Posts from the ‘Social Media Marketing’ Category

A huge thanks to everyone who shared their favorite Twitter tools on my last post about my mistake in unfollowing a ton of people on Twitter. You all provided a lot of great recommendations and it’s appreciated.

I checked out every tool I could access and found all of them lacking the deep insight I’m looking for.

So let me clarify in this post just what kind of information I’m looking for and how I’m starting to get it. I’ll keep the geekery to a minimum for the technophobes reading this.
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I made a big mistake. That mistake was unfollowing a large amount of people on Twitter, and not  just because I lost a number of followers – that was expected. And as with many mistakes this one was done with the right intentions. However what I’ve come to realize is that I had the wrong solution to the right problem.

The problem is this: how to get value from a massive amount of tweets produced by a large number of people you follower.

When I say “value” what I mean is actionable information that from a business sense can help provide insight and/or direction.

Yes, having a lot of followers appears “good”, although I can easily debate large numbers could be meaningless if people don’t take action (click, retweet, purchase) when you tweet. However I’m not here to argue that.

What I’m here to say is that I made a mistake, am reversing course, and going to work on applying technology to this problem.
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Personality. Personality is an advantage that small businesses have over their competition. It’s something that large companies lack. Rather than having a personality these companies have a brand. So it’s no wonder that a recent eMarketer article reports that companies are having trouble integrating social media into business processes. They aren’t set up to be social, which is the key to social media.

My advice to you is this: stop doing social media and mimicking the large corporations that “do social media” rather than building relationships. Use your biggest advantage, namely your ability to be yourself, to your advantage.

If you want to blend in – act like everyone else. If you want to stand out – be yourself.

What do you think?

What is it about your business that attracts customers and clients? Is it your brand or is it you?

Please share your experience and your thoughts about being yourself in the comments below.

Online influence metrics are changing the game again, and for the better.

Solid strategies – the ones that take time to take full effect and require a lot of thought and hard work – are going to win out over shortcuts.

Google did the same thing to SEO on it’s search engine. Spam sites and websites that were created purely for creating links in an attempt to have better SEO rankings continue to go the way of the dodo with each update Google releases. The Panda is strong. Don’t mess with the Panda.

With the Google update and SEO, earning those links to your content as well as having it shared on social media platforms (Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) is the way to go. Building crappy and meaningless links to content – not so much.

Goodbye Social Media Automation

I’ll say it plain – I’ve used tools to help me automate social media. I was under the false impression that I’d somehow miss out on information if I wasn’t following a lot of people, and that if I needed large numbers of “followers” and “fans” in order to help spread the word of Rob, meaning get clients.

I’ve recently found that impression to be patently false.

Recently I made some huge changes to my strategy, which are already producing results. Let me tell you what I did and the results I’ve seen so far.

My Theory And Principles

I’ve been reading a lot about gamification and game mechanics over the past months. I’ve also gotten a bit bored with the quest for more tweets, likes, pluses and other “social media proof” for my content here. I want to take it back to basics and make marketing fun again.

Soon I’ll be launching a site to help the less blogging inclined have a great time building a blog for their business. But that’s later…

So here are the principles I’m working off:

• Building a community around your business is of the utmost importance, and is becoming more important as more and more businesses come online and create more and more content. To do this requires engagement – conversations.
• Having large numbers of followers and fans on social media is actually quite meaningless if they don’t take action
• You don’t need large numbers of followers and fans on social media to build a very strong and profitable business – you need the right ones
• SEO is more important than ever, and needs to be balanced with social media efforts
• Marketing needs to become fun again, and that means helping people learn and have fun doing it – that’s value

So with those principles in place let me tell you what I’ve done. Keep in mind that I tell you this not as an ego thing but to report what I did and the results I’m getting so you can think on the choices you’re making.

Automation Comes To A Grinding Halt

A few weeks ago I stopped using Triberr in an effort to focus on better content curation. Interestingly (and this is not a knock against Triberr) the number of retweets I received on posts went way down. On average I’d get 40-50 retweets of my posts. Now the number is between 5 and 10 though some posts are in the 20′s. So far blog engagement, measured by page views and comments, has remained high.

Earlier this week I stopped using TweetAdder for targeted following. I gained a large Twitter following purely by following people I thought might be interested in my content and who might share good stuff with me. Reciprocity is strong my friend. Reciprocity is also why I stopped using Triberr – if I wasn’t going to tweet other people’s posts it wasn’t fair that they should  tweet mine.

Now there’s a major problem with following a metric ton of people on any social media platform. Can you guess what it is?

When you follow thousands of people you’re so inundated with links and other commentary that it becomes a huge time sink. I can read pretty fast, but not that fast. That led to my next move…

I Pulled A Chris Brogan

I read a lot of blogs via RSS, which is my preferred method of keeping up on blogs. Some of the people I followed I communicate with on Skype, email, or via their blog in the comments. Part of the decision I made was, if I’m speaking with someone on a regular basis and they’ll tell me the latest awesome they’ve found, why do I need to follow them on Twitter?

We can discuss that in the comments So…

A few days ago I signed up for ManageFlitter, a tool that connects to Twitter that allows you to:

• Clean up and manage who you follow
• Find out who isn’t following you back
• Find out which inactive accounts you follow
• Easily search inside your Twitter stream
• Link Google+ to your Twitter account

Leave a comment on this post and you will be entered to win a Budgie account which will work with a single Twitter account. It’s good stuff so please do leave a comment. Anyhow…

Within 48 hours I had unfollowed a large amount of people. In total I unfollowed 10,949 people.

What happened? As you can imagine I’ve lost a lot of followers:

This is my first post since the unfollowing so I have zero stats on how this effects the sharing of my content. I’ll have some numbers there in a week or so.

Hello Conversation

I do have some numbers on Twitter mentions. Basically a mention is my Twitter handle showing up. This could be due to a retweet of a post or someone replying to me (i.e. a conversation). Here’s a chart on Twitter mentions:

So far mentions are doing well. This is also because I’ve added back the main Twitter stream to my Twitter client (currently TweetDeck) and I’m having more conversations with the people I follow. This is easier to do when you aren’t following 11k+ people.

Time will tell on this, but already I’m able to engage more with the people I follow, which is what I’m shooting for.

And What About Site Visits?

How is that SEO working anyhow? Let’s go to the stats!

So far visits remain fairly consistent with close to 40% of visits coming from SEO.

Happy days!

What This All Means

So what does this all mean and what does it mean for you?

Yes, numbers beget numbers. But what do those numbers mean and what value do they provide for your business?

I can understand how social proof in the form of tweets, likes, and other shares can make you look good, but at the end of the day is it getting you more business? Sure it “might depend” but somehow I doubt it, especially if you’re in a services-based business, where people do business with you based on relationships. But doesn’t that extend to all businesses?

And bringing it back to online influence – how influential are you if you have a large “following” but no one takes action – sharing your content, referring you to other people, bringing you business.

Things are changing, and changing for the better. I think we need to make marketing fun again rather than pursuing large numbers of everything. That means more quality engagement with those around our business.

I look forward to helping forge that path. I hope you’ll come with me.

I’ve been a bit absent on the blog for the past month as my parents came from the United States to stay with my family here in Thailand for the month of November. We did so much that I need a break from the break. However that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. I have been, very busy in fact. Thinking, plotting world domination – you know, the usual.

Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about and then let’s chat about it in the comments below.

Is Social Media Necessary For Your Business?

Last week I had a call with a friend of mine who told me he thought social media had become almost a complete waste of time for him. He hadn’t published a piece of content in more than a month but the clients and money keep coming in, so much so that he’s looking to hire someone.

How is that possible? He goes to a lot of in-person networking events, has made hundreds of personal connections with business owners, and gets a lot of referral business from existing clients.

Last night I was speaking with a client who told me she’s being asked by her superiors about why their company isn’t using this or that tactic when their competitors are. A few items mentioned were QR codes and iPhone apps. Interestingly enough even not using these tactics they managed to sell more than $27 million dollars of their product.

How is that possible? She uses the marketing methods and tactics best suited for her target demographic. And I can tell you that those folks are not heavy into using QR codes or iPhone apps. Her analytics also show this to be true so we aren’t just making it up.

Don’t take those two stories though and say to yourself that you don’t need to be on social media. But when you look at the vast spectrum of what’s available today you need to think hard about the best route for your business.

My Current Views On Using Social Media

When I say “social media” I’m talking about the Wikipedia definition, which is:

… the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue.

So we’re talking using technology to have a two-way conversation with people.

Now, someone has to start the conversation, and when using a web or mobile medium that could be a simple shout out like “hey how’s it going?” or sharing a link to a blog post you or someone else wrote. However I think we’ve all gone overboard in the sharing department, which is why I recently changed my strategy for content sharing and curation.

But I miss the days of having simple conversations with people on Twitter. I’ve never been too into Facebook and now only really use it to connect with family and some friends. And then when Google+ came out I was thinking “oh shit now let’s see what happens with this one.”

Seriously, I’m at the point of overload with all of this stuff and it’s giving me a headache. And I’m so far deep into marketing that I can’t remember who, if anyone, told me to be doing so much on social media. It’s becoming more chore than fun.

And that’s a serious problem.

I don’t know about you but when things stop being fun I stop doing them.

It’s time to make marketing fun again. And that’s what I intend to do.

Here’s the plan…

I’ll be participating on social media sites – mainly Twitter (but also elsewhere) but to a lesser degree than usual. But Twitter and blogging were my first loves so I’m sticking with those.

Each Thursday night at 9 PM EST I hold a live marketing chat – the Dempsey Marketing Chat. Each week entrepreneurs and marketers come together to discuss how to attract or convert your ideal customers online. This week we’re talking about link building for search engine optimization.

I’m curating content at Dempsey Marketing Content, and sharing some of those links via Twitter using Timely.is.

I’m currently working on a community site called Dempsey Marketing Peeps. Rather than be just another social network where people sharing links my goal is to, over time, create a fun and vibrant community for entrepreneurs and small businesses to help each other overcome business and marketing challenges, have a lot of fun doing so, and get some excellent stuff along the way. It’s also going to be the central hub for Dempsey Marketing partners. Good stuff there

What ties these together? These efforts:

1. Seek to connect people for the purpose of building mutually beneficial relationships
2. Focus on real-time conversations between people

How Is Social Media Treating You Today?

Are you feeling a bit saturated by it all? Are you as excited as ever by the possibilities?

Are you looking for what’s next or how to improve what you’re doing?

How is social media treating you today?

Let’s talk about it in the comments below. I’ll see you there.

UPDATE: I am now using a new content curation theme on my curation site called Curation Traffic. It’s pure awesome.

As an entrepreneur and marketer it’s imperative to take frequent looks at your strategy and see how well it’s working. If something needs improvement don’t wait – make the change and continue moving forward.

For me, this is one of those times.

To fully explain this change in strategy I need to show you how it all fits together. There are a few moving parts here:

1. Content curation strategy
2. General and content sharing strategy with Twitter and Triberr
3. The new strategy

Take my hand and come down the rabbit hole with me…

Part 1 – Content Curation Strategy

My friend Scott Scanlon introduced me to Scoop.it a number of months ago. That was my first introduction to content curation. Scott has been doing it for years for his Defining New Media podcast, and I decided to fire up the curation engines for the New Social SEO podcast. While I’ve changed the direction of that podcast I’ve continued to curate content.

Essentially the process of content curation as I see it is this:

1. Selecting relevant content (blog posts, etc.)
2. Saving said content to some platform
3. Maintaining that collection of content (much like a museum collection)
4. Share that content via social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, blog, podcast, etc.

Within that extremely basic framework there are a few methods you can employ when saving the content to “some platform.” For instance, here is a screenshot of some posts I saved on Scoop.it:

I had been simply sharing the posts via Scoop.it, and sending some of the links out via Twitter.

And then I was introduced to Jan Gordon via Twitter and saw part of her method of content curation, which involved summarizing and/or adding additional commentary to the posts she was curating.

Here’s a screenshot of one of her posts on Scoop.it:

After seeing how Jan curates content I decided I needed a much better process for content curation.

Part 2 – General And Content Sharing Strategy With Twitter And Triberr

I’ve told you about how I use Tweet Adder to grow my Twitter community. The keys to using any automation tool are:

• Always reply back to people that initiate contact
• Be proactive – don’t only follow people but initiate contact, and not using an auto-DM message either
• Thank people for sharing your content and mentioning you
• Be conversational – don’t be afraid to have one-on-one conversations with people. In fact, do it and do it often.

Never forget the social part of social media.

I also continue to use Commun.it to find out about people that are sharing my content without mentioning me. It’s another great tool for those serious about using Twitter for business.

I was introduced to automated content sharing by Dino Dogan, who told me about a tool called TwitterFeed which allows you to post content from an RSS feed directly to Twitter. This was great as I was reading every post Dino put out and sharing them. It made sharing his posts – something I was doing anyhow – that much easier.

Until TwitterFeed I would read a post and manually share it via Twitter. Then came Buffer which allowed you to create a schedule and fill up a queue. Then Dino Dogan and Dan Cristo introduced the Internetz to Triberr which totally changed the game. And then I found out about 14blocks which would tell me when it was best to post. After that I found out about a tool I use more – Timely.is – which works like a much better 14blocks.

Long story short I soon began sending out a lot of links to my Twitter community.

With what I’ve seen of content curation, I no longer think that this is the best strategy.

Part 3 – The New Strategy

My new content sharing and Twitter strategy:

1. Continue to grow my Twitter community using a combination of Tweet Adder and the Twitter follow button on all Dempsey Marketing properties
2. Use the new Dempsey Marketing Content site as the hub of my content curation/sharing
3. Use Timely.is to share my blog posts once per day and use the rest of the queue to share the content I’ve curated

This means that I’m putting the brakes on using Triberr and all other automation tools.

This strategy is in addition to the continued implementation of my golden rules of social media mentioned above, namely responding to everyone that initiates contact, thanking for retweets and other sharing of my content, and proactively engaging with my community on Twitter.

As for the content curation side, I’ll be adding many of the blogs I’ve been sharing via Triberr to my Google Reader. The posts that I feel will help you my community will be curated on the Dempsey Marketing Content site, and a choice selection of those will be shared via Twitter.

The Reasons For The New Strategy

The number one goal of this new is increased engagement.

I love real-time conversations. Nothing is better to me than having a conversation with someone on a topic of interest. This is the driving force behind the Dempsey Marketing Chat. I have a feeling that by decreasing the amount of links I share and increasing the number of conversations I will be able to have more quality conversations with you all and learn even more from you.

I also feel that with the addition of a serious content curation strategy the potential of sharing overwhelm becomes a greater possibility. In the past I’ve seen people hit the Twitter site, check the recent tweets, and then leave. This is the polar opposite of how people use Facebook – they spend hours there. I don’t believe this is the case any longer.

People are becoming more savvy with their use of Twitter. The use of Twitter lists is increasing. If you have me on a list and I’m tweeting links every 30 minutes I could take up a lot of space on that list. While some people might think that’s good, I don’t.

Change Is Good

Over time I’ve learned more about how to use social media to foster the community around my business. I’ve also learned more about psychology, observed how people globally are using social media to connect, and determined what is most important to me as a person and an entrepreneur. I’m putting that knowledge into effect and changing my strategy.

What Have You Changed Lately?

How has your use of social media changed over time? What changes have you observed with how people use social media?

Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

I’ll see you there!

I hopped on Google+ as soon as I could get my hands on it, and once they released brand pages I nabbed one of those too, if for no other reason than to ensure my brand stays under my control.

So I’ve been using Google+ for a bit but in terms of using it for content discovery – a fancy way of describing what’s effectively finding out about new things – it just isn’t doing it for me.

Perhaps this is due to information overload.

By following hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of people across a number of social media networks there’s a lot of messages, links and other content coming my way on a minute-by-minute basis.

But here’s the dilemma – I want to stay up-to-date on the latest goings on across various topics but frankly no UI (user interface) out there makes it easy to consume a lot of information. And at the same time if I limit the number of people I connect with I am limiting my potential access to new information, and I love new information.

So here are the questions I’m putting to you today:

1. Are you using social media for content discover?
2. Do you limit the number of sources of information you use?
3. Is there a better app for presenting large amounts of information for easy digestion out there?

I appreciate your answers and thoughts.

An inside look at how the Ontario Ministry of Labour does it…

When I started working at the Ministry of Labour (MOL) in strategic communications, I knew that connecting with people through social media was going to be a success. It was going to take some time and a lot of effort, but in the end it was what people wanted. I currently work as a Social Media and Web Developer for the ministry and with the help of the social media team we’ve created a service that is fast becoming one of the most talked about government social media services in Canada.

How do you get a risk-averse organization, like the government, to embrace the use of social media? Furthermore, how do you get people interested in what governments have to say?

At the Ontario Ministry of Labour, we have put a tremendous amount of time and effort into building our social media community. In fact, we’ve been working at it for roughly 3 years. It’s not always easy but it has definitely been worth the journey and the risk. Here’s why…

People Always Talk About What Governments Are Doing

With the widespread use of social media, those conversations are happening more frequently online. Whether about work, life, or a balance of both, the legislation and policies that governments pass affect the lives of millions. Using social media to keep people informed about their rights and obligations under the law is the responsible thing to do. At the Ministry of Labour, we believe just that. We’re trying to join those conversations so that we can keep people informed.

Starting With Twitter

When we got on to social media back in 2009, we started out using Twitter. Why? Well, we knew that we could connect with more people if we used the methods of communication that they were using. It was also easy to adapt traditional communication materials to the “headline” type style of the Twitter platform.

Our efforts were first put into promoting news releases, ministry events, and conviction information. Seems boring right? Well, within a few months we had several hundred followers and those numbers have kept growing (now over 3,000). Our audience, on Twitter, consists mostly of human resources professionals and lawyers. Our focus, on Twitter, has always been to deliver breaking news as it happens. We use Twitter as a headline news service.

Our social media team proved, through the use of Twitter, that we could provide a reliable, popular, and informative social media service. Soon after becoming successful online with Twitter, we started looking at other ways to connect with people using new media. Creating a Facebook Brand Page was the next logical step.

Finding Success On Facebook

Success on Facebook came from features like commenting and public interaction, which is something that people don’t get from our website. The page was made public and promoted with Twitter and our website. People started to ask questions and “Like” the photos and posters we posted.

We learned that people didn’t want to use our page as a place to share their own photos and videos. Instead they used it as a way to find out more about how Ontario laws affect their work lives. One of the valuable lessons learned after launching our Facebook Brand Page was that organizations should never try to control how people use social media services*. Instead be resilient and try to learn from the community at large. The faster you adapt to change, the better your service will be and the more people will use it.

On Facebook our target audience is the average Joe, the lady next door, the guy across the street. It’s even your son or daughter. It’s everyone that works in Ontario and it’s also the business owner that wants to learn more about how to keep his or her workers safe and employed equitably. In contrast to our Twitter service, our Facebook Brand Page empowers people by encouraging them to talk with others about their everyday work lives. The goal is to make sure that people feel understood and informed about Ontario labour laws.

Adding YouTube To The Mix

Almost concurrently to our Facebook launch, we began to use YouTube. We uploaded videos of the Minister of Labour at speaking engagements and also created videos that gave a quick overview of what ministry inspectors would be looking for during routine inspections at workplaces. These videos are aimed at keeping employers and employees aware of their rights and obligations under the laws.

YouTube is a great way to inform workers and employers. The audiences are so different, yet the videos have an impact on both because employees and employers need to know how to work with each other under the law.

The Governmental Social Media Trifecta

Through the three social media channels, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, the Ministry of Labour empowers thousands by offering easy access to important information and by taking advantage of new avenues of communication. Social media is a great way for the ministry to see what people are talking about and to participate in those conversations.

By delivering news in real-time on Twitter, the ministry keeps employers, human resources professionals, and lawyers informed. By answering questions on Facebook it helps keep employees informed about new and existing laws that are in place to protect them. On YouTube both employees and employers are kept informed about new resources, laws, and tools that will impact their working lives.

The social media team at the Ministry of Labour works hard to keep people informed about workplace health, safety, and employment standards. Social media is just one way that we help keep you connected. It’s a great way to connect your audience and it’s well worth the time and effort that makes the service successful.

Measuring online influence seems to be pretty hot in the marketing world these days.

We have a perfect storm of factors – millions of people using social media and companies eager to get their products and services in front of as many of them as possible.

Do you remember when the Twitter update box asked you, “What are you doing?” I do. I’m sorry to see it go. It needs to come back. But that’s another post…

I was introduced to Andrew Grill, the CEO of PeopleBrowsr UK, during the GetReal Twitter chat. I had a chance to speak with him about the current state of the online influence industry (oh yes it’s becoming an industry), it’s impact on social media, what companies on both sides of the equation are doing wrong, and how companies should really be approaching online influence.

The conversation was so awesome I had to create two parts so YouTube could handle it.

Take a listen and then let’s talk about it in the comments below. Here’s some questions to get us started:

1. What do you think about the companies currently measuring online influence?
2. Do you think these measurements are good? Why or why not?
3. Are you waiting to see how this all plays out and leaving it be for now?

See you after the interview!

Part 1 – Awesome

Part 2 – Awesome, Continues

Let’s Chat!

Here’s a review of our questions:

1. What do you think about the companies currently measuring online influence?
2. Do you think these measurements are good? Why or why not?
3. Are you waiting to see how this all plays out and leaving it be for now?

And go!

Thank goodness for you the reader of this blog. I applaud your ability to put up with me, my incessant changing of the site design, my rantings and ravings, and answering my questions.

I recently wrote about how blogs might not be the best tools for engagement, which we defined as:

more participation in order to create a meaningful contact or connection with our readers.

A comment written by Tony Hastings, the author of The Top 10 Blog and a recent post about Triberr going manual. Tony wrote the following:

The Lesson From Tony

Basically Tony was saying that as it stands a blog isn’t the only place that engagement can take place, and because of this we need to look at the engagement we receive on our blogs along with social media as well as offline. It’s the entire context which helps to cast the right light on the happenings on our blogs.

It was one of those “duh” moments – something we need to be reminded of on a regular basis, especially if you’re a stats geek for me.

So what does your social media program look like? Do you have one?

We do. Here’s what ours looks like.

The Social Media Hydra

On our brand spanking new (as I write this) Dempsey Marketing Google+ brand page (thanks to Keith Bloemendaal for reminding me to create a page) I state without any humility at all that we own all the Internetz.

Now you may be asking yourself how that’s possible and why I’m spelling Internets with a “z” and making it plural. All in good time.

Let me get back to showing you our social media plan.

I have a mindmap. Here it is:

So if you want the full Dempsey Marketing picture you only need to follow us 8 places. Is that too much to ask? Really?!

And people wonder why marketing is the one thing that falls down in small businesses – it’s a heck of a job, but it keeps me busy and out of trouble.

How The Hydra Works

Unlike an actual (mythical?) hydra when one head is cut off two more don’t spring up in it’s place. That would be even more work.

The reason for this set up goes back to the comment left by Tony Hastings, the lesson it relates, and the anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered – people like to engage on their social network of choice. So for maximum reach if you can manage to be many places at once go for it.

This is, for many small businesses, quite out of reach unless they have a full-time marketing person on their team. That’s the main reason many consultants will tell you to pick your platforms of choice and run with them.

Whatever you choose the keys are to be present and keep the conversation going.

I’ve revealed a part of our plan so let me toss it back to you -

Where Do You Engage Your Community?

Are you sticking with a blog? Are you most active on Twitter or Facebook or Google+?

How did you choose which social media platforms to use?

Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

I’ll see you there!

Perhaps I’m being naive. I’ll let you tell me…

There have been some fantastic comments on my post about Why I Disabled My Klout Account. I thank each and every one of you here, on other blogs, on Twitter and Facebook, on Google+ and talking with my on Skype for your comments and opinions.

One comment I received more than a few times was why I don’t simply ignore Klout and the score they give me.

Well, let me tell you why…

First, let me ask you a question:

Do you simply ignore the companies you not only disagree with but you feel are harming people?

Or do you take a position, make it public, and urge others to join you?

The other day Geoff Livingston wrote a post – The New American Dream: Be a Pundit or Wonk -  that said, and I paraphrase, we Americans have shifted from a culture of doers to a culture of talkers. And to an extent I agree with him.

I’m fortunate in that I work with small business owners and have surrounded myself with entrepreneurs that are building businesses and offering products and services that they themselves make. So I’m insulated from the people that only talk and do nothing. Frankly I can’t stand those people.

This same idea applies to the two reactions when you see a company acting badly. You can either:

1. Talk about how horrible they are and all the bad but simply “ignore them” while not opting out – in this case you are still a part of their system, and sometimes giving them your money if you continue to purchase their products and services; OR
2. You can choose to opt-out, let your issues with the company be known, and help others to know what the issues are so that they can make their own decisions, and help them if they too want to opt-out

In this instance the first choice is no choice at all, which is why I will not simply ignore Klout and allow them to continue scoring me.

People Take Klout Very Seriously

Venture Capitalists are putting money into Klout – they take it, and the money they believe they can make from it, very seriously (source).

Companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars to participate in the Klout Perks program, buying word of mouth marketing on the cheap thus short cutting the community aspects of social media which consumers are looking for – they take it and their expected returns very seriously (source).

Schools are giving students added benefits based on their Klout scores – they take it very seriously (source).

One teacher in particular – Professor Scott Gallaway of New York University has said he bases part of his student’s grade on their Klout score – takes it very seriously (source).

Hotels are giving additional perks to guests based on their Klout scores – they take it very seriously  (source).

Bloggers are using the Klout score to qualify other bloggers – they are taking it very seriously (source).

Blogs are using Klout scores to rank companies, including VC Firms (source).

All of these people and groups take the Klout score very seriously, so I do as well.

I Don’t Care What My Score Was, Because I Don’t Care About The Score

One person on Twitter got the impression from skimming my previous post that I felt scorned, based on my addition of the emails. One of the emails was an automated response to me and the other was sent to Jure Klepic by the marketing manager of Klout, Megan Berry.

Since speaking with him this person seems to have reversed course on that impression. We’ll see if he comments on this post.

So let me state for the record, I don’t care what my Klout score was before or after they changed their math. What I was shocked about was that the CEO Joe Fernandez said few if anyone would see a drop in their score, and that turned out to be completely wrong. Might want to check with the development team before saying something like that again Joe.

What I Care About Is How Irresponsibly The Company Is Acting And How Much They Are Taking Advantage Of All Of Us

I have really got to hand it to Klout. They have created a system that is sufficiently complex that your average person will probably have their head explode trying to figure it out. Let me see if I can clear it up.

Step 1: Use Public Twitter Accounts to Gain Mass

In order to be able to get those dollars from advertisers you need people to advertise to. Taking the time to invite people into a system where they’ll be publicly scored takes too long. And how many people might will opt-in to a system like that? Probably too few. Hrm, what do to?

I know what we can do! Let’s take public Twitter accounts and public Twitter information, and automatically score the people. If anyone complains we’ll tell them it’s public information. Never mind that we’re adding information on top of it and making it public.

And for added measure let’s put the onus on them to opt-out of the system that they never opted into in the first place.

Sounds like a plan.

Step 2: Add A Healthy Dose Of Game Mechanics And Make The Site Sticky

Here’s where the jargon comes into play. Gamification is something I was introduced to by Dino Dogan. Long story short is that we add game elements to different activities to make them more enjoyable, and addictive.

What are the game elements in Klout?

1. The score itself
2. Ability to compare your score to other people across different measurements
3. Messages urging you to connect with other social networks like Facebook to “improve your score” – this also connects Klout to more of your contacts
4. Show you people that you “influence” that haven’t connected on purpose to Klout and do it publicly on Twitter and/or Facebook
5. Give +K to people on topics, and get +K yourself

Those are the most obvious ones.

Step 3: Take Advantage of Basic Human Psychology

I know none of us wants to look at ourselves as a machine and I won’t go there here. Just read Brandwashed and Brainfluence and you’ll have a very different view on things.

However there are some basics of human psychology that are at work:

1. Many people are at some level competitive, and we like to see where we are in comparison to others
2. We like to show off how good, smart, etc we are. We do this by the clothes we wear, the products we buy, and what we tell people online and off. For instance I’m an Apple advocate to the core. What does that tell you about me?
3. We get bored and like that keep our interest.
4. We are social beings.
5. We like free stuff, or getting “free” stuff that makes us feel like we’re important

That’s tip of the iceberg here.

Step 4: Become The Self-Proclaimed Standard So People Take It All Very Seriously

This is nothing new and companies have declared themselves the “first” or “only” or “standard” of things for years. I learned this technique from Dan Kennedy. If you’re in a market of one then you are the standard.

Klout is not the standard. However they say they are, and if they get enough people to say they are (in the media for instance) then they sure have the appearance of being so.

And hey, here’s “the standard in online influence” telling you what your “influence score” is. Well heck, it must be true. They’re the standard! And look how many people say they are.

Funny though that Klout doesn’t say who’se on their Klout squad. I wonder what their scores are, if they are making money and if so how much, and what they all do for a living?! Hrm…

Step 5: Sell Word-Of-Mouth Marketing To Companies On The Cheap

With mass in place, game mechanics and psychology keeping people in the system and bringing more in, and enough people saying we’re the standard (something we made up) we can now bring in the cash. Enter advertisers.

Here’s a question for you – how much do you think it costs a company to advertise anywhere? How difficult is it to generate buzz? How much staff, resources, time, effort and more did it take Old Spice to create their video campaign?

A lot of all of it.

Companies are giving Klout tens of thousands of dollars to buy word of mouth marketing.

Let’s be frank here – you get a score you’re proud of, you get free stuff because of it, and you won’t talk about it?

Zappos upgraded my shipping to overnight, on my first ever order, and I got on Twitter and Facebook and told thousands of people about it. I also told everyone that saw the shoes as well. Free word of mouth marketing. But they didn’t buy that by giving me some BS score. They got it cheap, but they got it honestly. They didn’t create a system like Klout to generate it.

And look at this, I’m telling you about it now, years later.

And yes I love Zappos as a company.

I Refuse To Play Their Game

I’m taking a chance with this post, and I’m assuming a few things.

I’m assuming that you don’t want to read just another social media post.

I’m assuming that you’re enough of an adult to see how you’re being gamed and rather than getting upset with me pointing it out, instead you are thankful or at least now more aware of what’s going on.

I’m assuming that you can handle the truth.

I’m assuming that you are sick of companies acting like this and will do something about it as did – opt-out.

I’m hoping that you share this post, not to somehow help my popularity but to help others break free of the game.

I’ve been asked too many times why I don’t just ignore Klout, let them score me and go about my business.

What they are doing is reckless, it’s irresponsible, and it’s not what I believe you want from any company operating in social media. A company that has yet to give an explanation of anything, and hides behind flimsy arguments such as “Google doesn’t share their PageRank algorithm so we won’t either” or “the credit score is standard and you don’t opt-in to that” or some other completely bullshit, unfounded argument that simply doesn’t float.

Klout is yet another company taking advantage of us and making money doing it.

I’m standing up for what I believe. I’m standing up for what I believe is a better way of doing business.

I’m taking a stand and making it public. I’m taking action. And I hope that you take action too.

What I Want From Klout

Here’s what I want from Klout:

• I want Klout to remove all accounts that weren’t purposefully created by people
• I want Klout to allow people to make their scores private
• I want Klout to stop automatically creating accounts for people

That’s what I want.

 

Yesterday I sent an email to help@klout.com to disable my account.

I received a nice automated email back from them saying that they will get back to me in 3 days if my question isn’t on their support site, which it isn’t, because I didn’t ask them to disable my account there.

We’ll see what happens in three days. But until then…

In this post I’m going to explain exactly why I did it. And I’ll tell you this, it ain’t for the PR my friend.

Here’s the skinny.

First Things First Though

Before getting deep into it I want to express my thanks to you for gaving me +K on a variety of marketing and business topics on Klout. That shows me that I am helping you with the information I publish here, and I appreciate your showing me thanks. I understand it can be daunting to post a comment on a blog post – we’ve all been there.

I want to urge you to read this post in it’s entirety and read the posts I link to as well as other posts on both sides of the Klout topic. Be your own person and make your own decision.

Now lets bring some thunder!

If You Aren’t On Top, You Aren’t Getting There

When I joined the NISM I talked with you about the distaste that I got for certifications while being in the world of Agile development consulting/teaching. Well it’s happening again only this time with a company named Klout.

I have made countless friends and connections thanks to blogging and seeking people out on Twitter and other social networks. I’ve run Twitter searches for keywords, used Twitter profile searches to make new connections, and asked other people who they recommend I follow and connect with. When someone said something interesting I’d strike up a conversation and get them on Skype if I could. In 2007 it was a great way to meet people, and now that Twitter and other platforms have millions of users it’s an even better way to meet new people from all over the globe.

Never did I look to see how influential any of these people were online before deciding whether or not to connect with them. I let their actions and the knowledge that they shared dictate my decision to connect with them.

Some might say that that’s a naive way to go about things and isn’t the way you “play the game” or some other drivel. I say it’s the way you do business, and the way that I do business. It’s how I built my last business and how I’m growing Dempsey Marketing. It takes a lot of time and effort, and it works.

And then here comes a company that’s telling us that someone their application says isn’t influential isn’t good for us to engage with on social media because they have a “low score” that will bring ours down.

Exhibit A – An Email From Klout

I submit for your reading pleasure (or horror) an email that Jure Klepic received from Klout concerning a question he had about his score:

That email is embedded in an excellent post from Jure titled, “Have you been put in Klout timeout?”

The way I read that email is like this:

If you are engaging with less influential people then your influence is lessened as a result.

So basically if you’re not being retweeted, reshared or re-whatever by top dogs you aren’t influential.

But perhaps I’m not reading that correctly. Let’s look at a comment from the same Megan of Klout of the above email. This comment was on the same post from Jure. We’ll call it Exhibit B.

Exhibit B – A Comment From Klout

Allow me to quote part of that comment:

As for the example you bring up here in particular — your network impact score was going down, which does indicate that fewer highly influential people were engaging with you. If you are regularly getting your content retweeted by top influencers and that stops, yes it will impact your Score — but it’s not because you are being penalized for the engagement from others (any action driven based on your content helps your Score), it’s because of the lack of action from top influencers.

The emphasis was added by me because I want to point that particular part out.

In this comment what I read is that you can engage with people with lower Klout scores however if you’re talking with top dogs and that stops you are no longer an influencer.

Combining this comment with the email from Exhibit A we can see that:

1. In order to gain more influence and therefore a better Klout score you need to connect with people that already have influence
2. In order to maintain that high influence you need to continue to engage high influencers

Sounds like a big old influencer clique to me.

So would the advice be to never engage people of influence so that when you speak with the “less influential” – the 95% we always talk about here that you must nurture around your business because they make up the largest percentage of your community – your score won’t be impacted?

But perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. Poor Megan is being bombarded across the Internets about the non-transparency transparency post Klout published when they updated their rankings and many people’s scores dropped by 10 or more points. And you have people of actual influence doing great work like Geoff Livingston and Pam Moore urging everyone, especially companies, to ignore these flawed pseudo-metrics.

[Some MBA programs aren't listening to them...]

So I submit to you Exhibit C.

Exhibit C – Klout Login Message

This is the last message I saw when I logged into Klout to disconnect all of my social media accounts before sending the “please disable” email:

I blurred the names of people that Klout says lost influence. One of the people on the list influences me greatly, has helped me increase revenues, and has had enormous impact on many small business owners.

And this dear reader was the final straw.

So I Man’ed Up And Disconnected Everything

Merely disconnecting your social media accounts from Klout isn’t enough. You need to go into each site and revoke the access of Klout, or any app for that matter, so there is no way they can get back into your social network data. My friend Jure Klepic has a post on how to do that. It was greatly helpful.

Frankly I’ve been feeling a big hypocritical about this Klout score thing. One one hand I’m railing against how their score is attempting to measure the impossible – online influence. I’ve found that the people that never comment on my blog or “engage” with me on Twitter are the people that become my paying customers. Obviously I’ve had enough influence on them that they’ve decided to pay for my assistance.

How do you measure that?

And what of the person in the “lost influence this week” list Klout gave me that has a major impact on many small businesses that are now profitable and thriving?

How do you measure that?

And what about the person who reads your tweet, or Facebook update, or blog post, and makes a change in their life that impacts the lives of those around them? What if they never mention you?

How do you measure that?

You don’t. You can’t.

I’ve thought about this for days, read tons of posts, had many conversations. The arguments for this are thin.

The “But Google…” Argument

I’ve read a number of arguments comparing the Klout score algorithm to the Google PageRank algorithm. Here’s the holes in that argument:

• Google gets absolutely zero benefit from any website being ranked on any page of their results
• If you try to game Google you will get beat down. Panda did a nice job of that recently
• Google is not claiming that they are the standard anything

And this is one I’ve heard used in a lot of cases.

The “I Don’t Have Time To Figure It Out” Argument

This argument comes in many formats but comes down to one thing – shortcuts. Our brains naturally create association shortcuts for us, so why not use them with everything? It’s just so easy to use a number given to us even though we really have no idea what it means:

To which Geoff replied:

I understand this dilemma, but I also feel like companies that aren’t wiling to invest in  learning a community and only want to invest minimal resources, don’t really care about a community.  There are other forms of marketing that may make more sense than social for them. – Geoff Livingston

What Geoff is saying is that you and I have a choice. We can choose to go for meaningless mass or we can choose quality of interactions.

Which are you afraid to choose?

It’s Dangerous To Create Accounts For People

I’ve got to hand it to Klout, they have created an application full of game mechanics and psychology. Well played.

One thing that’s hard not to notice is how if Klout believe you influence someone not only do they suggest you invite that person they have a profile already waiting for them! This reminds me of another company that created profiles for people called GetSatisfaction.

GetSatisfaction is a social support site I’m familiar with from my web development days (not too long past). The long and short of it is this – GetSatisfaction created accounts for a number of companies, without their knowledge and without their consent. One such company was 37Signals (37S), founded by Jason Fried and also for a web framework that changed the development world – Ruby on Rails.

Well GetSatisfaction decided that they would both create an account for 37S and use their logo. What happened next is that people thought that 37S had created the account and started logging support tickets. After their requests for assistance went unanswered they started to complain publicly about it online, which is when 37S found out about it.

Needless to say GetSatisfaction was publicly slammed for creating these accounts and using the logos of companies without their consent and had to reverse course.

That was 2009. History it seems is repeating itself.

Now you can argue that a Twitter account is publicly available and I’m no attorney so I’m not sure what the legalities are of Klout using your Twitter profile picture and creating an account on their service without your consent. Perhaps someone will find out for us.

Either way, even if you’re not signed up for Klout, you might be there and people might be noticing. Not cool at all.

But what do you expect from a system that needs mass to work? After all, if you don’t have a lot of people using the system how can  you rank them?And if you can’t rank people then you can’t say who is most influential? And if you don’t have that then how can you get revenue from advertisers looking to improve (buy) more word of mouth marketing?

Hrm…

Opting Out Of The Game

Mass is an outdated and dying notion. Quality and meaningful interactions is the future. If the Occupy Wall Street movement, Middle East rebellions against dictatorships, and protests around Europe have showed us anything, it’s that people want change, and are coming together to help make it happen. And there are people that are very much fighting against that change, be it with words or with force.

What that change will look like is anyone’s guess, but this much is clear – people do want change.

Klout is not change. Klout is more of the same – the same outdated and dying notion of mass.

I for one am opting out.

Will you join me?

UPDATE – LEAVE KLOUT

Thanks to Erica Allison for pointing me to a blog post written by Kat Caverly where she provides instructions on how to opt-out of Klout.

Here are the steps:

1. Sign into Klout as usual
2. Go to your Profile Settings
3. At the bottom there is a link to Opt-Out. Click that.
4. Go to step two, skip all their yadda yadda and click the link to continue opt-ing out
5. Finally on the last page you have to digitally sign that you want to leave. Do that and then click the final opt-out button.

After all that you see a message like this one telling you it will take quite a few days for your account to be removed from their system:

An even BETTER version of these instructions have been written by Martijn Linssen, a reader of this blog, in his post: Completely drop your Klout account in 30 seconds. Lot’s of great pictures walk you step-by-step on completely removing your Klout account.

UPDATE #2

A number of commenters here and on social media have asked why I don’t simply ignore Klout. I’ve outline why in this post – Why I Won’t Simply Ignore Klout.

Hint: if you’re following people on Twitter based on what they’re talking about then most likely you are completely missing your ideal customers.

Following people based on keywords or hashtags – something every Twitter tool in existence gives you the ability to do – will not lead you to getting more leads and customers.

As an example, let’s say you’re looking for CEOs to follow. Here’s the results of a Twitter search I ran for the term CEO:

There are a few issues with this:

1. All of the people they recommend, while being CEOs, are (most likely) not your ideal customers.
2. The tweets that contain “CEO” have nothing to do with what you’re actually searching for – my customers. They are merely tweets that have “CEO” in them.

With this search you are no closer to finding company CEOs you could actually do business with. So let me show you what works a lot better for finding your ideal customers on Twitter.

Invest In Your Marketing

First thing you need to do is invest in a little tool called TweetAdder. This little app runs on Windows, Mac and Linux – so there’s really no excuse to not be using it.

How much does it cost you ask? Great question.

Current pricing is as follows:

• 1 Profile – $55
• 5 Profiles – $74
• 10 Profiles – $110
• Unlimited – $188

If it’s just you then you’ll be good with the 1 profile license. If you decide later to become a marketer or your colleagues are so shocked by the amount of ideal customers you’re attracting and what in on the action you can upgrade later and only pay the difference. And the greatest thing about this license is it’s a lifetime license – meaning you pay once and you’re done. As long as they’re producing updates you get them.

Now let’s find some customers to start talking with!

Step 1: Add Your License Key

After you buy your license key, download TweetAdder and install it, you need to add your license key so that you can use the app. Here’s how to do that:

Step 2: Add Your Twitter Account

Once your license is verified you can add your Twitter account. That’s a whopping four tiny steps to do that. Here’s how:

Step 3: Run A Profile Search And Create Your Follow List

The profile search is what you’ve spent the money on, and it’s well worth it. There are many search types inside the app however this is the one I use the most.

The profile search allows you to search for Twitter users based on:

• Keyword(s)
• Location
• Number of followers
• Number of following
• Number of updates
• If they are using the default Twitter profile image (as many spammers do)
• Have a profile URL set

I highly suggest always searching for people NOT using the default Twitter image and that DO have a profile URL set.

Here’s a screenshot of how our CEO search looks:

The results of the search are the gold. In this case we get 10,000 people to add to our “to follow list” which you can like so:

Once we have the to-follow list created it’s time for some automation.

Step 4: Automate Following Your To Follow List

This is where we get into the controversy of automation with Twitter. I’ll leave you to argue it out in the comments below because I’m a fan of automation in many instances. Always remember this: the name of the game is interaction. If you’re not interacting with people then leave social media behind my friend. Otherwise, let’s keep going!

4 steps and you’ll be automatically following CEOs on Twitter. Here’s how to do that:

Depending on how many followers and how many people you’re already following you may want to adjust the numbers in the screenshot. If you’re up in the high thousands for each you’ll be good to go.

And that’s it! You’re following your potential ideal customers.

At this point I want to be sure I hammered home a point I’ve been making throughout this post, which is…

Step 5: Start Chatting With People

Social media is all about relationships, hence the “social” part of the word. One of the keys to growing your Twitter community is to be interactive. If all you’re intending to do it gather followers you may as well not be on Twitter in the first place. People will see that you never talk with people when they visit your Twitter profile page and won’t follow you.

The method I’ve outlined helps with discovering potential ideal customers. I recommend doing the following at least a few times a week:

• Taking a look at the people you’re following on Twitter
• Review their profiles
• Take a look at their recent tweets
• If something strikes your fancy start a conversation

It’s just that easy.

Any Tips To Share?

Now it’s your turn! What are some of the tips you have for people looking to connect with more of their potential customers on Twitter?

Let us know your tips in the comments below.

We’re looking forward to trying them out!

Have you ever attended a Twitter chat? It’s a pretty interesting experience.

A number of years ago Chris Messina introduced the concept of hashtags (that little # symbol followed by a keyword) to Twitter in order to tag conversations and make them easier to find. Today this is something that’s such an embedded part of the Twitter ecosystem that we take them for granted. At least I do.

I’m not sure how long Twitter chats have been around for, but I heard about them at least a few years ago and never jumped in. During a conversation with Saul Fleischman and Jure Klepic it sounded like an interesting way to meet more people via Twitter, my favorite social network platform. Yes I just said that Twitter is my favorite. What’s yours?

So What’s A Twitter Chat Anyhow?

A Twitter chat is when a group of people join together on Twitter and have a conversation around a hashtag. Basically a hashtag such as #toolschat is chosen and everyone gathers on Twitter at a specified time. Then every tweet they send out has the hashtag, in this case #toolschat, appended to their tweet.

A tool like TweetChat will automatically append the hashtag to your tweet so you won’t forget to.

Each chat has a moderator who asks questions which starts with a “Q1″ or “Q2″ on the front of the tweet. When you answer the question you use an “A” + the question number, so something like “A1″ or “A2″. This is so a transcript can be produced of the entire conversation.

The one I joined the other day was the #toolschat. If you’re already logged into Twitter you can use the TweetChat app to see some of the conversation.

It was a fun first chat but it was hard to keep up with everything going on. And if you tried using a Twitter client like HootSuite good luck – it won’t refresh fast enough.

The Problems With Twitter Chats For Business

There are a few glaring issues with Twitter chats when it comes to using them for business and networking. Note I didn’t say with the Twitter chat I was in – that was fun. These are problems I see with Twitter chats in general.

1: The Community Killer

Every tweet you send out during a Twitter chat goes to your full Twitter stream. In speaking with a number of people I found out there was no way to stop it from happening as long as you’re using Twitter for the conversation.

This is a major problem for me. If you have a Twitter community of any size you can quickly inundate them with the chat messages – messages they don’t need or probably want.

I have more reasons below but it’s this #1 reason that I hesitated to pursue this any further. Thankfully there is a solution which I’ll get into below. But first more issues

2: Not Everyone Uses A Twitter Client

Not everyone uses a Twitter client like HootSuite or TweetDeck and can filter out the hashtags. Many people use Twitter.com. In either case forcing someone to manually filter out some of your tweets is unnecessary.

According to Google Analytics Twitter.com is the #5 source of visitors to the Dempsey Marketing blog and website.

As our Twitter community grows that number could go up. I’d prefer to not annoy the (at the time of this writing) 10K+ members of our Twitter community by flooding their Twitter account with chat tweets.

3: Twitter Maintains A Limited History

I’ve heard that Twitter only keeps 7 (or 14) days of tweets. After that they’re no longer searchable. Bye bye tweets.

As a business owner that doesn’t help you mine that data for information to create blog posts, videos, frequently asked questions and other content. In addition, the people that join you on your chat are composed of potential leads, members of your community and other industry folks.

4: No SEO Love

The toolschat folks exported the transcript to PDF. According to the Twitter terms of service it’s against the rules to export tweets in HTML format. Most likely this is because you could take their traffic and recreate their service, and it would be a huge waste of their time to track down all the people doing it. So it’s against the rules.

But what that means is that there is no SEO juice for you and your business. And you know how much we love SEO here. That’s a no go.

5: No Branding

I’ve read more than a few books that say as a small business your primary concern should be bringing in sales. I agree with that, but I also believe that branding is integral to everything you do, including community discussions.

With Twitter chats there is no branding whatsoever. So no one knows who’s moderating the discussion, moderating in this case meaning moving the conversation from one question to the next. If I hadn’t done a search on Twitter for #toolschat I wouldn’t have found the ToolsChat account and found out that Michael Q. Todd and Leo Widrich host it.

6: No Control Of The Platform

Realistically unless you host your own servers in your own datacenter and have everything sitting on them there are parts of your business and community outside of your control. However all of these social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ – give you varying amounts of control of your own data. In Twitter there is no export feature. For many this might not be a problem but when we’re talking about building a community around your business, which we are, it is a problem.

I’m not suggesting that you build your own Twitter or stop using Twitter. Don’t do that. What I am saying is that there are other options coming online that we can use that tie into Twitter.

So what is the solution for having real-time conversations with your community, being able to tie into Twitter but not flood your stream, keep your branding intact and have access to all the information afterwards in a format you can use for your business?

The Solution – Stanzr

First a big thanks to Saul Fleischman for connecting me with Taariq Lewis of Stanzr.I connected with Taariq during the toolschat and had an hour long Skype conversation with him afterwards.

Make note of how Taariq and I connected. This is how you use Twitter for business.

1. Saul and Jure re-introduced me to Twitter chats
2. Jure provided me with a list of chats I might be interested in and pointed the way to TweetChat
3. I saw a tweet from Saul an hour before the chat started that he was going to join in on the tools chat
4. I joined in after a call
5. While on the chat I was Skyping with Saul and complaining about flooding my Twitter community with these chat tweets and the overall UI fail of the chat tools. Saul mentioned Taariq and Stanzr
6. Taariq joined the toolschat (not on the behest of Saul and myself) and I connected with him
7. I made mention I was looking for something better, found the homepage of Stanzr, and signed up for the beta. I then mentioned it to Taariq
8. 2 minutes after toolschat was over I was on a video call with Taariq. An hour later I was setting up my weekly real-time marketing chat on the Stanzr platform

That’s how you use Twitter for business!!!

I take that little side trip so you have a very real-world example of social networking bringing you business. And of course here I am writing an entire post about Twitter chats, their problems, and how Stanzr helps to solve these issues. And no I’m not getting paid to write this nor did Taariq ask me.

I’m excited about this and believe that this can help your business too.

Now in all fairness to Taariq and Stanzr they are in beta and are working out the kinks. I’ve been using it for only 48 hours so I’m no expert, yet. I did join into a chat using Stanzr – the #DailyDealChat – and it was far superior to the Twitter chat I had the other day (sorry Michael and Leo). Here’s why.

All the numbered items correspond to the numbers on the screenshot below the list

1. You can choose to have your updates go out to Twitter, or not — AWESOME!
2. Company branding
3. See who is participating on the chat and follow them on Twitter
4. Easily see which messages got the most likes
5. Easily see when someone replies to you
6. Social sharing of the chat itself into Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
7. Ability for someone to add the chat to their calendar (so they don’t have to manually add it)
8. Ability for a chat member to direct message the chat moderator

Here’s how that looks inside of Stanzr:

 

And that’s just the chat. When you’re a moderator you also have stats, export features and much more. I’ll be able to write more on that once I’ve used it, this coming week! Which brings me to the last part of this post…

Join Me Every Tuesday Night At 9 PM EST For #DMChat

A big thank you to Taariq Lewis of Stanzr for allowing me into their private beta and creating the weekly #DMChat. During this weekly one hour marketing chat we’ll focus on a few marketing and business questions and discuss them as a community.

For me this rounds out the Dempsey Marketing content offerings. We have in no particular order:

• Dempsey Marketing blog (where you find yourself today)
• The New Social SEO Podcast – available in iTunes
• Dempsey Marketing Magazine – exclusively on the iPad, coming January 2012
• #DMChat – available on Stanzr and fine social media platforms everywhere

Why a chat? Let me tell you.

The bottom line is that I love talking with people. Everyone has so much to teach and share and many people I know are also very eager to learn. I’ve been enjoying doing the podcast but the only issue for me is that it’s not interactive. It’s not like a live radio show where you can call in and ask questions and get answers.

Now I’m not going to abandon it though I am changing up the format of it. However a chat allows us, and you, to continue to foster the community around your business. Who is that community made up of? Two groups of people:

1. Your ideal customers – potential and current
2. People that will help share your content and point to you as an authority. These folks are the vast majority and will never buy from you, but are extremely important for your success

Nothing amorphous about that.

Are You Using Chats For Your Business?

Have you joined into a Twitter chat? What do you think about them?

Have you used chats for your business? Any results to share?

Let’s talk about it in the comments below!

I’ll see you there…

Oh, and don’t forget to join me Tuesday nights for the DMChat and discuss attracting and converting your ideal customers.

Update: since I first published this post I’ve been voted in as the Chairperson of the Industry Advisory Committee for the National Association of Social Media (NISM). Please continue to the post…

Social media certification has been one of those topics where everybody and their mother not only has an opinion but typically has a negative one. Is it even possible to be certified in social media, something that is becoming fully ingrained in global culture and changing the way we all do business and interact? As with everything it depends.

In this post I’m going to tell you why I accepted an officership on an industry advisory committed for an organization that is creating a social media certification.

Before you jump down to the comments and start trashing me I’m going to lay out some ground rules for this conversation:

1. If you insult me or any commenter on this blog you will be blocked. I would like to have a civilized conversation about this, and if you merely call someone names without addressing their points or mine you’re a child and you’ll be treated like one.
2. Argument isn’t a bad word, nor is it bad to have one. If you make a point be prepared to back it up. When countering someone else’s points, be sure to hit them all. If you only focus on one aspect that means you don’t actually have a leg to stand on. Show all of us you have to legs.

Those are the rules! So let’s begin shall we?

The Future We’re Already In

There is no doubt that social media has had a large impact on our world. Governments have been toppled; news that was once restricted has been spread via YouTube; people are organized and fighting back against the system. And is it really any surprise?

Today we have unprecedented access to an ever increasing amount of information. Not only do faster Internet and social media networks like Twitter and Facebook connect us all, but even the firewalls countries erect to monitor and stifle their populations are no match for the Tor networks and other technological workarounds the dedicated find.

The information is there, people are absorbing it, and they are taking action.

But let me take it down a few notches and make this more local.

How Many Businesses Truly Embrace Social Media?

I graduated from business school in 2009 so things may have changed – you tell me.

At the time my web development company was using online marketing to great effect, generating a lot of authority and business. I had been using Twitter for a few years and used it too for business. It was awesome.

So you can imagine my surprise when social media – blogging, Twitter, etc. – were merely an afterthought for my MBA brethren in the marketing plans created. I was told, literally, that not only did (most) not fully understand it but it wasn’t even on the radar. That was 2009, three years after Dan Rather left CBS because bloggers helped refute a story he reported on. But hey, no biggie!

But this is a biggie. Working within a heavily connected society both local and global is not something at least 2 years ago we were taught to do.

Also in 2009 my daughter was approaching 2 years old. She would shortly begin using both my Mac and my iPhone.

Funny thing though but something pretty typical – despite major changes going on around them, many refuse to change.

Now let me ask you: how many companies truly embrace social media? And I don’t mean those that are on Twitter or created a Facebook page, I mean truly understand and operate within the new context?

What The New Context Is

Before answering that last question and to be sure we’re on the same page let me define what the new context is.

The new context is this:

• There is more competition in every industry
• Every “local business” now competes on a global scale thanks to the Internet
• Consumers use more than 10 sources of information to make a decision (1)
• People want information how they want it, when they want it, and where they want it (2)
• Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that people hate being sold at; they hate being interrupted; they hate being treated as anything less than an individual

In short it comes down to this: the customer is in control, and they dictate the rules of engagement.

They begin their purchase cycle months ahead of pulling out their wallet and making an actual purchase.

With that as the context we are all now operating in where does that leave companies not creating content around their business and making it easy for their ideal customers to find?

Aaron Lee asked about that on a recent post about your biggest competitive advantage:

And that’s where the social media certification comes into play.

Before getting into my role in this let’s talk about how to keep out of the “SOL” category.

Keep Your Company From Being SOL

SEO and social media are now becoming more intertwined. For more than a few months both Google and Bing have been integrating social media into their search results, and Google has said that they are figuring out how to make social signals factor into their search engine rankings. It’s no longer a matter of either or it’s both – you must be doing SEO and social media.

What that means, in short, is that you need to be creating content around your business that is optimized for search engines and is share-worthy. We won’t get into what “share-worthy” means here but needless to say it comes down to providing value to your customers that connects with them from the second they think about the types of products and services your company offers.

Creating content like that is only part of the equation. You also need to continue to stay in front of your potential customer providing value until they are ready to buy. That entails creating content that can reach them when, where and how they want it.

If you can do that effectively you’re good, for now.

But many companies aren’t to this point yet.

Many don’t know where to start and rather than taking a chance and going for it they do nothing. Not a good option to choose. And this is where a social media certification comes into play.

Why I Joined The National Institute For Social Media

I am very happy to announce that I am now an officer for the National Institute for Social Media – Industry Advisory Committee. I’ll be frank and tell you that I’ve had very bad experiences with certifications in the past.

My first encounter was with the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) back in 2000. During the dotcom boom you couldn’t get a tech job unless you had experience, but without a job you couldn’t get experience. A true catch 22. So I spent a year and more than a few thousand dollars and got certified along with an internship.

After that I heard a funny term – “paper MCSE.” I came to find out that you could go to brain dump sites, find many of the test answers, memorize them, and pass the certifications. There were people out there getting credentials without actually knowing how to do anything, and they were getting jobs!

Strike 1.

Strike 2 came when I was in the agile software development world. I became both a Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) and a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) while running my web development shop. I consulted for a few companies as well, spoke at international conferences, and was working my way toward getting the Certified Scrum Trainer credential when all hell broke loose. The Scrum Alliance changed the rules.

Suddenly you had to be sponsored by two people that already had the CST certification. What’s the big deal about that? Well the CST certification allowed you to certify other people. At the time a CSM class was going for upwards of $1500 per student. So with 10+ people in a classroom you can see how lucrative that is. Once the rules changed there was a major barrier, and as I wasn’t a purist Scrum person (choosing to adapt to what a customer needed) I knew I’d have trouble.

Strike 2.

Will there be a strike 3?

Here’s The Problem That Needs To Be Addressed

The major problem from what I’ve seen and heard from my colleagues that work with large organizations say and write is that companies really don’t know how to approach social media. But it’s more systemic than that – they aren’t equipped to use it effectively on many levels.

The most recent example of this is the Ragu Dad’s scandal. Just Google it for some choice posts.

But frankly I’m not surprised. You can’t just open a Twitter account, find some influencers and start tweeting them with links to your products. It takes quite a bit more than that.

Yes you need to be creating content that can be found by your ideal customers, but once they connect you need to build a relationship. That isn’t in any MBA rulebook I was given. But it’s the reality of it.

It doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t  happen easily. Just because you’re a “brand” doesn’t mean people trust you. In fact, it might mean they trust you less. Consumers are more savvy and they know many of the marketing and sales tricks used. It’s going to take more.

How NISM Plans To Address The Problem

Based on my experience with certifications I’m sure you can imagine that I was hesitant to sign on with any company that offered certification, especially in social media, something that is an evolving thing and literally reshaping our culture. It’s also something that’s highly controversial, that I’ve slammed, and many people I know have slammed too. But a conversation with Eric Mills changed my mind.

Eric can comment on this better than I, but here’s the role of the NISM as I understand it.

Companies want to incorporate social media into their businesses. However as I mentioned above they don’t know where to start. They also don’t fully understand the qualifications someone needs to “do social media well.” When it comes to business it takes more that just talking with people on Twitter or Facebook.

For large companies it takes more, which was another reason I was hesitant to join NISM – I don’t work with large companies. They aren’t my ideal customer. They’re also bureaucratic and slow – two things that annoy me a lot (hence I work for myself). However that doesn’t mean I can’t add value to the organization and bring an “in the trenches” viewpoint. So I joined.

And what will an NISM certification certify for?

Currently there are three in the works:

1. Certified Blogger
2. Certified Social Media Manager
3. Certified Master Of Social Media

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on those names. But I digress.

Essentially each of these certifications will show a level of understanding of social media and what is entailed. Here’s an excerpt from the NISM certification page about the certifications:

However, passing a certification does not imply that a person knows everything required to be considered an expert in a given field. By passing a certification it establishes only that a person is minimally competent to work unsupervised in a given field or profession.

They aren’t claiming that you know everything there is to know about social media. Quite the contrary.

Earning a NISM certification verifies that your knowledge and skills that are at a level that is necessary to be proficient in a variety of situations, but also provides an impartial, third-party endorsement of your knowledge and experience – with the intent to enhance your career opportunities.

Sorry – no guru status here folks. And that’s what sold me – they aren’t giving “expert” status with the certification.

There is also going to be continuing education, something we see in many professional fields including real estate and project management (the PMI).

What Do You Think Of This?

I really want to know what you think about this so let’s talk about it.

Don’t forget the ground rules for this conversation I have above.

Here are some questions we can use to start it off:

1. What is your view of the current use, or lack thereof, of social media by large companies?
2. Do you think a certification is necessary to help more companies use social media? Why or why not?
3. What do you think of social media certification in general?

Let the debate begin!

Update

Since writing this post I have opted out of Klout. I talk about why I opted out and also why I chose to not simply ignore it but to take action.

If you’re still interested read this post, but please proceed knowing that I’ve left and have stated my reasons for doing so.

clout (noun):

Informal . pull; strong influence; muscle, especially political power – Dictionary.com

Klout:

Klout measures influence online. When you create content or engage, you impact others. Klout analyzes that impact to find your Klout Score, influential topics, and your influencers. Klout is the standard for influence.

Yes, I’ve Changed My Mind About Klout

When I first saw Klout my reaction was the same as many others – how in the hell does a company purport to measure the influence one has online when there are so many factors to look at? Well I’ve come around and here’s why.

The Klout score, while not being a perfect measure (as nothing ever is so let’s get over it) is composed of three parts:

1. How many people you influence; (True Reach)
2. How much you influence them; and (Amplification)
3. How influential they are (Network Score)

You can see the breakdown of how it all works on the Klout score web page.

Regardless of my opinion here are the facts – companies are using your Klout score to determine whether or not they will engage with you and give you free stuff.

This post isn’t a debate on whether or not this is good, bad or total crap – that ship has sailed. Rather I want to show you how you can be sure you’re influence is being measured for the right things.

Getting Started With Klout

When you sign up (for free) for Klout the first thing you want to do is connect all of your social networks. There are many to choose from. At a minimum be sure to connect Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Once you have them all connected up Klout will work it’s magic. It appears that by default you get a score of 10. I added the Dempsey Marketing Magazine to Klout and that’s the score I got right off the bat. Of course starting out with a score of 0 wouldn’t be much fun, and I’m sure the folks at Klout know that.

Once you get your score you’ll see a list of topics that Klout believes your influential on. This is what we’re talking about today.

Topics Klout Finds You Influential On

After a time, how long I cannot remember, Klout finds topics that it believes you are influential on. These may or may not be accurate. Thankfully though Klout allows you to take topics off of your list.

As an example, before I started Dempsey Marketing in December 2010, I had 8 years of talking about software development and then agile software development. These are no longer relevant to me so I don’t need to be seen as such.

To knock it off the list so Klout can find other topics for you, simply click the “X” by the topic and it will knock it off the list.

What this does is ensure that people cannot give you Klout for that topic, and potentially “make you influential” for something you aren’t.

Keep Your Klout Topics Clean

Over time and as you connect more social networks with Klout the site will find more topics for you. So be sure to log in on a weekly basis to see what topics Klout has added for you. If you see one that doesn’t make sense help it out and remove it.

If you’re working with online content marketing to grow your business and you haven’t got a podcast yet, get one! Especially if you’re a consultant or solo entrepreneur.

Seriously, I can’t think of a better way to really connect with customers and prospects and show your skills as a thought-leader, coach, or service provider than with a podcast.

One year down the line after starting my own podcast it’s become the biggest source of lead generation for my business.

Sure, all the other “traditional” online strategies work: I run a business blog, I’m active on Twitter, post videos from time to time and try and keep up with Google+ and Facebook. It’s the podcast, though, that people seem to connect with as they tell me it helps them really get to know me.

The Backstory

I realized the potential of audio after posting a short tryout podcast on my site over a year ago. Although the sound quality wasn’t great, and I wouldn’t listen to it now (!), within 24 hours I’d secured two major speaking gigs on the back of it.

I ask every customer how they found me and both clients explained that they’d been convinced about my suitability for the job by my podcast.

As a former university lecturer I was used to getting asked to speak at conferences and business events, but no one had ever contacted me about this through my site even though I regularly made it clear on the site I was available for speaking. So this was a first and a great example of that old adage: show, don’t tell!

After doing some research about what I really needed to produce a quality podcast, I launched a show which is currently up to episode 32.

Very quickly it enabled me to quadruple my speaking and coaching rates, get invited to speak speak abroad, and more importantly it’s helped build new relationships that are continuing to grow my business.

So Can Anyone Do This?

Sure. The entry level to podcasting isn’t huge. Essentially all you need is a computer, free editing software and a USB mic. My own approach is slightly more advanced (mixer, digital recorder, dynamic mic and Adobe Audition) but that’s purely because I’m an audio snob. My wife says I’m trying to be the BBC !

Editing audio takes a bit of know-how, but it’s nothing you can’t learn to do if you apply yourself. There are stacks of resources out there, particularly on YouTube, and if you’re really struggling or in a rush you can always hire a consultant.

My Top 7 Tips to Podcasting Success

Whilst there are never any guarantees, and many podcasters never get past episode seven, here’s what I think you could do to open up another successful source of lead generation for your business:

Tip #1: Define the niche for your show with your title

E.g.

• The Improve Your Golf Swing Podcast
• French in 5 Minutes a Day
• Beat the Tax Man Podcast

These in turn could generate leads for a golf coach, language teacher or accountant selling a range of products and services such as: consulting, coaching, and digital training products, etc

Tip #2: Keep your show under 20 minutes

People don’t have much of an attention span. Short and snappy advice works best. According to the boffins, the average commute to work is 18 minutes in the US. Ideal time for listening to a podcast!

Tip #3: Write good show notes

Scripting your show word for word makes you sound unnatural. But too many umms and arhs can drive a listener crazy.

If you have clear show notes, say, in the form of bulleted points to cover you’ll stay on topic, won’t struggle for something to say, and won’t scare away your listener.

Tip #4: Record your show at -12 to – 6 DB, then raise it to -1 DB in your software prior to release

Trust me. This is what you need to do to stop your sound from spiking and distorting.

Tip #5: Interview experts in your field

Talking to others is easier than talking by yourself. And interviews are a great way of bringing news, information and a new perspective to your audience. It will also help more people find you as interviewees will spread the word about your show.

Tip #6: Invest in great art work

Your goal is to get people to subscribe to your podcast, primarily from iTunes. That way they keep up to date with every new show you release. Great art work gets you seen in iTunes. No doubt about it. And remember: it should be 600 x 600 pixels to look great on every device.

Tip #7: Promote your podcast as part of your integrated marketing strategy

I talk about my podcast on Twitter, make it visible on my blog, occasionally export a show to YouTube, and post links on Facebook. By hook or by crook people find out about the show and with that the audience grows and in turn my business grows.

So although the audience for podcasts might be smaller than the number of Twitter followers you have or visitors to your blog, a podcast can generate more qualified leads because regular listeners come to see you as the go-to expert in your field, which is never a bad thing.

So take my advice: go start a podcast or two!