Twitter | Purple Stripe Productions

More Friends Please

April 11, 2010 By Lynette Young Leave a Comment

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

Soon after the first status messages go up on Facebook, there is a panic when the number of people following your accounts don’t reach critical mass within the first two weeks. The comparison to mailing lists and distribution databases start to come up. (Can’t we BUY followers?) More followers equals more people to broadcast cleverly-crafted marketing messages to. What good is spending all this time (a.k.a. money) on these channels if we don’t have a hundred thousand followers consuming our messages? Why don’t more people want to read what we are broadcasting? Why don’t they like us?

To put it bluntly, numbers matter.

Collecting numbers just for the sake of having numbers isn’t the goal. Often times the quality of “the numbers” is overlooked. Easy question – would you rather have 10,000 ‘fans’ that don’t really care what you are about and ignore you, or 500 ‘fans’ that are actively seeking information on your products or services? Of course even with 500 ‘fans’ you can get impatient and wonder why your widget isn’t flying off the shelf or customers aren’t lined up out the door. Christopher Penn has always said if you are selling Gulfstream G5 jets, and only need to sell one every two years to live like a king – you only need two followers, one of which is ready to buy a jet, and one that knows someone that wants to buy a jet. You need to find the right numbers. [Read more...]

Filed Under: info Tagged With: Christopher Penn, facebook, Google Alerts, LinkedIn, Radian 6, social media, success, twitter

Publish SOMETHING!

April 9, 2010 By Lynette Young 4 Comments

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

Without a tangible status update and ‘friends & fans,’ it feels like there is no *proof* of our social media efforts. The sooner we can hit ‘publish’ – the sooner management sees we are actually working and not playing around all day on FarmVille.

Taking a step back, listening, and learning are all nice in theory, but ‘lazy’ in the business world. Action produces results. Listening is inaction. We define success in how quickly we rack up the number of fans, friends, status updates, ‘likes,’ and re-Tweets. Numbers we can count and reproduce on a chart. How can you be considered successful if you gained less fans this week than last? How can you justify to your management that your efforts are successful if you LOST a few followers?

The listening precursor is a real sticking point in a good number of companies. You can see the results of not listening in multiple facets of a company. Customer Service is reactive to problems and always on the defense. The Sales team struggles to keep up with unique product offerings until the demand of customers hits the tipping point. Research & Development work in silos far removed from end users. Marketing follows a safe and predictable path that fits nicely within the niche and genre of their industry. Human Resources is seen as the ‘heavy’ in the company. Information technology departments treat employees like teens that cannot be trusted with the Internet for fear of rampant porn viewing and personal online socializing resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue due to unproductive worker bees.

The bottom line – handing in a status report with slow-gaining numbers is perceived as a failure in Corporate America. Fast. Quick. Instant. NOW. Because the technology (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) produce instant content, the perception is that success should be instant as well. Trust takes time.

Solutions are easy to identify, but hard to implement. Change is hard. It’s disruptive. It’s unproven.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: info Tagged With: facebook, Fiskars, LinkedIn, social media, success, twitter

Secrets to Success on Social Media

April 7, 2010 By Lynette Young 6 Comments

The answer is simple – BE SOCIAL. Now of course if you get that part, you won’t need my company’s help or to even finish this article series. For the rest of us that realize we are learning every day no matter how successful or experienced we are – read on…

It’s 2010 and while it may be old hat for some, most companies had technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn on their radar at least from last year (other companies realized the revolution started in 1984). Wait it out, be safe, see what others in their industry are doing (and if it works…) Without realizing what goes on behind the scenes and viewing only the tweets and status updates, many are tempted to jump right in. Show progress, DO SOMETHING. Great from a personal perspective, but it doesn’t fare as well professionally.

After working in this field for well over a decade, we are finding patterns in the resistance, adoption, and implementation to social media. Understandably, not all companies are set up to be ultra-progressive and on the bleeding edge of technology. The thing is, the curve is starting to see the crest, and holding out any longer puts you on the dark side of the slope. Even a 70 year-old brand can adapt. Hell, a 360 year old company can adapt. If they can – YOU can.

There is no more ‘wait and see’ in this economy. Results are proven, so long as you are not expecting social media to be a direct line to your company’s bottom line. If you treat social media as a telephone, and not a sales database, you will see results.

Becoming engaged in social media doesn’t mean a mad rush to smash on the ‘publish’ button and produce content. A good part of the ‘need’ to get on social media platforms is a result of several factors, in a very predictable course. With each step, there are traps to avoid and strategies to accomplish goals. The dangerous part? The process that leads to success and the (multiple) ones that lead to failure look very similar to the untrained eye. Trying to tackle social media endeavors using the same tried and true tactics and initiative you’ve used in the past will FAIL. In the past being active looked like productivity. Activity = Progress. Not so anymore. Sales people thought that the way to make more sales was to call more people. The game has changed, and fact is, you need to learn the new rules (or make your own) – but it is NOT the same as it’s always been.

Over the next few days the Purple Stripe team will be publishing the following articles related to the different steps involved in developing a social strategy.

Publish SOMETHING!
More Friends Please
Show Me The Money

A few additional topics may surface as well. We welcome your comments and thoughts, and hope that over the next week we can help you find some soft spots in your social media plans and set the course straight!

(Be sure to subscribe to get the articles as soon as they are published!)

This article is part of a series on social media success from Purple Stripe Productions.

Filed Under: info Tagged With: facebook, LinkedIn, secret, social media, success, twitter

Does Every Company Need to Be Involved in Social Media?

December 14, 2009 By Lynette Young 1 Comment

Short answer – NO. Not everyone needs to be concerned with having a professional business presence in social media networks. How do you know if you can get a note to skip gym class? Here’s a quick and easy checklist to determine if you should take social media seriously:

Do you value what your customers are saying about you?
Do you need more customers?
Is customer service important to your company?
Are you looking for ways to stay ahead of your competition?
Do you sell goods or services?
Are you actively expanding your customer base?
Would you like to gain additional business from existing customers?
Are customer referrals important to your business?
Is becoming the first place people look when purchasing the goods and services you sell important to you?
Do you need to build a brand outside of your existing customer base?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then a social media plan could be beneficial for your bottom line. I’ve met plenty of companies that have answered ‘no’ to all of the questions. While they may not admit to answering ‘no’, their actions prove otherwise. Incorporating a social media strategy into your business plan is not difficult or time consuming, but it does require expertise and planning.

Do you know where to start? Start by listening! Two places to start – your Google and Twitter.

You don’t need accounts to perform searches. Start by searching on your company name, industry, and relevant phrases and terms (as well as competitors) to find out what conversations are already going on. Surprised at what you found – or didn’t find? Social media content is essentially “Google food” and together with a well-crafted plan, can get you actively involved with potential customers.

So what’s holding YOU back?

Filed Under: info Tagged With: Google, search, social media, twitter

Twitter Founder at The College of New Jersey

November 3, 2009 By Lynette Young 2 Comments

Lynette will be attending both the networking mixer and keynote talk by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey hosted at The College of New Jersey in Ewing.

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey will speak with the College about the popular social networking site on Nov. 4 in Kendall Hall, in an event hosted by the School of Business.

Jack Dorsey’s talk, titled “Twitter: Its Implications for Business and Beyond,” will encompass his experience in initiating and growing the Web site, ranked by Alexa.com as the 12th most popular site in the United States. The 5:00 P.M. event is free and open to the public.

This should be a very interesting talk, as Twitter was not created to be a business networking platform or even start out with a business plan or revenue stream. What it has turned into is nothing short of game-changing – with uses ranging from keeping the Red Cross in touch with disaster victims and hotels such as the Roger Smith reaching out to patrons to amazing fundraising and awareness movements like #BlameDrewsCancer. Jack’s take on the state of Twitter now will be very insightful.

We hope to see you and be sure to Tweet us while you’re there!

Filed Under: info Tagged With: twitter

A New Way To Tweet

September 9, 2009 By Lynette Young Leave a Comment

The private alpha launch of oneforty, a site dedicated to being your one stop resource for all things Twitter, is well on it’s way. Twitter is considered one of the Big Three in external-facing social media communications platforms (the other two being Facebook and LinkedIn) While the premise of Twitter is simple, you answer one question, “What are you doing?” by typing an answer in 140 characters or less, the platform’s use and meaning goes way deeper … Grand Canyon deep.

Using Twitter from it’s website actually limits you in what you can do (and gain) from the service, but luckily the founders have allowed access via APIs (hook in and out of the data) that let third party companies build tools and utilities. This allows you to use Twitter exactly how you see fit. So far, oneforty has cataloged over 1,200 applications for Twitter. This shows not only the undeniable draw of Twitter for personal and professional communications, but that the community drives a need for using the platform in different ways.

I highly recommend visiting oneforty and putting your name and email on the list. So now that oneforty has your back on finding the best tools for your needs – are you ready to get engaged with the community out there? No? We can help.

Filed Under: breaking news Tagged With: facebook, LinkedIn, oneforty, twitter

Business Is All A-Twitter

July 25, 2009 By Lynette Young Leave a Comment

Finally providing a comprehensive business guide to all things Twitter, the Twitter 101 guide has been released. While it doesn’t give you a specific plan on how to incorporate a Twitter strategy as part of a larger online (or offline for that matter) marketing and branding effort, it is amazing at what it does aim to do – educate business people on how to best professionally understand and use Twitter. With sections including Best Practices and Case Studies, you now have the resources to help make an informed decision on if Twitter would be a good tool for your business as well as verbiage to help sell the idea to higher-ups. What you won’t see spelled out is any sort of monetary gains, time and talent resource requirements, ROI, or anything else that could infer what Twitter will ‘cost’. While I’ve seen Twitter grow from a neat application to post status messages independent of platform (at the time mostly MySpace or Facebook), it has undoubtedly grown into a must-have tool for a lot of people and businesses. It looks like the folks at Twitter are starting to come public with information about to best use the platform they created and help businesses get the most they can from it.

Filed Under: info Tagged With: twitter

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