Seth Godin is 100% correct when he said that its not the size (quantity) of your followers that matters most but rather the quality of your posts. However, you’ve got to have some followers or you’ll simply be talking to yourself. The key is to make great posts to a network of people who really care about what you have to say.

So how do you build a group of engaged followers?  If your’re building your Twitter network, there simply is no better tool than Refollow.

Once you’ve logged into refollow.com your Twitter account info, you will see a variety of options you can use to manage your followers.  While all are valuable, I would like to point you to the option that lets you identify all of the followers of another Twitter user. Once you have identified these people, simply click on ‘Select All’ and then ‘Follow’.

It is important to note that most people on Twitter will reciprocate when you follow them – also something that refollow makes extremely easy for you to do.

When I was building the Shared Interest Twitter network I identified all of the active followers of the Fairtrade Federation and followed them – I assumed that anyone who had chosen to follow the Fairtrade Federation would also be interested in following Shared Interest, the world’s only 100% fair trade lender.

A great website to use to identify who the top Twitters are in your area is wefollow.com. Simply enter the tag (e.g. fairtrade) and wefollow will show you the top 25 most influential people in that sphere.   As an aside, at the time of this post, Shared Interest was the most influential Twitterer for the Fairtrade tag, but only 5th  in terms of total users, which shows that Seth is right – quality over quantity.

Tip: Only follow active users – those that have tweeted in the past 30 days.  Try as you might, your messages wont resonate with inactive users. You can use the filters on refollow.com to weed out the deadwood.

Social media is not about the tools – Facebook or MySpace or Flickr or Twitter or blogs or YouTube. It’s about having a strategy for identifying and communicating with customers and prospects online. To barrow a concept from Cluetrain Manifesto, ‘Markets are conversations’ and these conversations are taking place online. Businesses simply cant afford not to be participating in these conversations.

Whilst social media tools will come and go, your strategy shouldnt stray much. Moreover, once you’ve defined your strategy, choosing which tools you will use will become much more obvious.

Photography is a powerful way to connect with your customers and prospective customers. When I was the marketing manager at Shared Interest, I was confronted with the following situation:

• We had thousands of photos that had been taken by staff during customer visits
• Management of the image library was tedious due to the lack of search-ability
• Photos were not publicly accessible and sharing them with stakeholders was next to impossible
• Many of the photos offered an incredible window into the work that Shared Interest does (social lender) that would, if publicly accessible, create a tighter bond with current stakeholders and help to acquire new members.

With this in mind I chose Flickr, the online community and photo sharing site to host and manage our photo library.  Not only is Flickr a great way to manage your photos by creating sets, using descriptor tags and and creating titles for your photos, but you can also add text descriptions that give the viewer more insight into the photo and can even contain a specific call to action.  This photo is a great example of a very detailed description – basically a mini case study – with a call to action (link back to company website).

Being an online community, you can also find groups (or start your own) related to your photos.  Once you join a group then you can share some or all of your photos with that group.  Because Shared Interest is the only 100% fair trade lender, I joined and shared our photos with several fair trade related groups.

Using Flickr continues to give Shared Interest much more online visibility, providing easy access to stakeholders and offering a much more efficient way to manage its extensive image library.

Recently I set out to create the shortest possible document to explain, to business people, why social media is matters and why it’s effective. This document is intended for people that don’t get why collaborating with your audience online is both more manageable and more effective than a more traditional publishing communications model.

The result is Why Social Media Works (with bonus slide!) and I’d love feedback on it!

So it’s been years since we talked about how companies are using social media (that’s what we’re calling blogging now, see even that changed).

Some things have changed dramatically. For one thing in our absence people have developed something called “Micro-Blogging” and it’s, no pun intended, huge.

I’m going to dispense with making a case for this, and get right into how to get started and tell you straight up, all you need to do is get on Twitter. If you spend 30 minutes of your time on Twitter looking for your customers, and are not excited, you probably aren’t going to get it. Trust me, on this, you will get the essential mechanics really fast. I’ve shown lots of people how to use Twitter, and, especially compared to using a blog, everyone of them figured it out the mechanics right away. If you need more incentive, see this article from Business Week. It will take a little while to really start amazing your company with Twitter, but the amazing thing is it’s within everyone’s reach to do that.

Let’s Get started!

1. Go to Twitter.com and create an account. Use either the name if your business (e.g. shadowboxstudios), if you work in a big company make sure no one will freak out if you use just the company name, or something about your representing your business (e.g. larryatshadowbox), which is a bit safer in larger companies.
2. Get comfortable, take a deep breath and make a simple post (called a Tweet). It must be brief as their is a 140 character limit. The suggested starting point is to simply answer the question: What are you doing? That’s the essence of it right there. Congratulations, you’ve created and started using your new Corporate Microbl0g.
3. Now for the fun part, use Twitter’s search tool to start searching for words that relate to what value you provide. It’s very easy to grow your visibility on twitter if you are helpful. That should be easy to do once you get comfortable, after all your business is all about being helpful. If you are a powerful brand you should have no problem finding people talking about you on Twitter. If you are not you can find people using words that relate to what you do, and enage with them.
4. Once you find someone Reply to those people, thank them for their support, help them solve their problem, tell them about a new way you can help them, in short show them that you care and are listening. Be prepared to answer questions, after all you want to start a conversation, not just impart information. 

Two things to keep in mind to make the most of your new Micro Voice

1. Revisit your blog strategy and tweet in support of that strategy. Don’t use it to simply do short versions of your press releases (though you can tweet about your press). Post things that happened during the course of your business day that you don’t mind people hearing about.
2. It’s much more effective if your tweets clearly convey that these tweets come from you, an individual person. For that reason you can, and should, tweet about things that are just interesting to you. Tweet things like: how much you liked an article you read online (provide a link!), or how pretty the day is, or what networking event you are going to. These kinds of posts should not outnumber the ‘on message’ tweets you provide, but they should be in the mix, to help convey that you are an individual joining the conversation, you just happen to be representing your company as you do it.

I’d love to hear about what your experiences are using Twitter as a company representative. Please share!

For about 2 1/2 years we’ve been away. Now we’re back! So much has changed, yet the essential ideas we put out here in 2006 are (mostly) still true today.

We look forward to renewing our conversation on Corporate Blogging!

You’ve been working your tail off blogging and you havent seen any results from your efforts.

How do you get people to check out your work?

The key is decent search engine rankings so that people will find your blog when searching for relevant terms. Decent search enging ranking, however, is easier said than done. Or maybe not. Nick Wilson has just posted a great article on the Performancing blog: 3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic.

According to Nick, the most important things to concentrate are:

1. Copywriting
2. Links
3. Networking

This is a great article which points to the most trusted authorities in various fields of SEO, so you will greatly benefit from reading it and also following all the external links it has.

I belong to a really interesting discussion group called Pinko Marketing Discussion. There is also a Pinko Marketing wiki where you can find out more about the whole Pinko Marketing movement. Before you jump to any conclusions about it being associated with communism/socialism, let me just state that its not. Its really all about community marketing and the reason that I am bringing it up now is that blogging is a great community marketing tool.

There was a recent discussion started that I would like to repost here, as there are great nuggets of information found within.

Original PostI’m still trying to wrap my arms around all this and I am wondering what tools folks use to maintain and manage a conversation with users.

I have a “hard” product (meaning not software) and I want to provide a platform for folks to interact and provide feedback. What is the right web tool for this?

Is it simply a forum or are there new tools that facilitate this exchange more effectively? And if it is a forum, any feedback on what the best solution is that is out there (for my small business budget).

Reply #1

There is no perfect tool for developing community. Blogs can facilitate it, so can forums. So can conferences, skypecasts, email discussion lists, seminars, phone calls, happy hours, social networking, the list goes on and on. Community is built through quality communication among your community, which, as a pinko marketer you are a part of.

But even more important than the tools are the time, energy and attitude that you bring to nurturing the community. If you genuinely care about the community (as a whole and individuals!) and their love of your product/service, then they’ll care your company.

Strong relationships are the ultimate competitive advantage because there is no shortcut to creating them. They take time, love, caring and blood/sweat/tears. But I’ll take them over patents any day of the week.

Reply #2 (Original author posts more information)

Thanks for the offer of generating ideas. Hopefully I can keep this fairly short, but it does require some background.

My company markets bamboo fly fishing rods. Typically–99.9% of the time in today’s marketplace, a fly fishing rod is made of a graphite or carbon fiber material. However, between about 1880 and 1960, the majority rod was made of bamboo–split bamboo to be exact.

The maker splits a bamboo culm length-wise (of a particular variety called Tonkin that is grown in a 20,000 acre area in southern China), and then proceeds to plane the split pieces by hand into very exact (within .004-inch) 60-degree triangular shaped and tapered strips that are glued together in sixes to form a hexagonal rod–about 1/2-inch or less in diameter at the base and 1/8-inch or less at the tip. This is a long and labor-intensive process that yields a completed rod in about 50-75 hours. Hence the move to “plastic” materials that can be mass produced.

There is a certain nostalgic element to fishing a bamboo rod, but because of the labor involved, they usually sell today for US$1200 to US$3000 and there is very often a waiting list of up to 18 months from popular makers. My thinking (and the reason I started the company) is that nobody should have to pay that kind of money or wait for a rod (and it wasn’t always like that–when bamboo was the norm, there were production shops that put these out by the millions in any and every grade for all fishermen–fly fishermen or otherwise).

So, over the last four years I have developed a relationship with a family in China that builds the rods at a rate that allows me to sell in the US$400 range and to keep lots of rods on hand for immediate delivery.

That’s the business. I sell over the Internet and and via mail order direct to customers. I am toying with a deal where I work with fly fishing guides and outfitters to have them advocate the rods and get affiliate-like finders fees. I advertise in the right magazines. I do some email marketing. It is a very conventional business and I would like to figure out how to create a community. And I understand that I need an online and offline community.

My business goal is to “right-size” the business by selling about 1200 rods per year. (I am currently doing about 300 a year).

The things that I deal with include the following:

1. Made in China. Can be a big deal for some fly fishers (“USA, USA, USA”–oh brother! We do live in a global economy).

2. Shock factor of the price vs. competition. Many cannot believe I can offer a quality product at the price I do. But the rods are as well build as any available. I have a lot of happy fly fishermen.

3. A large interest in the 55-80 year old set (though this is just one segment) that is for the most part offline. I often get letters in the mail with interesting penmanship. These are people that actually fished bamboo at one time, not like me that wished I did.

4. Choosing a fly rod requires “feeling” the action. Selling over the Internet or mail order is kind of stupid. People really want to try before they buy.

5. It is a niche of a niche market. US, there are probably 4 to 5 million fly fishermen, maybe that many again in the rest of the world. Those interested in bamboo are probably 10-20% of this group.

6. Because bamboo has something of a mystic and is rare, getting rods into the hands of fly fishers often causes a stir.

7. I run the business part time out of my house. That means limited resources, time and focus. I am a “virtual” business with just me (and my wife and kids) as owner/chief bottle washer. I want to keep it like that. As you can see, I have “outsourced” manufacturing and continue to do so in areas of finance, marketing, etc.

That’s the long-winded version of the business (I know, very unpinko). Bring it on, I am very open to suggestions and criticism.

The URL is www.split-bamboo.com (Company name is Headwaters Bamboo Rod Company).

Thanks again,

Reply #3

Just a quick thought from a non-marketer: For me, a truly organic and sustainable way to build community is to tell a compelling story. Story draws people in, and if the story gives hints of more story to come, it keeps people coming back for more.

That said, I think you’ve got potential for some great story in your product. You mention you’ve developed a relationship with a family in China who make the rods. As a potential community member, I would love to hear about that family. See pictures. Read a travelogue of your trip to set up your business. Not only could this be great reading, but it would go a long way to alleviate assumptions some folks have about anything made in China — ie, that it’s *all* crappy, poorly paid factory work.

Another place to explore story is with some of your old timer customers. Grab one or two that you know personally and go for a fishing trip! Take lots of pictures. Talk about old school fishing and blog it! The life stories that come out during a day of fishing …. I can only imagine. (Hah — think “A River Runs Through It” Podcast style! )

Reply #4 (my reply)

I grew up in McCall, a small mountain town in central Idaho. McCall is a fisherman’s paradise. I spent many days of my childhood with my father, brother and close family friend fishing the many streams and lakes around McCall. Ray, the family friend, and my father were great fly fisherman , while my brother and I were simply bait fisherman. Its not that we didn’t aspire to become fly fisherman, its just that we did not have the patience or dexterity as children to do much with a fly rod other than make bird’s nests out of the line after several casts.

When I turned 12, my father bought me my first fly rod. That was the day that I became a fly fisherman. Between the advice that I received from my father and from Ray, I became a pretty decent fisherman over the years. Fly fishing is rather easy to learn but difficult to master. Ray taught me how to tie my own flies and how to tell which hatch was on. Both Ray and my father taught me that there is much more to fly fishing than simply catching fish. There were a lot of things that they told in an off handed fashion that I didn’t really understand until I was at the university. It was then that I realized that there are many life lessons that can be learned while casting a fly.

I basically gave up fishing when I went to grad school in Arizona. Its hard to be too interested in fishing when you have to drive long distances just to get to crappy trout fishing. However, I seemed to always make at least one trip back to Idaho per year and would always manage to get in a few days of fishing while I was there. When I went back in 1998 just before I moved to Europe, my father told me that Ray had cancer and didn’t have more than 6-8 months to live.

Of course we all wanted to get one last fishing trip in with Ray. We ended up going to one of our favorite old haunts that we used to go to when my brother and I were just kids. It wasn’t the best place to fish, but it was a short drive and it was easy for Ray to get in and out of the water there.

There we were on that fabulous fall day, all in our float tubes – my father, Ray, my brother and me. It was a beautiful site. We didn’t catch many fish that day. In fact, I don’t think I caught one, but it was the best day of fly fishing that I have ever had. It was the last day I would fish with my friend Ray.

That’s my favorite fly fishing story although I have many more. As you know, every fly fisherman has great stories and now they are telling their stories in their blogs. I did a quick search on IceRocket and found that there are 3528 posts with the topic: fly fishing. Those are a lot of conversations in which you should be participating. Your website should have a blog as your product resonates from passionate stories waiting to be told. You should find the active fly fishing bloggers and sponsor them with one of your bamboo rods. Offer a discount to anybody that hangs one of your banners on their blogs. Or make an exclusive badge (Certified Bamboo) that only those who have purchased a rod from you can hang on their website/blog. Start an affiliate program from within your community. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to meet your sales expectations if you become an active member in the community.

The company website is very well done, but it really does need a blog to tell his story. My next post will outline a the blog strategy that I recommend he incorporate.

I made a post yesterday about Intranet Trends to watch for in 2006 from a CIO article – basically I cut and pasted only the information that pertained to blogs. Today, a fellow blogger and knowledge management Guru, Louis Suarez, did the article justice by really commenting on the meat of the article. I highly recommend reading the post – actually, his entire blog is a treasure trove of knowledge management information.

Yesterday was the day that Dell launched their business blog. And it didn’t take long before a few of the blog heavy weights put the smackdown on them.

Jeff Jarvis says:

The subtitle is “direct conversations with Dell” but this is as much a conversation as yelling at a brick wall. There is not one link there. It’s filled with promotions for Dell’s wonderfulness.

But seriously, folks, the first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them. The conversation is already happening out there without you. Join in that conversation. Dell continues to believe that it can control the conversation. That horse is out of the barn, over the horizon, dead, and buried.

Steve Rubel says:

More importantly, Dell really failed to get the blog going the way that they could have. This was a golden opportunity for the company. They could use the blog to engage the community in a genuine conversation on the critical issues that have dogged them for years now as well as the good things they are doing. (Recent pictures of a Dell computer blowing up at a conference in Japan were recently the rage in the blogosphere and now the media.) However, they chose not to.

Scoble says:

By the way, I agree with Andy Lark that we should be nicer to new companies that try the bloggy Web. At least give them a couple of weeks to get settled into their new homes before we start lobbing rocks through their front windows. Of course, I doubt anyone will listen to me because these companies came into the bloggy Web so late that the mob isn’t gonna automatically be nice the way they were to me three years ago.

I agree with Scoble – give them a few weeks to get things straightened out. However, had they done their homework at the outset, they probably wouldn’t have received the lambasting that they did. Rest assured that with all of the eyes on Dell’s blog, it will either shape up nicely or be pulled within the month. My guess is that they will be forced into doing it right. Their post today shows that they are starting to get it.

Good luck Dell.