At his peak, notorious Tweeter Stephen Fry had 1.2 million followers on social media site Twitter, and was keenly following many hundreds himself. And, yet as he freely admits on his personal website, he was rarely able to respond to more than a handful of replies (Tweets) he received.
Is it any wonder that he recently announced he was taking a break from Twitter to write part two of his autobiography? Is it possible he has done so, because it’s just too overwhelming to continue, keeping contact with such a vast number of people?
I believe his experience may in fact reveal why many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) struggle to make an impact with social media marketing.
As I have said elsewhere, in my post on Seth Godin’s Tribes, people use the Internet today to make connections and find meaning in their life, and so the question remains, just how meaningful to your business are the connections you are making as a business on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites?
Marketing online is not like marketing offline.
Unlike the offline world, trying to reach as many people as possible, by applying a scatter gun approach, and hoping something sticks, rarely works online, because the Internet gives people the power both to tell others what they think of you, and or, switch you off.
So, I believe that to really succeed using Social Media Marketing, you need to focus on making fewer but more relevant connections. It is better by far to have a smaller group of people – friends, colleagues, allies, associates, and other key influencers in your space – than a vast number of people who have connected with you for the sake of connecting.
So, who should you be connecting with, and how do you find them?
Meaningful connection means more than simply clicking the accept invitation button, in the way you do with old friends who contact you through Facebook. You need to start first, by having a reason, a compelling message, for people to connect with you, a reason which will also guide you in who you connect with.
For example at Compila our social media marketing focus, is helping small businesses succeed online by writing about e-business and Internet Marketing. We are an Internet Service Provider, and yet we are not trying to teach people about the science of keeping servers running on renewable power. That may be interesting in passing, but it’s not what our customers who are trying to succeed online need. All our communications are focused in this area, and so likewise, there’s no point us joining groups on Facebook which are focused on employment law. We follow people on Twitter and join other Social networking groups in the same area as our interest.
The next thing to understand is to focus on building the relationship not the sale. The relationships you build through social media marketing must be authentic, and that’s not easy if you are using it to pester people all the time with your latest deal. Your communications should be written in a sincere tone, and focus on empowering your follower to improve their life or business in some way.
This may sound like stating the obvious, but without a reason for connecting with someone, without having something to share, other than saying ‘Hi!’, the relationship will be difficult to leverage.
Where possible, you should have a strategy for connecting with the people who both want to hear what you have to say, and, who can tell others about what you are doing.
In his book Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, refers to something he calls Market Mavens – people who have a high level of market knowledge in one key area. Market Mavens are highly respected by their peers in their subject area, and are the source of highly valued recommendations. Think of the person within any group of friends who is the expert on music. Often their friends won’t bother to seek out new music themselves, because they can rely on this person – the market maven – to provide them with the best recommendation.
These are people that you need to seek out. You may find them blogging about your sector, you may find them as a journalist writing reviews about what you do, or by searching your database, to find the customers – the early adopters – who were first to buy your latest offering.
The point being is that if you can connect with these people, and more importantly, add new information to their already glowing expertise, the chances are that they will pass this information, (and by consequence) refer you, to 20 others who they regularly influence.
The people market mavens connect with are what Malcolm Gladwell calls connectors – people who act as messengers between the market mavens and the rest of the public. While market mavens love to acquire new knowledge about their subject, by contrast connectors love to be the person who shares the good news with many others.
So, if you connect with a market maven, you are by consequence connecting with 20 connectors, and that means a much, much larger group of people.
This may be why people often refer to the Internet as the ultimate lever – with focus and a little lifting you can leverage exponential gains.
I hope you have found this article on Social Media Marketing useful and informative. I would love to hear your thoughts or comments, please add them to the comments section below. Thank you very much for your time.
Harvey, very interesting and thoughtful! I truly enjoyed this post. Some thoughts from me…
Why would a business have to “engage” with its million followers, if they could even get to that level? Don’t get me wrong, we try to engage as much as possible with followers and especially customers on Twitter, and in fact, we have somewhat of a rep for it (and are tickled pink by that). But we certainly can’t do it with *all* of our 8,000 followers (which is meager in comparison to the coveted 1MM mark). And I don’t think they expect that. It’s the periodic engagement, when it counts, that really matters.
If my fuzzy, old memory is trusty, the original concept of Twitter, which I think many have strayed from, was following the updates of someone who interested you. Reciprocation, which has become an expectation today (and yes, it is for us, too, for the most part) wasn’t the original goal. And interestingly, the more one engages with various individuals, the less interesting their conversational stream becomes for others. Following that model of interaction, one truly would need to have a small amount of well connected followers.
But for a business, this certainly doesn’t provide much “reach” or help build a good “list.”
I would suggest that businesses can still amass a serious following, akin to a mailing list, broadening the audience with whom they can connect and make offer, while engaging at the same time with individuals, when it really matters.
A business can:
> Provide discounts and special offer to a wider audience
> Engage as appropriate (for example if service issues arise)
> Tap into a larger audience for feedback, or non-customer expertise (other business, marketers, etc.)
> Help others, capitalize on networking opportunities, and learn from others.
Also, the Twitter list functionality now gives us the ability to “manage separate accounts” without *having* separate accounts. You can create lists of Social Media experts, lists of other e-commerce sites, networking friends, customers, and more – only limited by your imagination. We’ve only started to capitalize on this feature, but see the potential for paring down the master list.
I’ll freely admit that we did some “Ready, Fire, Aim” in regard to our Social Media Marketing and with Twitter. We did it with our eyes open, though. If we waited until someone figured it all out, we’d be old and gray and way behind the curve. And while we are *not* “those people” who are after raw follower numbers, I also don’t believe limiting the numbers (other than through the filter of list functionality) is a good idea, either.
My two cents.
I enjoyed your post and wanted to toss these thoughts out. I would enjoy hearing back here, at my email address, or on Twitter, anytime.
Thanks again Harvey, and have a good Friday and a great weekend!
Mike Kunkle
Co-owner | Chief Marketing Officer
DreamWorthy Gifts LLC
http://www.DreamWorthyGifts.com
http://twitter.com/DreamWorthy
Hi Mike,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a great reply, it is truly appreciated and the points you make are very valid indeed.
I am very impressed that you have embraced Social Media in such a fantastic way and I hope you continue to see much more success in the future.
I agree with you that lists are a great addition to Twitter and can really help organise things better.
With regards to Twitter, in my honest opinion, there needs to be a distinction made between large brands, celebrities, sports stars etc and small businesses. A large brand can have 100,000+ followers no problem, and not need to engage individuals personally. However, I also believe there needs to be a distinction made between small businesses that have a large client base already using Twitter and those starting out that have none or very few followers already.
Unless a small business has a large customer base that is already using Twitter, someone starting out has to follow people in the hope that they will follow them back. On Twitter there is no rule, that you have to follow someone back, but is often the courteous thing to do. The problem is, is really how interested is this person in the information that the new small business has to share, or are they just following them back out of courtesy.
So is the fixation on amassing a large amount of followers really of any benefit? The new business now has 1000 followers, by following lots of people, who then follow back, tweets are written but how many people are reading them or interested in the first place. So the business owner is not seeing any fruits of his labour and may well give up on the whole idea of social media being of any benefit to his business.
So, in my honest opinion, Twitter, for a good number of small businesses has lost some of its effectiveness. I am definitely not saying for all, as like yours, it can be very successful.
However, I just believe in this constant pursuit of more and more followers, the messages are getting diluted a little. A business now has 2000 followers, but in the likelihood they are also following 1500+ other Twitter users. Is it possible to follow this many people? When you tweet about a new Special Offer, how many people see it and/or read it, or does it just get buried in the hundreds of other tweets received every day?
The same really goes for all forms of Social Media, can you really make effective communications with 1000 Friends on Facebook, 500 Connections on LinkedIn or 2000 Followers on Twitter. Yes, I think you can but it takes time. For a small business starting out on social media marketing, I think it is better to slowly build the connections a few at a time, have two way conversations, “listen and talk”, forget about the pursuit of numbers and build real relationships slowly and effectively.
Thanks again Mike for your great reply and good luck to you and your business for the future.
Regards
Harvey