Social Media

I’ve had a debate going on with someone about one way Twitter relationships. I have to wonder when I see someone with thousands of followers and they are only following a few hundred if they have missed the entire point of Twitter.

The whole point of social media is to be social, instead of thinking you are a Hollywood socialite that everyone should bow down to. Harsh? Maybe a little but anyway…

The other person in the debate said in the defense of the people that never follow back and I quote “Personally, I don’t follow hundreds or thousands of people because it makes things too cluttered and overwhelming. I’d rather be able to effectively follow a smaller number of people.” Cluttered huh?

I agree about effectively following people, I want to follow people I have something in common with but then again, opposites attract. I will even go so far as saying I am following people that are not in my industry and don’t have the same interests that I do but I follow them anyway because I like what they tweet and the personality they have on Twitter.

I still can’t get past one way relationships though, when there is a 10,000 to 300 ratio. Something seems wrong to me, it’s not like if you follow more people you will have so many tweets you won’t be able to read them is it?

The fact is most people don’t speed tweet and of all the people I follow everyone seems great. I think by not following back the majority of people that follow you (unless they are spammers, porn related, etc) you take the chance of missing something really good.

Maybe I am looking at it in a non cyber world way, if I go to a gathering or a social mixer and do all the talking but never listen to anyone else would I be considered a rude person?

How do you feel about one way Twitter relationships?

I think a lot of us have seen the article post titled “Eight reasons why I’ll unfollow you on Twitter” and I agree with them. I have set some guidelines for myself to follow when using Twitter. These guidelines didn’t come to me when I started using Twitter they were already things I did but applied when I started using the program. These are my guidelines; you don’t have to follow them. These are my thoughts, you don’t have to agree or accept them for yourself.

1. Be polite! My mama always taught me to say please and thank you. There is no reason to be rude to anyone. Try to reply to every DM (personal DM not auto response DM) and acknowledge others when they tweet something to you. You never know when being kind will make that persons day better.

2. Don’t spam. Spam was never good in a can, email or on Twitter. Don’t spam junk links constantly or those silly “Get 16K followers in 90 days”. I promise you that if you are an interesting person with good things to say and you treat everyone with respect the followers will come.

3. Think of others first. Re-Tweet to help others and someone else will pay it forward. If you have a Tweet pal that posts a good video or article then help them, I think we deprive people of very “Tweet Worthy” material by just thinking of ourselves.

4. Don’t auto follow or auto direct message. This is a SOCIAL network, be social. Use the program the way it was intended, sure it will take more time but think what Twitter would be like if we all put it on autopilot. Life is not meant to be lived this way.

5. Don’t beg. If you whine to get people to click your links in tweets you look needy and pathetic. If you post tweets that say something like “Please help me, I need 8 more followers to reach 900” is that really adding any value to the people reading it? People like people that are confident.

6. Follow those that follow you back unless they give you reason to un-follow or they are not a fit for you. I have had a mixture of people that have followed me in my short time on Twitter so far and I have followed most of them because they have similar interests. I have not followed the people promoting porn, adult related material or ones that you can’t really tell what they are talking about.

7. If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. I personally don’t go on Twitter to fuss about things. I may post from time to time that I am not happy with my computer or the web is running slow or something to that but I try to make a joke about it or laugh. If you come on to just tweet and blast everything then you are wasting your energy and the time of others that are reading it. If you are just a “hater” and you look at twitter as the next place to start a fight then you are barking up the wrong tree, you won’t get many fans.

8. Don’t self promote just to feed your massive “Twego” (Twitter Ego) I think it’s ok to tell people what you do, post articles you have written and even post links to your products and services. What I think is not ok is to think you are the only one here with something valuable to offer and have the mindset that everyone should bow down to you. Let me break it down “Southern Style”…We all put our britches on the same way, one leg at a time. I think we can learn from each other and the day I stop learning is the day I need to move to a deserted island by myself.

9. Don’t have a 2 hour personal conversation in tweets. You are abusing the program and what it was designed for. If you want to chat go to Yahoo or MSN. I found some local people in my area and I even had things in common with them, I was excited till I followed them and realized they used twitter to talk to their friend and that was mostly it! I unfollowed quickly because I didn’t care about who they thought was cute, what time they planned to get together on Friday night, etc. More than half of the things I had no idea what they were talking about. I was useless chatter with no value what so ever.

10. Have fun! Yes I said fun, it’s easy to get in a rut with anything if you do it long enough and then next thing you know it has become routine and the fun is gone. Mix things up, don’t be afraid to step outside the box. Make people wonder what you will do next. Practice random acts of kindness. I feel that if you enjoy what you are doing you will do it better and others will also feed from this.

A successful website is only as good as its marketing. Most would be website business owners seem to slight marketing thinking that just half way efforts in marketing will be ok or falling for the field of dreams myth “if you build it they will come”. They will spend several thousand dollars on a nice website and no money on marketing. If we look at traditional brick and mortar business I think we can compare.

Most successful brick and mortar businesses do everything they can to market their business from ads to television; they usually have nice store fronts and signage. Retail stores look for good location so they will gain a steady flow of customers that frequent their establishment. Have you ever seen a Wal-Mart or a Taco Bell that was built in a pasture field forty miles from nowhere? Me either.

How do we know businesses like this exist? Even if you have never been inside a Wal-Mart or Taco Bell you know what it is because of ads, television and radio plus you have probably driven by them. They have exposure and it’s very hard to not notice them. Even small successful business owners will market their business.

Shifting back to the online world and your website we often see the website as the business built in the pasture field forty miles from nowhere. It has no signage and a lot of times the lights are off and it appears abandoned. There has been no form of advertising and marketing is pathetic.

There are basic forms of marketing that anyone can do for an online business that will get you started but unless you are a marketing guru or you plan on taking time to learn how to market your business it’s probably best to be left in the hands of a professional. Marketing does not have to be ridiculously expensive it needs to be done right and done to the right audience.

Who is your target market? How can you appeal to them? How will you get their attention? You need the right product to satisfy the needs of your customers. Your product needs to be offered at the right price. You need to have the right product at the right price in the right place to be purchased by your customers. You need to inform potential customers of the availability of this product, its price and its place.

In its most basic form you can start marketing your business through social media, article writing and blogging. Don’t become a spam freak but instead write articles to inform and educate. Start groups on social networks that will allow you to educate and network. Try to keep in mind that you want to help your potential customers and in turn they will help you. If you are an authority to them that will build trust which in turn will lead to more customers and sales for you.

One other very important thing is to be yourself, you are your business so don’t be afraid to open up and let people get to know you. You will build closer more personal relationships with your customers.

Personal branding is a term that a lot of us are hearing today and I think its something we are going to be hearing a lot more of in the future. What exactly is personal branding? There is a great definition of personal branding here.

Is personal branding really a new thing though? It may be new in ways it is being used now but as far as being a new idea, no, I think personal branding is a very old idea that most businesses have gotten away from. As a matter of fact I will go so far as to call personal branding “old school”.

Personal branding to me is getting to know the person behind the business, not trying to hide behind the face or logo of a business. Anyone can create a business name and a logo and hide behind that but the fact is real people should not have to hide behind a company façade, that is being an outright coward.

Did you ever have those light bulb moments? You know when the light just seems to come on and something that was so evident yet was hidden just hits you in the face? This is one of those times.

Years ago the business owners before us practiced personal branding, they built relationships with their customers and they did it on a very personal level. Hop in the time machine and go back several years, go in the old country store or to the insurance office or some other establishment, what do you think it will be like? They will call you by name, they will make you feel important and they will ask about you and truly be interested.

The bottom line is the cold hard fact that you are your business, not the name or the logo you hide behind. I am Proimpulse (Me, Anthony McMurray), not the name that took me 2 weeks to come up with over eight years ago, not the logo I designed. Seriously, who is Microsoft? Bill Gates. Who is Amazon? Jeff Bezos. Who is McDonalds? Ray Kroc. Who is Kentucky Fried Chicken? Colonel Sanders. You get my point.

Now I have never talked to any of these people in person but my point here is we have come full circle and we are getting back to the old ways of doing business we just have a better vehicle which is social media.

Are business names and logos important still? Yeah I think so, we will continue to need those but we need to open ourselves up and let people know there is a human behind them.

Another great example of personal branding is something that happened to me not long ago. My dear wife made the statement “It seems like a lot of your old friends never call you unless they have a question or issue with their computer or something involving the internet”. At first it really upset me and I thought to myself if they can’t call me just to say hello they were they ever really my friends to start with? A few days later I was with one of my long time friends (a police officer) and I decided to confront him, I told him what my wife said and his answer blew me away.

His reaction made so much sense I had to laugh at myself for thinking the silly selfish thoughts earlier. His words were “When we call you and ask you a question about the computer or the internet its not that we just come to you when we have a problem it’s the fact that we come to you because you are our expert in that field, the same reason if you have a law question you call me. Besides, we are guys and we think different than women do.”

The world is cold enough as it is, we all want to feel important and feel special. I love to walk into a business and have the owner say “Hey Anthony, how’s it going?”

I look back at the many testimonials that clients have sent to me and it amazes me what they say, “Anthony was…” or “It was a pleasure Anthony”, or “I called Anthony and he…” Was I really that blind? Have we become that cold and insensitive?

I know personally I am focusing on getting back to grass roots of getting to know people and the way business should be, what are you going to do with it?

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