Day 19: Darwin’s Three Rules of Social Media Marketing

I am now up to 390 followers. According to twitaholic, http://twitaholic.com/, the number 1000^th most followed Twitter account is Maria Rita with 258,715 followers. So I have only 258,325 to go.

In my quest to become one of the most followed Twitter accounts I have also began to really explore and learn how to use the other popular social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Obviously these other networking sites can help me with my goal, but there is so much more potential. In 2010 Facebook hit over 600 million users. LinkedIn hit 90 million and Twitter was at about 195 million. Those of course are huge numbers of users and access to that many potential customers is any salesman/marketer’s dream.

As a marketer/salesmen, how do you take advantage of that kind of potential? I’ve read many blogs and articles on ways to promote yourself, company or product using social media. Each article is written by a so called SMM guru, and each one has a different approach. I find myself asking the question, “Which one should I to follow? Or should I follow a little of each?” Because there are so many different techniques and strategies I don’t think I would ever be able to follow them all, so I had to come up with a way of filtering each approach to find the ones that would best meet my needs.

I’ve been in sales now for about 14 years, and if there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that the only things that really matter are results. With that mind in mind I developed three SMM rules to help me evaluate the approach and advice I will take as I move toward my Twitter goal and as I build up my social media marketing campaign. My rules are as follow:

1. It doesn’t matter what you have to say if no one is listening.
2. It doesn’t matter if someone is listening if you have nothing to say.
3. It doesn’t matter if people are listening, and if you have something to say, if you can’t collect the data on who is listening.

Based on these rules I have developed a strategy for getting people to listen, having content for them to listen to, and finding ways of collecting data on who is listening. So how will I do that? Good question. I’ve a pretty good plan to start with, but I am sure it will evolve overtime. Because each of those rules requires a lot more explanation, I plan on blogging about each of them separately over the next few weeks. That will give me time to try a few different strategies, and so when I write the blogs I hope to have some actual results to report.

Until next time.

Day 9: My Three Fold Strategy

As many of my followers know I am on a quest to have one of the top 1000 most followed Twitter accounts in the US. Today is day 9. Number 1000 according to http://twitaholic.com is Vernon Kay and he has 253,255 followers currently. At this point I have 123 followers. I think that is pretty good considering 9 days ago I had never even thought of creating an account on Twitter.

So far my Twitter strategy has been very simple and straight forward. I follow others in hopes that they will follow me back. I also am tweeting about what is going on in my life, and about things that are interesting to me. This strategy seems to be working, but very slowly and I know there are things I could be doing that will work much better.

Therefore I developed a new Three Fold Strategy to increase my followers. Below is each area where I will focus my efforts.

1. Improved content

2. Email campaigns

3. Get published on popular websites

Here's what I plan to do for each category.

Improved Content- I realize that chronicling my quest to the top 1000 may not be interesting to all people. In fact, it might not be interesting to most. So I need to find additional content for my blog and for my tweets. That content can come from myself or someone else. Because there is already an abundance of interesting content on the web, I will look there first.

I read a blog post written by Techno Marketer that talks about different ways to find current and interesting content to blog or tweet about. He suggests using RSS feeds, blog searches, tweet search, monitoring services and Google Alerts to keep abreast of current interesting topics and events. Then using this information for my posts. I will attempt to implement this strategy right away. To read Techno Marketer's post go to:http://technomarketer.typepad.com/technomarketer/2008/12/success-in-social-media-means-being-ready-to-pounce.html

Email Campaigns- In my function as Director of Sales and Marketing at Ascent Advisor I have to market our free websites, executive briefings and our websites. One way of doing that is through social media like this blog, or my LinkedIn account. To see an example click on one of the following links:

http://www.ascent-advisor.com/events.html

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/799383936

In addition to these methods of marketing we also do email campaigns. Because I plan on using my Twitter account to keep followers posted about some of the events that Ascent Advisor is up, I will also use the email Ascent Advisor email campaigns to help promote my Twitter Account.

Is there a conflict of interested there you might ask? I would say no. My tweets are not designed solely to promote Ascent Advisor, but they are designed for me to communicate about my life, and subjects that I and my followers find interesting. And since Ascent Advisor is a large part of my life, and many of my followers should find their webinars and other events interesting, I will keep you all posted about their events. As for putting the email link on our email campaigns, I have cleared this with my boss. I believe that my Twitter Account will help our customers and prospective clients to get to know me and through me, the company. Hopefully that will improve Ascent Advisor's relationship with our customers.

Get Published on Popular Websites- This one may be the hardest for me to accomplish. Except for my own blog, and a few websites I've created when I was younger I have never been published on a website. So what will it take to get published? And where should I or could I go to get published? The answer is I don't know. But I will being working on that immediately.

The first thing I will do is ask for your help. If you have any idea on how or where I can publish my blog posts I would to hear them. Please post all ideas on the comment box below. Also, I will ask all of my followers. Perhaps one of them can help me. And lastly I will look online for ideas on how to accomplish this feat. As you all know the web is rich with both valuable content and infinite garbage.

In my next blog I update everyone on what I am doing and how I am doing it. As always, I welcome your feedback and would love to hear any addition ideas you may have on how to accomplish the strategies I've discussed today, or on how to increase my followers in general. However, I will not pay for followers. I plan on growing my following through strictly organic means.

I'll miss you coach Sloan.

I finished my supply chain management final last night and it was brutal! I think I did well. I start computer forensics next week. Hurray!

Day 2: Twitter's Rules and Regulations

So this is day two. I've decided that during my quest to the top 1000 I will keep everyone posted on what I'm doing to get there. That way when I'm done, this will serve as a how to guide for anyone with similar aspirations.

Today I finished off my twitter profile. I came up with a bio that makes me laugh, and I found a really cool back ground at http://www.twitrbackgrounds.com/photo-twitter-backgrounds/crack. There are actually quite a few sites with backgrounds, but I really liked this one.

I also did some research on following limits. It turns out that twitter limits the total number of follows you can do in a day to 1000. As if that weren't enough, after you hit 2000 follows, then they restrict you with a mysterious ratio. So what does that mean exactly? Good questions. It means they don't want anyone to follow a lot more people than they have followers. So what's the ratio? Well twitter doesn't say. Their example is of someone trying to follow 10,000 accounts when they only have 100 followers. That seems reasonable, but in reality the ratio seems to be much stricter than that.

I read a complaint online where someone had a ratio of about 1.4 to 1, and twitter stopped them from following additional people. I read another article that said that the number is 180. Meaning that after you get over 2000 follows then you can only follow 180 more account than you have followers. I don't actually think that's correct. But I do think the ratio has to be closer to 1 to 1 than I would like; especially since I have such an aggressive goal.

So what is to be done? Well the simple truth is that if you would like to grow quickly you must find ways to build your followers other than by following others. It also means that you cannot follow everyone that follows you if you have over a thousand people following you a day, or if you want to grow you followers by following new people.

Therefore I would like to make a disclaimer. If you follow me, I may not follow you. I would like to follow you. In fact I would love to follow you. However, in order to keep my ratios in check I most likely will not be able to follow all of my followers. In fact, I may have to un-follow some folks I currently follow. Too bad; so sad. Please don’t take this personally. I am still interested in all of you, and each one of you is important to reach my goals, so please continue to follow me even if I can’t follow you.

In addition to learn more about Twitter’s rules, and completing my profile, I also have started using a program called TweetAdder 3.0. This program is helping me to manage my follows, followers, messages, and to search for followers that would be interested in what I have to say. If you’re interested go to www.tweetadder.com.

That’s it for today. There will be more coming soon. If there are specific topics you’d like me to cover on this blog, feel free to comment bellow.

Juan's training at Sundt Construction was great! Ascent is taking them from $1B to $3B. To see his first presentation: http://ping.fm/7YYCl

Juan's at training at Sundt Construction went great! Ascent is helping them go from $1B to $3B. To see his first presentation: http://ping.fm/7YYCl

Day 2 of my quest to the top 1000. The current 1000 has at least 251,321 followers. Today I have 25. Not too bad after one day.

I just signed my first Social Media Marketing customer, M2 Consulting!

To be one of my first followers go to: http://ping.fm/LOY6L

Today I start my quest to have one the 1000 largest twitter followings. Why? Because I think I can.