Zenologue

The week ending March 13th 2010 was an apparent and important milestone in the world of social media networking, when Facebook surpassed Google in the count of most site visits in a week in the United States (full story can be read here. This was not the first time that Facebook overtook Google, but it was the first week-long victory, and it has the potential to become permanent.

As the number of subscribers to Facebook continues to grow, with the “population” of Facebook being compared to that of actual countries, it may be no surprise to see it become the most-visited site on the web. After all, the “Google” population is able to grow only as more people gain access to the internet, whereas Facebook still has a large pool of currently unregistered internet users to draw from. Eventually, the two populations might stabilize, but then the war really starts about who will attract the most visitors.

However, at the present time, it is possible that we could be near a tipping point where social media and the power of peer-to-peer marketing really do begin to take over from organic searches. Instead of asking Google for a list of local photographers, we can now poll our Facebook friends for testimonials and recommendations of photographers they’ve worked with in the past in order to find a good fit. Such peer-based endorsements are surely much more effective than a PPC ad or a search engine listing, no matter how relevant Google thinks they might be.

I’m sure many businesses are actively trying to figure out how to leverage this trend and tap into this new source of business referrals. Facebook fan pages, tweets and Foursquare check-ins, shout-outs etc. will all no doubt all play their parts.

But this doesn’t come without its own peculiar set of problems. For example, the annoying fact that we have to use a multitude of apps and web sites in our social networking activities. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, Plaxo and a host of others all attempt to make the web a social place, but at the expense of  having to maintain profiles all over the place and spend [waste?] time trying to keep them all current and up to the minute.

But, the biggest issue I see right now, though, is that of signal-to-noise. Typically used in science and engineering to measure the quality of an electrical signal, signal-to-noise is the ratio between the useful part of the transmission (the signal) to any artifacts such as random background noise. In email, for example, the signal can be thought of as those emails we want to receive, whereas spam would be considered as unwanted noise.

If the level of noise is allowed to rise too high, compared to the signal, then the quality of the item being measured can be corrupted or degraded. This is why spam is such a nuisance; left unchecked, it would reach levels that make reading our actual emails very difficult, or even render email itself useless as a mode of communication.

Unfortunately, I believe this degradation is also happening with social media. The level of noise (spam, nonsense, pointless posts, meaningless tweets etc.) appears to be growing on a daily basis. I’ve already lost count of the number of dumb applications I’ve had to block from my Facebook profile that would otherwise fill up my news stream with pointless garbage about mob wars, idiotic quizzes and other nonsense distractions.

No doubt the problem has been present from day one, but if the noise is allowed to surpass the signal, the system could be rendered unusable for anything useful, such as promoting a business.

As business owners in a marketplace, it’s unclear what options we have to combat the problem of increasing noise. Unlike spam email, the noise found on Facebook, for example, is cleverly disguised as “fun” in the form of games, quizzes, pointless comparisons to celebrities etc. The population of Facebook as a whole doesn’t seem bothered by this noise, and many even embrace it willingly. Is Facebook doomed to become nothing more than a mob war with 400 million players? In the middle of all that might remain a few “survivors” who plaintively try to sell their wares to what is essentially a world of zombies, but they would be in the clear minority and ineffective.

How are we supposed to cope with the ever-increasing number of social media networking sites that we positively “have” to join simply because everyone else is there? I view myself as fairly restrained and conservative in the world of social media – a newbie if you like. Yet, I still have to juggle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Foursquare in order to be considered even a minor citizen of the social media world.

In the sense that Google effectively took over the internet search niche, I wonder if there will ever be a single social media giant that will completely dominate the role. The “where are you?“, “what are you thinking?“, “what’s happening?“, “what are you feeling?“, “what do you want?” do-it-all place where we have one profile that covers everything.

Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch this great social experiment unfold, and I’m sure the eventual outcome will be a lot different to anything we can imagine right now

Anyway, thanks for reading. I do have to go now, since my Facebook farm animals are starving and need me…

Marketing facebook, google, LinkedIn, social media networking, twitter

At the risk of giving away my age, I wonder how many readers here remember the famous song by Genesis called “Follow You, Follow Me” from their 1978 album “Then There Were Three”. Of course, Twitter was something birds did in those days, but the title could easily be the theme tune for what we know today as one of the largest social media networking sites on the web.

If you aren’t already using Twitter, or have tried it and wondered what all the fuss is about, you might want to think again. When I first ventured into this strange new world of tweets and followers my first reaction was bewilderment. I simply couldn’t understand why everyone now wanted to text online, as if mobile texting wasn’t enough (blimey, I just realized the word “texting” is now a verb, and wasn’t in my spellchecker). Why, I thought, do all these people need to know that Bob’s cat has fur balls? It seemed like everyone was spreading the totally mundane 140 characters at a time.

But then something good happened – businesses started to get online with Twitter and were actually using it to leverage the market and make money. Best Buy, the major US electronics retailer, used it to spread news of special offers and incentives to major success. Other companies started using it to join in the conversation with their clients.

One of the first things that most people new to Twitter notice is that it’s apparently important to get as many followers as possible, no matter who or where they are. However, having a huge follower list might make someone feel famous in some odd way, but it isn’t necessarily the best thing if you’re trying to promote your business.

By the way, you should probably have a separate Twitter account for your business that is different to your personal stuff – it helps to keep these things apart from each other and prevents your personal tweets from diluting your business message.

So the question you should be asking yourself is “Who should I be following?” and “Who should be following me?” Okay, that’s two questions. Let’s take the second one first.

Who Should Follow Me?

The answer to this one is your target market. It seems so obvious, yet so many people are missing this one completely and not trying to attract the right followers. We are in the photography business, and we ought to have a reasonably good idea of who our target market is. For example, it could be middle-aged moms with good taste and an appreciation for finer things, such as photographic wall décor. It probably isn’t some dude 3000 miles away who likes to paint his toenails purple on a Friday.

But how do we get the right people to follow us?

Firstly, we can’t rely on them simply finding us first and then following us. That would be too easy! Instead, we need to look in the places where they go, specifically for the people and businesses that our target market might follow on Twitter. There’s a good chance, for example, that your local large art gallery has a good following, and that a number of those people will fit your desired market. So, follow the art gallery and then follow the people that are following them. Hopefully, they will reciprocate and follow you back. You can do the same thing for any other organization or people that your target market is naturally drawn to, such as fancy restaurants, upscale beauty salons etc 

Who Should I Follow?

A lot of Twitterers (is that even a word? Maybe it’s “Tweeters”) will simply follow anyone who follows them or just anyone they can find. That’s probably not the best strategy. Instead, start out by following the professional organizations related to your business, such as the PPA, RPS, pro printing labs etc. Follow other professional photographers, marketers and other experts. Follow your local organizations and charities too. Avoid following anyone who could be considered a spammer, especially the ones who only know how to say things like, “Get a million followers in five minutes with no work while you’re asleep.”

Finally, don’t neglect your local market! If you live in a huge city, this next step might not be as easy as for those in smaller towns, but it’s still probably worth a try.

You can use the advanced Twitter search to find people within a specific radius of your zip code (enter it into the “Near this place” field in the form):

You can then take the results and follow the people who interest you as potential clients or links to other potential clients.

Or, you can use TwellowHood, a new directory calling itself the Twitter Yellow Pages. Click on the TwellowHood tab and it brings up an interactive map so that you can click down to your actual town or city:

You will need to log in first with your Twitter username and password, but then you can follow people in your locality with one click each. Very easy and it means you will be following your local community, some of whom will hopefully return the favor 

Conclusion:

I hope that this gives you an idea of what can really be done with Twitter in terms of connecting with the people who matter to you and your business. I’m sure there are many other ways to use Twitter in this fashion, so please feel free to send in any useful comments you might have on this ever-changing and interesting subject.

Marketing Marketing, professional photography, social media networking, twellowhood, twitter

Your web site is, quite obviously, a marketing tool for our photography businesses but, if we’re to have the best chance of engaging our market in this Web 2.0 world, then we need to converse with them and not simply present a highly sanitized, techno-laden, emotionless blurb full of keywords that would send even a search engine to sleep.

The immediacy and spontaneity of blogs make them great for this purpose, as are Facebook and Twitter, if used properly. But, even the content on our main web site should be written more conversationally if we’re to catch and keep our readers’ attention.

Look, No Words!

Photographers are blessed with the ability to communicate in both written and visual media. So why is it that we rely so heavily on our photographs to do the marketing for us? After all, slideshows and flashy presentations might look pretty (to us creative people at least), but how effective are they at engaging the prospective client?

It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and maybe some indeed are. However, photographs by themselves are generally not a conversation – conversation starters perhaps, but not conversations in themselves. They may appeal to the viewer on an emotional level, which is a really great start, but we all too often leave it there, with no further attempt to really talk with them. Think of it like this: would you show a client a photograph in person without saying a single word about it? Do you show your friends your vacation photographs without the anecdotal stories that go along with them? Of course not! Just take a look on Facebook at all the comments that can be spawned from the posting of a single image – this is a conversation that anyone can join, and it’s all free.

Striking and powerful images can be wonderful at starting a conversation, but we had better continue that conversation, or our market will simply leave thinking we hung up on them. This can be as simple as acknowledging a user’s comment, thanking someone for a retweet on Twitter, or answering questions.

What Do You Want To Talk About?

It should be clear by now that there’s a need for us to join in with the spirit of this conversation that’s going on all around us – but what should we talk about? Well, one thing’s certain – it’s really no use talking about ourselves. People who talk about themselves too much at parties are usually the ones left standing about on their own guarding the coat pile.

The ideal subject for this conversation is simple: Our Market. Specifically, how they can benefit from our unique selling points, as long as those points are presented in a way free from business-speak. This must be one of the hardest things to do – the traditional concepts of marketing are so ingrained in us that it’s difficult to break the habit.

There is a conflict between our desire to communicate our message and “advertise” what we do, and the need to engage people on a more human level. We need to find ways to “speak” in plain terms, in a truly conversational style that is honest and from the heart, as it were.

For example, say that one of your unique selling points is that you’re an expert at photographing green cats (not much call for that I know but, hey, this is a hypothetical example).

The copy on your web site should appeal to the emotions that owners of green cats generally experience, and how portraits of their precious green pets can have so much sentimental value to them that the investment in a portrait is well worth it for all the benefits they will enjoy from the photographs. You can work into your conversational talk things like how much more adorable green cats can be, how they make strong bonds with their owners and how great they are to have. How sad would it be to not have a portrait of your beloved green cat after it’s gone from this world? This is much more effective than simply saying, “book your green cat portrait session now!” 

You’re The Voice

You could, of course, blast Facebook with status messages such as “Green cats look cool in black & white” or “When it comes to photographing green cats, we’re not green”. But that looks too much like traditional interruptive advertising or spam.

Instead, you could “listen” to the conversation and find people who are saying things like, “I love my green cat”, “my green cat is my best friend” etc. Then you can reply in a nice way that, yes their green cat is indeed cute and might look beautiful in one of your portraits. You don’t even need to mention that you photograph green cats – if you participate enough and allow people to get to know you, they will learn this information by themselves.

Another way to think of it is to imagine having a face-to-face conversation with a prospective client, perhaps someone you just met who asked about your business. The voice they would hear is distinctly you, and obviously human, with feelings, passion and a sincere concern for their needs and desires.

We can transcribe that conversation and apply it to the web site without making the mistake of over-sanitizing it or using fancy words. Okay, I know the web site is essentially an artificial conversation, but the voice you use can still be real and no less you than the spoken word. Keywords are still important for the search engines, but we should never make them a priority over the quality of our content.

The only job of the web site is lead-generation – to encourage the reader to engage you in person by calling, emailing, asking for more information and to involve you in a real conversation with them that can then lead to a booking and potential sales. In order to accomplish this we need to appeal to their emotions, something we should be able to accomplish considering that photography is inherently an emotional business. 

Conclusion

The introduction of the Web 2.0 has not only made the web more interactive and flashy with dynamic content; it has further enabled the online conversation that’s been there since the web was first invented; the difference now is that the conversation is immediate and becoming the dominant force. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogs, YouTube, Wikipedia and a host of other social networking sites are bringing the conversation to a rolling boil that is making traditional web marketing almost obsolete. We need to join in or we risk being left behind as relics of a more primitive time …

This post was based on my personal reaction to chapter 4 of The “Cluetrain Manifesto”, which can be found here:

http://www.cluetrain.com/book/markets.html

This was written in the early 1990’s but reads now like a prediction of much that we now take for granted. A very interesting and thought provoking read indeed. 

Marketing branding, business, facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Photography, social media networking, twitter