How Not To Win Friends and Influence People

So you’ve got yourself a Twitter account and you find yourself following people left and right and excited when someone follows you back.

Ok, let’s step back for a second for those new to Twitter and just go over some of the lingo.

To “follow” is to add someone so that you can see what they are tweeting or talking about. When you are “followed” by someone else, it means (or could mean) that people are interested in what you have to say. Yay! Well, ideally it means they are interested in what you say.

It seems a lot of people will just follow people because they want to be followed in turn and have a whole lot of followers. Which is great if that’s what interests you but what you are left with is a whole bunch of disjoint tweets and a lot of noise.

However, if you truly want to make effective use of your twitter time, follow people who share relevant interests and with whom you can engage and participate in meaningful conversation.

So I’m following interesting people and have some following me back. Now what?

Well, here’s what you shouldn’t do:

1-Blatantly self-promote:
Nobody likes a self-promoter and social media is about everything but that. It’s about building relationships first : engaging with the people who are interested in your brand, subject matter and business, second.

2- Be fake.

Be genuine. Be real. Use your authentic voice. Most of the people you interact with online with you will never actually meet therefore in order to have meaningful online relationships you really need to be yourself. This will attract more followers and raise your credibility as a veritable source.

3-Bombard your followers

If you are constantly pushing out new content and new links you may overwhelm your followers. Sometimes less is more and if you are constantly tweeting you actually may be overlooked. Tweet value and your followers will seek you out.

Twitter has been likened to a cocktail party whereby you will talk to a lot of people, filter out a lot of information and personal stuff that you don’t really care about (while pretending to be interested) but ultimately takeaway some useful bits of information that will help you.

Be conscious of the points above and you will stand out above the crowd.

Do you have a social media strategy?

To Tweet or Not To Tweet…That is the Question.

With all the buzz these days surrounding social media marketing it is hard to resist not joining in fear of being left behind and missing out on great marketing opportunities. However, it’ is worth mentioning that while social networking sites may be free to join there is still an investment of time, therefore it’s important to have a strategy.

Strategy?

Twitter may be the site du jour but is it really relevant for your business needs? Same applies for LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Technorati….It can be tough to navigate the social media landscape without a plan. There are sites devoted to every profession, interest group, technology etc.

Start with the end in mind

You need to identify what it is you are trying to achieve- build an online community, website stickiness, generating leads, increasing brand awareness, increasing sales, thought leadership, listening to what your customers are saying or even keeping abreast of the competition.

Research Your Target Audience

Where does your audience hang out online, if they are online? Just because Twitter and Facebook are hot right now, doesn’t mean that’s necessarily where your specific audience hangs out.

Before Starting a Strategy

How much time are you willing to invest? How will you measure success? How long are you willing to try?

In the upcoming posts, we will elaborate on the above questions (so make sure to take the time to think about them!) and guide you through the process of building your very own strategy. Stay tuned =)

Everyone’s a-Twitter? But me!

Ever feel like you can’t keep up with technology? That when you finally joined Friendster   it was no longer the IT thing since all your friends had moved on to Facebook.
You then joined Facebook and thought: “Now what? Do I really care what John Smith-my friend from 15 years ago is doing on Saturday night?”

Moreover, if you own a business you keep hearing about Web 2.0 but just don’t know how to ‘upgrade’?  You know it’s something you should do and that there are tons of benefits but don’t know where to start.
Well, you are not alone.

Everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon and there are new experts in Facebook, Twitter , LinkedIn , Myspace -you name it,  popping up everyday, trying to share tips, tricks, how-to’s, how not to’s and suddenly you are just as overwhelmed as when you first started.

The key is to to take a step back and evaluate what it is you are trying to achieve. Brand awareness? Building an online community?

The goal of our blog is to break down and simplify these steps for you and share success stories.