Where are you Jumping?

Thanks to social media, we are now able to connect to the world in ways we never thought possible. Whether you are writing on your friend’s wall on Facebook, texting or tweeting, there is always a way to communicate and most of us don’t think twice before doing so. However, did you ever consider that you may not be communicating with the right person or that what you are tweeting may be used against you at work next week? Unless you have experienced the dangers of social media firsthand, these thoughts have probably never crossed your mind.

The Dangers Of The Public Domain:

Are photos ever put up of you on Facebook that represent you in a way that may get you fired from your job or in trouble at school? Did you ever update your twitter status and write something that was not necessarily PG-13? You may not think twice before posing for a picture or updating your status, but this could backfire. When something is posted online, it is permanent and open to the public eye. Even on certain applications, your privacy settings may limit who can see your profile, but your friends profile may not be limited and what if they display a negative photo of you? There isn’t much you can do about that. Larry Johnson of the Kansas City Chiefs recently experienced the dangers of the public domain firsthand when he decided to use twitter to tweet some comments that were not necessarily “politically correct”. Once his tweets were out there, they drew more attention than Johnson had intended , which has resulted in his release from the team. In today’s world we need to be extra careful when doing something that could land us as victim of the dangers of social media.

Chiefly a Twitter Problem

Identity theft:

Social media platforms have made many of us more vulnerable to identify theft. By providing too much information on sites such as Facebook and My Space, many of us are making it simple for criminals to create false identities and access our bank accounts. Have you ever received a message on Facebook asking you to verify your Bank of America account number and password? I have certainly received messages similar to this. Although I do not fall for these counterfeit messages, a user new to the world of social media may not think twice before giving out their information. With the increase in identity theft now a days, users of any type of social media networking sites need to be extra cautious with what information they provide to the public.

Who are you really connecting with?

Are you sure Twitter user Soccer452 is really your best friend Suzie? What if it is somebody pretending to be Suzie? Celebrities have so many users trying to impersonate them on twitter that they are now given verified accounts to help the twitter community decipher the authentic accounts from the phony ones. What about on Facebook? I don’t think twice before accepting a Facebook user who has requested to be my friend. However, there have been incidents where Facebook users have been impersonated. Take for example, the tale of Facebook user Bryan Rutberg. In January ’09, an unknown user got in his account and updated Bryan’s status to say “Bryan NEEDS HELP URGENTLY!!!” The unknown user then sent one of Rutberg’s Facebook friends a direct message saying that Rutberg was robbed at gunpoint in London and needed money in order to return to the United States. Rutberg’s friend wired him over one thousand dollars thinking he was helping him out. Meanwhile, Rutberg was safe at home during this whole incident and the money was never to be seen again. Impersonating people on social media platforms is becoming more and more common these days. Although the warning signs may not be clear, we need to always be on our toes when trying to connect with our friends.

Social media has changed most of our lives for the better. It helps us maintain relationships with family and friends, promote our brands and products, and communicate more clearly across borders. However, we need to make sure to be very careful when using any form of social media and watch out for the danger signs. For brands, the ramifications are multiplied. With more people and resources on the line, it’s crucially important that brands know what they are doing when enacting a social strategy. With the typical faceless brand, people often lose sight that a brand is really just one face for an entire community of people and treat brands even less respectfully online. Vigilance and foresight are the only winning strategies.

The two biggest pieces of advice that can be given to any user of social media to protect yourself, whether you’re an individual or a representative of a brand, are the following: Make sure to be careful of what information you put out there else it may come back to haunt you later, and do your diligence when connecting with others. Getting your safety squared away first allows you the freedom to reap the multitude of benefits of the social sphere.

Feed readers aggregate new content from multiple sources— blogs, news sites, and multimedia— using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology, allowing you to quench your thirst for a particular field without visiting individual websites. Given its utter simplicity and its extreme utility, it astonishes me that I still have friends who haven’t yet set up a feed reader.

Staying up to date on the themes, trends and events in social media has been my personal hobby for the last three years as I’ve been studying how people use the web in their daily lives. With that said, I can’t imagine how my hobby would have ever developed beyond a glimmer in my eye if I’d had to learn about this field by visiting individual websites. Aggregating data into one web page gives me access to information quickly so I can scan for the bits I find useful or intriguing whenever I steal a few moments.

So, now that I’ve convinced the naysayers to finally start using a feed reader, I should relay a few tips I’ve discovered through trial and error. With any hope, these practices will allow you to get the highest ROI on your RSS:

Play around

Crafting the ideal feed reader page can require some trial and error. When you first set up your page, don’t be afraid to subscribe to content from a wide variety of sources. Over time, you’ll get a sense of the content you find “sticky” enough to grab your attention.

Prune continually

It can get overwhelming to stay on top of the sites with more prolific posting schedules. I’ve found a personal threshold for how much information I can commit to reading in one sitting. If I end up feeling overwhelmed when I see a large number of updated items from one particular site, I’m likely to take that as a sign that I should delete my subscription. After all, feed readers should make your online life more enriching, not more stressful.

Star, skim and skip

All feed reader tools include some functionality so you can separate the informative wheat from the chaff. In Google Reader, you can “star” an item for later viewing so it doesn’t get buried in subsequent posts. Skimming headlines and skipping items altogether are also entirely appropriate practices within this medium.

Part of increasing the ROI of your RSS is also recognizing its inherent social nature. In Google Reader, for instance, users can share links with their Gmail contacts. These shared links show up automatically within a “Shared friends” category once you launch the reader. Other services, including Bloglines, Feedly and Netvibes, include their own social functions. When it was time to choose a feed reader, I went with Google Reader simply because it was already interoperable with my Gmail account. The upside of this choice is that most of my email contacts are also Gmail users, so I can easily view the posts they find intriguing, or share my own.

Using Google Reader, I tap into the brains of some of the heavy hitters in the social media world—Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, and Beth Kanter—on a daily basis. Their words inform my view of the dynamic social media landscape and inspire me to use social tools in new and effective ways. In an industry that changes minute to minute, it’s helpful to know that my feed reader is working even when I’m finally asleep.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit old for some of us. How about RSS feeds for news sites? Who needs to check CNN.com when you can just grab the RSS feed and be alerted about new stories?

One of the nice things about RSS is that it automatically brings news to me. New post on your blog? I don’t have to remember to check every day. RSS tells me when there’s something new.

Similar to this, we’ve seen the emergence of auto-tweeting in the last year. For those of you who don’t know, services like Twitterfeed allow twitterers to auto-tweet any RSS feed. Mostly, that takes the form of, for example, “New blog post: Day 46 of the Mayonnaise Diet http://nondescriptURL.com.”

As well, services like Tweetlater and SocialToo allow twitterers to automatically direct message or @ reply new followers. Sometimes, that takes the form of, “Just wanted to say hi and thanks for following. Looking forward to tweeting with you.”

These are great tools when used politely, but too many people have gotten lazy with these things and are obnoxiously taking advantage of them.

The problem that many of us have is the blatant, over-the-top advertising that is done. Personally, I think Twitterfeed is really useful. I like knowing when my tweeple post something new. I won’t always read their stuff, but at least, I have the option. The problem comes when you auto-tweet things like, “If I suggested you read one thing today, it’d be this http://URLshorteningservice.com.” To me, that sounds like you found something interesting, and you’re not just shamelessly promoting yourself.

Have a new blog post? Think it’s spectacular? Set your auto-tweet to begin with something like, “My new blog post,” not, “Let me mislead you just to increase my pageviews.”

Now, a lot of so called Twitter experts will complain about auto-tweets for hellos. Truth be told, I think they’re great. I simply cannot send a personal hello to everyone that follows me within a short time of them doing so. Sometimes, I’m too busy. Other times, I’m just not on Twitter. So, what do I do? I auto-direct message a polite hello and then follow up later with a personal hello to anyone that has responded.

This has two benefits. One, it’s simple for me to welcome people, and two, it cuts down the number of people I have to say hi to because there are so many twitterers that follow just to see if you will follow back, but they have no genuine interest in you. So, I figure that, if they message me back with a hello, I should take the time to check out their profiles, maybe their blogs too, and then tweet them a genuine greeting.

The followers that I ignore are the ones that direct message me something like, “Your the coolest person ever! So, I’m giving you access to my new top-secret post on making money the easy way http://ShameShameShame.com.” Notice the confusion between your and you’re, as well as the person just assuming I’m interested in that sort of post, and saying I’m the coolest person ever when s/he likely has never met, or even heard about, me? That’s just poor and annoying salesmanship there.

Chris Brogan would say, “I offered to shake your hand, and you stuck your tongue down my throat. Yuck.” Wait until you’ve built a relationship with me before you assume I’m even interested in your moneymaking tips. If I am, you’ll get lots of pageviews from me instead of just an immediate unfollow due to the uncouth hello you just sent.

What does this all mean? Automation services are great when used correctly. When they’re used incorrectly, they burn bridges that you’ve barely begun to build. Go ahead and auto direct message me a hello and maybe even your URL. Go ahead and auto-tweet your new blog post. Just don’t make any assumptions about what your new followers are interested in, and definitely, do not mislead them. This way, you can join the ranks of Twitter for Smart People and not Twitter for the Socially Inept.

While you need only be on Twitter for a day or two to see that there’s a great deal of spam and bad corporate Twitter marketing (the exact sort of impersonality that Godin dislikes) there are also a number of companies doing it right. Their Twitter voice–which, importantly, is not a corporate voice but the voice of a real person with a name–is entirely personal. Their updates constitute a very real and genuine conversation. Is there some corporate promotional material mixed in there? Sure, but to no greater degree than in the feeds of the oft-tedious Twitterati or countless entrepreneurs and marketers who pump their blogs and trade links while they complain about their commutes and talk about their weekend skiing trips. That many companies can’t break away from their suited monotone doesn’t mean that ALL companies can’t.

Take Starbucks–or, as I should say, Brad from Starbucks. Considering that over 30,000 people follow Brad, he does an excellent job answering questions and talking to people. His tweets aren’t overly clever or exceptionally charming. But then again, neither are Barack Obama’s, and quite a few people seem to think he’s fantastic at Twitter.

Or take Dunkin’ Donuts. (Full disclosure: We’ve consulted with Dunkin’ Donuts on their Twitter marketing strategy.) Dave over at Dunkin’ Donuts was tweeting about the sub-zero temperatures in Chicago a few days ago, and he even had time to give someone a little ribbing about her math. Again, does he post some promotional information and some business content? Of course. But, as a native Bostonian I can tell you that, while I may not really care to see every link that Chris Brogan thinks is cool or know when ijustine is going running or watching CNN, I definitely want to know if Dunkin’ Donuts is giving away free coffee or opening up a new shop near me.

Godin, who recently treated print journalism on his blog with a similarly dismissive wave of his hand, wants to know why someone is “going to spend time with Dunkin’ Donuts unless there is something in it for you?” With all due respect to his larger point, it doesn’t seem to follow, logically, that anyone on Twitter (or on Social Networks, for that matter) could spend time with someone they get nothing from. The beauty of Twitter is that you can opt-in and opt-out whenever you want. 30,000 people follow Starbucks. Clearly, they see value. More than that follow Chris Brogan and iJustine (even though I don’t). They wouldn’t if they didn’t see value.

While Twitter marketing may not in itself be a direct line to sales, it is a direct line to increased brand loyalty. And when you consider that the cost of creating, designing, and maintaining an interesting Twitter profile is very low, it’s unwise to be as dismissive of the idea as Godin appears to be.

Take this e-mail we received as an example of how not to reach out to a blogger or business online (please note that I altered the company URL for confidentiality):

Dear webmaster, We want to inform you that recently we have launched a website called www.failrail.com. FailRail.com is a website that allows visitors to view, create and compare timelines. These timelines can be illustrated with pictures, text, YouTube movies and MP3. On our website, you will find timelines about music, movies, history, politics, art et cetera. The website is very educational, so our site is very popular among teachers and students.We noticed that your blog is focused on internet. We would be grateful if you could post an article about Failrail.com on your blog.

This company could be interesting, and their service could be fantastic. I’ll still never write about them because of their impersonal social marketing. They turned me off with “Dear Webmaster” (I’d much rather get a simple, human-style “Hey there” or “Hello”) and they lost all hope with “We noticed that your blog is focused on internet.” Hack work like this shows only 2 things: you’re not taking your product seriously, and you’re not taking your audience seriously. The PR component of a good social marketing plan has to begin with your genuine interest. Whether you’re a blogger looking to network or a business looking to get some buzz, put all that business about traffic and clicks aside for a moment and invest yourself in the bloggers and sites that you’d like to network with. If you can’t find anything that interests you or that you’d like to comment on, save yourself and the blogger time and move on to someone else.

The dangers of spamming bloggers with canned e-mails are extreme. The best-case scenario? Your e-mail will get ignored and your web site or company will go on that blogger’s mental blacklist. You may forget—indeed, you never really cared to begin with—but the blogger will not forget. The worst-case scenario, of course, is that your careless e-mail will appear in a post like this, exposing your misstep to a fairly large audience. (We were nice enough to change the name of the company, but not all bloggers are as kind.) Regardless of the reaction you get, your social marketing plan isn’t going to be effective if you’re alienating nearly 9 out of 10 people you contact.

For the digital PR component of every social marketing plan I work on, I probably spend about 75% of my time doing research. I would much rather send out 5 e-mails to interesting writers who I would read even if I wasn’t in the business of doing digital PR than send out 50 or 100 e-mails to whoever happens to be at the top of the Blogged.com or Technorati search results. I’m interested in bloggers that write innovative, engaging content. Those writers, those few, are the people I want to help me generate buzz.

Further, when I do write to a blogger for the first time, I almost never “pitch” them. I talk to them about the articles that I like or tell them why I enjoy the blog overall. Quite often I’ll say how I ended up reading the blog because I’m always interested in how people find the blogs I write for, and I tend to think other bloggers feel the same way. My goal, simply, is to get a conversation going and see if there’s a potential fit. One of the biggest mistakes people and companies who are new to social marketing make is viewing the first contact as a selling opportunity. This isn’t traditional business, and this isn’t traditional selling. Even those who blog for a living are still doing it primarily to share their voice and their ideas; helping you share your ideas or make money isn’t their priority.

Then again, most of the digital PR e-mails we receive reveal that most people aren’t even ready to think about the sell/non-sell question. They’re still struggling with the fundamental element I talked about earlier: Actually reading and being genuinely interested in the bloggers they decide to contact. In this e-mail pitch we received, the writer assumes that we’re going to be just overcome with enthusiasm for her company’s SEO quiz:

Dear Search Blogger, I wanted to let you know about a really cool contest we launched earlier this month at www.nondescriptlink.com. The Contest will identify the Biggest Search Geek in the SEM industry. Please take a look and test your SEM smarts! So far over 800 people have taken the test, and the top score is only a 71.25%, so the test is really quite difficult. See if you can beat the current Search Geek.Try the test today: www.nondescriptlink.com, or post about it on your blog!

Like the first e-mail, this one commits the mistake of openly asking me to write about their contest. There’s no need to ask. I know why you’re writing. Spend that valuable space getting me more intrigued, and we can talk about how interested I am in posting an article about it later on. Or use that space to make your case that my readers would like to hear about your contest. This e-mail also commits an even larger error: the salutation tells me the writer has never even riffled through the post titles on PandemicBlog. “Dear Search Blogger”? As much as I dislike “Dear Webmaster,” I’d rather be addressed with a vanilla catch-all term than with something I am fundamentally not. “Dear Webmaster” is like meeting your friend’s dog Rusty for the first time and saying “Hello Animal.” “Dear Search Blogger” is like saying “Hello Anteater.”

If I’m seem overly vitriolic about this, it’s because the etiquette of digital PR—indeed, of social marketing in general—isn’t difficult to understand, provided you can separate yourself from the formality and hard-sell habits of traditional business. Much of it is common sense. Do like the bloggers you choose to contact. Spend most of your digital PR time with reading and research. Don’t go in with a selling attitude, but instead think of it as one student talking to another, one thinker talking to another, and one writer talking to another. Never send an e-mail to a blog if you can’t give an impromptu summary of what it’s about and why it’s interesting. And, above all else, don’t confuse dogs and anteaters. This is, after all, social marketing. It behooves you to at least get names right.

Napoleon, a 24-year-old Captain at the time, had set up a gun battery in a forward position. In fact, the battery was so far forward that Napoleon’s superiors said he would never get anyone to man it. The battery was so close to the enemy and so exposed that to take up the post meant guaranteed death by enemy artillery. Indeed, the first men ordered to the post refused. Undeterred, Napoleon had one of his sergeants create a wood placard with a message on it and place the placard on a stake near the gun battery. The message on the placard read: The Battery for the Men Without Fear. The position was manned day and night from that point on by soldiers eager to prove their heroism, and Napoleon’s battery dominated the city’s harbor. The resulting withdrawal of the British Royal Navy led to French victory and the start of Napoleon’s illustrious career.

So what does this teach us about marketing? Speak to people’s deepest emotions in order to succeed.

Here are some of those deep emotions which, when activated, lead people to take action:

1. Pride (specifically in one’s background, country, religion, etc…)
2. Manliness or femininity
3. Feeling of safety

Of course, the idea of appealing to these elements within people is not new. You can see each of the three above examples in any Chevy truck commercial. If you drive a Chevy truck you are not only safer than others on the road, but you also manlier than non-Chevy truck drivers, and also more proud of America. Chevy hits as many of your emotions as possible. But wait, what about Ford? Ford’s commercials say their trucks carry more weight and make you more manly. And then there’s Dodge, and Toyota..oh damn, they all say they are the most manly. One can pull a train, one can stop an airplane, one can drive off after a 3-ton rock is dropped in its bed. This is the equivalent of Napoleon having four gun batteries and placing the same placard in front of all of them. It wouldn’t have worked. A superlative is, by definition, an exclusive thing. There can only be one best, manliest, sexiest, bravest, —–est.

So, continuing our truck example, we have four pickup trucks lined up in front of us. Each truck has a wooden placard in front of it saying: Truck for the strongest men.

Confused, we all stand in a clump staring at one sign then another then another. Noticing our apparent confusion, the makers of Dodge, Chevy, and Ford quickly decide to tap into a different emotion. We watch as a new sign is posted in front of each of the three trucks saying: Truck for men who really love America.

Hmmmm…

Well, now we’ve pretty much turned away from Toyota because we all want to support America. But, we still stand in confused clump, unsure of which truck to choose because they all claim the same superlatives. Noticing this, the makers of the trucks go to great lengths to show us how strong their truck’s frames are, and how they perform in crashes. They each post a third placard in front of their trucks saying: For men who love their families.

I’m sure you can all see the pattern here. I will not go further into the unending stream of wooden placards shown to us. The point, I’m sure, is obvious. If everyone is “the best,” then no one is.

So what does this teach us about marketing? I think it teaches us that what was revolutionary for Napoleon is now commonplace. Napoleon “thought outside the box” and chose to approach his men though different channels than just passing orders down the chain of command. Today, however, Napoleon’s tactics are very much “in the box.” As such, it is important that marketers pay special attention to how the competition is appealing to consumers; not to mimic it, but to intentionally take a different course.

This is especially true in online marketing where the ability to target consumer micro-segments is unprecedented. Find the people you want and then hit their emotions in ways that they haven’t been hit before. At first it is likely scary, just like it would be scary to tell Ford to stop fighting the “I’m more manly that you are” fight. But, if you take a second and step back, move outside the traditional marketing dogma under which you were trained, you will see the true genius of Napoleon: Approach people differently than they are currently being approached.

Be different. Prove your superiors wrong. Lead people to the actions you want them to take. Market like Napoleon.

In fact, Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world, according to Alexa, with 52% of its page views coming from the English version of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia is the worlds biggest and most successful wiki, but there are thousands of niche wikis out there and due to their collaborative and social nature, they should be part of any social media marketing strategy.

Marketing on Wikis

• Many wikis let you make updates anonymously. Ideally, you should log-in and create an identity. Be honest and be yourself.
• Don’t use wikis for self-promotion. It is not intended for that and your entry will end up being deleted or at least edited.
• While you want your business or brand to be added, it is better to build out complementary and appropriate information as part of adding your business. For example, if you are a professional social media marketing consultant, you’ll want to add content to the definition of social media or the definition of marketing.
• It is OK to correct mistakes, it is not OK to remove competitors.
• When you add a new page, make sure you start with the template that is appropriate. If you make mistakes, other people will fix them, and if you spam with inappropriate content, other people will remove you.

It is important to have a clear picture of what wants to be achieved with wikis. The main professional aim on Wikipedia or other important wikis should be tracking and managing what is said about you, your brand or your company. At least in the case of Wikipedia, their links are far too influential for anybody to ignore its content, especially given the public’s misunderstanding of its liberal editorial policies. It is also a very good way to contribute your knowledge of your market or the focus of your business to the community. Wikis should not be looked at as a tool to generate links or to increase a website’s page ranking. In fact, all links on Wikipedia are “nofollow”, meaning that they are not counted as a link by Google or the other search engines, which use links as part of their ranking algorithm.

Wiki Etiquette

There is a set of unwritten rules that will ensure a successful use of wikis as marketing tool.The bottom line is that any significant wiki community will be very vigilant and strictly opposed to biased information. Any effort to enhance a Wikipedia listing should make sure that it aware of and follows the established guidelines. That said, here’s a guide to creating a new page in Wikipedia.

Niche Wikis

This is a short list of niche wikis, which can be relevant to specific businesses or brands:

• WikiTravel: the wikipedia of travel.
• Dealipedia: a business wiki for mergers, acquisitions, venture investments, IPO and other deals.
• LyricWiki: all the lyrics you can handle.
• WikiMapia: collaborative mapping.
• Wikia: community supporting the creation and development of wiki communities on any topic people are passionate about. Currently, they support over 6000 communities in more than 70 languages.

While wikis allow very little deviation from the established rules and customs, if you pay attention and follow the rules, wikis offer an extremely powerful forum for enriching the community and associating your online brand with intelligent and useful content.

1. TV Isn’t King
2. They Don’t Care About Your Ad, They Care What Their Friends Think
3. Marketing Has to Change

I agree so strongly with these three notes in particular that I formed this business based on them! But the discussion that followed the article brought up some points that I thought worth getting blogosphere feedback on.

1. If TV isn’t king what is? Stats show that TV quality content is still extremely popular (might we say king?) online. If this isn’t King, what does something need to do to be ‘King’? My main feeling is that TV as a medium is dying due to one main factor: Interruption marketing. What is the first thing a DVR/TiVo owner does? Skip all commercials. One of my colleagues asked “why?” when this point was brought up. I think the better question is “now that the possibility for freedom is there, why does anyone EVER WATCH TV commercials?”
2. Gen-Y (and many older folks) are supposedly of the opinion that “your ad doesn’t matter”. I would have further refined this point to be “your poorly-targeted, uninteresting ad doesn’t matter”. Look at the viral success of some interesting, funny or amazing online ads. Are they THAT hard to understand? Are they random, unrepeatable anomalies? I say no. They all engage the consumer in a way that the consumer WANTS to be engaged. Putting a TV commercial online and then complaining that viral marketing is failing is like putting a Mustang in the ocean and telling Ford their cars don’t work! I think ReadWriteWeb had it slightly wrong. Gen Y-ers like relevant, engaging ads. They watch the Superbowl for the ads, they forward amazing online ads. Gen Y is responsible for the huge success of some viral campaigns. It’s the overwhelming failure on the part of the ads to understand the medium and earn attention that Gen-Y disagrees with, not advertising in general.
3. “Marketing has to change” is about as timely and insightful an observation as someone showing up to the D-day beaches on June 10th, 1944 and proclaiming “something big just went down”. Maybe they were being “simple” for simplicity’s sake, but think comments like that reassure marketers in a terrible way. With that comment, we’re askin g people to ignore and delay the inevitable. “It’s OK, other people who ‘get it’ are just beginning to understand this new wave of marketing. I can spend five more years of marketing budget before I turn my brain on.” So much content is available online now (print, radio AND Television content) that advertisers who aren’t wising up don’t have much more time as the space is rapidly being conquered by the forward thinking outfits who are willing to “brave” the lands where consumers are in control of what they spend their time on.

I would say I think very much like a Gen Y-er. I can’t stand being interrupted online and I hate irrelevant ads, but I LOVE good viral videos and I love targeted ads. I realize that TV isn’t king anymore (or more specifically, for much longer). I realize that in an increasingly on-demand world, marketers can’t demand attention of Gen Y, they can only earn it.

If you’re a marketer seeking Generation Y’s dollars, ask yourself if you’ve honestly considered the changing landscape and changed your actions accordingly. It’s like they say, repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. How will you change your approach today to win Gen Y dollars tomorrow?

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A true fan is – according to Kelly – someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.

This post makes a very good point on the role of these 1,000 fans, but does not discuss how can one build such a core of fans.
While reading Barry Schwartz’s book “The paradox of choice; why more is less“, I discovered valuable information which helped me approach this intriguing question.

Adaptation

Adaptation is an evolutionary theory referring to the way individual organisms gradually change and get more suited to their environment.

However, the theory of adaptation does not only apply on studies of evolution and the origin of species…it also applies to human behavior.
To put it simply, we get used to things and then we start to take them for granted. Repetition brings adaptation.

To a degree, this is necessary to create a sense of coherence and security; people need repetition to develop a feeling of safety.

But an interesting paradox has been observed: when people get used to a source of pleasure it stops being a source of pleasure.
For example, the pleasure degree of your first joy ride was much higher than the one of your 100th joy ride.

How to Build a Steady Fan Base

What can we learn about marketing from adaptation?

Balance is the key.

On the one hand you should follow a pattern. This could mean:

• using the same style of expression (e.g. same writing style, same directing style, same music genre, etc.)
• creating expectation (each broadcast should promise a new one)
• keep a steady publishing structure (e.g. new content every Monday and Thursday)
• refer to previous publications; your fans will be happy to find a point of identification (”Hey, I know that!”)

On the other hand you should renew sources of pleasure. For example:

• make something different once in a while (if you write a blog, post a video or a podcast). This provokes the expectation mentioned above.
• develop and expand your methods and them implement them to your pattern. (like in TV Shows: a new character is introduced and the becomes a regular member of the cast).

Conclusion

Building a base of 1,000 true fans is a very cumbersome process. It requires complete engagement, passion and vision. But as Kevin Kelly said, once you have this base you can make a living out of it.

Learning from the functions of adaptation and its paradox, can help you expand. Nine Inch Nails is probably the best example. Remember what they started almost a year ago, with ther ‘Year Zero Project‘? They got out of the norm by providing something completely different (an interactive campaign, where fans search for clues and participate in projects) and they have now implemented this pattern to their whole campaign, by providing new ways to the fans to participate. Now NIN fans expect new ways to participate in upcoming NIN projects.

Certainly, this equilibrium between repetition and innovation does not guarantee success, but is surely a major step to this direction.

We will be returning with additional posts on this subject so please subscribe to our feed to stay connected. As always, your feedback on the subject will help us expand the discussion.

So what do you say, are there other ways to build a regular fan base?

Facebook has a special initiation…namely ‘follow our rules or die’.

If you don’t know how to use Facebook you need to be “in the know” before you get started in order to avoid any unpleasantness and hassles. This saves you a great deal of time both now and in the long run. Invest a little of your time now in discovering how to properly use Facebook so you avoid losing massive amounts of your time later dealing with account issues and warnings.

Here’s where you get initiated and kept out of the Facebook black hole:

One of the big reasons people use Facebook is for networking. Especially for business, it makes sense because it is a protected environment. This can be a very good thing because it keeps away spammers.

Less Spam = More Attention

This being true, your communications to your friends have a better chance of being read and responded to (which is what you want). Of course, you’ll need to know how to build your friend/contact network. Don’t worry, I’ll talk with you about that and give you tips on how I obtained 2211 friends.

Unfortunately, many new users get caught by the Facebook spam moderators and get their accounts shut down. These guys mean well but unfortunately sometimes the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.

Even many seasoned Facebook users have had their accounts disabled and banned. Robert Scobleizer (a long-time and experienced Facebook user) wrote about how his account got shut down. He later got it reinstated but why make yourself go through the hassle. After the effort it takes to build up 500, 1000, or more friends, you want to protect your account and the time that you’ve put in.

There are some basic rules that you want to follow. When you are sending friend requests always include a personal message and only send the same message to 8-9 people before changing it up and sending a different one.

Realize this is a general guideline and Facebook changes their algorithm periodically. They also have human administrators that check things out when a filter is triggered.

To be ultra safe at the start when you first signing up and are getting comfortable with the Facebook laws and user community you may want to send only 5 of the same personal message each day.

This ‘message’ field is available when you do a friend request. To be clear here’s a pic of what I’m talking about:

Facebook won’t tell you exactly what their filter is but right now it seems if you send 10 or more of the same messages on the same day it triggers one of their filters and you’ll get an account warning. If you exceed the limit for account warnings (seems to be between three and five), your account will be disabled.

So the thing to remember is to vary your messages when you’re sending friend requests. I recommend, and I practice this method, that whenever you’re requesting a friend you include a personal message of how you know them or if you know one of their friends mention that name and what kind of business you are in along with your contacting them. Or if you found them through a common interest group mention that in the message because it is an instant commonality and bond you share with them (which raises the chances they’ll accept your friend request).

Also, when you are e-mailing friends you make within Facebook, you must vary your message here as well. I don’t recommend emailing people you aren’t yet true friends with because it can lead to trouble. Facebook likes to enable communication between friends and has a filter that you could ‘trip’ by emailing random users. So, if you are coming out with some new product or some new cool website you want to set up an event to notify all your friends instead of attempting to e-mail them all individually because that will cause your account to get shut down. Events are one of the Facebook applications that I’ll talk with you about further later.

You now know some of the basics of the Facebook community and how to interact with people without getting your account shut down. Follow these basic guidelines and you’ll have a good Facebook experience.

Basically, don’t send the same friend request more than 10 times per day, and don’t send the same email to your friends more than 10 times per day. I’m talking when you’re doing cutting and pasting. These are guidelines that are working right now but to be ultra safe you could do only 5 of the same per day.

Now for another huge bugaboo…mass emails. You know the ones that are sent to you and 100 other email addresses in the ‘to field’

Here’s an example:

As you can see there are many email addresses that this was sent to and this makes people (especially Facebook people) angry. You’ll often get angry messages back in response and even some hate messages. Also, many of those people may unfriend you. This can hurt your ability to make new friends. It’s just not worth it. So stay away from this. The right way to do it is by using the Events application. Setup an event and invite all your friends to it through the events invite function. That’s the only way to do this correctly.

Email is a 1-to-1 communication and you should always think of it as you have a face-to-face conversation with someone sitting across the table from you or next to you on a couch or in a chair.

Next time we’ll talk about powering up your networking through a huge time-saving tactic.

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This is a guest post by Alexander Alaric. Make sure to show him some love because he’s got a lot more to come in this series.