Tag Archives: Followers

Aug19

I’ve been Tweeting (@loisgeller) for 2 years and I enjoy it. A lot.

But I never gave Twitter a lot of thought until the other day when my friend, Amy Africa (@amyafrica in Twitter talk), called to chat.

We talk about a lot of things but sooner or later the “How’s business?” question comes up. “Fine,” I told her, “but it could always get better.”

Amy’s an Internet marketing expert and she knows that I have 12,000 or so Twitter followers. She mentioned that having a large-ish Twitter following credentializes you. Amy tends to just mention things and let you make the connection.

I made this connection immediately. Could the time I spend on Twitter ever actually do my business any good? Twitter is big part of what we call Social Media – Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, this blog, etc., all of which I’m involved in to different degrees. Could Social Media do my agency any good?

I should know the answer but I’m not sure I do.

I write about the power of Social Media: relationships, consistency of voice, brand issues, one-to-one communication, frequency, etc. I know how to make a deal, how to close a sale.

Does all this credentializing do any good? Have I been invited to make more speeches this year than last year? Does anyone send me a Tweet asking for marketing help? No and no.

So I asked my Twitter friends if I’m missing anything. Here’s what a few of them said:
@vbpickett: “You should appreciate the great friendships” ( I do!)

@Journeywoman said “absolutely invest in Twitter time …”

@MatthewTNelson:“I have my tweetdeck open all day and I’m constantly scanning for website RFPs. When I see one interesting I reach out and connect.”

Later he tweeted that he had landed two website development contracts via Twitter in the past year.
Wow! Results. Now I have to figure out how to home in and do the same.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, advice you can share, I’d love to hear from you.

So I like Twitter, but what does it do for me?

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Lois Geller

So I like Twitter, but what does it do for me?

I once sent out a tweet that asked how many of my followers read the newspaper every day. A few told me they read it online, and one lady tweeted she reads her Pennysaver every week.

That is a scary thought for me, because I get nervous when people don’t read. Most of all, I feel sick to my stomach when I think people aren’t curious about things going on in the world, or new ideas, or innovations. Just plain curious is good.

Twitter is great that way. If there is breaking news, someone is always tweeting about it, and I hear it first on my Tweetdeck. I can also test all kinds of things on Twitter:

1. Ask people about something, with a link to show it (people read tweets with links).

2. Ask for advice. Recently I was throwing my new iMac into the ocean as I couldn’t get it to work because the monitor showed vertical colored lines. As soon as I tweeted about it, 5 or 6 people told me the computer was dead period. Take it back to the store.

3. I make friends on Twitter with people who share my point of view. Many people who I’ve had conversations with on Twitter have come to visit us, or called me, and when I visit a city…I get many invitations for coffee and lunch to meet in person.

4. For business, because of the huge numbers of people on Twitter, I can do a tweet and invite people to come to our Facebook page and enter a contest. They do come and then I can send them to a website to sign up for a newsletter (and get their email addresses).

5. If I want to find people who are lawyers on Twitter, I can go to twitter.search.com or simply press #lawyers and find all lawyer mentioned in the last 10 minutes or an hour.

The opportunities are endless to use Twitter as the driver to take people to your website, or blog, or E-zine. It’s got great possibilities…and I’m sure you’ll think of new ones for your business!

So, I gave up smoking and candy….but Twitter? No!

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Lois Geller

So, I gave up smoking and candy….but Twitter? No!

I missed it when I was in Vancouver a few weeks ago, because my iPhone service was “iffy” and my tweetdeck was very slow. Why…I ask myself into the night?

Well, if you ask my “real life” friend @amyafrica she’d say that all my followers are wackos anyway, so why even read their tweets.

If you ask my friend @anierenberg, she’ll say the only way to network is in person, not on social media. I do notice lately though when we talk on Sunday nights that there is a tweet tweet sound in the background…so she may be adapting.

I like Twitter for several reasons:
1. I can follow people that I might never have access to in life (or it would be hard to meet them). For example, recently I contacted @marcishimoff who wrote the book, Happy For No Reason. I thought she might write an article for one of our client’s on-line newsletters. So, I tweeted on over to Marci and asked, and she said we could talk about it. Bingo!

2. Learning from the Twitter leaders is interesting, and recently I was sent from Twitter to @chrisbrogan ‘s blog, where he talked about a great book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He said that it was about how the author talks about the stories of our lives and how when he got off the couch and started moving that his whole story changes.
I bought the book right away on amazon.com .

3. When I need help, I start tweeting about my problem on Twitter and someone always comes to the rescue in minutes. So, when my new television set couldn’t be set up with the Best Buy guys on Comcast…I marched over to my tweetdeck and in about 30 seconds, I heard from Frank Eliason of @comcastcares and they talked the installers through the process.
Last week I struggles with my new iMac, and people from Best Buy jumped in and told me right away to return it to the store (as there is no cure for vertical color lines on your monitor).

4. And, then I make friends on Twitter I’d never meet in life. @joebees was talking about taking a run and mentioned the loop in Aventura….right outside my apartment. I started talking to him, and he came to visit my office laden with great bee pollen vitamins for us all.

@tlmaurer and I are always exchanging funny chat during the day. She was sad about my computer and eventually told me I should write a rap song about my problems with Apple and put it on YouTube. We’ve been back and forth writing rhyming lyrics ever since.

@relevance , my friend Ted always gives me advice on my latest challenge and @Ernieschell told me about visiting the Barnes Foundation Museum a few weeks back before it moved the collection. I did and it was great.

So, I guess I enjoy Twitter, because it helps me in my life, and my work and introduces me to all kinds of great people….and it improves my luck. So many people have asked me to speak at their meetings, because I’m always giving my latest marketing tips on Twitter.

So, just try it for two months. It is not about who is eating a ham sandwich any more.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about some Twitter Marketing Strategies we’re testing for clients. Stay tuned.

I just returned from Merit Direct’s annual conference for b2b cataloguers.

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Lois Geller

I just returned from Merit Direct’s annual conference for b2b cataloguers.

This year I spoke about the power of Social Media, sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. One of the things I like about the social media world is that in many ways it’s like direct marketing on steroids – faster, more intimate, and easier-to-measure.

I was amazed that many in the audience didn’t know about Twitter or LinkedIn. Some had Facebook accounts for showing family photos.

I spoke about strategy and how to drive followers from Twitter to Facebook and then to your blog. As people get to know you, the more likely it is that they will do business with you, especially in b2b.
The title of my talk was How to get Tons of Free Advice on the Internet. I showed them how I floated questions on LinkedIn and received dozens of great answers from leading lights in our field.

My enthusiasm for this subject is over the top because I have a great time meeting people online. The Merit audience wanted to know the basics. I was amazed that with all of the publicity around these programs (how did Obama win the election? Social Media) that they hadn’t at least tested the waters. After all, it is all free.
My takeaway was:
· Many people in business are depressed. They’re worried about their companies and their jobs.

· They are waiting for business to come back as it has in the past.

· They are marketing conservatively, doing what they’ve done (just mailing less).

My advice to them and you:
· Develop the right attitude now! If you stay positive and keep on truckin’ – trying new ideas – something is a bound to work for you.

· If you just wait for business to come back, as it has before, it might not. Go after any piece of business that has a chance to pay off for you. (I call it the Dandelion Theory.) Blow out as many programs as you can, and one will take root. Maybe more.

· Now is the time to think creatively. Tell people about the benefits ofy our product or service, as if you were recommending it to a friend. Skip the rhetoric. Talk like a human being and tell your prospects why they should buy it now.

· Don Libey at the conference said, WAYMISH. Why are you making it so hard for your customer to buy from you? Make it easy on your website, on the phone, on your direct mail. Short is best.

And, let me know how you’re doing. Visit me at twitter.com/loisgeller at LinkedIn: Lois Geller, Facebook: Lois K. Geller and by email: loisgeller@loisgellermarketinggroup.com Easy, huh?

Use Your Voice…

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Lois Geller

Use Your Voice…

The internet used to be a place where I connected with old friends (my favorite book marketer, now in N. Carolina), and loved ones (my cousin in Sarasota). I showed pictures of my cats on my Facebook page, and wrote about my miserable cold on Twitter. LinkedIn was the place I’d throw out any immediate business challenges (like someone took over our website, how do I get it back?) Youtube was where everyone showed their kids first steps.

People are still using it for all of that, but it has changed. Now, it’s an open forum for people to talk about products or services and create followers and most companies are branding themselves in this huge arena of people. But, how are they doing that?

For the most part, they’ve relegated a techie person to craft the Twitters, the Facebook pages, and Youtube. They’re really missing the boat, I think. They should get their best salesperson, their best communicator and make that person their “unique voice” :

1. The voice should sound like real human being, and actually be one. That means he can talk about the company, but also add some personal things about his life, and maybe even some “inside stories” about the company.

2. The person should answer questions that people are asking about their company.

3. The person should not be an advertisement. He should just talk about people using their product or service (and maybe throw in some funny stories).

Most of all, there should be a strategy for the social media. Are you sending people from Twitter to Facebook, or Youtube to your website. I’ll talk about that more in my next Tip of the Week.

Blazing New Trails Takes Nerve and Pays Big Rewards

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Lois Geller

Blazing New Trails Takes Nerve and Pays Big Rewards

Last week a college friend came up from Atlanta, husband and daughter in tow, for their annual trip to New York.

We went to an off-Broadway musical called Hank Williams: Lost Highway. Hank was a small town Alabama boy who became a great country singer in the late forties and early fifties. He never made it to 30 years old. Hank drank himself to death but not before he gave us Your Cheatin’ Heart, Honky Tonk Blues, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Jambalaya, Hey Good Lookin’, I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You, and dozens more great tunes.

Jason Petty plays Hank in Lost Highway and he is just amazing. To me, Jason and his backup group sound better than the great Hank Williams and I said so to my friend as we were leaving the theater.

“Well, sure”, she said, “But he was imitating”. Hank didn’t imitate. He wrote new music, wrote new lyrics, arranged everything by himself and recorded every song in single takes. He did things nobody else had ever done. He was the first, the original, and everybody after him stands on his shoulders. They write plays about him.

And, of course, she was right.

History is full of people like that. They do things nobody else ever did and then along come the imitators. If they’re talented, the imitators make the original better. Without them, our televisions would still be small, round and in black and white. But the guy who invented that old TV was the genius. The people who came after him were merely clever. Direct Marketing is like that, too. Very few originals, lots of imitators. And the imitators don’t always make the original better.

Part of the problem is that most people think they’re better off being followers. Genuinely original ideas startle them. It’s not that they’re afraid to try something new; they think they don’t have to, so why bother? It’s as if they’ve been eating roast beef and mashed potatoes all their lives and then suddenly someone gives them sushi. They say things like “let’s not re-invent the wheel” and “we’ve always done it this way.” They get into a comfort zone imitating, but not improving.

They like Hank Williams now, but they wouldn’t have liked him back in 1948.

Banks and insurance companies are the worst offenders. They get in comfort zones and they do the same things over and over. You are pre-approved. Low APR. No medical exam required. Look after your loved ones. Safe driver discount. Our strength is our people. But that’s going to change. The Hank Williamses got involved. Whoever’s the Hank Williams over at Aflac gave us the frustrated duck and Geico’s Hank gave us their gecko and suddenly insurance looks different.

When our agency makes a creative presentation, we usually show three concepts: a breakthrough kind of idea which we usually love; a slightly more conservative (imitative) idea but with a little edge to it; and a safe idea which just follows the pack. Nowadays, most clients go with the safe idea.

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Tag Archives: Followers

Twitter: Just fun or does it actually do anything for you?

So I like Twitter, but what does it do for me?

So, I gave up smoking and candy….but Twitter? No!

I just returned from Merit Direct’s annual conference for b2b cataloguers.

Use Your Voice…

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