Articles Tagged with Social Media

#SMsceptic: How To Get More RTs (The Copycat Way)

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This post’s been drafted since February and I’ve been reluctant to publish it, but after reading Cracked.com’s The 5 Most Notorious Joke Thieves on the Internet and particularly #4, I thought “ahh what the heck….”

4 Steps to RT Success!

Step 1
Find a popular tweet of the moment, usually an image or joke that’s getting shared like nobody’s business.

Hipster birds imageStep 2
Put a spin on it. Make it slightly different. Or if you want to be a right git, don’t even bother changing it – copy and paste it as-is.

Step 3
Tweet it in your own right. Don’t RT the source (in the old RT/quote style or otherwise) – just pass it off as your own.

Step 4
Watch the RTs roll in.

Example

Did you see that “R.I.P. Journalism” tweet (about Katy Perry unfollowing Russell Brand on Twitter) that made the rounds a while back?

Here’s the earliest tweet I could find from January 2012:

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Dear Alan Weiss: You’re Wrong About Social Media!

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Vintage social media imageWhile holidaying in Spain I read two business books, recommended by @mackfogelson of Mack Web Solutions and @lstigerts of Marketing Gal during a recent #maximpact webinar: The Pumpkin Plan and Million Dollar Consulting, respectively.

(Please note: the above two Amazon links are affiliate links.)

I adored the former. The latter, Million Dollar Consulting, was interesting for a number of reasons. The author, Alan Weiss, makes some great points, and it’s clear that he is an expert when it comes to his profession and the world of consulting, but I had a few… bugbears about some of what he said. But this isn’t a book review. In fact, I’m only going to dig deeper into one area where I strongly disagreed: his thoughts on social media.

Before I continue, it’s important to point out that MDC was originally published in 1992, well before the world of social media (and even the Internet) became prominent as the behemoth that we know and love today. However, its 4th (and latest) edition was published in 2009 and has been updated to include “brand new material on blogging and social networking.” And while Mr Weiss praises the Internet (“The Internet and its accoutrements… have offered marvelous ways to improve our effectiveness and efficiency”) and recommends blogging (“Use a blog to regularly… promote your experience and ‘go to’ status”), it is clear that the man is not a fan of social networking.

While everyone is most certainly entitled to his or her opinion, just as Weiss is entitled to his own, the problem here is that his opinions are spoken in absolutes: it’s not “consider against using it” or “give it a try but be warned,” but more of a “don’t bother” and “don’t waste your time” attitude instead. Not only that, but when you’re dealing with an authority like Weiss, readers/fans will hang on every word and take every single suggestion on-board – I bet a fair few readers have said to themselves: “You’re right, Alan! Forget social media! Who needs it!”

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How I (Briefly) Became An Internet Meme…

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Meme sketchA short, lighthearted post while I continue the transition from employment to self-employment…

Earlier this week I shared one of a number of professional headshots I’d had done, taken by the wonderful Peter Rowlands of P & M Photography:

I chose a green background for a few of the photos to coincide with the branding. However I didn’t expect people to make this observation…

Uh-oh. Well you can tell what happened next…

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My First Ever Online Marketing Campaign (Was An Absolute Failure)

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Bob Dylan Fail imageI recently got into a bit of an… umm… ‘altercation’ with a South Wales-based business (who shall remain nameless) via Twitter. They followed me and then sent me multiple copied and pasted @mentions basically saying: “we’ve followed you, so the least you can do is follow us back.”

I politely told them that this wasn’t a good approach to social media, to which they replied telling me that while they appreciated the feedback, they were annoyed at me for doing it in a way that was public (i.e. not via DM or email instead). I informed them that in a social media space, others wouldn’t afford them that luxury (and would be a lot harsher than I was), and reiterated that I wasn’t having a go – I was only trying to help. They then unfollowed me (charming… but quite funny).

But it’s true. I wasn’t having a go. I was trying to help. I was speaking from experience.

You see, my first ever online marketing campaign – years before I got my start in SEO – was for myself, as a solo musician. In early 2006 I released my first CD (Bad River, a 5-track EP) and wanted to promote it online. So I did it via the social media website I was most prominent on at the time: MySpace (my MySpace profile is still there by the way).

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#SMsceptic: Etiquette Tips For Gentler (Yet More Effective) Twitter Outreach

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Megaphone graffiti imageIt’s been a little while since I wrote an #SMsceptic post (i.e. moans about social media), but following a recent first-hand experience and various conversations with colleagues/industry peers/fellow tech enthusiasts, I wanted to discuss Twitter @mentions some more, especially in the context of conducting outreach.

For the record, in my opinion, outreach via Twitter is awesome. I prefer it to email (which is I guess the more standard approach in an online capacity) for a fair few reasons:

  • It’s quicker and easier. “Hey, I wrote about you – check it out: [shortened URL].” Boom! Done.
  • It’s less pestering to an extent (…at least I think so, as I see email as a somewhat more formal means of communication and therefore Twitter as less formal – with that in mind, an ill-timed or unwanted @mention may be viewed with less dislike than an email of the same intent).
  • It holds more weight from an authoritative point of view – if someone’s thinking “who is this guy/girl?!” then they can check out your profile. If you have stuff in common or they realise that you have mutual acquaintances then it might help with the process. They might not be able to assess all of that by email alone, e.g. if you don’t have any info in your email signature.
  • It’s visible to those who have an interest in both of you – i.e. if someone is following both the sender and receiver of the tweet, they’d be able to see it in their feed and – as they know both of you – they might be inclined to check it out as well.

Also, @mentions are generally more effective than DMs (Direct Messages) as the latter requires that both people follow each other, which may not be the case all the time, especially if you’re conducting outreach with people who may not know you (yet).

Anyway, I digress. Apologies… I tend to do that.

The main point of this post is help you to avoid a few common pitfalls, take a softer approach and generally piss as few people off as possible (which can sometimes be the nature of the beast with this type of thing).

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