How To Increase Interaction With Your Facebook and Twitter Network
I received this question from a gal in my network we’ll call Sonia who’s wondering how she can increase the interaction and response from her Twitter followers:
“I really appreciate your down-to-earth personality. It’s no wonder you have so many followers and have become so successful… now to emulate you
“…Back to my twitter question, “How would you advise people to get to know the people they follow or that follow them? I have followers I would like to know but many don’t post or don’t always reply to my posts. Makes me wonder if they see my posts or what is going on??”
“I know there are times when I just like to read posts and don’t always reply myself… so maybe that is what they are doing? I don’t know… but I would like to have more interaction with my followers and am not sure how to get it? Any tips? Maybe I’m not posting personal enough stuff? “
Sonia raises a very good point here. I see many others faced with the same challenge.
Here’s the thing: everyone is super busy with our attention pulled in all directions. Often people simply do not have enough time to respond to everyone. So, for sure never take it personally. (Some members of my community tell me they stop following people on Twitter if they don’t follow back or respond. I say don’t be too hasty!)
Add on top of that the fact many people are still very new to both Facebook and Twitter and are not sure yet of all the features and protocol.
Here’s what I recommend:
- Make sure when you’re following someone on Twitter you really admire and want to get to know that you also add them as a Facebook friend. And vice versa of course. (I look for the Twitter app on the person’s Facebook profile - I like this app as it displays the recognizable Twitter colors and logo. If the person doesn’t have that app installed, I search for them on Summize.)
- Go read that person’s blog and subscribe. Come back often and post intelligent comments.
- Subscribe to their other feeds (Twitter, Facebook Status Update, FriendFeed, etc.) to monitor their activities and get to know the person a bit better.
- Along with posting blog comments when you read something that resonates with you, send an @message to the person on Twitter including a shortened link to their post. (I like http://is.gd for shortening URLs).
- Make a point of writing on their Facebook wall when appropriate. Not too often, always relevant and never with a big fat signature block.
- Comment on pictures, posted items and notes the person posts on Facebook.
- If you have a teleseminar series, podcast, radio show or you’re making a product - send a direct message on Facebook asking if you can interview that person (and maybe a ping about it by Twitter dm). Be concise, be clear. Make sure you state the WIIFM.
All of these activities need to be spaced out over time. Don’t come off like a stalker! Be clear on who you want in your professional network and why.
I share in-depth many other rapport and relationship building strategies in my Facebook for Professionals multi-media program.
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Much of what I’m describing here is what my friend and mentor Kevin Nations calls “intellectual voyeurism.” Because of the vast amount of information we’re all sharing online these days, it’s very easy to find out a ton about a person without them ever knowing you…. yet. You can then appropriately and respectfully inch your way into relationship with that person.
I recommend always coming from win:win, no agenda, kind, helpful and, in fact, show others you’re willing to help promote them.
As for other people you just want to network with, the same suggestions apply however you can keep it a bit more casual and join in conversations where appropriate.
Also, as I talked about here, use Summize to search for variations of your name to be sure you don’t miss any @replies to you.
What’s your experience? Is it easy to get your followers to respond on Twitter? Are you developing the relationships you want on Facebook? Do you think personality style affects our experience of social networking?
Make a Comment ( 18 so far )Social Media Marketing: Battle Of The Sexes?
I’ve noticed quite a stir in cyberspace recently. Whether it’s traditional internet marketers vs. web 2.0 marketers, heart-based vs. numbers-based marketers, or male marketers vs. female marketers - some folks seem polarized in their discussions… and thinking.
I don’t really care for rivalrous behaviors. Men and women are different. Period. Both genders are a vital and integral part of everything we do. Nor do I believe in competition as I blogged about here:
Here’s the thing: I do not believe in competition. Especially for the solopreneur. There’s only one YOU. No one can “compete” to be you. Even if you and I offer the exact same service, people will always do business with people they know, like, and trust. And, each of us adds our own personality, unique experience, and proven strategies into the mix.
Recently, my friend and mentee, Ann Rusnak The Time Diva, wrote this post: Quit Wasting Your Time Complaining and Take Action encouraging women to stop complaining about how the marketing world is male-dominated and to just get out there and take action. I completely agree, as I commented back to Ann:
I’m ALL for taking action - we gotta vote with our feet, mouths, mice, and dollars!! Men are action-takers and problem-solvers. Their ears are kinda like dogs and they tend not to have the frequency tuned into the complaint channel (read: poorly worded requests from us women!!)… I know, I’m speaking from years of personal experience and studying the genders. ha! So we’d all be better served by walking the talk and just getting out there and making things *happen*!! Like Ghandi says, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Love that.
Gender vs. Personality Type
When it comes to social media marketing, sure, it could be argued women are more social and more naturally relationship-oriented than men. However, I like to focus more on personality than gender. I’m a huge fan of personality assessments in order to really know ourselves and our clients well. We all have our own unique sets of motivations, desires, needs and wants. In fact, the better you know yourself and the better you can recognize–and adapt to–other people’s styles, the more effective you’ll be at relationship marketing.
Social Media Marketing for Professionals
It’s my honor and privilege to be one of the featured guest experts this week on the Marketing Mentor, Adam Urbanski’s From Contacts to Contracts telesummit. On a series of four free calls, June 23-26 at 10:00am Pacific / 1:00pm Eastern, you’ll hear from five dynamic gals sharing their proven strategies to effectively using social media tools - like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and video - to market your business and grow your profits.
(Btw, Adam tells me a few men have given him negative feedback because of the fact it’s an all-female event. Hm, I can’t understand why. As Ann Rusnak says, stop complaining and take action… positive, productive action where everyone wins.
In any case, I hope you can join me and this incredible lineup of excellent social media/web 2.0 experts… who happen to be women, interviewed by a guy. As I blogged about recently:
Those emerging as leaders by embracing new media are those who engage in conversation; those who are authentic, transparent and congruent; those who consistently use new media platforms well; those who are open and available…
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Monday, June 23 : Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad™
How to Get the Best Out of Your Blog: A 4-Point System to Get Found, Get Known and Get Clients -
Tuesday, June 24 : Deborah Micek, Coach Deb
How to Create Crowds of Raving Fans with Twitter -
Wednesday, June 25 : Yours truly, Mari Smith, the “Pied Piper of Facebook”
How To Create Profitable Relationships Using Facebook -
Thursday, June 26 : Nancy Marmolejo, Viva Visibility
How to Save Time with an Integrated Social Networking Strategy
All calls are 70 minutes in length and begin at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET
I’m particularly excited about Adam Urbanski’s event this week as I know every single one of the speakers personally, love their style, highly endorse them and recommend their work. Hope to hear you on the line!
P.S. What are YOUR thoughts around gender differences in marketing? Or should I say marketers?!
Make a Comment ( 10 so far )My Facebook Features Wish List
Everyday I use Facebook and everyday I find myself wanting just a few refinements to the current features. Nothing major (well, except the broken email system!), just certain things that would make my user experience more powerful, positive and productive.
Here’s my wish list of Facebook features,
(1) Radically improved email.
C’mon Facebook - don’t you know more and more people are using FB email as one of their *primary* mediums for communicating? I’d like:
- To create folders for sorting/archiving. (I know I can do this in Outlook with the email notifications. But Facebook email has the person’s profile pic filed with the message and I like that for reference.)
- To set up filters/rules so I can at least manage incoming email better.
- The ability to forward emails. T
- o be able to blind copy. (One of my peeves is those multiple-recipient spam emails!)
- The ability to unsubscribe/prevent getting email from specific people I don’t necessarily want to unfriend.
(2) More customizable News Feed.
I’ve played with those sliders on the news feed mixer board up the wazoo. I’ve got names in the “More About…” and “Less About…” fields. Yet I know there has to be room for improvement in Facebook’s algorithms. I *reeeeally* would like to refine the content further! Whatever happened to the little thumbs up and thumbs down in the News Feed?
And, just with ads by certain people (see #5), I’d like the ability to nix those same folks (the ones I blocked in particular) from my News Feed when I see events, groups, yada yada by/for/about them.
(Wondering what the heck I’m talking about re sliders, mixer board, more/less about? Scroll to the foot of your News Feed page and click on the link for Preferences. Voila!)
(3) Aggregate Mini Feed of top friends
Maybe there’s an app that does this? If you know of one, let me know! Here’s what I’d like to do: hand pick my shortlist of people I want to follow closely. Then pull their entire Mini Feed into an RSS reader with alerts for certain activities. Okay, dream on, I know!
My goal here is (a) not to miss anything important, (b) tone down the “noise,” and (c) zero in on specific friends and specific activities without having to look at a batch of profiles one by one (not that I do much of that right now!). Make sense?
I already know you can subscribe to any or all of your friends’ Status Updates, Notes and/or Posted Items RSS feed. However, it’s just as easy to look on FB or use the Firefox FB toolbar, for example, for Status Updates.
(4) Ignore all Events, Groups.
I use the “ignore all” button every day to clean out all the extraneous invitations as I wrote about here. However, just as you can ignore all APP invites from certain friends, I’d like to see that feature added for Group invites and Event invites.
(5) Lift the limit on Group messaging.
Yep, this is a tricky one because if ever Facebook lifts the current 1,200 limit, the spammy-type folks would abuse the feature up the wazoo. However, what if there was a qualifying procedure? Accumulate so many points, go through a peer-review, get x number of endorsements. That type of thing. Food for thought. Meantime, Facebook Pages are the only place with no ceiling.
(6) Send Page Updates to Inboxes.
This is contingent upon my wish #1 above because I’d probably filter to a specified folder. I don’t know about you, but I rarely check my Page Updates. I might if they came into my Inbox just like Group emails.
(7) Block certain ads.
I really don’t mind the ads on the left hand side, the bottom and in my News Feeds. But there are times when I see an ad from a person I’ve blocked on Facebook and I just want to be able to gratifyingly click a big black “x” and get rid of that ad. Okay, okay, I’m moving on. LOL.
Actually, I recently started noticing ads that have clearly accessed my YEAR of birth. Now that *ticks me off* as I have my year of birth hidden for privacy (identity protection) reasons, not because I care that you know my age. Seeing an ad with “41 Year Old Female” or “Women Over 40″ in the headline also makes me want to click a big black “x” and get rid of that ad!! PLUS, it makes me question Facebook’s privacy settings and what info they’re revealing to advertisers.
That’s it! Just seven wee adjustments please, pretty please?! Ha! (Yeah, hm, so much for “nothing major.”)
Oh, I could easily add an 8th wish and that’d be: A *much* better way to display all my fave apps on ONE page and not have to fight for valuable real estate on my shrunk down profile. However, I know Facebook are working away behind the scenes on their super-duper new and improved Tabbed Profiles coming out next month. Fingers crossed we like ‘em!
What about you? Which refinements would make all the difference to your user experience on Facebook?
Make a Comment ( 8 so far )What To Do With Constant Facebook App Invites
Many people who join Facebook for business and professional reasons often seem completely stumped by the overwhelming number of invitations to install applications. And, the more friends you have the greater the number of invites you’ll receive.
From what I’ve seen, new Facebook folks respond to constant app requests in one of these three ways:
- Install-em-all: Some members feel obliged to install every app, especially when the invites come from people they know personally. The install-em-all peeps think their friends will get a notice from Facebook if they don’t install the app and they might risk offending their friends. [Note: Facebook does not alert your friends either way].
Result: a Facebook profile completely overloaded with apps that (a) looks cluttered, spammy, and unprofessional and (b) drastically slows down load time. [Maybe the new tabbed Profile will help alleviate the app overdose syndrome].
- Deer-in-headlights: Brand new Facebook members often end up feeling stuck and overwhelmed with incoming friend requests and app invites from complete strangers. They feel confused and wonder what on earth all the fuss about Facebook is and end up missing out on the huge marketing potential.
- Head-in-the-sand: These folks let the app invites pile up higher and higher not knowing what to do with them. They’re afraid to install and afraid to ignore.
Help is at hand. Here are my suggested solutions:
(1) Ignore All.
The ignore all button is your friend! I use this button every single day as my policy is to ignore about 99% of application invitations. Absolutely no disrespect intended for all the amazing app developers out there or the kind friends who want to include me in the fun.
My strategy is to utilize apps that (a) have a particular business use, (b) save me time, (c) help me be more productive, and/or (d) help increase my visibility and presence in a tasteful and diplomatic way. (Actually, my fave way to find out about an app is to read a blog post or Note from a friend providing his/her experience with a certain app).
To apply the Ignore All feature, on your Home Page (the very first page you come to when you log in to Facebook; it shows your News Feed) click on ANY of the Requests over on the right column at the top. This takes you to your master Requests list page and you’ll see the ignore all link at the top right.
NOTE: I recommend reviewing your friend requests first, confirm/ignore, skim through all other requests, then click the ignore all button. A window pops up giving you a choice of which type of requests you want to ignore.
(2) Ignore All From Certain Friends
I use this link from time to time. Basically, if you’d like to keep someone as a Facebook friend and simply prefer not to receive app invites from them, use this link (appears under each invite).
(3) Block the App
If you keep getting requests to install certain apps from many friends and really don’t care for the app, just go ahead and block the app altogether and you won’t receive any more invites.
Here’s how: with incoming app invites, use the “Block This Application” link (as shown in the screenshot above to the left of the red box). Or, search for the app using the master Search Bar in the top left of any screen inside Facebook. Click “View Application” then you should see the link for “Block Application” on the right column towards the top:
I hope this helps make your Facebook experience more pleasant and productive!
For more Facebook tips you can apply immediately to accelerate your business growth, check out my Facebook for Professionals complete multi-media system.
Make a Comment ( 15 so far )Ten Steps to Leverage Your Blog Posts With Facebook Notes
If you’re an active blogger (and I recommend online marketers for sure have a blog), here’s a ten-step process to create valuable exposure, build rapport, nurture relationships and advance your credibility:
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- Make sure you’re importing your primary blog using the Facebook Notes app.
- Check that you’re already friends with certain prominent people in your industry. If not, send them a friend request (always with a personal message).
- Write a thought-provoking blog post and mention these specific people in your industry that you respect.
- When Facebook imports your blog post into the Notes app, TAG the specific people you mentioned in your post. (You can only tag your friends). They will all receive a Notification in their list of Notifications that you tagged them, and the story will publish in their Mini Feed, and the story will push into their friends’ News Feed… thus bringing more traffic back to your Note.
- When people comment on your Note it also goes into their Mini Feed and their friends’ News Feed. You might also send a private email directly asking certain people to comment. Always include a link to your Note and/or blog post.
- Add to the Comments yourself from time to time to also push out a notification in your Mini Feed and your own friends’ News Feed.
- For particular commenters, you could also acknowledge them publicly on their Wall… again creating valuable exposure and viral visibility for both parties.
- If you follow these same people on Twitter, that you aspire to and have blogged about, (which I recommend you do - look at their Facebook profile and/or search on http://summize.com to find their Twitter username), send them a tweet or direct message letting them know you included them in your blog post.
- When people comment on your blog post, send them an @ Twitter message to acknowledge them in public.
- After a certain period, use the Share feature on your Note (imported blog post) to post out the Note on your profile. e.g. say 3-5 days goes by and your Note has many comments - you could post to your profile (use the Share button) and include a comment to the effect there’s a great discussion going on and you’d welcome more input. And/or you can also use the Share button to send the Note directly to specific friends via email.
As you can see - that’s a LOT of mileage out of ONE blog post!! I wouldn’t recommend this strategy for every blog post, necessarily. But certainly, give it a shot now and then - and do let me know your results.
To see an example in effect, check out my last blog post: Not All Internet Marketers Are Created Equal and the imported Facebook Note currently with 23 comments. (If we’re not yet Facebook friends, send me a request in order to see the Note).
You’re welcome to comment directly on my blog (I use CommentLuv so your latest post URL pulls in) and/or on my Facebook Note. I’ll do my best to also acknowledge you publicly for added valuable visibility!
UPDATE: Be sure to also add in your prominent people as Technorati tags!
Make a Comment ( 10 so far )
