The Edgy Entrepreneur

Facebook and Gardening

One of the great things about social media is its ability to connect like-minded people. This is particularly helpful for people who are seeking out specific support...as is the case with gardening. There are a ton of blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Ning groups, and the like, with garden chatter. Using these different platforms is one of my favorite ways to have conversations with other people who have the same passion and interest in dirt as I do. (For more information on using social media marketing on Facebook, check out the series I wrote previously.)

Facebook has been making quite a lot of changes recently, which always leads to temporary chaos. This time, they have changed the feeds that filter in on your profile. It is important to note that there are two feeds, the news feed and the Live Feed.

The News Feed is a filtered feed of 250 of your top friends...as determined by Facebook. The content is limited to conversational posts. If you decide that you don't want Facebook to choose whose content is in that feed, you can scroll down to the bottom and click on the Feed Options button and add to the mix. The live feed is a mashup of all kinds of updates from all people. Here's where you go for "Julie is now friends with Brad" levels of information.

It is nice to have the option to see more or less content...though with the Hide button on each entry, we have had the ability to selectively screen out updates for a while now. It feels a bit artificial and weird that Facebook would be the one making that determination...not sure that's such a winning idea.

Last week, I recorded a short video for Garden World Report on finding gardening folks on Facebook. Check it out below...

Director of Social Media: My New Position at Cool Springs Press

I have neglected all of my blogs while writing my last book...most of all this one. But, I return with great and exciting news! I have been named the Director of Social Media for Cool Springs Press! This position is a first for the garden publishing world...probably the entire gardening world...and I am thrilled to have the opportunity.

I can already see you asking, "What the hell does "Director of Social Media" mean, anyway?" Yes, well, we

are defining that even as we speak. And will likely  be redefining it into perpetuity, as we all know that social media is a moving object, as are consumer habits. Cool Springs Press will be issuing a full press release on Monday, but here's a sneak peak at what this all means:

• building connections with authors and readers
• seeking and implementing feedback on new titles, content and format
• finding new talent that is both social media savvy and skilled in garden writing
• training all kinds of authors and the horticulture industry on the use of social media
• leaping tall buildings in a single bound (which I have always been able to do)

This is just a quick update, but I wanted to post something to let you all know of the new things coming my way. I look forward to hearing from you as I venture out into the world. Of course, I will continue to use Edgy Entrepreneur as a platform to talk about social media in general. But I am also looking forward to talking about the new era of publishing and writing.

Stay tuned...

Twitter and the Fakey Follower Resistance

I am absolutely over what I have come to call "Fakey Follower Syndrome" (FFS for short). This Twitter phenomenon has a couple of symptoms that are most notable, but I have no doubt there are hundreds of variations on the theme.

The first is the "I'm a spammer pretending to be a real person following you". Which in theory may not seem like a big deal...but if you get 200 followers in a week and 100 of them are these zero value add accounts that do nothing but push irritating marketing messages, it's a huge pain. Here's why: in order to find the 50% that are really cool people that I want to follow, I have to check each and every follower to see if they are "genuine". This was not made easier by Twitter's redesign of the followers page, which now shows the latest tweet but not the profile bio.

The second really irritating and ridiculous symptom of FFS is the "Thanks for the #followfriday love" scheme. This is when a spammy follower thanks you for a #FF recommendation that you never made, making it look like you endorse him/her. A variation of the #FF scheme is sending @ replies to Tweeple with high follower counts and street cred, hoping that whomever reads their stream will see it and think they are a big deal.

I think Twitter does its best to address spammers...and admittedly, I don't have a magic wand that will make this all better. So, I decided to tweet about it with my real followers...here's how it all got started:

@jeanannvk: OK srsly people, stop with the shovey marketing accounts. Uninteresting and uninspiring. Provide some value, will ya?

@jeanannvk: And, I have had it with the fakey follow fridays. Don't use my name to get followers. And DON'T thank me for a FF I didn't send out. WTH?

@jeanannvk: I mean, is this kind of mucking up the info stream going to happen to FB, now that it is relatively open? Sigh...

At this point, I receive several cheers from the crowd. Here's a small sampling:

dianamarie@JeanAnnVK I get those thank yous too. WTF?

CanarsieBK@JeanAnnVK Get it all off your chest girl. Don't hold back. I do wholely agree with you though. Is that even a word?

jswo@JeanAnnVK I kind of hate Follow Fridays now. It's such a stream clogger and it's so abused.

KayBallard@JeanAnnVK Yay! I skipped twitter yesterday (mostly) because of dratted FF. I even get recommended by people who don't follow me??? LOL

In frustration, I suggest "we the people" should take back Twitter from the spammers/scammers:

@Suburban_Farmer @sporkdork @CathyBrowne Let's stage a Twitter rebellion. Join the Fakey Followers Resistance!

@CathyBrowne @Suburban_Farmer @MelissaJBond LOVE IT...I smell a movement underway #Fakeyfollowersresistance

Yeah, I am feeling a full on groundswell against the constant spam attacks, organizing a movement #fakeyfollowersresistance

This spurs much discussion about if this would be an effective tactic...and what else might work.

tomob@JeanAnnVK the protocol is to call them out with the #unfollow hashtag

infoholic@JeanAnnVK But what will a retweet campaign and setting hashtag do?

infoholic@JeanAnnVK Unfortunately I don't think it will work. We all have good spam filters and but still have spam. Here's why: http://is.gd/1DAtP

infoholic@JeanAnnVK One way to solve the problem is for Twitter to allow key-word, auto follow to paid premium accounts. This puts a cost on spamming

infoholic@JeanAnnVK While ever the cost of spamming twitter (twamming?) accounts is free it will be done. That's why we get so much email spam.

We chat back and forth about it...and ultimately, I am left without a real answer to my problem. I know that I can no longer deal with the volume of spam accounts that show up in my follower listings. Quite possibly out of shear frustration, I decide to do this:

@JohnnyLion OK dude, I am not interested in helping you build your follower base. #fakeyfollowersresistance

and this:

@davidwtrs dude, you are a perfect justification for an anti-spam feature on Twitter #fakeyfollowersresistance #spam

And I am going to start blocking the really offensive spam accounts instead of just ignoring them. I guess I am hopeful that Twitter will notice how many times an account is blocked and investigate.

The bottom line is that I am going to do something, even if it is wrong...because it just feels better than doing nothing. If you want to join me, start @ replying and blocking these people. And use the  #fakeyfollowersresistance tag so that we can all identify these scoundrels and take action, too. I acknowledge that deciding todo this by myself may have a small impact, but if we all identify even one or two fakey followers a week, we could at least be a pain in the ass.

Oh, and one more thing...people, turn off your auto follows. It just creates the perfect breeding conditions, and we don't need more of these pests.

Photos by DuesXFlorida

And AdobeMac

Twitter in Context, TweetTree

One of the biggest challenges with Twitter, especially for new users, is the never ending flow of information. So far, attempts to make sense of this barrage have been via applications that segment discussions and friend groups. Both Tweetdeck and Seesmic do an admirable job of creating group structures that give the user an opportunity to focus on specific people or topics. Really, I think the  potential of Twitter isn't realized until someone grabs a hold of an app like Tweetdeck and starts experimenting.

But what hasn't been available to date, is an app that will create context and relevancy for ongoing conversations. Essentially, a tweet stream is very linear...chronological postings of tweets, one after the other. This can make it a big challenge to follow a conversation, yours or anyone else's. Hell, there are times when I get a delayed response and I have no memory of what we were discussing. In order to avoid serious flakiness, I have to go back and dig through hundreds of tweets to find the original thread.

Enter TweetTree. This site allows Twitter users to enter in their id and password and see a version of the stream that has conversations located in proximity to each other. Put simply, if you are tweeting with someone, you can see what you said, then what they said right next to it. And, you can see what your friends are talking about with their friends in the same format. Such a simple thing, but the difference it makes in readability is huge.

The other fantastic thing that TweetTree does is that it creates a feed that looks a lot like something you would see in Google Reader out of your Twitter stream. Links, photos and videos show up right in the stream, no need to click over and leave the page. Talk about adding dimensionality...it's like suddenly seeing Twitter in 3-D!

I think TweetTree has a lot of potential...though it is not in a place where I could use it as my sole Twitter client. As much as I like the 3-D experience, I still follow way too many people to not use an application that corrals them into segments. However, I definintely love this site as an ancillary to what I am already doing. The depth of information is fantastic.

This application could certainly be used to enhance individual user's experiences. But, it is also a great market research tool. The depth of information gathered, combined with the efficiency of it being in one location is really amazing. I am certain TweetTree will have all kinds of applications that haven't been discovered yet.

I would love to know if you are using TweetTree. If so, how?

Marketing and Telling the Truth

I've been thinking quite a bit about branding strategies of late and I have a question...why can't marketing be about telling the truth? I mean, you know, the plain old truth...the "this is a great product, give it a try, if you like it, buy it again", kind of truth? Some sort of "here's the real value to you, here's how your life will actually benefit from giving this a go"...kind of message?

Because that is not what I usually experience...I usually read things that tell me my clothes will shine with radiance like the sun or smell as fresh as the ocean. I am conditioned to look for things that say "extra strength' or "super" or whatever the current moniker is that tells me I have the really, really good stuff...not just the plain old good stuff. I mean, how clean can you get something? If you scrub it with the extra, super, duper cleaner instead of say, vinegar and water with a little dish washing detergent, is it a billion times cleaner?

Consumers have been fed and led by this kind of advertising for so long that we have become jaded to the very adjectives that have been used to motivate us. And this approach might very well have continued had social media and the interactive web not come along. There are many things that happen within the culture of social networks, but one consistent message rises to the top. "We want truth in messaging. We want to know the people who work at the companies that make the products we buy. We want to know why we should care."

Still, there are precious few who are able to respond to this call, online or otherwise. Because this requires an openness, an eagerness to communicate, a willingness to tell the truth...and above all, a desire to understand your audience well enough to know if the product you are trying to sell them will actually be of benefit to them. This means a deeper understanding of your customers and potential customers, less (instead of more) advertising, highly target messages that reflect your knowledge and interest in the communities you serve, and lots of relationship building. Did I mention truth telling? Yeah, there's that, too...

And aside from yours truly, who has embraced this concept to the point of naming my gardening podcast "Good Enough Gardening", there are very few people out there who do a great job applying these concepts...David Meerman Scott is one of my faves. But I know that there are a whole lot of people out there grapling with these concepts, struggling to pave a new marketing road. What about you, what are you doing? Who do you follow or admire?

Social Media Marketing Training

Recently, I decided to offer social media marketing training classes as sort of a way to lift the veil, so to speak. I had two primary motivators. The first was that it seemed to me that the companies that were really benefiting from online marketing campaigns were the big guys who could afford to outsource it. The second was that I was just so tired of the secretive bull crap that seems to be inherent in conversations about the cost and effectiveness of social media marketing that I decided to be as transparent as possible.

And while it isn't possible to quantify the cost and exact services of each and every thing I could offer, I decided to put forth some packages to give people an idea of the cost of my services. Even if you choose not to use me, these will give you an idea of what these services should cost with someone else...though I will tell you, I am on the affordable side. It is also important to note that the complexity of a campaign makes the cost more difficult to predict. So, without further ado:

We offer three social media training packages, a research option, and a project-based bidding option.

• Just Getting Started: This training package is a 1 month introduction to social media marketing. Over the course of 4, 2 hour sessions (with assigned homework) we will teach you the basic information about top social media platforms, engagement and basic monitoring. The sessions will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the Portland, OR area, please contact me for more information. The cost of this package is $1000.
• SEO/SMO: This is not your mother's SEO...if your mother had SEO, that is. This is the new, social media friendly version of search engine optimization. We build out a language to use on your home site, as well as any social media platforms where you establish a presence. The cost of this service is affected by the size of the job, the fee can range from $400-$750.
• Online Campaign Research and Recommendations: We work with your company to create a research and recommendations package that can include online competitive analysis, market research, target market identification, identification of "best fit" social media platforms, effective engagement strategies, and strategies for measuring results. The length of time for these sessions will vary. Generally, these will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the Portland area, please contact me for more information. This is a project-based fee.
• We Want More: This training package is fully loaded with information online brand research, identifying target markets, basic SEO and SMO, campaign development, identification and utilization of social media platforms, engagement strategies, metrics, analysis and implementation of feedback. These sessions are taught over the course of 3 months in 2 hour blocks, once a week. Generally, these will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the Portland area, please contact me for more information. The cost of this package is $6,000.

And that's the scoop...I hope it is helpful in setting your own expectations when looking for a social media consultant. If you happen to be Florida and are looking for an amazing social media consultant who offers services and prices very similar to mine, check out my colleague, Lauren Candito.

I would love to hear of any experiences you have had with contracting social media consultants or finding training programs for reasonable fees.

*Photo found by M_Napper on Flickr: Creative Commons License

Building Community on the Web

Seems like I have been so busy with the release of my book (Growing Food) and the kick off of my podcast with Amanda Thomsen (Good Enough Gardening) that I haven't had a single minute to write about my second passion...social media marketing, and in particular, building communities online. I have learned a really a couple of really valuable lessons during this process, so I thought I would share them with you.

The first is this...though every brand or company might want an online community, not all will be able  to build one. That's just a cold, hard fact. Now, I am not saying that people can't benefit from online marketing...because everyone can...but no, not everyone can benefit from an online community.

The second is this...it will not happen overnight. If you try to push people into becoming a community overnight, they will do everything they can to avoid it...and you will be treated like a spammer. And no matter how many clients want you to bring in 8,000 new people to their social media accounts each week and offer to pay you to do so, you must still tell them that is an impossibility. That's not a community...and a great example of that is the ill-fated MySpace.

The third is this...your networks will build slowly and then suddenly take off. I don't know why this happens, but it is as if you reach a level of critical mass that results in exponential growth. And once this happens on one platform, it makes growth on other platforms much easier. Graphic Depiction of Online Communities by D'Arcy Norman

The fourth is this...even if all of these things are in place, if the market doesn't want what you are selling, they won't buy it...period. So before you do anything else, use social media for market research. It has to be one of its best and most effective uses.

The fifth is this...and when people buy, the conversion rate won't equal the significance you feel in your social media relationships. Here's what I mean by that...social media marketing is relationship based, so a significant part of your time is spent building connections. And, when you do start promoting a product, you will naturally expect all of your online friends to feel as passionate about it as you do. And while I am not saying they won't ever buy it...I am saying that a lot of variables go in to making a purchase, so don't be disappointed if you have lower than expected sales.

Let me help put this into perspective, Grokdot posted the Top Ten Sites for Conversion Rates:
 1. ProFlowers 31.1%
2. LL Bean 25.7%
3. Amazon 23.7%
4. VitaCost 23.0%
5. Coldwater Creek 22.4%
6. QVC 21.1%
7. Roamans 20.4%
8. Office Depot 20.2%
9. LandsEnd 19.3%
10. Victoria’s Secret 19.2%

And these are well established brands that put a ton of money into marketing on and off line...average rates for small businesses would range from 1-10%. See what I am saying?

All of this is not to dissuade you, but to help you create a realistic marketing plan that will help you portion your time and resources efficiently and effectively. Since most small businesses don't have a lot of money, they have to be prepared to use the one thing they do have...time. It may take longer, but the long, slow burn can be just as effective, even more so, in building and maintaining a happy, healthy community.

Social Media Marketing: How It Works

It can be challenging, to say the least, to try and capture the way in which social media marketing actually works. The framework for understanding this process is so different from traditional marketing that not having experience in marketing can actually make the tenets easier to adopt.

 

The good news is that communicating via social media is much more like real life communications, on fast forward. We have removed the barrier of travel and quite a bit of the "getting to know you" niceties. And because much of the "screening" function has been removed from the relationship dance, users expect direct (tactful?) and transparent communication.

Implementing an online marketing campaign in this context requires that a company be flexible and responsive. This ongoing effort is about building culture and community around a product or business. And though there are some time-saving tips, this is not a quick fix or a one time effort.

Businesses who choose to enter this space need to understand that they are a part of the community they are building. They do not own the community they are building. And it is that lack of control that feels very uncomfortable to many. But by letting go of this need to have a polished and perfect (and unbelievable) brand, companies are able to build deep brand loyalty and viral recognition.

This loyalty is the result of a real life desire to support the people we care about and admire. Relationships create customers, and relationships are significantly harder to build if your campaign is only utilizing billboards, TV ads, and print.

With social media, when one of your contacts buys your product it is because they believe in the company at a much deeper level. They have stronger buy in and a connection with the person(s) who is running the campaign. Which is just common sense, really...don't you give your business to your friends first?

All of which makes social media marketing a very enjoyable process...if you have passion for your business and have a great product, you will have the opportunity to share that with a receptive and engaged audience. And this is a hell of a lot more fun than creating a whole bunch of static messages and using them to talk "at" a potential group of customers.

And where traditional marketing is about flooding the target market, hoping a small percentage of people respond, social media marketing is about building relationships. The latter necessitates more time spent on the front end, but results in a higher response rate. Taking the time to build these relationships will also increase the likelihood that your customer will continue to be your customer time and time again.

The jury is still out on whether or not social media marketing can benefit every business. This depends on multiple factors, including market pull and brand positioning. It is definitely in your company's interest to explore it a bit more, whether that is via hiring an interactive marketing consultant or using existing company resources to gather information.

Chances are that your customers are already using some form of social media. If you aren't showing up to engage them, someone else is.