there is an implicit, gross cost to giving something away (gross profit is the money you earn, minus the cost of making and providing the profit). Let’s assume the normal retail price of my widget is $50 and my gross profit is $25, meaning a gross expense of $25. That means each time I give something away you need to refer at least one customer for me to break even and three for a profit. Sounds like a lot more work, doesn’t it? Also keep in mind that gross profit margins in many industries struggle to hit 50% so each freebie needs to bring in a multiple of customers.

What I’m not taking into account here is viral buzz but be realistic. Launching a vanilla ‘take a freebie’ will not get you buzz. If you be creative, that’s a different story.

What about paid referrals?

Referrals I do support, but people rarely put solid thought into how to price or structure their referral scheme. When judging referrals I need to take into account net profits over gross profits.

The first thing to do is figure out our acquisition (marketing) cost per customer; in other words, how much does it cost me to get their money?. Let’s assume that $8 of the above $50 is a marketing expense and that every time I spend $8 I find a new customer (the model is repeatable). In the real world I’d have a specific acquisition costs for each channel. That means paying over $8 per customer is not feasible while I still have replicable, working marketing models elsewhere.

In my experience, because of propagation, referral customers can also have higher than average attrition rates. So, perhaps we should  be giving $6 per customer, not $8, to be safe. $6 makes sense, I am lowering my cost of acquisition so some cannibalization is okay (though, we don’t want to cannibalize so much that higher volume channels are now ineffective).

We also need to remember that referral sales can cannibalize other channels, if I had 100 referral sales it would be safe to assume at least 30 would have been sent by their friends whether I had a referral system or not.

Referrals are great when you don’t have the money to spend on promoting. But, as budgets increase you need to be careful that referrals don’t become too expensive. You should always be lowering cost of acquisition, not increasing it.

Thoughts on bulk discounts in referral schemes

So why don’t we structure a referral system that gives me 20% off for each customer I refer. Again, in the above example my customer pays $50, so I would give $10 off when they refer a customer.

Compare bulk discounts to relative costs of other channels; and then look at volume. The referral scheme again is too expensive here. 10% off works, but what happens when I refer a second customer?

Referrals are easier on the Internet

If I buy and consume a product online, it is cheap and efficient to measure referrals. If I’m buying offline, it is harder and the cost of measurement increases; a cost which needs to be deducted from referral fees.

Most web startups also take little capital so referrals are a fast way to grow. Larger, traditional organizations find referrals difficult to measure and have the capital to focus on stronger ROI channels.

Fighting for referrers

Most companies do not yet offer fully evolved referral programs nor are they heavily promoted. As measurement becomes cheaper and existing channels become saturated there will be a stronger fight for referrers (those who recruit their friends or promote products for a fee).

The sad reality is I am an active referrer / affiliate on some products. But, like everybody, I have a line that I consider a helpful tip and spam which I will not cross. Personally, I try to not be plugging more than 2-3 products. So what happens when I like 4 products? Assuming they are equally valuable to my network I’m going for the highest payouts which again leads to a race to the bottom (or top!) in ROI terms. These limits vary among people but do exist.

September 1, 2010

Purchase Configuration & how to differentiate

When we sell to a customer we often ask, “What pain-point am I solving by selling?” Sometimes we are REALLY smart and think of the packaging too. Rarely do we look deeper. But, by doing so, it can reveal some areas for improvement within your business. This is what we call discovering your business’ “purchase configuration.”

What is purchase configuration?

Defining “purchase configuration” isn’t complicated. Essentially, your customer buys a combination of the following:

  • Intangibles: i.e. Corporate image.
  • Pre- and Post-Sales Service: Services provided to your customer both during and after the sale.
  • Packaging: This is what your customers’ see — the appearance of your product or service.
  • Physical Product & Service Sequence: The process a customer goes through to order and receive your product.
  • Core Benefits for Your Customers: What is the customer really trying to solve by buying your product/service? What pain-points are there, and what issues are they trying to resolve.

How to Stand Out from Your Competition

Considering these factors in your marketing efforts can enhance your core benefits, and, more importantly, each of these factors offer a basis for differentiation; letting you stand out from the competition. Each of the components in your business’ purchase configuration may be enhancing value, or possibly deterring customers — so looking at each piece is important. Take, for example, the purchase configuration for a restaurant:

  • Core Benefits: As customers, perhaps we visit the restaurant because we are hungry or we want to socialize.
  • Physical Product & Service Sequence: In a restaurant, the process starts with speaking to the host or hostess, being seated, then ordering and having your food brought to the table by a server.
  • Packaging: The design and ambiance of the restaurant would be considered the “packaging” here. Plus menu design, layout, decor, uniforms and signage all contribute to the packaging.
  • Pre- & Post-Sales Service: This is the interaction between your employees and your customers. Considerations for a restaurant: Is the waitress friendly? Helpful? … And were they still like this even after receiving the money?, etc.
  • Intangibles: Intangibles are the hardest to manage in purchase configurations, including your restaurant’s image.

Once broken down into smaller parts, it becomes far easier to analyze what your business is doing wrong… and what you’re doing right! Perhaps your waitresses are friendly (Service), the restaurant has a great ambiance (Packaging) and the food is considered good and filling (Core Benefits). But, for some reason, customers are unhappy and your reputation is not strong (Intangibles). Looking at your physical product & service sequence in a chain you may see that orders are sitting in the kitchen for too long before coming to a table. Customers are waiting too long and are therefore becoming unhappy. Without breaking each component of the purchase down, this may have been been more difficult to discover.

Conclusion

Too many businesses consider their services or physical products the only things that they’re selling. Even if sales are going well, it is good practice to sit down and analyze each part of the configuration. Who knows, you may find some areas for improvements which, in turn, can provide you with opportunities to realize greater results!

August 28, 2010

Why social media gurus should be trampled by elephants

Several weeks ago I wrote that social media is not new. I only partially called out the pony, rainbow and unicorn practitioners though. I’ve been ‘doing the Twitter’ for years now and social media gurus there is what teenage girls once were to Myspace. Worse, these gurus claim to be offering professional services.

If I had my say they would all be trampled by elephants. So, without further ado, here are my top 5 reasons your social media guy needs to be trampled by an elephant. Note: I’m not saying all social guys are bad, stretching it you can call me one. I’ve stated before that social works. What I’m railing against are the people who fit my description below.

Ponies, Rainbows and Unicorns

Ask them what they do. The answer: I engage people, I create relationships, I add a layer of transparency. They may as well talk about ponies, rainbows and unicorns.

Now, my friends, is when we run screaming. I can put glass dividers in an office and add transparency. Engaging people is useless without anchoring it to a brand and a business goal. Ask them specifically what they do and who they target (i.e. I create digital campaigns to demographic x to inform them of product y). Gold star if they can hit 1/2. Sometimes the sun, stars, moon and seas are perfectly aligned and somebody can answer this.

Perhaps one of my favourite past-times at conferences is to talk to these guys, telling them ‘engaging people’ does not count and ask for something more specific. Watch their heads explode, just like here. I see it as public service.

What’s a bottom line?

When talking to the next social media ‘guru’ you meet, ask them what bottom line impact their campaigns had. Note: bottom line is not engaged people, viral buzz or new followers; bottom line is the amount of sales their campaign generated, customer support queries it solved etc.

Don’t let them talk about ponies, rainbows and unicorns here. Maybe they just never did “math” in school so be really basic: You were paid this much by the big nice executive. In turn, you generated him this many dollars so he had this many left over.

Social Media is ‘it’

As I’ve pointed out before, social media is not the everything. It is a component of something bigger. Perhaps it is aligned with your recruitment strategy (run screaming if they had never thought of this). Maybe it is timed with other marketing activities. But when you meet one who honestly believes everything can be solved socially take pity, it is not their fault. Some people are not born as smart as others. You know, the ones who don’t move for the elephant.

I can’t afford a graphics guy

Yep, I thought the Myspacer’s were terrible but I think the gurus have taken the crown. We all put photos on our site but seriously guys, get a professional photo and photoshop it properly. There is no excuse to have white edges on your photos from a poor cut out nor should I feel like you just scanned last night’s DUI photos.

Don’t worry though, social media gurus, I get that these professional services are expensive and you can’t afford them. That’s because you don’t understand business and can’t charge for what you do. I’ve taken the liberty of doing some research, most Universities offer great marketing programs.

Wait, my Apple runs on Unix? or What’s a Unix?

Betting on a social guru with no technology training is like betting on the Mayans. No, they don’t have to be coders, engineers or designers but you need to fundamentally understand your field. Would you hire a plumber who didn’t know water went downhill?

If your guru lacks any technical knowledge it’s time to call the elephants over.

August 24, 2010

How to create a content schedule (and engage users)

Note: This is part three of my series ‘How to Build & Sell through a Community’. Click here for part one.

Three weeks ago was a general run-down. Two weeks ago we covered the first part of forming a community. As I evolve this blog series I have further split down this section, today we will cover:

  • Blogging Content Schedules
  • Getting users to engage with content

Avoiding I’m too busy syndrome

A content schedule is crucial; you are defining what you will post, why and when. How often have you thought ‘I don’t have time to blog’ and skipped a post? (I’m often guilty). Your schedule should be a cohesive plan and re-frames this challenge to ‘I’m executing on a marketing plan for my business’.

I find it easiest to approach this challenge from two angles:

1. How much time can I dedicate weekly? (i.e. 90 mins) 1. What content attracts my readers? (marketing how to and commentary)
2. How many posts can I write in that time? (2-3) 2. How much content do I realistically need to produce to keep this audience engaged? (2-3 weekly posts)
3. If I could only write on three topics a week, what would be most important to my users? (marketing how to and commentary) 3. How much time will this take weekly (90-120 minutes)

This approach is simplistic in nature but is a good starting point. Some aspects, such as the content required to keep your audience engaged will need to be fine tuned with research and testing. I’ve tried posting daily, sporadically though-out the month and semi-regularly. For my audience I’ve found that 2-3 weekly posts has so far delivered the best results in terms of unique hits and RSS reads.

Now do some more research. What days do you think your readership will be most accessible? With the advent of e-mail lists, RSS readers and social networks publishing your content at the right time almost sounds irrelevant, right? Nope. I’ve personally found that the initial uptake on an article is still tied to how viral it generally becomes and let’s not forget we are creating a community here. We want a time when our readers are free to start a discussion.

Again, using this blog you find that I generally post on Friday, Sunday and either Tuesday or Wednesday. This is no accident and if your blog is new will take some fine tuning.

So now we know the volume of content we will produce, the general topic and when to propagate it. Write it down so you don’t forget. Again, in the case of this blog:

  • Sunday: Commentary / Opinion
  • Tuesday / Wednesday: How to
  • Friday: Follower Feature
Again, I feel inclined to mention that lately I’ve broken half of these rules. Do as I say, not as I do.

Always brainstorm ideas

It may feel easy now but coming up with blog topics can be hard work sometimes, we all hit our dry periods. I keep a word document in my blogging folder with topics I want to write on, ideas I have had or news I want to comment on. I’m always prioritizing and adding to this list as soon as I get ideas so I do not forget. You will find that instead of writing in dry periods you will have a nice list to pick from now.

As I lock an idea in I’ll generally write it in my Google Calendar with a 30-45 minutes blocked off to write the piece the day before. I know I’m posting tomorrow and I know what topic I am posting on. Why not sit down and write it now?

If you are in the mood, write

I can’t tell you how often I’ve hit periods where I want to write, only to blow them off because I’d just published an entry. In time I’ve learnt to take advantage of these periods.

Having time and creativity is something to take advantage of. When things get too busy there is something to open up and post which is well thought out, written and relevant.

Writing for Search, Viral or other?

Too many people forget ‘why’ they are writing individual articles. Are you writing your article sit down and ask if you are writing for search, viral or other. For example, my Social media is NOT new post was written to go viral as the title and content implies, yet my Social media marketing statistics was heavily weighted to bring in search traffic. Often something as simple as the title can dictate what you are targeting.

Instead of decide this for categories I suggest you do it for each individual posts. Some articles work best for viral, some work best for search. A strong company blog is balancing both of these well.

Viral articles are often lists (i.e. top 10), comparisons or commentaries. Search articles are generally written to answer user questions (how to) or provide deeper information on subject matter. In my experience search users spend longer on a website than viral visitors.

Getting users to engage with your content

What do I mean by engaging? Well, do you want users to read, retweet or comment your content? There is no secret sauce here, I’ve found the best way is to simply ask.

I don’t believe that ‘social proof’ (seeing other people have retweeted an article first) is relevant when it comes to blogs going viral. In fact, I argue the opposite is true and that individuals love to share new content.

What ever your engagement goals are the point is to make this easy for users. If you want a retweet have large tweet buttons to remind users. If you want more RSS reads have clearly displayed RSS buttons. Internet readers are busy, make it easyfor them.

What did you think? Drop me a comment below, e-mail or tweet me. I’m also known to fall in love with people who retweet my content. Next week we will finish off the ‘Forming & Planning’ a community section of this series with overall content schedules and sales funnels.

August 22, 2010

Thinking Freemium? The perils of decision anchoring

Freemium is a popular business / pricing model where your core product is free and instead users pay for add-on premium features (i.e. Skype, Gmail). The school against the freemium model discuss low conversions and the overheads of keeping free users whereas those who practice it claim higher than average user adoption and trial. If you were to ask me, freemium works best when you take on a complacent industry (i.e. e-mail) where users are generally locked in to one provider.

One flaw that we rarely consider is that a freemium model can give away too much for free. I’d probably pay for Google Docs if I had to but I can get by on the free edition. Likewise with my Gmail account.

The fatality here is that your product is probably worth the money, as are most free products. Skype to me is worth the $70 annual subscription as a tool, but I am not willing to pay $70 for the ability to use it on mobile. Instead of anchoring my decision on ‘is this product worth the money’ I am asking ‘is this worth $70 more than the free version?’. The answer is usually no.

On Tuesday the 17th of August 2010 I crossed a major item off my bucket list and saw Aerosmith play live in Toronto. I was right in the front rows too. I’ve always been a fan of Aerosmith and heard they were always incredible live. Not only was I willing to pay so much for something based on buzz and reputation but the mystery drove me mad, what was I missing out on? Because I was not used to getting the concerts for free my internal dialogue was not ‘is this better than the free version’ but ‘is this good?’. The answer was yes.

There is a fine art between restricting features on a freemium model so the upgrade is worthwhile and giving users a free taste. When pricing on a freemium model most companies make the mistake of basing their price on the tool, not the added premium features. You need to consider ‘what are these features worth as an addon?’, not ‘what is my overall product worth?’. You gave your product away for free, it is already worth nothing.

August 15, 2010

Scheduling Tweets is NOT Marketing

I will kick this post off with a confession: I have scheduled the odd tweet or two. Usually when something is so important I want to tweet it once, twice or three times to drive some serious traffic. Or sometimes there is something I really want to share but have just barraged my stream with 10 tweets.

Last Sunday I took a stand saying that Social Media is NOT new. Stick with me and hopefully today we will agree that scheduling / automating any social account is NOT Marketing.

How can you listen?

I will let you in on a secret. My Twitter success is because I actively read my home page and private lists to see what certain users, segments and locations are saying. I do quick and dirty sentiment analysis, event scanning and news checking. I follow some tweeters triumphs and challenges. In marketing terms I’m doing my market research.

The key is I’m getting to know them as well as I can. When I log into tweet I spend a minute or two reading my timeline and more often than  not find somebody to engage who fits my strategic trajection. If you are automating you have missed that. More importantly, by listening to my feed I know when to post links, when to tweet socially and when to reach out to users.

You need to talk to people

The ‘gurus’ always say engage, engage and engage. As much as I bag this concept (because it is NOT new and we rarely speak about monetizing it) in a social channel you need to be social. By having listened I know what to say to people.  In marketing terms I know what message to deliver and through which channel.

I’ve always drawn a line between social accounts made to propagate information and accounts that are playing a longer term game. It is my belief that those playing the longer term game and building monetizable fan-bases will remain strong whereas users will eventually realize that propagated accounts nothing more than subscribing to an advertising stream.

Users are not stupid. Within the next two years I speculate that they will figure this out and demand more from brands or retract themselves from public social media. Which side do you want to be on?

Look at Friendfeed

Paul Carr hilariously points out that he is probably the only person to have deleted his Friendfeed this year; not because of a mass Friendfeed exodus but because he is the only person who remembered he even had it. I have around 2,700 Friendfeed subscribers. My best guess is a whole 0 of them actively read my feed. I think I’ve logged in to Friendfeed twice.

This is because Friendfeed functions as a mostly automated internet feed. Once I plug my services in there is little re-visit value. My Twitter page contains the same information and active content generation / conversations. Friendfeed has become nothing more than a failed presence. I’m not alone. Most of us did the same thing. Sign up, plug in and go back to Twitter.com. When robots talk to robots not much marketing happens.

Some automation is ok

My Foursquare plugs in to Twitter. My Feedburner auto tweets. There is nothing wrong with plugging certain streams into others automatically. It becomes a problem when the entire stream is propagated.

As I mentioned earlier, I schedule the odd tweet or two, usually for good reason.. However, I encourage those who automate more than 15-20% of their presence to realize you are missing some major learning, monitoring and relationship building opportunities. On top of that you are catalysing a race to the bottom that will burn any ROI social sites have left.

You are NOT marketing by scheduling tweets. The reality is even direct marketers and telemarketers try to speak to me. You don’t.

August 8, 2010

Social Media is NOT new

Engage. Form Relationships. Share content. Social is the new currency. Social Media is the answer. There has been a fundamental shift in how we communicate.

I’m sick of hearing it. This is not new information. How we communicate now is how great communicators have always worked their trade. Word of Mouth has always been powerful. Social Media may be a new term but the theories and fundamentals are not.

My argument is that excluding the new term, social media is nothing new.

What is Social Media?

There are many definitions of social media. I’m a simple guy who lives by simple definitions. To me, Social Media is people communicating and collaborating online.

We can talk about the change in pace, the openness and transparency but our core reason for joining is communication. I concede that the speed and technologies that underwrite this process are different today. I concede that more people are involved in this channel than there were previously. However, people have always communicated and collaborated online.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away

The Internet did not exist. People sent letters to each other. Telephones and telegrams came to prominence. People spoke in small gatherings. They communicated. They made friends. They formed relationships. They engaged. Sound familiar?

Then a friendly, cheerful man invented the Internet. People were using BBS’s to communicate. When I was operating my first companies and even up to 5 years ago I was a member of 40+ forums. At the same time others were making profile pages on Geocities and communicating through guest books, web rings and other old school techniques. I’d always be involved in multiple conversations and threads, building a rapport to promote my services. I engaged users. I shared interesting content with the board. I created original content. I commented on other users content. I built relationships and rapport. Sound familiar?

It should. Old media, gurus and just too many people in between either have short term memories or poor research skills. What is happening today is not new. Back then I knew several firms trying to integrate my forum identities and create a singular stream. It has been a long journey to get where we are today, nothing happened overnight.

Experts: Please give it a rest

I get the need to hype your own field, I do plenty of Digital marketing. But it seems the ‘experts’ and ‘gurus’ are a huge part of this misconception.

  • Even if Social Media was new, why are we still talking about engage / form relationships at most conferences. This is not high level stuff.
  • Many older users are scared by the change in medium and assume it is new. They fail to realize how normal this is for younger and more seasoned users.

If I was born decades ago I’d be still be forming relationships. If I was at a cocktail party there would be people I knew and was incubating relationships with. There would be people I need introductions to. I would talk, listen and engage. People from every background would likely be in attendance. Just as diverse as social media today.

I think half the problem is their fundamental misunderstanding of what has actually changed. Even scarier are the ones who think you can pop out a tweets and have a business. This is why we are still having such low level conversations.

Ask an expert if they have a basic model. Most don’t. Ask them what their suggested listen, respond and produce ratio’s are; they will probably look at you blankly. There is researched little data on Social Media because the smart consultants realize how this slots into a bigger marketing picture and are busy applying it as one tool. Worse, I don’t think the experts understand this.

You are not an expert in communication

And to claim to be a Social Media expert you are almost claiming to be an expert in communications. You probably are not and are specially not a social media expert with no technical background.

All of my clients who have a social marketing module (notice how I dropped the ‘media’?) are told that they need to put their own voices forward. If you want to be social be social, not manufactured social.

Social is hard to quantify. People have tried. SPIN Selling is old but still works. There are very few experts in talking to people. There is a reason. Social is no different. The best social marketers get relationships offline as quick as they can.

We are just transitioning

Much of what used to happen offline is now happening online. This transitioning has  been happening far longer than most know. As the pace of technology innovation quickens we exacerbate this transition.

Just because something has become popular it does not mean it is new. The Internet used to be boutique corner stores and Internet cafes. Now the chain stores are in (Facebook, Twitter). When Wal-Mart opened shopping was not new.

Social Media Works

Social Media does work, but when it is part of something bigger. I’ve authored quite a few articles on the topic and you will see that it is generally about integrating it into something bigger or providing solid insights for those who are at the medium level. That is my target market and who I write for.

My challenge to the other ‘gurus’ out there is to:

  1. Stop talking about obvious things
    1. If your knowledge does not go further, quit while you are ahead
  2. Recognize social media works as part of something bigger
  3. If you want to be social media specific, get to a higher level. Anybody can Google what most of us are blogging.
August 6, 2010

Ryerson Guest Lecture

Yep, I’m all grown up and sound half intelligent now. I was asked to be a guest speaker at Ryerson this evening and speak about:
  • Starting a technology company
  • The stages
  • Some tips / what to do
  • How investing works
  • Social Media

I’ve been asked by several tweeters to put the slides up so here we go……

August 4, 2010

How to Build & Sell Through a Community Part 2: Why?

Note: This is part two of my series ‘How to Build & Sell through a Community’. Click here for part one.

Last week was a general run-down. An introduction on what we will cover and why this is important. The e-mail feedback I received was fantastic and some new topics have been added. This article is the first step of ‘Form a Community’. We are going to cover:

  • Target Market
  • Message
  • Channels
  • Differentiators
In other words, this is most of the Who, Why, What & How I covered in the last article.
Next week we will finish off the ‘Forming & Planning’ a community section of this series with content schedules, metrics, funnels and other equally exciting tools.

What is the point of your community?

Don’t just do social media because everybody else does. Infact, I’m rather outspoken in saying that Social Media is not relevant for every business. I’m not saying it does not work but the ROI and worthiness is considerably lower than other channels. Before building a community you need to decide what you want out of it.

Profit is sometimes a dirty word to social media ‘gurus’ (I use the term loosely) but fear not, you are dealing with me. Are you hoping to:

  • Get more customers?
    • New customers?
    • Referrals?
    • More sales from existing customers?
  • Increase conversions?
  • Service existing clients? Provide user-end support?
  • Increase client satisfaction?

There are other reasons and some of these merge, it depends on the company. The important thing is to have defined a single coherent reason to build a community.

Target Market

Communities don’t just pop out of nowhere. Good communities have been carefully planned to fill the need of a certain group of people. A good community is vibrant, there is a constant interaction.

We just decided what the purpose of our community was. Perhaps it was to increase referrals. Now we need to decide which group(s) of people best fulfill this use case. Clearly here our target market is going to be existing customers. Yet we should go deeper. From existing data you may see that customers who have been with you for 6+ months and have made at least two purchases are most likely to refer. Be specific, it helps.

It is important to accurately define the type of person you are looking for.

Channels

As I mentioned in the last part of this series, a community does not necessitate a new website. You may build your community over Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN or something more obscure.

The important thing is now we know what we want and who to reach. Study your target market and see where they are. Studies show that Facebook users have a higher average income than Myspace users, and Tweeters are higher than Facebook. Twitter users enjoy short, rapid pulse mobile communications whereas LinkedIN users communicate less but with more depth. Reddit & Digg users want to discuss links and content.

For example, Grasshopper Buzz have built a strong Twitter community creating buzz with existing clients and exciting new potentials. Figure out what your audience want to do and where they already are. Fish where the fish are.

Differentiators

There are a tonne of communities.There are many people on Twitter. What makes you stand out? Why is your community the one? I’ve already written that there are too many social networks to keep up with these days (unsure why but it’s tweet count is not properly showing. Ideas?). Users time is valuable and getting them to swap is tough.

Grasshopper do this brilliantly by connecting existing and potential clients where there is a strategic fit and promoting existing clients where possible. As a business owner there is a reason for me to follow and communicate with Grasshopper. Sprouter have Erin Bury as their secret weapon who knows just about everybody and is always connecting people.

Figure out what value your community delivers and find a unique way to promote it.

Next week we will finish off the ‘Forming & Planning’ a community section of this series with content schedules, metrics, funnels and other equally exciting tools.
That’s all for this week. I hope the heavy lifting was not too hard and you are beginning to conceptualize what you want and how to get it. What did you think? Drop me a comment below, e-mail or tweet me. I’m also known to fall in love with people who retweet my content.
August 1, 2010

Surface Questions are useless

I wanted to share a quick thought. I often get asked:

  • How did you get so many followers?
  • How do I get a lot of followers?

These questions are irrelevant (and the answer to both is luck). There is every chance that the answers won’t help you and the answers that do help you execute may prove to be worthless exercises anyway. In this scenario you should instead be asking:

  • How many click-throughs and conversions does your following provide?
  • Is your audience active and engaged?
  • How do you maintain and grow this engaged following?
  • What are your goals on Twitter, and have you achieved them?

See the difference? Asked any of the latter questions and I’d automatically brush over the former questions but you are likely to get some real meat, numbers and see if the exercise is even worthwhile.

And there we have it. A little out of the realm of what I normally write (longer and more actionable) but ask yourself, are the questions you are asking impeding real discovery?

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