Tag Archives: Social Media

You need 1000x more followers on Twitter

You need more followers

You need more followers!

The more followers you have, the more likely that there will be someone paying attention to your messaging when you share your content, your announcement, your promotion.

It also heightens the probability of someone sharing, resharing, or actually clicking through to your content or your brand. A secondary benefit is that people respect numbers, no matter how authentic or real or true these followers are.

It’s a sad truth.

And, finally, you can’t build a following unless you have a following. It’s very difficult to grow your followership with only the right people if you’re also not willing to collect everyone else. I am not going into how to do this right now because that’s going to be next week’s article but you need more followers by hook or by crook — even, alas, if you need to buy them (if it comes to that). It’s easier to get rid of spammy followers than it is to develop a real following. I call it a social media bootcamp.

You need to work on things that are kind of bullshit but seem to be important to people: follower numbers (be it Twitter or Facebook) and your Klout score. The too cool for school crowd is preparing hateful comments right now but it’s true: Klout scores and pure number of followers matter.

I mean, according to SocialBaker’s Fake Followers app, my president, Barack Obama, only has 46% “real” followers on Twitter. 35% of his followers are “fake” and 19% are what’re called “inactive.” All that follower-buying and yet the president of the US is still the number-4 most-followed Twitter handle on the planet, right?

So, even though follow-back schemes, Twitter’s promoted “who to follow” list, and full-on buying hundred, thousands, hundred-thousands, or even millions of Twitter followers, cash-on-the-barrel. You need to start somewhere.

I guess when it comes to Twitter, at least, and also Facebook and Pinterest, fake it ’til you make it seems to be a pretty great way to kickstart your Twitter empire. How else can you explain the shadow-obsession with applications like TweetAdder and Twiends?

I hate to say it here but when it comes to celebrity, the more popular you become the more popular you are and the more popular you become.

When it comes to celebrity, however, you cannot choose who adores you! Who wants your autograph!

Who sends you fan letter, naughty selfies, or entire ears! And, when it comes to celebrity, who even knows how much of all that is real grass root obsession or is the combined simulacrum of a dozen agencies and publicists?

Me? I think over the course of the last 6 years, 4 months, and 1 week I have been on Twitter, I have tried loads of things. I am sure I bought Twitter followers at a time when I found a good source through my team whenever my team bought Twitter followers for clients and all that.

That said, I am lean: of my 42,688 followers on Twitter, only 1% are fake, 1% are inactive, and 98% are good — but it isn’t always that way, I am sure — I spend a lot of time trimming, mowing, and pruning my own Twitter lawn. Tweetscaping, I guess I would call it.

OK, now that I have burnt all of my bridges and told you a little too much, and now that I will probably be drummed out of the Twitterati by everyone except possibly Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki (my shameless Patron Saints of Twitter), let me continue.

You need the right followers

I guarantee you that you’re much more likely to attract the right people once you have a certain amount of gravitas, and online that gravitas is defined by: who you are, of course; who you work for; what you’ve done; what you say; who you’re associated with (those are the old reliable); but also how many followers you have, the ratio of number of followers to number you follow (you need way more people following you than you follow to be a cool kid), your Klout score, and simple things like your bio, if you have a profile photo, if you have a nice background image, or if you’ve been on Twitter for a long time.

We people are a little like chickens: if a couple hens are really into a particular rooster then all the hens will be into him.

And, if you spend all the hard work in finding the right people to follow, you can’t make any of these “right people” follow you back, can you? You can surely ask, implore, and demand, but you cannot make.

I guess, at the end of the day, we’re simple creatures — and hella superficial at that!

You need to be interesting, popular, successful, relevant, powerful, connected or influential enough to make that follow-back worthwhile, especially when people want to keep their ratio as “cool” as possible by only following back high-Klout, high-influence, and high-caste individuals (thereby benefiting from the friend and Klout association — what a racket)

To quote Tony Montana: “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.” And, the corollary, “On social media, first you get the followers, then you get the influence, then you get the business.”

I will warn you that you’re probably going to break a few eggs, make a few enemies, step on a few toes, and turn off a few Twitter- and Facebook-purists. Maybe you should let me know in the comments if you’re actually interested in learning how the Twitter- and Facebook-sausage is made. I would appreciate it — what do you want to know?

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3 signs your social media shout is a socmed wimper

(Via Biznology) Every other week I like to remind you that you’re being a social media wuss. And, by wuss, I mean you’re being too much of a social media “nice guy.”

And by “nice guy” I mean you’re spending too much time worrying about what others think to the point of turning your entire social media marketing campaign into a milquetoast and pablum sandwich. You spend too much time trying to get everyone to like you.

You’re always afraid of stepping on toes or offending anyone. You’re especially afraid of getting fired. If you’re honest with yourself, that’s your biggest fear: losing your job if you’re an employee or losing (or alienating) your clients (or prospects) by doing something as revolutionary as having a voice, an opinion, an agenda, or a point-of-view.

Heaven forbid.

If you don’t have any champions…

You as a brand shouldn’t be a one-man-band. The online world is (and has always been) a conversation. The Internet is a collaboration. The social mediasphere is a two-way-street. And if you’re speaking to yourself alone in your social media room, you’re doing something wrong.

What are you doing wrong? Are you boring? Are you afraid? Are you insecure? Are you derivative? Do you create unique and compelling content or do you just repeat, retweet, and reshare the hard work of others? Are you a unique source or are you a repeater? Are you a soloist or just another face in the choir?

Cowboy up and audition for the solo!

Even better, why don’t you write your own music? Become a social media composer? Well, at the very least, learn how to project your voice to the back of the hall! Learn to use your diaphragm and get some volume.

Even if you have nothing to actually say, say it loudly and with confidence. Loud and proud always wins if you never leave the choir. Not everyone’s meant to become a soloist, a composer, or a conductor.

If you don’t have any enemies…

If you’re willing to compel the attention of the spotlight, you’re going to have critics. If you don’t, you’re not saying anything. You may not actually be dull but you’re being a dullard online. You’re not even being a dullard worthy of bullying or mocking, you’re being a Gray Man.

“A gray man?” you ask: “The gray man is someone who can walk through a crowd, be seen by everyone, but remembered by nobody because nothing about them stands out.”

The gray man is a concept taken from survivalism. The belief states that being invisible is better for survival than running around brandishing assault rifles and a big fancy 4X4. Cool, right?

Being a gray man may well be dandy for keeping alive in a post-apocalyptic deathscape, but being an invisible wallflower is antithetical to what you’re supposed to be doing on behalf of your brand, your company, your boss, your products, and your services.

Yes, I know you love social media because you’re naturally bookish, introverted, and a little anti-social (which is why you’re so good at social) but you’re now in content marketing, social media marketing, and digital marketing — and marketing is a subset of selling and sales requires that you beat the band, get out there, and break through the chaff, the ack ack — that you’re able to go from your librarian’s whisper to Whitman’s “barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world!”

Repeat after me: “Yawp!” Ok, once again, “YAWP!” Much better.

If at least a few people a month don’t even care enough to slag, slander, hate on, or flame you enough to make you a little nervous, then you’re not yawping very well, you’re not being authentic enough.

The reason why everyone hates a nice guy is because the nice guy is often kind of a jerk. He spends so much time doing things he hopes and prays you’ll find appealing that he’s essentially a liar.

He’s a liar because he’s fine being “just friends” even though he’s in love with you; he’s inauthentic because he’s not being himself and he’s got one hell of an unfulfilled agenda that moves further and further away; and the nice guy’s even dangerous because the rift between what he wants and who he is and how he’s acting, behaving, and being is infused with frustration and disappointment — and that can be volatile.

People really do want to know you better — stop being such a bifurcated putz.

If nobody unfollows you…

We keep on talking about acquiring followers, Likes, friends, and fans. We’re obsessed with it. We’re also super-afraid of being unfollowed. If you’re never being unfollowed, unliked, bozo-filtered, banned, blacklisted, spam-boxed, or tarred-and-feathered, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. I don’t mean you need to bash people over the head — you can win with charm, playfulness, smarts, humor, entertainment, or even je ne sais quoi.

But one thing you need to do is maybe message a little more than you do. Or choose a side. Or have an opinion that is a little more controversial and risky than glib beauty pageant aspirations for world peace.

(Ok, I thought I should mention just about now that I am being a little extreme.)

I want you to increase your volume: frequency-of-tweets, boldness of voice, directness-of-intent, and something even scarier and more intimidating: what do you want from your followers? What do you need from them?

How would you like them to help you?

In a perfect world where you actually got your heart’s intent, what would all your social media profiles, handles, Walls, channels, etc., be doing for you? Would they be adding bottom line to your revenue? Would they result in more donations to your cause? Would they be buying, buying, buying from your awesome eCommerce site?

Remember this: you’re allowed to give your followers a big kiss on the lips! They’ve already admitting to having a crush on you. Come on!

There’s no reason in God’s green earth why they would be following, liking, and subscribing to you otherwise, right? You’re not going to lean over, your eyes closed, and get a cheek. Come on, you’re already an item!

And really, the only reason why anyone would unfollow you is because they just don’t think that this is the right relationship. That this match wasn’t made in heaven and they’re going to look some more. It’s not you, it’s me; it’s not me, it’s you — whatever.

Churn’s a good thing. I mean it. If your followership is stagnant, it’s because so are you.

So, you’re really not even risking anything, are you? If they’re already into you, you can come from a place of power, of leadership, and of control — but in a good, supportive way.

You don’t need to fear rejection because your friends, followers, and subscribers have already made the first move.

Yes, I know that doesn’t make it any easier, but you’ll never make it around all the bases and get a home run if you don’t start with a first kiss. (Ok, that analogy has more than played out — I can just hear all of the unfollows, dislikes, unsubscribes that I am getting right now as we spiel.)

But, at the end of the day, the reason why everyone likes bad boys is because they take what they want, they speak their mind, they don’t apologize, and they stand their ground!

While I don’t necessarily recommend that much aggression be dumped into your social media platforms, I do agree with one thing: the stereotypical bad boy certainly gets what he wants because he knows what he wants and he lets people know in a very clear, easy-to-parse and easy-to-understand way.

Even though he may well be bad, he’s not duplicitous and you never (ever) need to read his mind to know what he’s after. He’s willing to raise his voice and become the center of attention — he’s even willing to make a scene when there’s no other choice — and so should you.

Never has the mediasphere been more noisy, competitive, or easy-to-access in the history of mankind — you’re going to need to be willing to shamelessly and fearlessly draw some attention to yourself to draw attention to your brand or corporate mission.

Good luck, knight — I wish you good luck on your quest.

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People don’t like being collected on social media

You know how much I am obsessed with “long-tail blogger outreach,” right? I am a man possessed! That said, I really don’t collect people. People don’t like being collected. They — we — don’t like being part of a ménagerie de personnes (people also don’t like folks who drop French for no good reason at all, by-the-way). While it’s really too easy to collect people, it’s even easier to take them for granted — and maybe there’s a tipping point. I have been consulting some bouncing social media babies recently and they’re doing it right. They’re each running a couple-hundred followers and friends and they know every one — they’re aware of exactly who they’re following and get really excited whenever anyone follows them back.

I mean, really excited! It’s very charming.

But please forgive me, I felt the same way too — and I must tell you that I really needed the reminder. I mean, not to brag, but I have been 500+ on LinkedIn since before many of you were born. And with 43,571 followers on Twitter and 4,777 friends on Facebook, maybe I am “that guy.”

And with such a torrent of conversation splashing and sloshing at me all the time, manifesting in an endless din, I of course am just about always overwhelmed.

It’s almost impossible to both maintain the cultivated intimacy of those very first days of exploration when you knew the name of everyone you followed and, especially, everyone who followed you.

And, in order for your good words, your good message, your brilliance and genius to make its mark is to have built an audience.

There’s the rub. If you’re unable to remember that each thousand followers you accumulate will widen the gap between you and your followers. While your followers and friends will probably may not lose their attachment to you — in fact, their attachment might grow as they spend more time with your voice, your words, your wit, and your wisdom, you’ll get overwhelmed, too — just like I did.

Just remember, people don’t like being collected.

Honestly, I don’t know if I have done a very good job of it myself. I have tried to create Twitter lists and keep connected, but it’s not easy. It’s also not easy when people, over time, know you more than you can know them — even on Facebook.

Always remember, people don’t like being collected.

Do your best to not allow your burgeoning social media empire to go on autopilot. While it’s virtually impossible to keep up with so many people (unless you keep the number of people you follow to a severe minimum or limit your engagement with people you don’t personally know on Facebook to just followers and not friends), that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with any of them.

At the very minimum, you’ll need to pay attention. You’ll need to listen. You’ll need to participate with everyone, at the very least.

At-replies (@replies), direct messages (DMs), and third-party mentions. At the very least. And you need to engage with generosity of spirit and patience. You’ll need to engage with everyone who engages with you with as much personal touch and attention as you would someone you already know — with the understanding that you’re only being damned with your success.

That were it not for your success building your brand and reputation online, you wouldn’t have this problem, would you?

There’s an amazing book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird. It’s a book about writing that suggests that no matter how overwhelming the Herculean task before you — the overwhelming wall of tasks that keeps you from writing that great American novel — you can reduce it to simple steps. In the case of the book, a ten-year-old boy was freaking out about a book report about birds:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Bird-by-bird, follower-by-follower, friend-by-friend.

People don’t like being collected but people hate being dismissed.

The beautiful secret about being present, being well-engaged with your followership as you develop the sort of followership that extends into the thousands and tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands, potentially — is that, outside of private messages, engaging openly, honestly, presently, and sincerely with people publicly and before others is an outstanding way of shaking hands and kissing babies while the cameras are on.

However, that’s just a parlor trick. It’s a way of expanding and deepening perceived intimacy online, a way of spending quality time with one person publicly so as to show humor, humility, kindness, and attention to everyone else — sort of like how CEOs like to profess how the door to their office is always open.

What happens, then, when people your work with take you up on your offer to come visit them in the corner office?

Well, you sit there and thank God that you’re trusted and respected enough by each and every one of your employees that they’re actually willing to take you up on it (because, generally-speaking, the sort of CEO who does something like this is the sort of CEO who is pretty sure that his minions are too intimidated to ever cast a shadow on his door).

But you, you’re different.

Because you know, now or even before, that people don’t like being collected, people hate being dismissed, and people resent being trifled with, you’ll make a business of engaging pleasantly with everyone who comes to your door, no matter how casual the encounter, no matter how modest their pedigree, or no matter how non-existent their Klout.

Remember, every day, that you don’t have to do any of this. You need to neither collect thousands of people nor do you need to maintain a simple cadre of real people you’ve met in real life. It depends on what you want. Do you want access and influence or do you want relationship, intimacy?

Either way, it doesn’t matter. People aren’t stupid. If you’re rocking forty-plus-thousand followers like me or 38,356,230 like Justin Bieber, people know that.

They understand you’re busy. They know you’re probably torn in two by your schedule. That said, remember that this relationship must be a relationship of mutual respect: do you thank people for their retweets? For being mentioned in a #FollowFriday?

Are you responsive enough to take the time to brandish your virtual Sharpie to sign autographs? To smile sweetly as you’re immortalized in a virtual mugshot-with-a-star.

You don’t need to engage every day with every one of your 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 followers: remember, bird by bird, friend by friend.

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Kiss your social media shame smack on its lips!

If you want to build your brand online circa 2013 from scratch, you need to kiss your own personal shame on the lips through the protective glass that is the line in the sand that you and your employer have decided are grounds for termination. What do I mean? “Goose, it’s time to buzz the tower.” And if you’re not willing to publically buzz the tower — to really set the windows rattling and maybe put some coffee down the captain’s shirtfront — you’ll never be able to differentiate yourself from all the other people who are hitting all the same points with the same tone.

You don’t have to be outrageous to kiss your shame on the lips — you can surely be the talk of the dinner party without showing up drunk and creating a scene — you just need to be a little more honest, a little more forthcoming, and a lot more human than you’ve probably been commanded by too many broadcast journalism classes, by too many media training courses, or simply by your very own concept of self, decorum, and shyness.

Think of all of the amusing — saucy even — stories you could tell at a dinner party, even if your mum, dad, Priest, Rabbi, boss, inlaws, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, and even kids were in attendance — if you had the courage!

The reason why you come off as so tone-deaf online might even be because you aren’t much of an exhibitionist at all! Maybe “I can’t say that” is more of an excuse you use so that you don’t have to become the center of attention in the fist place. Maybe you’re too shy for this? Maybe you’re not the sort of person who would even get up at a dinner party with all of your family and friends to even tell a story in such a public, out there, sort of way.

I mean, if I’m being honest, online people want to see you in your knickers humping a giant stuffed bear as much as you want to do it yourself. This has been proven again and again by the hundred of Harlem Shake videos published by just about every company — and not just the Playboy Mansion and a bunch of college kids.

Sadly, since there were so many Harlem Shake videos, only the really raunchy, sexy, bombastic videos ever made the light of day (very smart, you introverted social media manager — you were able to hide in plain sight!)

Nothing you will do in your blog posts will ever be as humpy or as nast or as raunchy as all the people in your office have already possibly been when they clicked upload and your Harlem Shake video went live and possibly went quasi-viral. Be honest, you’ve probably kissed shame on the lips at a few holiday parties in your time — don’t worry, what I am suggesting is really up to you.

If it helps you out at all, consider all of this to be part of your job; if it helps you out at all, workshop some of the scenarios you’re considering and pass them by the most creative people in your office. Explain to them what you’re up to and let them know that they shouldn’t be surprised when the walls shake, the coffee flies, and you break some sound on behalf of the company and brand.

First caveat, however: do not script it, do not read it, do not practice it, and do not make it perfect. People hate reluctant roleplay — it’s no fun if it’s forced!

Ask TMZ: there’s only one thing more shameful than a sex tape popping up: a sex tape that was produced for publicity reasons.

No, I am not suggesting a sex tape, but I am suggesting getting as close to your shame as possible, making it close enough to make you a little nervous — maybe a lot nervous. If you’re not challenging yourself as much as you do when you prepare and perform a public speech, I think you may well be calling it in.

Why in the world was I inspired to write such a post? Well, I reconnected with Jason Konopinski at SXSW and started to listen to his podcast, Riffing on Writing. His latest episode features Julien Smith and this blog post is going to be completely derivative.

This entire post was a riff on something Julien said — and something I think I need to remind myself of today: “people don’t get close enough to their line when they write.” While that may not be a direct quote, it’s what I heard and this is what I made of it:

You may well have a line when it comes to what you will and won’t say on social media, on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, et al — and that line might really and truly be right on the edge of propriety, too!

However, I bet you’ve never even remotely come close to your very own line — and that’s indeed safe but it doesn’t help when it comes to making a name for yourself or standing out from the crowd, especially — and this is another paraphrase from Riffing on Writing from Julien — since we’re currently living through the most competitive media age in history.

Strangely enough, I am now listening to The Engaging Brand podcast with Anna Farmery and her guests Stephen Voltz & Fritz Grobe — gurus in the art of creating viral videos — and they’re echoing what Julien and Jason talked about except in this case they’re talking about what makes a viral video hot: and it’s not narrative, it’s not story, it’s not inner-most-innermost, it’s more side show, dunk tank, shot in the groin!

OK, now that we know what the people want, they also echoed what I said earlier on, too, which is: you need to be honestly bombastic, you need to be earnest about that groin shot — you need to make sure that all the viewers of America’s Funniest Home Video don’t call bullshit on your doggie video unless there’s a very big wink and a large nod.

When it comes to embracing our own personal Idiocracy, we don’t want to feel like we’re being spoken down to, for goodness’ sake, we want to feel like we’re all on the same level — that we’re sharing a bit of a giggle, a bit of a blush, together. That, as we laugh and our shoulders relax and we let some of our daily stress disperse into the Interwebs, we also click Share To: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit, Digg, Vine, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and everywhere else.

Final caveat: please go as far as your line in the sand — but no further. For most companies I have seen on YouTube doing the Harlem Shake, I don’t even know where that line is anymore. Even if your line is very out there, make sure you have your boss and legal define a line for you — and stick behind it; also, consider the family friendliness of your content, too. If Bob Saget wouldn’t show it on AFV then you might have gone too far.

You really don’t want to get flagged as family unfriendly. Think about your content as a submission to StumbleUpon, “Is this page safe for work? [Yes] [No, it contains nudity or adult content]” — try to avoid nudity or adult content. Remember, America was founded by prudes. Violence is OK, sexual content is not.

Good luck and I want you to know that no matter how bold you are, no matter how brave you fancy yourself after all of this, you’ll still get nowhere close to your real line — unless you’re a sociopath or Louis CK — so don’t be too concerned.

Some bad news: you’ll soon realize you’ll become way more popular online if you get and keep super close to your line of shame than you will ever get from being smart, being a good writer, or having actually original insight. I am sorry but it’s true. You’re already an amazing writer, right? Imaging the new heights you’ll reach if you come out from the shadows, come in from the cold, and allow your freak flag to fly!

Let me know how it goes.

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Inspired Web Design from Unison Agency

I am Director, Social Media, of Unison Agency, based in Historic Georgetown, Washington, DC, and proud to be part of such an innovative, creative, forward-thinking, and tech-capable branding firm such as this. In fact, before I met Robert Fardi and the Unison team, I wasn’t sure there were any creatives in DC — but there surely is, there surely are. Watch this new video announcing the introduction of Unison’s brand new “web channel” — the newly-launched website at www.unison.net

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