uber.la

Nov 29 2011

THE Biggest Mistake In Social Media Marketing: Not Asking for the Business

Category: about me,executive learnings,social media,social media marketing,tech opinion,trust & reputation — jmacofearth @ 3:27 pm

UPDATE: See the subscription and ebook offer form. Right over THERE > >

I've been plugging away at uber.la for several years and I'm doing a few things right. But I have missed the biggest opportunity of all.

I have failed to ask for your business effectively. Something known as underselling.

I talk about CTA (calls to action) all the time in my strategy documents and presentations. I harp on opt-ins, and giving a gift of perceived value for free in return for that contact information. And where is mine?

I can tell you it's about making the right form for the website. (I've got the consulting form up now!)

I can tell you I've got the great new 90-second video on SEO that I need to finish first.

I can tell you it's because my book, The Twitter Way has been delayed.

I can tell you I just haven't gotten to "the offer," and I'm not a big fan of e-books. The offer is done.

And I would be making excuses. So when are you going to do it? For your online presence, when are you going to ASK FOR THE BUSINESS?

All the excuses in the world don't add up to a single lead. I may be generating goodwill here, and traffic, and education, but the entire thing is a FAIL without the business behind it.

Of course, it's easier to plan and execute that strategy for other businesses. I'm just doing my job. That's what I can do for your business, big-medium-small. And I love doing it.

But do it for myself, I must. I know what the challenge is for most small businesses thinking about social media. And I've been a part of some successful social media efforts, so I have some ideas for your business as well. Now I need to give that solution, or the framework for that solution, to you for free. Well, in exchange for your email address. You can opt-out if you like, but without contact, I'll never know you were here other than that blip on Google Analytics.

I'll be back shortly with the offer and the form. You can hold me to that!

Then I can ask you with a clear conscience, "Where's your value proposition and your call to action?" And we'll get on with the business of social media marketing.

And of course if you need help generating ideas, strategic plans, or content, let me know. I'm here to help. (my weak call to action)

UPDATE: ~~I have the form. Now I need the gift to offer you in exchange for your email address.~~

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2011/11/social-media-mistake/

Check out the Social Media for Business page and these other posts about learning social media:

Tags: biggest mistake in social media, call to action, clear conscience, generating goodwill, getting started with social media, lead generation, small business, social marketing, social media, social media consulting, social media consulting form, social media for business, social media marketing, social media startup, social media strategy, strategy documents, value proposition

Comments (3)

Nov 28 2011

YouTube Video Marketing Results (CHART) UPDATE 12-4-12

Category: social media,social media marketing,tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 9:54 am

UPDATE 12-4-11: The new YouTube analytics is out. And my 30-day experiment with video marketing is pretty cool. I'm happy.

I created a visual resume and intro to social media video presentation on Oct. 28th. It was nice to have a new format of content to promote and use as a calling card for my social media consulting business. And as I began to see the growth in views on YouTube I began to have ideas about other educational videos I could produce to help small businesses get a handle on social media marketing. So I have since produced 4 more educational videos and 2 more playful, sidebar videos (Google Hangouts with Steve Jobs & New Twitter Spam). See the Social Media In-Less-Then-2-Minutes Video Page for the complete list.

* see this slide fullscreen or download the PPT presentation on Slideshare.net.

As I reported last week in this post: YouTube Video Marketing with Social Media: Reporting 3 Weeks of Results the traffic increase was pretty good. I was not getting traffic yet from the YouTube searches, but I guessed as I upped the number of available videos, added a social media marketing videos playlist, and began promoting the videos directly on my site, that I would see another uptick in traffic.

Then on Nov. 17, my YouTube Marketing Report post had a big day. And yesterday, Nov. 27, another Twitter-related post (How to Get Useful Business Information Out of Twitter: Hashtags for Social Media Research) took off giving me my highest single day traffic in months. (400+ views in one day)

I'm running more analytics on the deeper results, but I wanted to share this today, to give you another reason to kickstart your 2012 online marketing plans with video content. And I should have another video out this afternoon, The Fastest SEO Guide EVER. So look for my next results post in a couple weeks, and I'll dig further into the mechanics of my online marketing with YouTube.

And of course if you need help generating ideas, strategic plans, or content, let me know. I'm here to help.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2011/11/video-marketing-results/ ‎

Check out the Social Media for Business page and these other posts about learning social media:

Tags: CHART of Video Marketing, educational videos, findability, google analytics, largest search engine, learning social media, marketing concept, marketing efforts social media content, marketing with youtube, powerpoint presentation, search engine marketing, social business, social marketing, social media results, social media strategist, steve jobs, video marketing, youtube marketing, youtube results

Comments (12)

Nov 27 2011

Twitter Signal to Noise Ratio: Trying to Find Meaning & Losing Friends

Category: community building,social media,social media marketing,tech opinion,twitter way — jmacofearth @ 7:01 am

I don't think this is a stretch. Nobody really has any idea how to use Twitter. And each month I find more and more people on my "haven't tweeted in 30-days" list. And some of these folks are SEO workers, social media mavens, or otherwiseknownas "people in the business." And they're dropping off Twitter at an alarming rate.

So as things go with technology these days, if it's solving a problem you use it, when it ceases to be useful you drop it. Twitter is falling into the latter category.

Social: The friendly part of Twitter is quickly dying off. I have very few social conversations on Twitter these days. When I am active, and posting odd and skewed perspectives on Twitter, I get maybe one response in twenty tweets. I using to get some witty reparte going on Twitter with friends and frenemies. But not more, the line has gone dead for social fun. (Update 11-28-11: Try this. Ask a question on Twitter. I used to get 3 – 5 responses, often from people I didn't know. Now I'm lucky to get one reply for every 10 questions. I miss the interactions.)

Small Business: Other than tweeting coupons for weekend food and drink specials and a mad rush of Black Friday sale tweets. Small business simply has no idea why or what to tweet. And I don't blame them. I'm not really listening for that, are you? In fact, I use a filter on Tweetdeck that completely removes "coupon" or "on sale" tweets from my feed.

Big Business: The case study of all case studies is DellFactoryOutlet. It seems so routine today, but tweeting special deals with specific OFFER CODES that could be tracked back to Twitter was a pretty big deal. The first million made using Twitter was Dell's claim to fame for quite some time. Well, everyone has caught on to the idea. Entire businesses have sprung up to do the DFO-concept to the extreme. And I couldn't care less.

Social Evangelists: So what exactly do I listen for? What do I tweet these days? As much as I would like to think I am a tasteful tweeter, and I have put some time into trying to figure out what that means, I too am broadcasting more than I'm listening. I still hope for conversation tweets, but it seems people have less time and less patience for tweeting. If it's not part of their job, most normal people are turning off Twitter. So a lot of time time what we get is people tweeting about tweeting. Or better yet, people tweeting about Facebook and Google+, I guess because Twitter is a better place to rant than the actual networks themselves.

And one thing that Twitter still has is tools to measure, listen, parse, search, graph and track Tweets. So it is a social media marketer's dream. You can get real-time graphs on sentiment, on esoteric measurements like "share of voice." And the couponers must be making a killing on Twitter because a new group-coup business seems to start up every week.

But if the only people really listening are the social media marketers, it becomes the proverbial echo chamber. We are only hearing ourselves talk about ourselves.

Oh, and I guess there are a lot of people who are the exact opposite of me, who are tuning IN to the COUPONS. Making decisions on where to eat or go to happy hour based on the #hashtag or deal of the moment.

Have your Twitter habits changed? Do you value the conversation you are having on Twitter? Have you stopped tweeting all together? I sure hope Facebook has not really won!

I'm not saying I've given up on Twitter. In fact I'm working even harder, see links below, to educate people on how to tweet better and do research on Twitter. But if I'm growing tired and cynical about Twitter, it's no wonder the non-social-media-focused person has much patience to learn something that seems so time consuming.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2011/11/twitter-noise/ ‎

Check out the Social Media for Business page and these other posts about learning social media:

How to Get Useful Business Information Out of Twitter: Hashtags for Social Media Research
Bogus Posts Starting to Show Up in Social Marketing Channels (New Twitter Spam)
Social Marketing Strategy: Thinking Beyond the Page (VIDEO)
Social Network Content Marketing Tactics: Using LinkedIN Groups (VIDEO)
What's Working Really Well in Social Media Marketing? (CHART)
Google Analytics for Online Marketing in Less Than 2 Minute (VIDEO)
How Can a Social Media Strategist Help Your Business? (VIDEO)
Social Business Lead Generation in 75-seconds (VIDEO)

UPDATE: I just had an idea for a #hashtag movement. And I find, it has already started!

Yep, there's a facebook page and a twitter account.

Screen Shot 2011 11 27 at 8.25.15 AM Twitter Signal to Noise Ratio: Trying to Find Meaning & Losing Friends

Here's a link to get the Twibbon for free: http://twb.ly/occupytwibbon

Screen Shot 2011 11 27 at 8.13.26 AM Twitter Signal to Noise Ratio: Trying to Find Meaning & Losing Friends

+++

Wonder what I am talking about when I say Twitter porn? Here is a list of recent followers on a new account I set up for a client. We're already up to 200+ followers! Only 40 of them are real.