June 27, 2010

A quick and dirty study on Social Media

I’ve noticed lately that my buying behavior has been switching to brands who are on social media and, more importantly, brands who would engage with me (more on that soon). I wanted to see if I was an oddity or a norm here.

So, like anybody else would on a Sunday I created a 30 second survey on Google Docs and Tweeted. This is by no means a comprehensive survey but a quick and dirty fact finding mission. As many of the respondents (around 65%) located the survey on Twitter you can say that the pool is somewhat biased when comparing channels. For those wanting real specifics, n=40 (with two disqualified for incomplete information, not bad for an hour on Sunday afternoon). Read into the results as you wish, my followers helped me collect the data so it is only fair I share it.

70% of respondents indicated that a companies social media account influences their purchase decisions. All users who responded to this survey are clearly social media savvy (and thus the results are only applicable to a similar crowd) but it does demonstrate that people on these channels expect representation from businesses.

60% of all respondents indicated social media as part of their purchase criteria (the difference here being that a company must be on social media to make a purchase) and that they have purchased from a company because they were active on social media where competitors were not. Again, this applies only to a social media crowd but shows that non-savvy small businesses are likely losing sales for not being present.

most influential social media channel

Respondents were then asked to specify the most important social media channel when investigating purchase options / companies. Twitter was considered the most important channel, perhaps due to ease of access and simplicity. Company blogs came in last; my best guess on this one is that company blogs are rarely conversations whereas Facebook Pages and Twitter profiles are often very conversation heavy.

most popular social media marketing channels

Respondents were then asked to rank important factors when evaluating a channel; specifically, when two products / companies maintain social media channels and the user is making decisions. The rate of activity and level of interaction came in at number 1 which, as mentioned earlier, may be why Twitter and Facebook were considered more important than blogs.

Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, 30% of respondents indicated they regularly pay a higher price for products active on social media over competitors who are not. We already knew social media was an important evaluation tool but this number was somewhat surprising to me.

Read into the facts as you will. As always I love the e-mail, Twitter and comment feedback.

June 22, 2010

I saw your tweet

Want to get found at a conference? Engage in meaningful conversations while you are supposed to be silent? Debate content and be seen as a thought leader?

You probably already do this; just tweet.

I’ve always live tweeted at conferences. I feel that the stream and conversations add a layer of value and let me find some incredibly relevant, often local, people to follow and connect with. What I’m going to do is share a story with you to help prove the worth of the almighty tweet.

Weeks ago I was at Product Camp Toronto. I commented on a presentation with a few hash tags. A few hours later at lunch I was approached by several people about the tweets / comments I have made. Not only were people proactively seeking me (far easier networking) but I’ve closed contracts with many of these companies and have offered quotes to many more!

What have you got to lose by sending out a few tweets at a conference? You probably have a smartphone anyway. There is plenty to gain.

June 8, 2010

In which I delete 4,000 LinkedIN Contacts

I’m expecting a flaming for this one but here goes. Last Thursday, the 3rd of June I deleted over 4,000 of my 1st level LinkedIn contacts bringing me down to a healthy 68 (see the profile here.)

Removing that many contacts is sure to frustrate some people though I feel I vetted out my contracts correctly. More importantly, why did I do this?

  • LinkedIn is a platform that works best when you have fewer, close contacts. When I joined LinkedIn many moons ago things were a little different, this was years before there were even profile pictures (there was so much hype behind that change by the way.) There were no Twitter’s, Facebook Fan Pages were not yet attracting enough professionals, LinkedIn was the place to be to make connections. Now I have tools such as Twitter, my blog and Facebook Pages to mass interact with my audience.
  • Most of this audience did not truly want to be connected anyway (flame away.) I’m not saying all Open Networkers are bad but a majority are address book collecters. Anybody who needs to promote that they have 8,000+ connections is 1) too ego-driven to work with me and 2) has way too many people in their core group to do any meaningful networking.
    • Because of this you can’t do business with most Open Networkers. They simply are not interested, play it as a collectors game, wonder you reach out to them or don’t see your message among everybody elses.
  • The spam was horrible. LinkedIN has few mass administration tools and people I barely knew were able to hit me with self-promotion questions and messages. Honestly, I wasn’t interested, if you want to promote be open about it. By the time I cleared my spam it was time to move on and I barely got time to interact.

Since deleting everybody my LinkedIn experience has been better and far more successful. I no longer accept invitations from everybody I know. We need to have a solid business relationship or have had profound talks at a conference to be connected there. Otherwise you will just have to deail with my Twitter, blog, phone and e-mail. Like my Facebook LinkedIn is now exclusive.

May 15, 2010

Monitoring Keywords = Sales

Last year I wrote an entry on why Social Media is important for business, specifically how it can be leveraged for sales. I’m not going to rehash what I’ve already said but being a practical guy I love examples; especially recent ones.

A huge part of your social media presence should be monitoring your customers pain points in keywords. Reach out to them. You will  be suprised at how well it works. I’ll be calling my local TPH dealer.

April 23, 2010

Free eBook: Social Media Workout

I have a confession to make. Supposedly I have been co-writing an ebook on all things web with @NatalieSisson. Due to time commitments I was unable to further my work with Natalie (this time). The good news is she has just released a fantastic (and free!!) eBook giving brief, bite sized workouts to improve your effiency and results in the major social media channels.

Want a taste? The Contents are below:

Workout 1: Back to Basics
Workout 2: Get Facebook Fit
Workout 3: Tone up with Twitter
Workout 4: Exercise Control Of Email
Workout 5: Lunging into LinkedIn
Workout 6:  Make Movie Muscle
Workout 7: Website Weightlifting
Workout 8: Build a Better Blog

It’s totally free so what do you have to lose? Click here to be redirected to Natalie’s WomanzWorld and get your copy.

April 16, 2010

Well played Twitter!

It’s been on the cards for a while. Tweetie has been acquired (and is becoming the official Twitter app). A new URL shortener is being launched. Android apps are being made official. Ads have been launched. Twitter has grown up. They are making the transition from a platform to a product.

Platform:  describes some sort of hardware architecture or software framework (including application frameworks), that allows software to run.
Product: commodities offered for sale

The warning signs have been there for a while. Developers were encouraged to stop filling the holes in Twitters products and instead focus on innovation. It’s a tough situation and a real Catch-22 for Twitter. I feel for the developers but Twitter is a business and at some point there needsto be a focus on profit.

There is no doubt developers helped grow Twitter. Most of us use applications (i.e. Seesmic) and I’d be willing to bet some users joined due to developers promoting their tools. A developer ecosystem was not only encouraged but  heavily promoted so developers felt safe and continued on. Some innovations were marginal and deserve to be crushed, some were fantastic but we all draw the line at different points. What we cannot question is that 3rd party developer’s added value and pushed the Twitter forward.

As a business this ecosystem begins to hurt Twitter. They were a mildly profitable platform but not a wildly profitable product like their contemporaries. While not very innovative ads are worth too much cash to turn down but nobody visited Twitter.com (how often do you visit  to send / read a tweet?). The same ecosystem that pushed the company forward is now taking away the impressions and hit counts that are important to advertisers. As a platform owner Twitter have every right to take control back and this is exactly what they are doing.

It has been made clear that the ecosystem will continue to be encouraged. Skeptics are quick to point out that Twitter might monitor how  3rd party features work before rolling it into the core system. My biggest issue is not Twitter taking back their platform but having encouraged the developers and never making it clear that ‘eventually, we want control’. The other half of me understands the need to grow a revenue model and for that they need their visitors back.

I cannot buy their advice to developers to not fill holes anymore. After all, what is a hole? I’m fairly sure a few years ago shortened links & desktop tweeting were not holes in the Twitter product but innovations. Now developers are encouraged to focus on improving the stream (i.e. propagating streams further across the web, a huge benefit to Twitter).

Well played Twitter! I hope it works out!

November 11, 2009

Find LinkedIN Contacts on Twitter

Just an administrative thing but the article is not located on this page. Click here for my guide on finding LinkedIN contacts on Twitter.

June 4, 2009

Why I @ so much

Yesterday I got into a slightly heated discussion with one of my Twitter followers. I was asked to not @ people so much as they were finding that nearly half of my tweets, sometimes mere, were @’s.

Obviously I ignored this piece of advice but it made me think, Why do I @ so much in the first place? First I needed to consider, What is Social Media to me and why do I bother using it?

To me, any social media site is based on transparency and open discussion. Sharing information and dealing with people as individuals is of the greatest importance.  Its why I think many business’s and individuals fail. To give you an example, my local newspaper are on Twitter and all they put in their twitterfeed is automated links to published articles. What good is that? I’ve also found countless retailers who only tweet their specials. Now what good is that?

Social media is about having an identity and as I said, treating people as individuals. There is no value for me to follow the newspaper or these individuals if the same information is sent to me by their newsletters and is promoted on the front page of their website. Social media is about providing unique content, and as far as I am concerned, is a great and cost effective way to open a dialogue with current and future customers. I’d be much more likely to follow the newspaper if they asked for a discussion of the article and opened up a ‘Twitter forum’. Then I am engaged with their brand; any marketer can tell you how important that is.

Some brands get this and try to open up a discussion. Those brands get the first step correct but mess up the second; responding. Surely you can’t begin to engage customers in a discussion and then leave it. This is why I personally respond to as many people as possible with @’s (though I often get 15-20 a day, so there is a backlog and sadly I miss some). It continues the discussion, further engages people with my personal brand, brings the relationship to a deeper, more personal level, encourages the user to engage themselves next time and gives a personal level of gratitude. To me this is just as important, if not more important, than opening the dialogue in the first place. When brands respond to me personally online I’m far more happy.

Brands that don’t even try to engage me in the first place fail. Social media is built to foster this engagement and most of the users join seeking it, so any brand who tackles social media with a standardized message is going nowhere fast. Engaging users on social media can direct some serious traffic; when I am happy I link it and looking at my bit.ly tracker each of my links generate an average of 300 clicks – this is also increasing fast as my follower count increases. Each @ is also another chance to re-promote the same link.

The big dilemma is that I need to remain conscious that my @’s may not be interesting to others so I am (loosely, I often forget) trying to stick to the following @ rules:

  • Try to paraphrase the @, so users not involved in the first leg of the dialogue can understand what is going on.
  • For generic @’s (ie thanks for the RT), I try and cram as many users in the tweet as possible and re post the bit.ly link.
  • Keep the discussion going. Tweeting ‘thanks’ is no good but ‘Thanks for telling me about x, what does everybody else think’ is good.

And there you have it, my justification for so many @’s and what I (try) to do to make it less of a burden on my followers.

March 9, 2009

Why I love Social Media (Traffic spike!)

3-4 weeks ago now I wrote a Squidoo lens titled ‘How to add your LinkedIN contacts to Twitter’ and forgot about it. Last week I decided to check in on how it was going – around 20 uniques visitors per day. Then I searched Google for keywords, including ‘how to add LinkedIN contacts to Twitter’ and ‘how do I add my LinkedIN contacts to Twitter’ and noticed the lens was ranked #1. I had written an update version so thought, why not post it on my blog to help promote it?.

I did just that. I put a link at the top of the old lens informing people of the changes and linking them to the new resource, Tweeted the update to my followers (around then 1,800ish) and left.

12 hours later the article generated around 180 uniques! Looking at the traffic stats in Google Analytics I can see that Twitter referred over half the traffic, the Squidoo lens sent its fair share and I had a single hit from Delicious – somebody bookmarked me. 24 hours later Delicious hits have grown to near 25% of the traffic and continue on an upwards tend. I’ve also noticed a few smaller bookmarking sites referring me traffic. The traffic was clearly qualified too – with my Bounce rate going from 71% down to 42% and the LinkedIN / Twitter guide being the most viewed page here!

That is just a little story I wanted to share. It was just an innocent attempt on my part to drive a little more traffic here and begin to consolidate my articles. I did not really promote the change at all. For a simple blog article I think the traffic generated was phenomenal and it just goes to show what all of these websites can really do for your traffic – even if you did not mean for it to happen!