A while back, Lifehacker reminded us that Google Voice Actions can be used with any web service that supports SMS or Email. You can easily send SMS and Email messages by speaking into your phone, so any service that lets you interact via SMS and/or Email is fair game. Keep in mind that most of this also applies to Vlingo or any other voice command software.
Simple Scenario
One primary example would be Twitter. By activating your mobile phone on the Twitter home page, you can send a tweet by texting it to 40404. Combined with Google Voice Actions, you would be able to say something like “SMS Twitter, That Rahsheen guy is some kind of awesome” and GV handles the rest. Of course, this assumes you have a contact in your address book named “Twitter” with a phone number of 40404.
Kicking It Up 10 Notches
If you want to be a Social Media Mogul, you will immediately recognize that this just isn’t powerful enough. There are other worlds than Twitter and you need to be able to update them all on the go using GV. Most of you already know where I’m going with this: Ping.fm. Both a blessing and a curse, Ping.fm is a powerful tool for updating all of your social networks simultaneously.
Once logged into Ping.fm (you do have an account, right?), navigate to ping.fm/sms and save the number in your contacts as something simple like “Ping.” You want to make sure you pick a name that will be easily recognized when you say it and “Ping” works pretty well. While you’re at it, go to ping.fm/email and add your unique posting address to this contact as well.
Now, you can long-press your search button, say what you want, and broadcast to everyone everywhere. As always, feel free to leave a comment here or hit me up on Twitter (@rahsheen) if you have questions, comments, or concerns.
There is a serious scam going on in the social media world and I’m tired of seeing people get got. Marketing has come a long way, changed a lot, and still remained the same. The problem is that the pillars of the MLM community are fooling you with a false narrative. They want you to think that you will become a marketing powerhouse in social media with thousands of customers running after you, wallets out and purses open, by simply following the steps in their latest e-book or whatever info product they’re slinging.
Don’t get me wrong, there are marketers out there that know what they’re talking about. You can tell they know what they’re talking about because the tech world recognizes them as equals. Not only are they skilled marketers, but their circles intersect with the people who help build and promote these new media tools.
It goes back to the question of , “Can you be a social media expert without being in social media?” The answer is, “Hell No!” If you aren’t in the trenches building your community and interacting with people, you cannot claim to know how to use this stuff.
The reason these MLM and Network Marketing gurus get such huge followings on all these social networking sites is that they already had huge followings to begin with. Look at how long some of these guys (and gals) have been around. Their tribe was built a long time ago. All they’ve done is leverage that tribe. A simple call to action to their existing mailing list and they’ve suddenly got 30,000 followers on Twitter. It’s that simple…for them.
You will never be able to duplicate this. There is nothing in anyone’s e-book or video series that changes that reality. You don’t have a standing army of customers. You are starting from scratch and you will have to put in the work to build your own community from the ground up. Anyone offering a magic shortcut to this end is blatantly lying you will waste a lot of time failing really slow if you buy into their crap.
Don’t believe me? Try and prove me wrong. I’ll wait…
…on second thought, I won’t. I’ve got better things to do.
A little while ago, I had a job interview downtown and decided to take the train. As I sat there looking out the window and listening to Day 26 on my iPod, I caught some erratic movement from the corner of my eye.
It was some poor soul who may have been begging for change, but was definitely making a lot of noise and carrying a pretty strong scent about him. I couldn’t really understand what he was saying as I promptly turned up my music, but I did notice how everyone else reacted.
Many people took a sudden interest in the stained and somewhat tattered carpeting. Others, forgetting this was the route they took daily, began staring out of the nearest window as if the train had suddenly taken flight into the stratosphere.
This man’s appearance immediately made me think of how some people treat social media. I’m sure that if any of these people could have immediately unfollowed this man and silenced his babbling, they would have. You can’t unfollow people in real life, though. This man had interrupted the normal flow of things. It made people feel uncomfortable and those he approached probably felt violated.
How many people have you seen on Twitter that produce just such a reaction from others? How often have you been scanning your Twitter stream and noticed an update that just stood out from the others? Maybe even one that made you wrinkle your nose in disgust and start hunting for the UNFOLLOW button. Maybe you’ve never noticed a tweet like that.
Recently caught a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Steven Hodson over on Winextra Shooting Bubbles (gratz on the rebrand!). He was talking about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of SEO and Marketers and how good white hat seo link building services are. The post basically covers how marketers jump into the social media space and flail around with no clue what they’re doing, all the while claiming to be “ninjas” and “experts.”
One particular section stood out to me because it’s the same exact line of thinking I’ve formed about marketing as it relates to social media:
You know who a successful marketer is?
It’s the person who you can talk with on Twitter or Friendfeed or by email and feel like you are having an actual conversation – not the target of a sales pitch or that you are riding trapped with them on an elevator. Sure you could be talking about product or service but the moment you throw out a buzzword or two you have crossed the line from being an interesting person to talk with to being just another marketing dreck.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Steven just gave you the key to the city if you’re trying to make money using social media. As a matter of fact, this same mentality works everywhere else.
I believe that every conversation ends in a sale. Problem is, nobody likes being sold or pressured. They would rather evaluate the situation and make a decision on their own.
How do you get someone to make the decision you need them to make?
This is such basic stuff that I’m surprised so few actually get it. You have to convince a potential client or customer that your product or service will benefit them or otherwise provide value. With standard sales, you’d go through a process like:
Engage – make an initial pleasant connection
Build Rapport – small-talk to make your target feel comfortable
Discovery – at this point, you are trying to find out how your product will benefit this specific person
Close – by the time you get here, you and your target are buddies. You know exactly how your product or service fits into their life and they feel like you are doing them a huge favor.
For some reason, marketers in social media just keep trying to close the sale, skipping all the important steps necessary before that. This may still work with email marketing (maybe), but it does not work in social media. These are real people you’re talking to and if you don’t treat them as such, you will never succeed.
You have to put the work in if you want this to work for you. This means being real and genuine. Trying to be a part of the community for the purpose of making money won’t work. You have to just be a part of the community. With the web heading towards real-time, it’s all too easy to spot a fake and I or someone else will point you out. If you’re not here to provide value to the community, you may as well pack your things and move along.
Oh, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out…
Twitter is gaining popularity, attracting people of all types. They talked about Twitter on The View. George Stephanopoulos interviewed twitterviewed John McCain. P. Diddy has jumped in with both feet, keeping us updated and motivated (Let’s Go!!!). As always, with great power comes great responsibility…wait…I mean when a social service’s numbers blow up, most of them are probably just spammers and other types of marketers.
There is nothing wrong with marketing in social media. It’s a good place to establish your brand and make connections. The problems arise when the marketers start Doing It Wrong(tm). It’s almost disrespectful. Maybe I’m just sensitive.
Twitter Isn’t a Mailing List
We could go back and forth on this point all day long, but you’d still be wrong. Twitter is not your own personal mailing list. Let me restrict the parameters to make this more clear:
A standard network or Internet marketer sets up a mailing list attached to some kind of auto-responder.
The auto-responder is stuffed with a bunch of emails scheduled to fire off at specified intervals.
The goal here is to move your target to action without you lifting a finger.
Problem with that is, when someone subscribes to your mailing list, they usually expect this will be the case. When someone follows you on Twitter, they expect to see you updating your status. Not pitching them on your product.
The proliferation of services that will schedule tweets and shoot out automated messages to Twitter just illustrates my point here. We all know how I feel about social media automation.
Your Followers Aren’t Following You
Many network marketers and “small-business” owners have purchased leads before. The selling point on these always mentions something like “pre-qualified” or “targetted.” Anything that makes you think the the people on these lists are interested in what you have.
Once you start contacting these leads, you quickly realize that these people mostly want nothing to do with you. They were probably careless with their email address, or filled out some survey where one of the questions asked them if they had an interest in making money from home. Who doesn’t want to make money from home?
There are a bunch of services popping up which allow you to build your followers list automatically. Now, anyone can have thousands of followers without investing any time in Twitter at all. All they have to do is signup or opt-in and all the other people that have signed up and opted-in follow you just as you follow them.
Am I the only one that sees a pattern here? Nobody who signs up for these follower-generation services cares what you have to say. They don’t want to buy your crap or join your business. Just like you, they’re trying to get a bunch of followers on their “list” so that they can pitch their crap.
You Just Got Punk’d
So, you’ve signed up with this service, probably given up your Twitter credentials and the whole nine, and the only connections you’re going to make are with people who want to sell you something. Not only that, guess who makes out like a bandit? The service you signed up for. They played on your greed and now they have your contact info and twitter credentials. Not only that, but I bet they will turn around and sell you out to the highest bidder.
You might as well start looking around for Ashton, cuz you have definitely been had. Is that a camera hidden in the corner there?
There are people who just don’t know any better. They just wanted a bunch of followers because that’s supposed to be the thing to do in social media. It’s supposed to increase your status and make you somebody. Well, it doesn’t and I’m sorry you were misinformed.
For you marketer-types, you need to step your game up and start doing things the right way. If you’re going to be lazy about it and try to take shortcuts, you may as well quit now. You’ll never last. Also, you won’t make any money.
It amazes me how the most important and basic things can fly right under your radar. I recently had a colleague ask me what they should be doing to promote their content. What should they do to get their blog out there? How should they go about creating a presence on the web? They had researched their blogs PageRank, checked their backlinks, and tweaked their theme. They couldn’t figure out why people weren’t linking to them.
Let me start of by ensuring you that I am no expert on Search Engine Optimization or SEO as they like to call it. I’m just a guy who started blogging and realized I needed to find a way to get more web site traffic. Not really sure how I came to that decision, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t about to pay for search engine optimization consulting. So, here are the things that worked for me.
Use Your Words
If you’ve done any research on SEO, you’ve heard the term “keywords”. Personally, this is one of the words that makes me nauseous because it’s used so much. These are supposed to be the search terms that you want to be ranked in Google for. It helps if you know ahead of time what your SEO strategy is and many search engine optimization companies may be able to handle that for you.
The fact that Twitter is so simple and so revered makes it a perfect example to use when talking about social media in general. It provides the most basic framework for what more complicated networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are built upon. You find people and connect with them based on the value they have to offer you. That is the most basic action that occurs and everything else builds from that simple choice of “following” someone.
Auto-Follow
When you follow someone, that’s supposed to mean that you’re interested in what they have to say. Remember, this action is the basis of a social network. This alone will make sure that your network is valuable to you, so what happens when you automatically follow everyone that follows you? As time goes on, the quality of your network approaches zero.
The proliferation of spammers and marketers is just one single variable that ensures this to be true. There are many other reasons you shouldn’t use auto-follow. There are a large number of people on Twitter who you would view as “noise” if you took a look at their Twitter time-line and those same people are going to follow you at some point during the growth of your network.
Let’s use a real-world example. You and I are both content creators. I happen to write about a subject that you could care less about, but I think your content is the bee’s knees. Do you subscribe to me just because I subscribed to you? Isn’t that being dishonest? Fronting? Perpetrating? Patronizing? You don’t care about what I have to say, why pretend?
Auto-Reply
Why? What is the usefulness here within the context of a social network? We keep forgetting the fact that “social” means interactions with real people. That is what makes it different from everything else. When you replace that interaction with a robot, you are telling me that I’m not important enough for your attention. You’re telling me that you’re not there. You’re telling me that you’re kinda rude.
What you’re actually telling me is that you don’t really have time to interact. You are not really interested in all this socal media stuff, but you know that it’s supposed to be good at building your brand or making you money, so you’re making a half-assed attempt at it. Keep in mind, these things may not be totally true, but it’s the impression I get.
Remember when you could call a company and a human would pick up? Wasn’t that nice? Now, you have to speak to an automated system that doesn’t even understand what you’re saying. You probably end up using foul language to get to an actual person. How does that make you feel about that company or brand? Do you feel valuable? Do you feel as if they care at all about you or what you have to say?
“Tweet” or Get Off the Pot
Don’t get me wrong, there are certain specific cases where automation is acceptable within social media. Some entities in this area are known bots and we are simply using social tools to get information from them (@rtm, @timer, etc). There are even cases where you may want to follow everyone who follows you for the sheer purpose of growing your network and kick-starting your ability to interact. Conversations regarding these are all over FriendFeed.
There is also a danger here. We may render our social networks completely useless because of the sheer number of people auto-following, auto-replying, pushing RSS feeds as messages, and sending out automated updates. This is not social. This is spam. This is getting ridiculous.
If you are not willing to put in the time and effort it takes to really be active in social media and to actually interact with real people, please delete your account. If you don’t feel that you have time to build real relationships and you need a robot to speak for you, please delete your account. If the majority of your social interactions are actually automated, you may need to rethink your strategy. Social media may not be for you. I hear mailing lists are all the rage.
It seems like a lot of us tech people find it hard to explain the tools we use on a regular basis. I don’t think the problem lies with how complex our tools are. The problem is that, as geeks, we usually make things too complicated. I’m definitely guilty of this and those close to me point it out all the time.
It’s like trying to explain what a computer does by starting with how microchips work. Who cares about all that? Normal people just want to know how something benefits them. How can it fit into their lives? Nobody cares how a microwave works, they just know it makes food hot. Nobody cares what HD really means, they just know it makes sports look really good and allows you to see how many people on TV actually wear make-up.
Now, here are 5 easy scenarios that you can use to explain Twitter to regular people:
1. It’s a way to let your friends know what you’re doing all at the same time
Let’s say you decide to have a little get-together. You could call all your friends individually, you could email them, you could even text each one. With Twitter, all you’d have to do is send one status update and all your friends will see it immediately. They could even respond to let you know they will be there.
None of this has to involve direct contact with a computer because Twitter supports SMS. You could be handling all the initial preparations right from your cell. No making fifty calls to give out directions, tell who to bring what or any of that mess.
2. It’s a way to ask your friends a question
You’re watching TV and you can’t remember the name of this actor, it’s driving you nuts. You’re pretty sure one of your friends knows, so you update your Twitter status:
Hey, anyone know the name of the black guy on House? Total brain fart.
Pretty soon, someone sends you a reply, reminding you that it’s Omar Epps.
3. It’s a way to share important news
You hear breaking news about a tornado sighting. Your kid’s team just won the playoff game. Kroger has 2-liter bottles of Coke 10 for a dollar. You just ate the tastiest mango you have ever had in your life! Whatever the scenario, you can let everyone know what’s going on immediately my sending out one simple update.
4. It’s a way to get important news
In the same way that you can quickly share news with others, you can get news updates. Not only can you get news updates from your friends, but you could actually follow CNN, MSNBC, BBC or maybe your local news network. Whatever you want to know about, there is probably a reliable source for it on Twitter and you can listen in and stay up-to-date.
5. It’s a way to strengthen relationships with those you care about
My family is pretty much scattered across the US. It’s even sometimes hard to stay in touch with local friends and family. Sometimes, you don’t have time to reach out and touch someone. You know you want to stay in contact, but maybe you don’t do small talk too well or you just don’t enjoy discussing the weather. Maybe you know people who gossip too much and you don’t want to deal with it, but you still want to stay close because they are your family.
Twitter allows you to maintain that connection with loved ones, without all the bells and whistles. You don’t have to talk to them directly to remain connected and stay in touch. You keep track of their updates, they keep track of yours. You maintain a bond with minimal effort. If you so choose to have a discussion, the option is always there. This may sound like an impersonal solution, but what’s the alternative? Falling out of touch with those you actually care about?
Conclusion
These are just a few examples to maybe spark a fire in your mind. Those of us familiar with social media tools often struggle to explain them. They don’t end up getting used by the general public because we can’t even tell the general public what the point is. It almost boils down to one of the most basic rules of sales:
Features tell, benefits sell
Stop trying to describe tech tools by gushing about how scalable they are, how clean the website is, what random tech blogger guy is behind it. Nobody cares about any of that. All they want to know is what will it do to increase the quality of their life.
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