guerilla marketing with social networking

7/31/2019 Guerilla Marketing With Social Networking

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Guerilla Marketing with Social

Networking and Search Engine

Optimization

By Druce MacFarlane


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ContentsIntroduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3

Twitter Basics ................................................................................................................................................ 4

Creating Content ....................................................................................................................................... 5

Finding Followers ...................................................................................................................................... 6

So I am up to 20,000 followers. What does that mean? .......................................................................... 7

Priming the Pump ..................................................................................................................................... 8

So, I have all these followers. What now? ............................................................................................... 9

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 10

Facebook Basics .......................................................................................................................................... 11

When is Facebook presence a good idea? .............................................................................................. 11

Establishing a Facebook Presence .......................................................................................................... 11

The Like Button.................................................................................................................................... 11

Obtaining Members ................................................................................................................................ 11

How to use your Facebook community .................................................................................................. 11

LinkedIn ....................................................................................................................................................... 12

Google Plus ................................................................................................................................................. 13

Accounts vs. Pages .................................................................................................................................. 13

Circles vs. Followers ................................................................................................................................ 13

The Social Network as defined by the search engine ............................................................................. 13

Search Engine Optimization Basics ............................................................................................................. 14

The Selection of target key words .......................................................................................................... 14

Key SEO principals ................................................................................................................................... 14

Web Page Optimization .......................................................................................................................... 14

Cross-linking ............................................................................................................................................ 14

Promotion ............................................................................................................................................... 14

Measuring success with Google Analytics .............................................................................................. 14


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IntroductionIf you are reading this, you probably dont need to be sold on the importance of social networking and

search engine optimization in this highly connected environment. There are too many anecdotes that

describe product success, celebrity and political triumphs that have occurred in no small part to their

message being well disseminated over the Internet. Social networks and search engine optimization

help leverage the message of small groups and organizations with small resources and budges over

much larger audiences.

In the past, marketing success could be aided with resources. For years, large organizations with deep

pockets could out flank competition using advertisements, product placement, and other identity

techniques in order to create greater awareness in their target market. Some of the most influential

tools available for those performing Internet marketing are free, which levels the playing field between

large and small organizations. Internet technologies are the greatest democratizing forces that we will

know in our lifetime.

In physics and engineering, there is the concept of the simple tool. Simple tools, such as the inclinedplane, the wheel and the lever can be combined to form the basis for all mechanical machines,

regardless of their complexity. Each simple tool performs a specific job, and it performs it very well. In a

similar way, there are the equivalent of simple tools when it comes to Internet marketing. While media

pundits may argue whether Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus are better, we will describe how each has

a very specific role and function, and how using all of them together, in a consistent strategy may help

achieve your goals far better than working with one over the other.

In the end, this is about using these tools to further your goals. Your goal should not be to achieve

greater Facebook presence, or to capture more Twitter followers than your competition. It is to find

your target audience, and know how to communicate with them as effectively as possible.

The first step in this process is to have a good understanding of the tools at your disposal, their

strengths, weaknesses, and how they can be used together to form a cohesive strategy.

Social Networks

Search Engines

Your website


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Twitter BasicsSocial Networking has been the prevailing buzz word for several years, making marketing and

engineering organizations scramble to try and incorporate some aspect of social networking into their

roadmap in order to capitalize on the added attention. The problem is that social networking is a broad

concept that encompasses many different products, companies, technologies and disciplines, making

the goal of social networking too nebulous a goal to effectively pursue. Many organizations hire Social

Networking Consultants, most of which are just marketing professionals who have used one of the

popular Social Networking tools, and can add little value.

The purpose of this article is to discuss one of the many tools available to a Social Networking project,

Twitter, and discuss reasonable strategies for its use, what you can expect from a well executed

campaign, as well as hints, tip and pitfalls.

For those starting completely from scratch, Twitter is a Social Networking service founded in 2006 and

has grown to an estimated 200 million users at the time of this writing. To those of you completely

unfamiliar with Twitter, it is a broadcast platform allowing users to send out messages of 140 charactersor less to its users. Users can subscribe to other users in order to get broadcast messages from other

users delivered to them by either text message or listed in chronological order on their web page or

twitter client of choice. Twitter was originally designed around the constraints of cell phone text

messages or SMS, allowing any user to interact with the system with even the most basic cell phones, so

long as they have a SMS messaging plan.

The important things to note about twitter are:

Messages sent out on Twitter are broadcast to the world by default Users that subscribe to your account get simpler access to your broadcasts, but anybody may

view them

Users that havent subscribed to you may still find your posts by searching on keywords locatedin your post

How Twitter is typically usedTwitter users will typically follow other users that they find interesting, people that they know, or

people that have common interests. When following another user, you can specify whether or not you

want messages immediately delivered to your linked cell phone. In the days of the Smartphone, this

technique is being used less and less, with users opting to view tweeted messages on a purpose built

viewer. Regardless, it is good to know that some users get immediate notification, as you can use this

fact to create time sensitive campaigns for users that follow your account closely. On the opposite side

of this spectrum users can be turned off if the poster posts too frequently with unimportant

information. Optimally, twitter etiquette seems to indicate that one daily post is as frequent as users

are prepared to accept from an unfamiliar poster. Obviously friends and family members can usually get

away with more.


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The end result of this follow network is that Twitter creates a web of associated users. If you are

followed by a user that is interested in your topic it is highly likely they follow other users interested in

that topic as well. This leads me to the next Twitter use aspect: the Retweet. If a user finds a post of

your particularly interesting, he may rebroadcast it to his members, and provide you with attribution.

This helps spread the word and help publicize your account, and extends the distribution of your

message.

Creating Content

As stated before, the best Twitter followers start following for one of several reasons. They may know

the person or organization associated with the account. They may find the posts interesting or

informative. They have an interest in the subject matter. Content selection should reflect this. If users

find posts useful or interesting they will continue following, or even retweet the information.

Two limitations of twitter are going to greatly influence what and how you post. The first limitation,

already discussed, is the limit of a post size of 140 characters or less. Messages must be short and

concise in order to fit in that small window. Adding to this limitation, if you are hoping to extend thefootprint of your messages by having other users retweet the message, your message must be even

shorter than 140 characters. Users rebroadcasting your message must also have enough room to

indicate the message is a retweet, typically indicated using the characters RT followed by the twitter

address of the person it originally came from. For example, if you broadcast the message Hello there,

somebody retweeting that message would send out RT @username Hello There. The added RT

@username adds thirteen extra characters, meaning you have a new adjusted limit of 140-13 or 127

characters with which to work. Obviously, this is going to be dependent on the length of your Twitter

name.

The next limitation is that Twitter etiquette requires you to not send more than one post daily. So

getting around the first limitation by sending out two messages in order to complete your thought is not

going to be received well.

So, what can you do with 140 characters or less? Basically, you are limited to short messages that you

can send out frequently. One method of getting around the size limitation is to post links to web pages,

along with a brief description. Understand that the appeal must be greater if you expect users to follow

a link. Where users may be alright with reading a brief message from your organization, fewer will be as

prepared to follow a link and potentially leave their Twitter application in order to read what the page to

which you have linked. The description you write about the link, and what you link to has to be

appealing enough to get users to cross that barrier. Given that, understand that links to advertisements

will not only be effective, but will usually result losing followers. If you must link to retail offers, make

sure that they are deals that will make followers feel like they are being given exclusive access to in

appreciation of their loyalty.

The most effective campaigns are those that may combine elements that the target audience may find

interesting. Mix and match from any of the following types of posts:


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Short Tip of the day. Something relevant to your and by extension your followers interest. Links to materials you or your organization has created. This may include articles, white papers,

etc. This can be content about your company or organization, but again should not be too

commercial. Linking to a page that describes how your product or service can be useful is

acceptable. Linking to the datasheet is not.

Links to external articles that are not directly about your product or service, but reflect a storyor angle that would benefit your company or organization. For example, if your company

makes solar panels, linking to an article about climate change would be acceptable.

It is important that whatever frequency you select to send posts becomes a permanent process. If you

post daily at noon on weekdays, you should continue to post at noon on weekdays. If you post weekly

on Sundays, continue that pattern. Users will get used to your posts showing up at a particular time,

and come to expect it to be there. Posting inconsistently will result in user frustration.

One final tip: If you are posting a link to a web page, URLs can frequently be as long as or longer than

the Twitter message will allow. This also leaves nearly no room for the addition of a comment todescribe to what you are linking. You can remedy this using what in the industry is called a URL

shortener. URL shorteners are services that take full and long links to web pages and create as short a

URL as possible. The URL that the service provides will redirect the user to the page you want. There

are a number of URL shortening services available. If you are using the Twitter website or their branded

client applications, URLs will be shortened automatically.

Finding Followers

One benchmark of success in Twitter is the number of followers your twitter account has. It is an

important metric, but not as important as some would believe. Twitter followers can come and go

quickly. There is no way to easily gauge whether a follower is genuinely a part of a demographic to

which you are trying to appeal, or even determine if the account even reflects a real human being. That

said, there is a technique to finding followers early.

The best ways should tie into your Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) plan. SEO, for the uninitiated is

the practice of engineering your website to take advantage of specific key words so your site appears as

high as possible when users search on those key words. How SEO works is a topic for another article,

but for now, understand that there are certain keywords that are important for your company or

organization to be associated. If your organization is Elmers Glue, it would probably be in your best

interest to be followed by anybody that expressed interest in glue, or paste, or adhesives, etc. Figure

out which words to which you wish association. This should be a relatively short list, and specific. Avoid

words that may have association with unrelated products or services. Using the Elmers Glue example,

glue may be a good word, but stick may be talking about a property of glue, or tape, or may even be

talking about a small cylinder of wood or a tree branch.

Once you have your collection of key words, use Twitter to search for users with discussions about those

words. Read these posts for context. Again, if you were Elmers Glue, and you searched for the use of

the word glue you are interested in posts like I got glue all over my art project, but not a post like


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kindness is the glue that holds societies together. The first post may find what you have to say

interesting, but the second one probably wouldnt.

When you find a post by a user that has interest in your key word, follow that user. This has a dual

purpose. First of all, if this user does have an interest or enthusiasm about your subject, you can use this

to obtain insights as to how they may use or interact with your or similar products. Beyond that, andmuch more to the point, following the user will alert them to your accounts existence, and frequently

(out of courtesy) they will follow you back. You can usually determine beforehand which user are likely

to follow you back by looking at the ratio of people that they follow versus the number of people

following them. If those two values are close, they are likely to follow back anybody that follows them.

Follow this process for each user that references your keyword in a relevant way, each day as a best

practice.

Additionally, as a best practice, and most importantly to users trying to build a following, send a

personalized direct message to all new users that follow your account each day. This helps build a

relationship with the users and will let the user feel more included. Additionally, this interaction will

decrease the number of people that would later un-follow your account.

Make a record of each user you follow using this method, and mark when you first followed that users.

You should use this list to return in thirty days to monitor which users followed you back versus people

that didnt respond. It is important to unfollow users that havent followed you back in 30 days. Just as

we indicated that users that have a near 1:1 ratio of followed versus following numbers, if the number

of people you follow far exceeds the number of people following you, it can set off warning flags to

users. Accounts that indiscriminately send out follow requests and have a high followed to following

ratio appear to be Spam account to Twitter, and that practice can get your account frozen by Twitter.

This practice alone can get you to thousands of followers. The goal is to get the account up to a criticalmass where word of mouth and retweets start to result in users following your account that you did not

follow first. As you start getting more unsolicited users than users obtained through following, you can

start to ease off of the process of following users based on keywords.

So I am up to 20,000 followers. What does that mean?

As stated earlier in the article, just because you have 20,000 followers does not mean that you have

20,000 people interested in you, following your every post. You dont even have 10,000 of those

people. If 1% of your followers are actively interested in what you post of a daily basis, you are doing

very well. So, what are the other 19,000?

Many of your followers are on Twitter to be heard, not to listen or exchange information. This fact is

not limited just to other companies or organizations. Even individuals that only represent themselves

can fall into this category. Dont be discouraged. Just understand that this is reality of Twitter.


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So, if followers are not a good benchmark for how successful your Twitter account is, how do you

measure success?

One measure is to monitor the number of times popular posts are retweeted. If posts or articles are

being retweeted frequently, it is a good sign. Another way is to determine how frequently links you post

are being monitored. Try and link to links dedicated to twitter so you can measure how many usersselect that link. Follow mentions, or how often people refer to your account on twitter with other

users.

Priming the Pump

Once your group of followers has reached a critical mass, and organic growth is now outpacing harder

earned and hunted followers, there are a couple of proven techniques to help use your followers to

attract new followers. Each of these techniques, however, requires some sort of promotion or give

away. Some of them also depend on whether or not you have other promotional channels that you can

use in concert with Twitter to expand your twitter footprint.

The first technique is available to those who have an established channel for reaching their customer

base. This may include mailing lists, websites that are regularly visited, or even presence at a trade

show or seminar series where they can reach a relatively mass audience with which they would like to

improve awareness. The concept is to use this other channel to publicize and reward following. For

example, a company performing a seminar series, or taking advantage of presence at a trade show, may

promote a random give away to one follower. Their audience may be offered the chance to win an

iPad (or whatever the must have item happens to be at that time) for one random follower at the end

of the trade show, and provide instructions on who and how to follow. The limitations of success of this

sort of campaign are only limited by the audience of people made aware of the promotion. There are

anecdotes of users who gained over 100,000 followers in a seven day period with the right promotion.

Another technique is to take advantage of your existing user base to promote a similar program. An

example would be to tweet to your followers that a giveaway will be presented to any follower that

retweets a key message. The core concept about this is to take advantage of your network, and your

followers networks, etc. If you have 5,000 unique follower, and your followers have 100 friends that

are not already following you, with only degree of separation your potential addressable market is

500,000 users. Of course, the hope is that this technique goes somewhat viral and you will see result

of not only followers, but followers followers, and so on, extending the possible market to millions or

more. With a 1% participation rate, you can get a message to a large number of people for a very low

cost.

It is important to not use your followers in this manner until you have created enough of a following to

take advantage of organic growth, otherwise the return on the investment of whatever the giveaway

happens to be may be low. It is also important to not use either of these techniques too frequently, of

your account may get unfairly branded as being a spam site. You want to keep the value of the content

you deliver high, even if much of that content is not completely home grown or immediately applicable


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to your product or service, so long as it serves the common interest of your followers and isnt counter

to your goals.

Finally, you can create time-sensitive campaigns in order to increase audience attention. For example,

you may create a promotion that the next ten people that send your account a direct message will

receive 20% off on the purchase of one of your products. This technique has several benefits. First ofall, people casually following your posts will get trained that they need to follow your posts more

frequently, perhaps even have them delivered by SMS, if they want to take advantage of deals you offer.

Reading a time sensitive post, two or three days after it was posted will leave the user feeling like they

are left out of a good opportunity. Second, it will allow you to quickly identify which users already

follow you closely. It is good to know who these users are, because they can be useful for getting your

message out.

So, I have all these followers. What now?

As stated before, it is one of the biggest mistakes to believe that if you have 10,000 followers, you have

the ear of 10,000 people interested in what you have to say. A greater percentage of your followers

have no interest whatsoever in what you have to say, and are simply following you in the hopes of

expanding their audience. This is alright. These users arent costing you anything, but you do have to

take that fact into account when estimating the impact of any campaign you execute using your twitter

account. They can even be beneficial if used correctly.

So, if Twitter is such an echo chamber, with most users more interested in reaching followers than

consuming your content, is it worthwhile pursuing? Absolutely. As stately, probably 80% of your

followers will have little interest in what you have to say. Probably 15-18% know who you are, but will

only take passing interest in what you have to say. The final 1-2% will be your champions; they are your

base.

This 1-2% are enthusiasts that have interest in your subject matter. They will be active and enthusiastic

participants. What is more, they will have followers as well. They will serve to be influencers in a larger

circle that you may not have direct access to in any way other than through them. This circle may

extend beyond twitter itself. These followers are the diamonds in the rough that you need to identify,

interact with and keep happy.

You can identify these users by their activity. They will retweet messages you send that they find useful.

They will send out messages about similar subject matter. They will frequently interact with you or your

account. Identify these individuals. Nurture and cultivate relations with them. Seek out posts that they

are sending, whether it is about your organization or product or not, and retweet messages that they

send that are in the interest of your organization or product. These users will increase your footprint

and potentially open doors.


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Even the casual observers with primary goals of increasing their following can be useful in this respect.

If you are promoting content they deem valuable to their audience, they will rebroadcast it in order to

increase their credibility.

Conclusion

Twitter can be a powerful tool. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly howpowerful a tool it is, because there is no fool proof method of measuring its success. Primary

measurement methods, such as quantifying the number of followers are fundamentally meaningless.

Secondary measurements, such as measuring retweets and mentions can be more effective, but the

effect and impact of those are difficult to measure as the audience of each person retweeting your

message.

From a leverage standpoint, it is difficult to beat Twitter as a platform for delivering your message. It is

a free service that allows you to easily seek out and identify an audience, not by generic demographics,

such as age, gender and income, but based on demonstrated interests. For the simple investment of a

small degree of time each day, you can create a receptive audience that you can reach day or night.

In the end, Twitter is just one tool in the proverbial social networking tool kit. Gaining a twitter

following should be viewed as one means towards the end of publicizing your message, product or

service. There are other tools that, when used in conjunction with Twitter in a single concentrated

strategy, can help to strengthen your community and expand your reach.


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Facebook BasicsFacebook is perhaps the largest player in the social networking arena today. Although there are

similarities between Twitter and Facebook, as well as overlapping functionality, there is an inherent

difference in their approach that must be understood before embarking on any targeted campaign.

As described in the previous section, the foundation of Twitter is that every communication within the

system is expected to be public and broadcast to the world unless explicitly directed at an individual.

Users are aware of this, and this affects their interactions with the service. In contrast to this,

information published on Facebook is expected to stay within the boundaries of the direct relationships

each user has approved. A message posted on Facebook is typically only read by the approved friend

list of that user.

This strategy has been both a benefit and a drawback to Facebook as an organization. It could be

argued that the expectation of privacy is directly responsible for the widespread adoption of Facebook

as a communications platform. However, the value Facebook can derive from the understanding of its

users interests, interactions and associations is hindered by this expectation of privacy. Facebook hasbeen trying to nudge its subscribers to a more public model for years, but each move creates an outcry

from users that subscribed with the expectation of greater privacy.

When is Facebook presence a good idea?

Establishing a Facebook Presence

The Like Button

Obtaining Members

How to use your Facebook community


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LinkedIn


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Google Plus

Accounts vs. Pages

Circles vs. Followers

The Social Network as defined by the search engine


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Search Engine Optimization Basics

The Selection of target key words

Key SEO principals

Web Page Optimization

Cross-linking

Promotion

Measuring success with Google Analytics

guerilla marketing with social networking

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