Twitter and Viral Marketing

This post is a 3-fer. Three for one.

I was wondering what to post today on this humble blog. Couldn't think of anything so I went to play on Twitter. (I do that a lot on Twitter - play. It's good for you!)

I saw Ricci Neer's retweet post ( initiated by seanclaes , an interesting writer/photographer) about The Naked Accountant. Took a look and was impressed. In this video we have an accountant (how mundane?) talking about how a good accountant can make your life simpler and more enjoyable.






Now that is marketing! You can bet I will think of The Naked Accountant when I need accounting help in the future.

So, we have two benefits to show: 1) the power of Twitter to help us through our day; 2) the power of a viral video on YouTube; 3) introduction to Sean Claes.

Ain't life grand?

Greg Cryns
The Mighty Mo Website Design and SEO Promotion
Nursing Programs Online
.

Colbert interviews Twitter's Biz Stone

This is very funny, even if you like Twitter. ;)

Greg Cryns
The Mighty Mo Website Design and Promotion

.

Twitter scores another customer service home run

This is to show that companies can profit with social networking on the Internet. It also shows how fast things can happen there, too.

Yesterday I saw a tweet from one of my followers on Twitter, @JoanneSardini



Joanne said, "The power of Twitter strikes again! Why can't life problems all be solved this easily - Thanks guys!!"

Well, this sure interested me since I am always looking for proof that social networking works.

Here is the first tweet about the problem: "Just had a horrible experience with Shoebuy.com - they need to meet @zappos for some customer service advice! I got told off on the phone"

The second tweet about the problem:
"All I did was had a different billing address from my shipping address - not so unusual, right? "Not for shoebuy.com - not cool!!!"

I sent a message to Joanne asking if she would sent a description of the incident to post here. Joanne agreed and sent me this email message today.

<>

My online shoe buying experience took a knock over the past 2 days but ShoeBuy.com certainly redeemed themselves.

I ordered two pairs of shoes and used a credit card with a different name and billing address than the shipping info.

Not a big deal, thought.

ShoeBuy emailed me and asked me to call their processing dept. I did. They wanted to speak to the cardholder.

This is where it gets a bit sticky.

The cardholder is my Mom who happens to live in Scotland. I told them they couldn’t talk to her on this number.

Before I even had a chance to give her email or phone number I was told my order was being canceled – for my mother’s security.

OK, I get the point and appreciate that they were protecting her credit card but this is when it gets bad. I suggested that if they are concerned with cardholder security, they should ask for cardholder contact info at order time.

The woman on the phone rudely interrupted me. To make a long story short, I hung up the phone with a bad feeling (and no shoes!).

In an angry mood, I went to Twitter and made three tweets about my experience (you can pull them from my page) suggesting that ShoeBuy.com could learn from Zappos great customer service.

Just 20 minutes later I answered my phone at home. A manager from ShoeBuy was on the phone. He apologized for my problem and immediately processed my order and graciously gave me 15% discount.

I told the manager that I would go back to Twitter and tell people about the excellent service I received from ShoeBuy. I was very happy with their speedy remedy. When he heard this he was very happy that I was satisfied.

ShoeBuy obviously closely monitors its online presence. The man I spoke to couldn’t have been more apologetic or nicer about the situation.

Great example of using Twitter to monitor and turn a negative into a positive!

Joanne Sardini
Director of Sales and Owner Services
Edgartown Residence Club
Colonial Inn of Martha's Vineyard
Phone: 800-465-2810
www.edgartownresidenceclub.com

< /snip >

In a span of one short hour Joanne told her followers on Twitter about her problem and ShoeBuy turned that complaint into a very happy customer. In addition, many people now have a warm and fuzzy feeling about ShoeBuy. They are likely to pick up some additional sales, possibly some immediate sales. Joanne has almost 2,000 followers.

Today I will post this blog. Another group of people will hear the good news about ShoeBuy.

The ROI of monitoring Twitter for ShoeBuy, at least, is apparent if not measurable. My faith in social networking got a big boost as well.

Photo by Jerry Wong

Greg Cryns
20000 Credit Card Debt
Wahm Search Engine

Is Twitter a waste of time?

When I opened my email account this morning I was surprised to see a message from Dean Hunt that told of his new blog post titled "Is Twitter A Waste of Time?"

I had my own article with the same name in the works, but I will simply link to Dean's article now with a few of my own thoughts.

A month ago I did a test to find out the reach my tweets had to my followers. During one day I posted this message: "If you read this tweet please DM me. I will let you know how many respond."

I posted that message six times over 18 hours during that day. It was on a Sunday, a day which I think is a popular day to post by Twitter members. I calculated that my response rate was 2%. At the time I had 1,000 followers. I had 20 responses.

Of course the response rate will vary depending on many factors, not the least of which is the popularity of the person tweeting. But this is still a dismal result when you think of the OPEN rate of at least 30% for most newsletters.

I also understand that I asked my followers to take a DM action, not just to read my post. I am doing more tests right now.

As an Internet Marketer, I would like to know what happens when I send a link to a free report of my own in a response to people who follow me. I am testing this now and I will report the results later, but so far I am not too excited with the results.

So, is Twitter a waste of time? I speak for myself, but even if all I wanted to do was socialize, Twitter is losing its appeal for me. I simply do not have the time to do too much socializing. I love to post my findings so other can benefit but I also need to put food on the table.

To all of my wonderful and exciting new friends I've met on Twitter: I love you. I really do and I am looking forward to seeing you on Twitter in the future since I am not going away, just curtailing my activity.

What do you think?

Here is the link to Dean Hunt's blog post: http://TwitPWR.com/8Hs/

Greg Cryns
FREE report "13 Guerrilla Tactics To Build Your Email List"

20000 Credit Card Debt
.

Is Facebook better than Twitter?

I am hearing and reading many things that say "camp out in Facebook if you are a marketer."



Last night Ed Dale of the 30 Day Challenge presented a webinar. I trust Ed because he knows the Internet well and he has had huge success as a marketer on the Internet.

Here are the main points Ed made about Facebook:


1. The market is fleeing to Facebook for safety. The "market" Ed refers to equals people not necessarily those who would be targeted to your business. It also says that people trust Facebook more than any other social website including Twitter.

2. Facebook gains about 750,000 subscribers every day. In 10 days Facebook gains as many new subscribers as the total number on Twitter now.

3. If Facebook stopped taking subscribers today, it would take 36 years for Twitter to catch up based on current stats.

4. 150 Million Facebook subscribers LOGGED IN DURING THE PAST 30 DAYS. If true, this is an astounding number with the emphasis on LOGIN.

5. My own research shows that a lot more younger people (30 and under) prefer Facebook over Twitter. It may be as high as 10-1.

These figures, if true, beg us to reconsider where we spend our social time.

Or do they?

Here are some mind boggling stats plucked from the Facebook website at this link:
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older
  
  • Average user has 120 friends on the site
  • More than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
  • More than 18 million users update their statuses at least once each day
  • More than 4 million users become fans of Pages each day
  • • More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
    • More than 7 million videos uploaded each month
    • More than 28 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
    • More than 2 million events created each month
    • More than 25 million active user groups exist on the site

  
  Funding

  Round one: $500,000 from Peter Thiel, Summer 2004; Round two: $12.7 million from Accel Partners, April 2005; Round three: $27.5 million from Greylock Partners leading the round, Meritech Capital Partners participating, and Accel Partners and Peter Thiel increasing their investment in the company.

More links about Facebook:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/02/23/facebook-chat-latest-stats-whats-coming-next/



What do you think?

Photo by sitmonkeysupreme

Greg Cryns
Wahm Search Engine - affordable advertising

11 new and cool posts about Twitter

How to get ReTweeted - The Formula

Twitter is a Stage - Be Careful What You Say

Twitter Compared to IM, Email and Forums

Why Architects should Twitter

Twitter isn’t for telling and selling

Book of tweets: Writer to compile 'Twitter Wit' for HarperCollins>Twitter Fan Wiki

Twitter: job-search tool for Klingon warriors

Big HUGE List of Twitter Stuff

Using Twitter to Get Travel Assistance in an Emergency

11. Comment with one of your own!

Greg Cryns
Wahm Search Engine - inexpensive advertising
The Mighty Mo Website Design and SEO
.

Twitter hashtags explained

20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online

Instant Niche Emails - This is a fantastic list building tool. It is an incredibly simple way to create a year’s worth of emails for any niche market literally overnight! (also can also be used to create 52 blogging posts.






If you've spent some time on Twitter you will see hashtags in some of the tweets. The hashtag is the pound sign (#). Placed before a few letters it signifies a group of tweets about the same subject. Often hashtags are used to tell people about events that are happening at that moment.

For a crisp explanation of hashtags try Denise Wakeman's blog.Here is a good video about hashtags by Facebook expert, Mari Smith:

Twitter Hashtags - What Are They, How To Create Your Own - by Mari Smith

Photo by jarrellish

Greg Cryns
Get your great domain name

Results of Twitter message

Yesterday, 12/16/08/, as an experiment to find out how far a Twitter post will connect with my followers, I sent out this message four times:

"HOW MANY FOLLOWERS SEE YOUR POST? - IF you READ THIS POST please notify me in a message, date and time - I update later - thanks! "

1st post 5:17 AM PST

2nd post 7:00 AM PST

3rd post 3:00 PM PST

4th post 11:00 PM PST

I received nine (9) direct responses and 15 email message responses from people who said they saw the message. That is 24 total responses.

I have approximately 950 followers. This says that 2.5% of the people who follow me sent a response.

What does this mean? I'm not sure. The variables are many.

They were sent on a Tuesday. Would I get a better response on another day?

They were sent near Christmas day. Is that a factor?

I think it is fair to say that not all who saw the message decided to take action. I wonder how many simply did not have the time or energy to respond. I wonder if the people who do follow me think I post too much that does not interest or concern them?

I would like to see some more people do the same experiment. Statistics lie and liars use statistics, right?

At the core of the experiment is to find out how powerful, or not, is Twitter in getting out our messages.

What do you think?

greg cryns

Work At Home Profiles

Wahm Search Engine

Do I have to follow you on Twitter?

Cartoon by Hubspot

click the picture to enlarge

Personally, I follow most of the people who follow me.

Hey, check out my new videos of Paso Robles. They trucked in snow for the youngsters to sled on. :)

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

(refusing to say "happy holidays")

Some people miss the boat on Twitter

Don't kid us. If you are frequenting Twitter and you are older than 20 years old, then it is likely you are interested in marketing something. I think that is a fair assessment.

If you do what I do, you look to find "worthy" people to follow. You want to find people who are movers and shakers in your niche. You hope to learn things from them.

This morning I clicked on the link of one of the people I follow. She is known as "the communicatrix". In her link she was promoting a video she made that expresses why Southwest should pick her as their New Southwest Airlines Blog-O-Spondent.

Here is the link:
http://southwest.spigit.com/Sector/ViewThread?threadid=429

I think this is a great use of video to get viral attention. It is lots of fun to watch and it may even earn the communicatrix a new job. I hope so.

But here is my beef. I was about to send out a "retweet" that would show my 454 followers the link to this video. I don't know, but I believe this would help the communicatrix somehow, some way.

Golldarnit! She is not following me. So, what's the point of helping her? I am not saying that I am the most worhty person to follow, but that's what I thought. Eventually I decided to help the communicatrix anyway by putting the link on this blog. I think a retweet would have been more powerful since I know I won't get 453 crossovers to my blog from Twitter very soon.

Not only that, I could not send a message through Twitter because she chooses not to follow most of her followers.

My point is, don't be so stingy about following people. Some great people follow everyone who follows them. I think these people understand the inherent value.

Perhaps the handle should be changed to "The noncommunicatrix"?

Unless you are fearful of stalkers? If so, then you better just leave the Internet alone?

Please leave your comments. What is your opinion? I think it is bad form not to follow people who follow you. It is just plain snobbish. Should we limit the people we follow?

Greg Cryns

http://www.workathomeprofiles.com
http://www.wahmsearchengine.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/calgreg

Twitter Dictionary

Yesterday someone said, "See you later, Tweeps!" I think that one is especially good. It has a magnificent ring to it. I assume it means "Twitter people".


New tool: http://twitter.slawcup.com - you type in a user's name (handle) and it returns the words that user uses in descending order of frequency, not sure of the value here.

illtwitterate

Twittering

When I visit blogs I see more and more words that I may have seen but don't understand, like:

collaborative
social media (this one could mean so many things)
Qwitter - quit smoking
Politweets - When Twitter gets political

Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble—it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.

Twitties - hmmmm

twitollowers - I made that up

Twittonary - the Twitter dictionary - http://twittonary.com/

One more Twitter dictionary: http://twictionary.pbwiki.com/

tweetheart (I like that one)

twacklist (twitter blacklist)

tweeotches twitter + beotches

See? It's already been done but it grows by the second.

Greg Cryns
http://www.workathomeprofiles.com

http://www.allaboutpasorobles.com

The 4 Hour Work Week

Today I came across a an interesting blog by Tim Ferris. I never heard his name before so I was a little taken aback by his attitude about Twitter.

Tim says about Twitter, "I don't follow anyone on Twitter. To some, this is sacrilege."

I checked his stats page. Sure enough, Tim follows no one. Yet he has 3,857 followers.

Tim continues, "Imagine that you send an email to 10 people inviting them to a party, but you BCC 100 more casual friends who are uninvited. How will those 100 feel? Offended and somewhat resentful, just as I would."

I thought his attitude was quite haughty until I learned more about the man.

Tim wrote a book called "The Four Hour Work Week". You can buy it at amazon for about 12 bucks. I noticed on Amazon that "others who bought this item also bought" Seth Godin's "The Dip." The puzzle pieces are coming together. Tim is a successful author if scores of people selling his book as affiliates of Amazon is any indication.

His book is mainly about how to outsource as much as possible in your business life so that you have more time for other activities.

I found an interview with Tim by Scott Allen on About.com. Here Tim describes how he got caught up in the "overwork ethic" as a salesman for a Silicon Valley company. He was working 80 hours a week. That company went belly up in the 2001 dot bomb debacle. Tim moved on to "pharmaceutical design." A couple of years later he was making very good money at a sports nutrition company. But he felt dissatisfied with the long hours.

Tim started his own company and traveled to 20 countries. He started making more money and working fewer hours. This discovery led to the writing of "The 4 Hour Work Week." Apparently Tim made enough money not to be concerned with mundane activity like following other people.

One of Tim's post on his Twitter page is "Just bumped into Paul McCartney in an Amagansett coffee shop. He was playing a harmonica for a baby in a stroller. How cool is that? "

Learn about Twitter at Twitter Squeeze

Greg Cryns
http://www.wahmsearchengine.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/calgreg

Twitter dominates my networking life

The strange thing about Twitter is that I "feel" I can make it work but, in no way, am I positive about that.

I am doing some testing. Put a counter on my blog http://gregcryns.blogspot.com That's this one! ;P

Frankly, I am not seeing huge activity to the blog yet. That is something to take into consideration.

I changed the background of my Twitter home page. Do you like it? Check it out. I think the background could be an important issue at Twitter.

I am testing out 5 minute phone calls hoping that this will strengthen my networking efforts. So, if interested in chatting for 5 minutes, call 805-226-8354. If I am out I will call you back. Just leave a message.

That's it for today. I really need to get some real work done. My clients are getting a bit PO'd.

Greg Cryns
http://www.ziparticles.com
http://www.workathomeprofiles.com
Twitter ID: http://www.twitter.com/calgreg

Rick Butts and Twitter Squeeze

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Twitter gets bigger

I am overwhelmed by Twitter.

For about a week now (maybe two weeks, time flies when you are having fun) I've been banging at Twitter every day. I've learned there are scores of Twitter tools out there and more to come, I am sure. I am convinced that Twitter will just get bigger and bigger until it explodes into something owned by Microsoft or Google.

My friend, Diane Drayer who has three very good income streams on the Web and off, are planning a webinar about Twitter for our WAHM friends. Diane is out promoting her business with Sentsy this week at the State fair in Missouri so the webinar won't happened for at least two more weeks. I expect it will be in the middle of August.

I don't see many WAHM people on Twitter. I think they could benefit and that is what the webinar will be about.

This evening I phoned into Warren Whitlock's http://twitcastradio.com . I didn't know Warren previously except I am following him on Twitter. He is very knowledgable about social marketing and I recommend his Friday night shows whole heartedly.

I need to make this makeshift effort into a real blog soon. When I have time. ....

Sure.

greg cryns
Twitter ID: cal greg
http://www.wahmsearchengine.com