Archive for Twitter
“Fake Networking”
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s a great clip of Seth Godin commenting on networking online and how to distinguish between worthwhile “real” networking and waste of time “fake” networking.
It’s great observing the internet marketing field right now and seeing how many “superstars” (and wannabes) who have thousands upon thousands of “friends” (this is especially prominent on Twitter with the whole “Twitter autofollow” nonsense) are finally coming to their senses about all this social media activity/distraction.
You’ll find folks who auto-followed literally 10s of thousands of “followers” who are now cleaning house… all the way down to the double digits.
I never hid my feelings on this whole fake relationship stuff. I guess it just feels nice to have held strong to something I believed in (while other teeter-tawter on this issue) and be vindicated 
Raymond
P.S. Of course… having said that, I do have a bunch of “Facebook” friends whom I don’t really know… so maybe I should rethink my “strategy”. I will say this though, if someone spams my wall, invites me to WAYYYY too many events, or tries to engage (*ahem* distract me) with fruitless and spammy crap, they are outta there.
Hmmm, wonder why I make a distinction between Twitter followers and Facebook “friends”. Maybe because it’s harder to be “fake” on Facebook and harder to do automated following/spammy? Food for thought.
Twitter to the Rescue! Flexing My Social Media Muscle.
Posted by: | CommentsWhile PayPal has served us well (and it still serves us well), a few months ago Fernando and I decided that we needed a full functional shopping cart. Our sales funnel was just becoming too deep and too convoluted for something as simplistic as PayPal.
We needed full control over our sales process – up-sells, down-sells, cross-sells, continuity product, the works.
So I went on the hunt. I remembered Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss discussing the whole concept of “risk free upsell” and how 1ShoppingCart has a lil’ script that allows that to happen; so I poked around and got some feedback. It was Justin Christianson who then said, “Dude, why don’t you check out UltraCart, it’s awesome. It has the whole up-sell process taken care of along with a ton of other features/benefits.”
I did. And I have to admit, at first I was bewildered at all the options I had… all the menus, the configuration settings, not to mention the close to 500 page manual! I was like, “Justin, how did you bother going through all this stuff?!”
His reply? “Forget the manual… just use their customer support!”
And boy did I!
Their customer support was superb and was on top of everything. With their guidance I got my sales funnel figured out and was all ready to rock until…
The Event That Caused Me to Flex My Twitter Muscles
You see, everything was coming along nicely. I’ve spoken with their super friendly customer service representatives countless number of times on topics like, “How do I get an one-time offer salespage up?” “How do I add an image?” “How do I setup shipping?” And things were rolling, but then I hit a snag.
I went to upload a few videos and they just refuse to show up. So I called and asked and got they told me it takes time for the videos to process.
Next day, same thing happened and this time they told me to submit a formal help ticket so their tech guys can get on it.
A few days went by and I heard nothing. I emailed a few more times, called a few more times, and felt like I was given the run around. Each time I was promised that someone would get back to me but nobody ever did.
Finally, after 2 weeks of this horse-s**t (this was holding up our launch), I said enough was enough. I grew sick and tired of being mistreated, neglected, and ignored.
So I looked to social media for help.
My first one was innocent enough and looked something like this:
But after becoming more frustrated with the situation and still not getting the response I was expecting (neither on the phone with them nor in email), I poured on the fire:
This Got UltraCart’s Attention – GOOOOO Twitter!
This is where the sexiness happened (thanks to Twitter and kudos to UltraCart for patrolling the webspace for their names). UltraCart got a whiff of my dissatisfaction and rather than sitting idly by while I stir up a sh*t-storm at their expense, they took action:
At around the same time, I finally got a straight answer from their customer service department (after I probed deeper and practically threatened to cancel service)… so I finally got some closure.
Here’s the Point…
Twitter Can Cause Harm IF You Let It, AND It Can Cause Good… IF You Allow It
Don’t sit idly by when some folks start talking about you/your brand/your company/an issue you care about. Because sooner or later, it’s going to gather enough momentum, enough folks are going to get whiff of it (and gawd knows how many people will eventually blog about it)… that by then it’ll be too late for you to “take care of it”. This is assuming...»
What you have just witnessed is how I was able to leverage the power of social media properly to “call out” UltraCart because I genuinely feel like I was being mistreated. By the same token, you have also witnessed the ability for a company like UltraCart to quickly, efficiently, and tactfully diffuse a situation before it got out of hand.
All thanks to social media.
Use Tweets to Your Advantage
So how did Ultracart find me so quickly? Well, I am willing to bet money that they are using a service called TweetBeep, where you basically setup an account and get alerted whenever someone Tweets any of your selected keywords. In their own words, it’s “like Google Alerts for Twitter!”
So as soon as someone mentions your keyword, you get an email that tells you the Tweet and who Tweeted. Or...»
On another note, you can use TweetBeep for more than just protecting your business. You can use it to create business and draw more potential clients. For example, my buddy Fernando Ceballos got his current health insurance plan because he tweeted one day how he’s looking for one.
And guess what?
Someone had setup their TweetBeep to get alerted whenever someone Tweeted about “health insurance” and he got in touch with Fernando and voila! He got himself a client in Ferny. Pretty neat huh?
So get creative, what can you use Twitter for? What can you set your TweetBeep up for?
And lastly…
Don’t ever under-estimate the power of social media.
Raymond Fong
Setting the “Right Expectation” Vs. Hype
Posted by: | CommentsA conversation came up the other day while I was having dinner with Master Lee and a bunch of my fellow Hwarang brothers and sisters immediately following our MUSA (warrior) challenge involving grappling and weapon sparring. The conversation led me to discussing what I read in the book, “Predictably Irrational” on the topic of setting the proper expectation.
In the book, it talks about how when a person goes into an experience with certain positive expectations, those positive expectations can help make the actual experience that much better – to the point where it’s better than if the person had NO such expectations.
In essence, expectations can help make the actual experience that much better… But on the flip side, as marketers, we know that hype can damage your business. It may be because people’ll be able to smell that B.S. hype a mile away and avoid whatever you are selling like the plague, or your product won’t be able to live up to the hype.
So then the question arises, how do you distinguish “hype” from setting the “proper expectations”?
As an online marketer, I had to ponder this one a bit.
Hype vs. Proper Expectations
What is hype? According to Dictionary.com, it is defied as:
to intensify (advertising, promotion, or publicity) by ingenious or questionable claims, methods, etc.
The keywords here are “ingenious” and “questionable”. In other words, to get the consumer to buy through whatever means necessary – cheat, embellish, lie, etc.
*tsk tsk* I see “hype” as trying to stir up someone’s emotions, getting them all excited, by promising them something that cannot be delivered.
On the other hand, what is setting the proper expectations? Simply put, it’s about telling them the facts and nothing but the facts. Telling them realistically what they can realistically expect to happen as the result of their purchasing (and putting to use) your product.
Now… are you explicitly PROMISING them anything? No, you are merely telling them the results they can expect to realistically get.
Going onto Twitter, here are what some of my friends had to say:
Ben Mapp – hype=promoting unrealistic results for most; setting expectations=giving benchmark for likely results for most
Miss Tabares – hype lends itself to exaggeration; setting expectations is more realistic, like short term, achievable goals
Malika Duke – setting expectations sounds great, hype sounds like trying to sell by saying ANYTHING it takes
What do you think is the distinction between hype and setting expectations?
Raymond Fong
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