MindComet

Social Media is not a Panacea

Here’s what social media probably will not accomplish:

- Quadruple your web traffic in 2 months
- Be a sure fire way of owning the SERPs
- Make your brand a household name overnight
- Effectively eliminate your marketing budget by allowing you to ditch your other marketing channels

While social media is great, it requires a fair amount of planning, work, committment and support from other marketing channels to be successful.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jan. 20, 2010

What is trust worth to a business?

It’s not a secret that MindComet uses Radian6 for social media monitoring. And being in the position that I’m in, Radian6’s competitors frequently solicit me in hope of winning MindComet’s business. Historically, I’ve obliged when offered to sit through a demo. I mean, what if I find a product that I like better than Radian6? What if there’s something that can do the same thing, but at a fraction of the cost?

I recently turned down a solicitation from a Radian6 competitor after coming to a realization about our social media monitoring tool vendor—I trust them.

While I don’t typically share emails on my blog, but I wanted to share this one (BTW, names have been changed to protect the innocent)

Dear FRED,

As far as cost, I get that your product is offered at 1/3 the price of Radian6, however, I refuse sacrifice trust in order to save a few dollars.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Jan. 05, 2010

Schmaps’ smooth Twitter marketing tactic

This post is not an endorsement of Schmaps nor was I paid to write about Schmaps

Schmaps is a new service (at least this is the first I’ve heard of it) that allows you easily attach a map to your Tweets. Their value statement is “Share places and events on Twitter”. All in all, it seems like a pretty neat service. But this post isn’t a critique of the service. This post is about what I think is a clever and very unobtrusive tactic they’re using for raising awareness about Schmaps through Twitter.

I’ve been promoting an upcoming tweetup through the Social Media Club Orlando Twitter account and recently found this @ response to me from @MeaganLeader

@SMCOrlando here’s a ‘schmap’ for the tweetup: http://schmap.it/qyEoYI?a (made at http://www.schmap.it = share places and events on Twitter)

If you read Chris Brogan on a regular basis, you’ll know of his disdain for social media marketing tactics that involve pushing your product on someone without first taking the time to build a relationship. To use Chris’ analogy, it’s like trying to stick your tongue in their mouth when you should be shaking their hand. For the most part, I agree with his thoughts on this - build the relationship first. However, I think that Schmaps was able to combine the tongue kiss and the handshake in one smooth move that didn’t feel awkward.

It comes down to value

So how did she do it? It’s simple. Value. Her initial contact with me contained value in the form of a tool, in this case a Schmap link, that I could use to promote an event that I care about. When I saw that tweet and realized there was something in it for me, any barriers that I had, came down.

Through focusing on what is important to me, Schmaps effectively delivered a message about them. Nicely done.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Dec. 10, 2009

Dec is the season for a Tweet Tweet Tweetup!

While the holiday season is a special time of year, it can also be fairly hectic. Do yourself a favor and take a break from hanging Christmas lights and scouring the Web for the perfect eggnog recipe. Join me and Social Media Club Orlando at Orlando Tweetup IV. This event, sponsored by Etan Horowitz from the Orlando Sentinel, promises to be a blast. So make sure you get out and join us for a few hours, you’ll have plenty of time to sit at home and stare at the old yule log later.

The festivities are on Thursday Dec 10th at 6:30PM at Eden Bar at the Enzian Theater.

Also, for you Tweetup butterflies, doterati is holding their holiday tweetup on Thurs Dec 17th at Graffit Junktion.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Dec. 04, 2009

Hanging with Mike Haines, Regional VP of Facebook

Ok, so I didn’t actually hang with Mike Haines, in like a grabbing a beer or going golfing sense, but I did have the pleasure of attending a speaking engagement he hosted through the AMA Central Florida chapter.

Overall, the presentation was very basic, and to Mike’s credit, he explicitly warned us in the beginning. It truly was the 50,000 foot view. However, there were a couple of interesting points that Mike shared, which I thought invaluable, no matter how much of a “guru” you are.

Facebook is all about news streams.

In an average Facebook session of 22 minutes, a user spends 19 minutes of that time in their news stream. That one tidbit has an obvious and significant impact for marketers and their Facebook strategies - break the confines of your Fan Page and get your marketing message in user’s news feeds.

If you’re struggling with ideas on how to do this, maybe you’ll be inspired by IKEA’s approach to this. It is insanely simple, yet brilliant.

10x views on a stream vs page

If you were to post the same message into your fans news stream and only on the fan page wall, the former post would receive, on average, 10 times the views as the latter. Same message, different delivery method, different results. Not surprising, but it’s interesting to know the metrics surrounding it.

All in all, a good event. Thanks AMA CFL and Mike Haines!

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Nov. 18, 2009

My public declaration to fight SPAM

Spammers are everywhere. And without a doubt, they are the anti-midas, turning everything they touch into another 4-letter word that’s not “gold”.

Take for example, Twitter trending topics. It’s s a feature that is ripe for spam and in my opinion is now almost completely useless because of spammers. Twitter lists, probably one of the smartest platform features that Twitter has rolled out, is already littered with spammers. My DM stream is now useless. And I’m constantly pruning my blog comments for Viagra and phentermine offers, neither of which I need.

So here’s what I am doing. This is my public declaration of what I’m going to do to combat spam.

All blog comments are going to require approval by me

I honestly dread this. To me, it’s really annoying when you post a comment and your told that it’s awaiting moderation. However, at this point, I’m at my wits end. I could implement Captcha or get really elegant and use Mollom, but I just don’t have the time. Moderation is the most effective solution given my already busy workload.

I’m pruning my Twitter following list.

I was for quite some time a reciprocal guy. You follow me, I follow you. This stopped a few months ago, however, because of the practice, my following list if pretty large. That is going to change, no matter how long and arduous a process it is.

DM me a crap/spam message and you will be unfollowed.

I’m not even looking at my DM stream anymore, but that will change. Nuff said. You’ve been warned.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Nov. 17, 2009

A lesson in listening. Why Shakey’s Pizza rocks!

Are you a fan of Shakey’s pizza? Well, pop star Katy Perry is. In fact, she recently tweeted that she was hoping for a b-day shout-out from Shakey’s Pizza on one of their store front signs.

To provide a bit of backstory, Shakey’s had already established a Twitter presence and, with social media monitoring help from MindComet, were actively listening to mentions about their brand on Twitter. So when this opportunity presented itself, Shakey’s was already there, ready to go. They reacted quickly and had one of their LA locations change out the sign to say “Happy Birthday Katy Perry”. A photo was snapped and posted to Twitter.

This was a few days ago and unfortunately Katy Perry hasn’t responded to the tweet (yet). However, Holly Madison, star of The Girls Next Door, saw it and sent out her own tweet.

That’s what I like to call PURE GOLD. As a result of her tweet, the shout-out photo currently has over 7,000 views and that number is still growing as I author this post. Add that to the fact that Holly Madison publicly called Shakey’s Pizza one of her favorite things to over 230,000 of her followers! I suppose you could have Holly eat a slice of Shakey’s on Dancing with the Stars, but I’m thinking her tweet was alot cheaper (FREE) and less messy.

So I ask you, when opportunity knocks for your brand will you be listening?

BTW, please help me get the word to Katy by retweeting this tweet. I’d hate to see her miss her birthday wish.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Oct. 26, 2009