Archive for Twitter

Dear Mr. Internet Marketer,

I remember once upon time, the internet was a fun-filled place.  It was a place I can come and relax.  A place I can meet up with friends, chit chat about our days and lives.  A place where I can frolic among the different engaging websites that are fun, entertaining, and/or educational.

Those were the good ol’ days.

Then you came along and f**ked it all up.

You took it from a fun-filled playground where there was plenty of open grassy fields, kids-friendly toys, lots of sunshine, trees, and flowers and turned it into a melting pot of junk.  You pissed all over the grassy fields and sprinkled tons of shattered glass around all the toys.  You stampeded the flowers and in their place, put in man-eating plants.  You took the trees and put barbed wires all around them.

What in the world are you doing?  Please stop.

Death of MySpace

MySpace was once a great spot for my friends and me to reconnect and say hi to each other.  Heck, it was even a great place to meet new people (it even gave birth to the promiscuous statement, “From MySpace to my place…”)

But then you came along and pretended to be my friend.

You came along and sucked me in just so you can spit on me and my profile.  You lied to me when you messaged me calling me “your friend” only so you can sell me your junk.

Please stop.

Cancer of FaceBook

Then FaceBook sought to rectify the situation.  It was closed off to you for the longest time.  It was only for friends of friends of friends.  It was a closed community where true friends can connect.  It was suppose to be “better than MySpace” – the Bel Air version of MySpace.  It was great and fantastic!

I mean, yes it was just a more complicated and pretentious version of MySpace but at least it was cool and more structured.  I was able to reconnect with plenty more of my friends and family in a much more organized manner!

Then you showed up again.

Some way somehow, you penetrated the community.  You created applications laced with poison designed to do nothing but sh*t on my FaceBook page and waste my time as I continually deny your invitation and reject your stupid flowers and pillow fights.

Seriously, I don’t care whether you think I am Thao, I don’t care if you could be a celebrity you’d be a chipmunk, I D-O-N’-T care.  Why did you think I would in the first place?  Now my FaceBook is just a clusterf**k of your junk and sh*t.

Twitter Don’t Go “Tweet Tweet” Anymore

Twitter introduced microblogging.  It finally enabled me to tell the world what I am doing while I sit on my john dropping the kids off at the pool.  I was able to say things like, “I am tweeting now.” and feel important because I can pretend that the 23 people who are following my tweets actually cared.

I was able to learn of earth-shattering news happening around the world as news flooded the Twitter-land with things like the terrorist attack in India (which brought this info to more people in shorter amount of time than traditional means).  I was able to secretly stalk my friends and see their messages like, “I am leaving my house for my 2 week vacation – so yes, my house will be empty, please don’t rob me.”

Then you reared your ugly face.

Sure you may seem to be popular, with your 100,000.8 followers… never mind that you are following 238,898 followers and of those 100,000.8 followers, 8,723 of them are your own fake profiles and the remainders are your internet-cancerous marketing friends.

You flood the Twitter land with stupid messages like, “Hi my name is Bob, please like me and buy my stuff at: http://www.whyiamadouchebag.com”  You make Twitter now nothing but a shoutbox – where you do nothing but stand on your little hill and shout on top of your lungs, thinking we care and we actually listen to you.

Go f**k yourself.

Anti-Social Sites

Social sites and social bookmarks are no longer social.  Now they are just a cluster-f**k of Mr. Other-Internet Marketers like you.  They are filled with empty profiles with nothing but links to worthless websites that ask for your name, email address, and money.  These bookmarks are now loaded with links to self-promoting, value-lacking, piss-poor websites that have no business being bookmarked.

Social sites are meant to be social, but gawd damn it I am relapsing back into my reclusive self because these social sites are anything BUT social.

Can I ask you one question Mr. Internet Marketer?  “WTF?”

Please Stop

Listen Mr. Internet Marketer.  I get what you are doing.  I understand that it is your “job” to sell stuff online.  But what you are missing is the “add value” aspect of business, of what you are doing.

You are so busy and focused on just SELL SELL SELL, you are starting to piss off more than just me, you are pissing off the big brothers like Google and FTC.

Why do you think the whole idea of Google Slap and Google Ban came around?  It’s because you used and abused a system that was designed to improve lives.  You took that, warped it for your evil intentions so you can con people into buying your low-quality junk.

And now Google and the FTC are pissed and punishing everyone for it – thanks to you Mr. Internet Marketing A**hole.

Maybe if you get your head out of your arse for a bit you’ll see that by going back to the fundamentals of internet marketing, which is to give without want, and to add overwhelming value to people, you will not only help US but also yourself.

By stopping being such a prick online, stopping thinking of ways to “trick” the people to buy, “trick” AdWords to approve your ads, “trick” FTC to approving your ads, and “trick” your merchant account provider to approve your account… maybe, just maybe, you can bring balance back to the internet.

Mr. Internet Marketer, if there is any sense of dignity, ethics, moral, and self respect, please stop pissing on the internet.  Please restore the internet into the beautiful place it once was.  Do it for the children.

Signed,

Raymond Fong

P.S. And if you are NOT Mr. Internet Marketer, please sign the petition below by leaving a comment so we can get this message heard by Mr. Internet Marketer.

Jul
24

“Fake Networking”

Posted by: Raymond Fong | Comments (1)

Here’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.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0h0LlCu8Ks&rel=0[/youtube]

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.

Categories : Social Media, Twitter
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While 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:

twitter1

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:

twitter2

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:

twitter3

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

that 1. you are not just some crazy person and 2. you actually have a compelling case
you can do it manually by using Twitter’s own search function.
Categories : Social Media, Twitter
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