Friday, September 3, 2010

Finger Candy Media: The Right Amount of Times

by Jessica Northey
Last last two weeks we discussed “The Right Message"  and "The Right People" as it relates Social Media and the “Holy Trinity" of Advertising: getting the message you want, transmitted to the ideal audience and having it hit right when you want it.

Now we look at the "Right Amount of Times": How often should you tweet, post or blog?


Part III: The Right Amount of Times
How often should you tweet, post or blog? This is going to be different for everyone. You know your clients and potential client’s best.. As we mentioned in “The Right People” you will need to determine who they are. Pinpoint the characteristics of the perfect customer as it relates to your product or service. Understand how your target audience uses Social Media and then be there when they are there.

-Listen and then listen more.
-Ask yourself the following questions when you are designing Social Media Optimization Campaigns: What’s your point? What type of program is this? What is your purpose? Awareness, Sales, Loyalty? What’s your relationship with audience? What does your audience know about you today? When and where is your audience using Social Media?
-Who are you to this audience?
-Elevator pitch or 60 second commercials are obsolete how do you describe who you are or what you do in 140 characters or less?.

The other day a friend of mine in the “Entertainment” industry asked me to “follow” them on Twitter. Curiously, I took a peek at the profile.
At first glance I noticed how this person was only following a handful of people and then, that they were only broadcasting information about what they were doing AND what they had to say.
No interaction with others. Just a laundry list all about THEM, with no real purpose. That really turned me off and I didn’t actually follow them. I figured this person wouldn’t notice anyways, since they had hundreds of followers, however knowing this person I couldn’t help but think if they would follow people and engage them, they would probably have thousands of followers.

My philosophy is to follow everyone back, for a couple reasons:
-I don’t think I am better than anyone else. I can’t even begin to understand why it is so important to have people following you that you aren’t following.
To these people I say: Are you really that important? Are you really that interesting?
-You never know where your next friend or lead is going to come from. [{insert gratuitous Guy Kawasaki quoting Robert Scoble here} "When I first started on Twitter, Robert Scoble told me to follow everyone who followed me. “But why, Robert, would I follow everyone like that?” The answer is that it’s courteous to do so and because when you do, some people will respond to you and eveyone who follows them will see this—which is more exposure for you."]

Most people are used to broadcasting or even narrowcasting. So, Let me introduce you to your new best friend: communicasting! The exchange of thoughts, messages, or information by transferring information from one to another, or many to eachother and connecting to with other people. We all could do better by thinking a little less about ourselves and more about others.
How do you connect with others?
-Speak with people, not at them!
-Ask them questions.
-Check out their profile. Ask them about their town,their career, children, animals, family.
-Check out the link to their website.
-Read their blog, make comments.
-Notice their photos or background.
-Forget ‘What am I doing?’ and ask your followers ‘what are they doing?’
It also occurred to me that if this person really wanted me to follow them they could have just followed me and I would have followed back.

I am often asked, “how did you get so many followers,” honestly it has nothing to do with rocket science. It is completely human science…I followed people who followed me and I followed people I thought were interesting.

Try to remember that you have to learn how to give a little to get a little.

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