Solid Communications

Social Media Insight: Bogus "Paper Doll" Followers

It's quality that counts, not quantity.

Back in September, I wrote about outsourcing social media, and how some unscrupulous firms use multiple 'bogus' accounts to build your social media 'membership'. 

Today, I see sad proof that this practice is not only engaged in by overseas outsourcers, but also by firms here in the US. Below, I have copied the text of a listing on Elance.com requesting the setup of 250 Facebook and Twitter 'users' by a firm in Columbus, OH.  Notice how the job provider is asked to use 'one of the supplied photos' for each account depending on whether it's supposedly male or female.  This means there is no way this company intends to set up accounts for valid employees. 

So if you end up using a firm like this to handle your social media, you'll be paying them to produce 'followers' that are paper dolls--not one is a real person interested in your product or service! (Actually I think this drive is to produce ad revenue and clicks, but there's no real difference--it's all paperdoll traffic.)

Here's another example of why numbers don't matter if they are not correlated with quality . . .

Let's take a look at Twitter account Foodimentary.  (Foodimentary is a generic food trivia site, so I'm not picking on some poor individual blogger here.)  Foodimentary has 248,355 followers.  Impressive!  But if you go to Tweepi.com and pull up a list of this account's followers, over half of them have NEVER TWEETED.  NOT ONCE!  Of the remaining half, about 10% have not had any activity in over 3 months. 

Twitter limits the number of people you can follow to about 10% of your fanbase.  So, for instance, if you have 2,500 followers right now, you can go out and follow 2,500 plus another 250 = only 2,750 total.  Therefore, you should be making every follower in your Twitter account work for you--by  buying your product, reviewing your product, or retweeting your messages.  So get rid of that deadwood, and replace those 'dead numbers' with live people who are interested in your product! 

Work Smart! 50 Ways to Organize and Shorten Your Day

  
  

Do you work from your home or car?  Have a home office?  Would you like to be better organized? 

 These 50 tips will help you achieve more in less time and help you be more productive. 

Self-employment has been rising by 4% per year for the last ten years, which means that every year there are nearly 10 million new small business owners.  And with the available power of internet outsourcing and mobile technology, it’s now possible to work from your home, boat, or vehicle even if you are a salaried employee. 

But how does one make that transition?  How do you focus when there is no longer a cubicle to trigger that work reflex in your brain?  How do you filter out distractions when your work becomes your life, and your life becomes your work?  How do you cope with the increasingly longer days, now that you are also your own marketing department, accountant, and janitor?

Simple.  You learn to get highly organized.  And then you stay that way.

Tim Ferriss: 10 Tips to Maximize Your Marketing

In this episode of Rise: The Rise to the Top, author David Siteman Garland interviews Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of The Four Hour Work Week, and The Four Hour Body. 

Whether you are an author, fundraiser, corporation, or small business owner, this clip contains points and suggestions that I'd like to call out for my readers.  These points were true 100 years ago, and they are still true today.  They are also still ignored by 99% of people engaged in marketing, including those in the business of marketing.  Tim admits to spending $18,000 with a PR firm that accomplished little to nothing for him. 

How can you maximize your marketing efforts?

Having trouble communicating?

Sometimes it pays to hire a professional.   

I thought this video was particularly poignant and funny because I so frequently find myself in competition with outsourcers from India and Malaysia.  I lose bids on  great jobs because the employers decide to go with the lowest bid--and writers in these countries can work for $5-$10 an hour. 

"Oh yes.  We speak purrfect Ehnglish, sir.  Wewilltakeverygoodcareofyou, sir." 

There are three problems with outsourcing to non-native Americans who have 'pretty good' English:

1. Their skills are not as good as they claim, and you will probably end up re-outsourcing the work.  I see these jobs all the time on Elance . . . "Redo copyedit," or "Redo ghost writing chapters."  There ARE very good English-speaking writers abroad, but the best tend to charge competitive rates, even though their cost of living may be lower.  After all, if you're just as good as a writer-editor living in New York or California, why not charge the same rates?  So it isn't really a function of where the writer lives; it's a function of how much they charge.  You definitely get what you pay for.
2. Unless the writer is an American living abroad, foreign English language writers just don't get the culture.  Marketing and writing are skewed toward stereotypes.
3. Your project may end up getting further outsourced.  Many of the 'companies' that advertise on outsourcing sites get the work for $7-$10 an hour and then farm it out to underpaid (yet educated) labor at $3-$5 an hour.  Emphasis is on speed and turnaround; there is very little supervision of the final product.  Basically, your work is slammed into a writing mill.

Special warning for outsourcing social media - Some outsourcing firms promise almost unbelievable numbers of followers.  Thousands.  Hundreds of thousands.  A million.  How do they propose to achieve this?  Their laboring denizens each have 10-12 Facebook and Twitter accounts (at least).  Their accounts APPEAR to be American citizens.  They are paid pennies per click to join the client's page, thus racking up huge membership numbers for you, but zero-zilch-zip in terms of quality followers who are actually interested in your product or service. 

Social media outsource warning #2 - Beware of firms that might be using spamming software to acquire followers.  These codes have been banned by all reputable social media sites, and if your account grows too fast it will be suspended by the site.  You will lose all your contacts and have to start all over again, with a new email and a new identity.  Your IP number (computer ID) may also be flagged.

Custom Toolbar for Solid Fans

 

Solid Communications now offers a free customized toolbar!  Just click on "Download Our Toolbar" in the right column.  The download is safe and non-invasive.  It's also loaded with all the stuff I'd like my clients to have:

• A Conduit search box
• Link to Solid Communications for free marketing and branding guidance
• Facebook button
• Twitter button
• Jabberclub button—allows you to access video from your computer or YouTube and instantly email or Tweet the video link
• Snap Shots—gives you detailed information on sites related to your recent search or promotion topics, and even a visual snapshot of relevant pages
• A world time zone clock
• Skype button—free telephone conversations to numbers around the world
• Weather button—displays the current temperature right on the bar, and daily forecast in the hover box

Make your own customized toolbar to share with clients and customers at Conduit.com.  It's a great way to provide functionality and added value to your customers and readers.

It's also easy to delete the toolbar if you decide it's not your cup o' tea—just right click on the toolbar and uncheck it on the displayed list.  But I hope you take it for a test drive!

5 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid

 

Whether you are a small winery, a restaurant, a jewelry designer or a boutique bakery, here are 5 tips for making social media easier and more effective to use.

1.  Don't get all excited about using social media until you have someplace to send people. Establish your priorities. First make sure you have a great website and an updated, effective e-commerce page. I highly recommend establishing a blog, too. Tablas Creek has an award-winning winery blog, and the Creekside Inn does an excellent job of blogging and using Facebook to attract repeat customers and referrals. Use a blog to post fun facts, photos, behind-the-scenes glimpses of your business and product, and employee biographies. This gives your social media contacts a rich environment to visit when they arrive at your site. The point of engaging in social media is to entice people to visit your e-commerce site and buy your product. Ergo, your first priority is to make your website, e-commerce page and blog so effective that people simply can't leave without buying.

2.  Don't try to do it all.  Digg, StumbleUpon and dozens of others are not really necessary.  Unless you have scads of time or another favorite social media platform, focus on using just two—Facebook and Twitter.  In fact, you can link your Twitter and Facebook accounts together so that when you post on Facebook, your posts are simultaneously published on Twitter.  That way, you only need to focus on ONE social media platform.

3.  Don't ignore the power of social leverage.  While you are focusing on one social media site, put your minions to work spreading the word!  (Minions, by the way, are not dwarves or servants.  The word is descended from the French mignon, or 'little darlings'.  I like it!  I have an army of online minions.)  And so will you if you follow these  two simple steps.  Put social media 'buttons' on your blog posts so your followers can Digg, Stumble, and Tweet your posts to their friends and the tweetosphere.  (Look at the bottom of this post and you will see my buttons.)  Give postcards to your retail customers that include your blog address, your Facebook name, and your Twitter name.  Then your customers will become minions and begin tweeting, stumbling and digging in your service.

4.  Don't neglect your social media site. Once you've established them, create a plan for building membership and traffic.  Devote at least 1/2 hour a day to your social media sites.  Some people find it useful to create a content calendar.

5.  Find a balance between casual conversation and brand building.  Earn respect by sharing information, resources and links.  Engage in personal conversations.  If all you post and send are commercial notices and 'invitations' you'll end up being blocked by the very users you most want to reach. 

10 Tips for Successful Business Blogging

The first step is to choose a blogging platform, and there are a lot of great ones out there that make blogging so easy you can start writing and posting to the web within minutes.  Once you’ve decided to launch a blog and chosen a blog interface, whether it’s custom-designed, self-hosted, or a popular service like Typepad or Blogger (see Blog Software Smackdown for other top choices), it’s time to face the initially daunting aspects of design and content.

1.  Choose an appropriate layout and design

If your site is going to be very informational, with multiple fact boxes and links, then a 3-column layout may work best. It will give you more space to post information, and you will be able to place titles and boxes higher on the page so readers will see them when they first log on.

However, if you plan to write in a personal essay style, the 3-column layout is too busy—it will distract readers from your message. For this type of blog, a simple 2-column layout is best, one for writing, and one for links and information.

Choose a color scheme that is similar to your website, but give some thought to what colors mean to people. For the Women Wine Critics Board I chose strong colors, dark blue and orange, because the people writing for that site have strong, sensible opinions (and it’s also a subliminal protest against pink "women’s" wine sites and Barbie doll connotations). For a winery blog, I chose sky blue and green because they match the blue of the buildings, and have a connotation of sky and earth—which is a big part of the winery's product and story.

Busy backgrounds—plaids and prints—draw the eye away from content and slow down the page loading time. Also, backgrounds that look to others like grandma’s wallpaper may be intuitively perceived as unprofessional. Use these designs sparingly, in thin blocks or borders, to add emphasis and visual interest.