Blog Posts


24. May 2009:

Marketing And Twitter Revisited

Twitter marketing, it's all the rage and since my last post on Tooting Your Twitter Horn I've come up with a bit more to add to my previous thoughts. Some of this has come from experience and some of it from the thoughts and observations of others.

No, I'm not going to retract what I have said previously, I still believe Twitter is a kind of love/hate thing for me, but I have learned a lot more since last writing and much of it is worth sharing. This is not a "do it my way" "do it this or that way" type of offering, just a few more things to share and disseminate to those struggling to find their Twitter comfort zone.

So many people are talking about Twitter that it is fairly easy to find answers to most of the questions you may have, and it seems there is always something new to learn.

My use of Twitter on a daily basis has seen my network grow steadily and there have been no real secrets to this happening. If you participate and seeek out like minded people it is almost inevitable. Yes, there are ways to accelerate the size of your network and I've tried a few of them. Like most new users my choices were not always wise when I first started out, but I have since discovered some very useful and powerful tools.

Hint, many of the scripts that require you to Tweet a message advertising the service are not well received by many but it's up to you regarding the use of individual programs.

However' learning as you go has always been my preferred method online and it will be the same for most new Tweeters. So, let's get onto a few gripes first...mostly everyday things on Twitter.

(These things irritate a lot of people but if you think they are things that will work for you I'm not going to stop you - the Twitterverse is a land of free speech to my mind).

I have come to agree with the overriding philosophy that Twitter is first and foremost about getting involved and interracting with your network. I have struck up some really cool conversations and met a lot of people by participating actively so as far as I'm concerned it was time well spent. By the same token, the mistakes that so many make, seem so blatant and obvious (and we're talking strictly marketing here).

An experienced eye can soon tell the people using services like TweetLater that queue messages and post them on a schedule set by the user who will doubtless be off doing other things with no intention of ever spending time on "social" Tweeting. For them it's just an advertising medium. The fact that their Tweets are monotonously uniformly spaced and are always the same sales messages every day is, I would suggest, guaranteed to turn people off. It's the good old scattergun approach, probably delivering the same old carnage in terms of results.

It's a sloppy tactic and it's probably doomed to failure.

Then we have the "liars". Yes there are lots of them, so let's be frank shall we? There are many examples of this type flowing through the stream of Twitter.

Affiliate links blatantly posted with accompanying false claims "I'm making XYZ a week with this crap and you can too...."usually followed by a hoplink. Alternatively, "I've suffered from XYZ infirmity for years but this cured me....(another hoplink).

Now, if you want people to trust you and buy something on your recommendation, lying is not a good start. Speaking in the first person when it is obvious you have never done anything more than troll your way through the Clickbank marketplace and grab a hoplink is marketing ineptitude at full throttle. And let's face it people, who believes someone who has made a fortune last month, reversed his balding, lost 500 pounds, given up smoking and perfected his golf swing all at once? That's some dude.

Then we have those promoting Twitter tools to explode your following. If you have only a small following yourself how do you think this looks? Be very careful with your reputation, because online, it's often all you have.  I know people are looking for simpler ways to build their accounts, but if you behave naturally and talk to others, your following will grow "organically". Be patient or spend lots of money on a pro tool like Hummingbird (see resources below).

Along the same lines are those who brag about success but forget that it is easy for someone to do five minutes of research and blow them out of the water. Prime example was a young lad (if his avatar is to be believed) pushing several sites promising marketing riches and the like. On inspection, each site was an early 90's cookie cutter template with a few PPC ads slapped on and content written by someone probably more accustomed to eating Farley's Rusks and peeing in their Huggies. What's more, the sites were receiving zero traffic, or as close to zero as you can get.

More disturbing however was the individual's fawning and retweeting of a so called "guru" by whom he has obviously been conned into parting with money probably better spent on a college fund, for information worth absolutely nothing. Said guru/marketer was also busy making claims for another of his devotees sites regarding levels of success, totally debunked by looking at the site's statistics.

Now, as I've said before, far be it from anyone to tell anyone that there is a correct way to behave on Twitter, that annoys me just as much, but there are right and wrong ways to behave in life and those should really carry through to what you do on the internet. Yeah, some hope I know but it's worth saying.

On the upside, I have also met some cool people on Twitter and have found some great uses for it. It can be fun, if time consuming, and from a marketing perspective it is certainly worth incorporating into your efforts.

Yesterday I posted a tweet that was picked up by SEO master AndyBeard and the resulting response by way of sales was quite remarkable. Not many high profile users will give you the time of day like Andy, but, if someone with a large and relevant following knows you and decides to press the right buttons, the benefits can be delivered very quickly on Twitter.

I've posted some interesting but by no means extensive, resource links below for further reading. Ultimately Twitter is rising in my list of priorities and I'm now suggesting that maybe it should in yours too.

Oh, and don't forget to follow me @Caymanhost and get to meet some other cool marketing Tweople

Useful Twitter Links

Creating Multiple Twitter Accounts With One Email Address

Learning Twitter (Hashtags, Whales etc)

HummingBird Pro Twitter Tool (expensive but powerful) Best For Those Wanting To Build Networks Fast

Brute Force Twitter - Another network building tool (untested)

Twitter Salvation - Twitter For Small Business Users

Tweeting Too Hard - Tweets and Tweople Lampooned 

Qwitter - Monitoring Twitter Unfollowers On Your Behalf

Exit Tweet Generator (For Webmasters Wishing To Promote A Specific Site)

MrTweet - recommend your friends to others

Twitter Business Cards

File Twitter - Easily Share Files With Twitter Friends and Followers

Twitter Grader - Find Out How You and Others Rank

Tweet Backup - If You Really Want To Backup Your Twittering

Twitter Graphics - Excellent Selection Of Free Twitter Buttons and Badges

Keeping Up With All Your Friends & Followers Try Seesmic Desktop or TweetDeck



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08. May 2009:

Tooting Your Twitter Horn

Much has been written and continues to be written about Twitter. I thought carefully before writing this post, wondering if it was worth adding even more noise to the Twitter craze and eventually decided to air my opinions on the whole Twitter gravy train.

Before going any further, please realize that this comes from an internet marketing perspective, and understand that Twitter is not solely an internet marketing tool, although many would have you believe that it is.

Having used Twitter for the past few months, I have plenty of observations, some of which will doubtless ruffle a few feathers and cause argument, but these are my honest opinions and conclusions as a Twitter user.

On Twitter you will find a large number of idiots, as well as a large number of insecure and opinionated people. Of all the social networking sites I have ever used, Twitter definitely takes the prize for having some of the most obnoxious internet policemen types. What makes me say this? It is the Twitter Horn Tooters, of which there seem to be an endless supply. The one thing that most of them have in common is an ulterior motive or an axe to grind.

By way of a few examples, here are some of the things that I find most unsavoury about some Tweeters.

The Rule Makers - these are the kind of people who feel they have a right to tell everybody else what they can or cannot do with Twitter. What is often noticeable about these types is their blatant "do as I say, not as I do" ethos. The world is full of them and so, alas, is Twitter. It is sorely tempting to tell them simply to **** off, something you would more than likely do in the real world.

These are the people who somehow believe that you can apply the word "spam" to anything and everything that they don't agree with. Newsflash, no Tweet can be considered spam, because you elected to "follow" the person who sent it. In effect you opted in and if you don't like it, you can opt-out just as quickly. On Twitter it's called "unfollow".

Another favorite pastime of the Rule Makers, is to belittle anyone whose follower numbers are less than theirs, somehow making the leap that they are superior in almost every way to whoever they are attacking based on this idiotic premise. Additionally of course, they will attack those who are not building their Twitter following the "right way" and throw out the tried and tested spam arguments, the holier than thou protestations against anyone who has the audacity to try and use Twitter for any kind of commercial or personal financial gain.

Of course, most of them have no intention of trying to open anyone's wallet, they are the picture perfect example of altruism and will often go as far as to tell you how they "value" their followers and dream of only good things for them, whilst extolling the virtues of their latest products and services, naturally, because they genuinely care about the thirty thousand people who follow them. You have to ask, why would anyone want a list of thousands of followers if it was not for business or commercial purposes? Have you ever known a person who had thousands of friends? Didn't think so.

While on that subject, do you really believe that someone with thousands and thousands of followers is even remotely interested in you and what you have to say? Do you think they are ever going to see one of your Tweets, let alone enter into any sort of dialogue with you? In short, are you their friend, their equal? Not in their eyes, which brings up an interesting point in the chosen terminology of Twitter.

"Followers", was the word chosen to describe your network of names on Twitter. Followers, think about that. You can see why it appeals to a certain type of person, and you could draw some pretty ugly comparisons had you a mind to. Those who obsess about the size of their following, those who believe that this somehow bestows upon them some kind of status and importance not enjoyed by the mere mortals who follow them (like sheep?).

Let's move on to another class of Twitter user, usually a bit cleverer than the rule makers, these are the kind who are selling the idea that Twitter is the next big marketing holy grail. Unfortunately, this is usually in an attempt to sell you the latest greatest Twitter fad, guaranteeing to "explode your following and therefore make you rich overnight.

Come on! This is obviously blatant hype and untruths - let me qualify however. I'm not saying that Twitter is useless as a marketing tool because there are plenty of people who have integrated it into their marketing and been very successful. My guess is that if you are in the right niche and target the right people it can work very well. I also think that just like any form of marketing you need to establish yourself with your audience and if they like and trust you they may eventually buy some of the things you recommend to them. However, if you think that just adding countless numbers to your follower count is going to make you a huge online success I'd think again.

People will lie to you online, particularly to try and sell you the latest, greatest guarantee of wealth and success. Think before opening your wallet.

Twitter also has some major flaws as far as I can see. Trying to keep up with even a few hundred people is virtually impossible. Using a service like TweetDeck or other third party applications will soon see you exceeding the flow of tweets allowed. These people with thousands of followers are extremely unlikely to be paying attention to what you are twittering about because it's not humanly possible to keep up with everything. I can fire up Tweetdeck and within a minute I've exceeded the API's allowable traffic and that means I see no new Tweets until an hour has passed.

I follow one or two people whose mailing lists I have been on or am still on, or bloggers whose prose I continue to read. Those kind of Twitter users, i.e. those with an already established base of customers/readers can continue with those relationships via Twitter and in that way it is another useful communication tool.

If you're starting from scratch though, don't expect miracles, that's all I'm saying.  

Image Credit:  Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten



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25. November 2008:

Widgets Gone Wild - Download Create Share With Widgetbox

Widgets. If you've been blogging for any amount of time you'll have come across them for sure, and perhaps even thought that the widget craze had got a little out of control. Everyone was offering a widget and promising great things for them (remember Blogrush as just one example) and sometimes bloggers got so caried away you could barely find the blog beneath the widgets in the sidebar.

I came across this site recently that rekindled my interest in widgets and thought I should share it here. It's probably a little early for me to post about the site, as I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but here's a brief outline of what you can accomplish with Widgetbox.com

Create Your Own Widgets using your RSS feeds

Download hundreds of different widgets for hundreds of applications and incorporate them into your blogs/websites

Turn your own widgets into Facebook and Meebo Applications

Join Topic Specific Communities To Promote Your Widgets and drive traffic

Create Widgets specifically for other bloggers and cross promote with them

Add your widgets to places like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, Netlog, IGoogle and Friendster (coming soon)

Widgetbox Create & Share widgets

 

It occurred to me whilst exploring the site that as far as bloggers go, this has a lot of potential and some great applications. When you create a widget, using your blog's RSS feed for example, you can then promote it to the world at large in a variety of ways. Widgetbox has a number of communities so, let's say you have a travel related blog and you create a feed widget. You then join the Travel community, and add the community widget to your blog in order to get traffic and visitors from other sites in the same niche. In theory that's great and I've implemented it on one of my non marketing related blogs so I'll report back on its effectiveness. The widgets, both the community ones and the ones you create are pretty customizable so people can make them fit the look of their own blogs pretty well.

I would say that bloggers who know each other however and feel like doing some cross promotion could always put their heads together and use the service to build each other widgets and display them on each other's sites. You could of course just grab another blogger's feed and do it yourself. Cross promotion is a good way to build blog traffic as evidenced by things like guest posting so if you want to work with other bloggers, exchanging feeds in a good looking widget might work for you and the ability to be very selective is more appealing than just showing links over which your control is limited.

The ability to share your widgets in a number of social networking sites is also a great tool and gives you the chance at some huge exposure. If you decide to make things like Facebook apps the potential traffic is of course quite staggering.

I've only just begun experimenting with Widgetbox, but I recommend you pop over and take a look to see what it can do for you and what you can do with it.

The site is a little confusing at first (although I may just be a bit dense) and when I first landed on their page I thought it was just a place to download widgets. Sign up is free and it looked to me as though there were plenty of cool widgets to grab so I signed up and started looking around. Once I'd got the navigation sorted out it all started to fall into place and it took just a few minutes to cobble together three RSS feed widgets for three of my blogs. Here's a screenshot of one of them below

As you can see the widget includes post titles and images - you can choose to display just titles, excerpts of your posts etc and also set the look with various color options and size choices. Customization is pure point and click and should a visitor wish to download and display your feed widget they can change the colors to suit their own pages as you can see from the menu on the right of the widget image. You can easily incorporate the widget code into your own blogs with either Flash or Javascript code and all major platforms are supported so you don't really need any technical knowledge. I think bloggers are going to love this site and can see it growing quite rapidly, so it could be good for your traffic in the future.

The internet marketing community is very under represented at present as far as I can see, but if you have niche blogs it could be another good way to promote yourself. Even without the traffic aspect which may or may not prove to be effective, it's a really simple way to get some neat widgets for Wordpress or any other sites you may be running and makes it very easy to include them on your sites.

Explore WidgetBox Here



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20. November 2007:

Facebook (Giving In To The Inevitable)

After being called out for not having a Facebook account the other day, I've finally decided to add my profile to the millions of others out there on the social networking platform. I've only had a very brief amount of time to dig around in its myriad of options but if anyone is interested, I've placed a link to my profile at the foot of the sidebar.

Whilst I have nothing against social networking sites, there are simply not enough hours in the day for me to give them all my attention, thus my reluctance to open up yet another account in a new virtual space. I have to say it looks pretty good though, even if rather forlorn and empty in my little corner, so I will be trying to squeeze it into my routines where possible. If you are a Facebooker already and want to add a Johnny Come Lately as a contact, please drop by and say hello :-)



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26. October 2007:

Stumbleupon Reviews and Guides

sulogoWay back in the mists of time I joined a new program called Stumbleupon using my wife’s name, and with the intention of spreading the word about her art. I then completely ignored the site and never thought much about it again, until fairly recently. A lot has been written about SU, and I’m not making a groundbreaking post here, but this is my quick take on it for anyone still not familiar with SU and looking for information.

Getting traffic to any blog involves work and things have moved so rapidly as each year passes. The rise of social blogging networks and Web 2.0 have provided numerous ways for bloggers and webmasters to try and get their message out to the world; to the point that it’s almost impossible to keep up with the developments. I’m not going to try and tell you why Stumbleupon is so important or how best to use it - there have been plenty of articles on the subject and I’ve linked to some of the better ones at the foot of this post. What I will say is that if you are still ignoring Stumbleupon as a social traffic generating tool, you are probably missing out on a great opportunity to find new readers and new and interesting sites and people.

The fact is, Stumbleupon works. You can, in a very short space of time, start generating a lot of traffic to your blog or website, just by being an active Stumbler. I try to Stumble blogs and websites on a regular basis and it brings several benefits. Once you begin to make some friends on SU, and start to Stumble your own favorites, you will see results quite quickly. It’s not unusual to see hundreds of visitors after being Stumbled by others, particularly if they are a top Stumbler or respected source of consistently interesting and worthy Stumbles. You will probably find that the more time you spend exploring the site, the more great content you will discover and the more like minded people you will interact with, and this is what helps the program to grow and, in turn, helps you to drive visitors to your own sites. Like all Web 2.0 and social sites, participation is the key - give and take makes SU go around - but don’t worry, because with SU, it’s always fun and interesting, and you will find topics that interest you.

In my current attempts to achieve less reliance on Google, SU has become a search of choice for me - and it really does deliver some great results too. As a Stumbler, you will naturally link up with others who share your interests. This means that it is not purely the province of techies, bloggers, marketers etc. It is infinitely tailored to your wants and needs, and you will find fellow Stumblers in your sphere of interest very easily. When you befriend them, you can access all their favorite places and they can do the same with yours. User driven content of interest really works well and the more folks you hook up with, the greater the information sharing becomes. You are allowed up to 200 friends at SU so network sensibly and you will hopefully reap the rewards!

If you are wanting to drive more visitors to your own content, you will succeed if your Stumbles are worth reading and voting for - if you try to spam the system you will inevitably be hoisted by your own petard. Stumblers are a generous bunch by and large, but they will soon be turned off by rubbish and spammy efforts at blatant self promotion - this is a good thing. Also, the quality of traffic you command will depend on many variables and a lot of Stumblers will visit only as long as it takes to click on to another site from their toolbar. However, some will stay, and eyes on your content are all good after all, even if only cursory.

If Web 2.0 means nothing to you, a good introduction to the kind of social sites involved can be found at the Social Networking Articles Blog and for a comprehensive source of information you may like to read the Web 2.0 Authority Black Book These will give you a good grounding in the services and sites available and just what you an use them for.

When it comes to SU, I’m listing below a list of authority posts on the subject, (there are literally hundreds more but if you think there’s one that should be listed please leave it with your comments) so there’s really no excuse for you not to get Stumbling. When you do, be sure to drop by and join my friends list :-)

6 Reasons To Love Stumbleupon

8 Reasons Why I Prefer Stumbleupon

Five Tips For Getting Traffic From Stumbleupon

Bringing Those Stumblers Back

Making a Power Account On Stumbleupon

Dosh Dosh - A Comprehensive Guide To Stumbleupon

Stumbleupon Versus Digg

Internet Marketers Guide To Stumbleupon

A Definitive Stumbleupon Guide

Technorati Tags: Stumbleupon, Web 2.0, Social Traffic, Social Networking, Social Bookmarking, Web Traffic, Stumblers



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30. July 2007:

Bumpzee Sphinn and Kontrib

I've had an interesting few days familiarizing myself with three new (to me) places on the web. Everyone is familiar with social news and networking sites and there are plenty of them out there. If you have never had any success with Digg for example, but can appreciate the concept, these sites might well be worth visiting. 

I've never been a fan of Digg, and in view of what I write about on this blog, it's not a suitable place for my scribblings. As a result I've never really attempted to make much use of it, and, when I did, the results were particularly unspectacular. Along with the rise of Digg have come the gamers and elitist attitudes and it strikes me that "social" aspect of Digg is certainly not part of its appeal. Of course, I'm far from the first to come to this realization and Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently launched a new site called Sphinn which I mentioned a couple of days ago.

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19. July 2007:

RSS Feeds And Content Scraping

The advent of RSS feeds has perhaps been both a boon and a curse for webmasters and internet users. The ability to distribute content quickly and easily has to be a great thing for site owners, and in turn has made it far more accessible and simple to organize for internet users. 

As with so many internet technologies however, RSS also has the ability to cause a lot of bad blood because it makes "stealing" other people's content so much easier. Indeed there have been, and will continue to be, many unscrupulous people quite prepared to use RSS not only to steal content but also to profit from it. There are plenty of  website owners up in arms about this, viewing it as outright theft.

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