Hi, My Name is Jayna & I'm a Rampant #Hashtag User

So I'm a little goofy today ...but when is that 'different'. I've been loving twitter a lot lately (my recent blog topics can back me up). I'm at that level of engagement that I can banter with a number of people, scan for the most relevant content and just enjoy the fast pace of other people's conversations.

Hashtags are a twitter tool that allows people to collect tweets under one topic umbrella. By entering the "#" sign before a word or phrase (withnospaces) you can create a topic collecting agent. People can talk about a topic such as #followfriday & #musicmonday and in this, they can join a greater conversation outside of their followers & followees.

I created this ugly image - if you want to swipe it for your own #hashtaglove please give me the props please!

Then there are other people who, like me, on occasion get caught up in a tweet and put things up like #Imarriedagreatguy. I will be the first to admit - it's useless, I did it just to put in an arbitrary hashtag. But it's fun. I'm the only one to rock this hashtag for now. I doubt it will be a top trending topic (the most commonly mentioned topics on Twitter over a period of time). But maybe I'll get some other tweets in there about married life!

No matter what - I noticed I kinda do this a lot. Enter a random hashtag for the fun of the post. Does that make me wrong or just enthusiastic?


You decide... write a stinkin' comment or two on my blog, people. I'm not doing this to talk to myself! :) At least I have my newish comment from Lisa! :)

A Simple Case for Using Twitter to Market Your Business

People are still not "sold" on the benefits of using Twitter to market their business. However, I have one simple statement to help people get their head around adopting this platform for their business. Use twitter regularly (keeping within the etiquette protocols) and you will easily reach an opt-in audience with an established interest in your business.

People are so wrapped up in the METRICS of twitter and social media that they forget to look for more 'natural' benefits of using this tool. It is getting easier to create a matrix, benchmarks and legitimate ROI for using Twitter to market your business. But let's take a moment to sit back and look at the relational value you get. People who have opted to follow you/your business on twitter have interest in interacting with you on Twitter.

I'm not going to beat this point into something more than it is not. Yes, there is still a great deal of strategy and maintenance to do when interacting with your followers, but instead of viewing them as a metric, hang out with them as people. You'll be surprised at how much more they like the person behind the brand & manning the twitter account than just a logo pushing information at them.

Don't Take Social Media Personally....

...I mean it. Don't get discouraged if no one replies to you in Twitter. This is advice I shared with someone last night after I spoke on a panel at Bentley University. She is trying to launch a business and is frustrated with Twitter.

It's hard (to launch both a business and get going in Twitter). There are so many rules of engagement with Twitter. This is probably one you need to put at the top of your priority list - especially if you are new to Twitter. Why? Because if you give up, you'll never experience the thrills of Twitter.

Let me pick on Chris Brogan - he's a thought leader on Social Media, he's a big deal on Twitter...and he's a nice guy! He's got over (I wanted to say 100k followers, but at this moment he's 77 followers shy of that stat) - He's got a small city of followers. I can tell you, that he's talked to many of them in Twitter and in person. He has talked to me in Twitter a few times - but he hasn't replied to every thing I've sent to him.

This doesn't make Chris a bad guy - it just means something happened that he didn't get a chance to reply to a tweet.

It doesn't mean that I'm not sharing something of value with him (and his most recent tweet helps illustrate the point I'm going to make) - he might just miss it. He gets a lot of tweets directed to him each day. You may have some Social Media GOLD to share with him, but he might be stuck on a plane that hasn't started offering in-flight WiFi yet. He gets some more tweets, makes a few phone calls and your great tweet to him is just missed in "life happening" on and off Twitter.

Don't give up - Don't spam people either, but if you have something of legitimate value. Share it and send it out a few times. If you don't get any replies, move on to your next topic. People are different and if you keep trying, people will find something they value in what you have to say.

And then there's the flip side to this - on a rare occasion, you may just get a tweet that makes your day/week/month...

...this Tweet made my decade! BT is an "electronica" musician - Brian is my favorite musician of all time. I have been an adoring fan for over a decade. I have seen him in concert just about every time he has come to Boston. I saw him break his ankle on stage & I saw him (a few years later) shut down Avalon on Landsdowne St. I only missed him when he came to town on my due date. So anyone who has a favorite performer who is loyal to the end, knows how much I love BT. So how thrilled do you think I was to get this personalized message directly to me. How thrilling is it for me to have an interaction that is so enthusiastically appreciative of my fandom? (And yes, I'm giddy all over again - especially finding a way to use this interaction to encourage people to use Twitter.)

Your favorite musician/actor/whatever may not be on Twitter so you might not get an interaction this thrilling - but I hope it can illustrate just how rewarding engaging with people can be. It takes time to get used to Twitter and to connect with people - but you reap what you sew on here. Rewards will come in many forms from Twitter - I even scored a free pair of slippers. I'm standing by my opening statement - Don't Take Social Media Personally - because you could give up and miss out on some really cool online experiences.

Facebook Villain, Me?

It’s common knowledge that people are followed and unfollowed regularly, easily on Twitter. It’s less personal than LinkedIn and significantly less personal than Facebook. So it’s very easy for me to unfollow someone who doesn’t add value, or just annoys me on Twitter.
I find myself regularly annoyed by someone on Facebook. This person knows me well enough to say “Hi” if we were to bump into each other in public. They are generally a nice person, but they are just ANNOYING the CRAP OUT OF ME ON FACEBOOK. I wish I could hide my updates from them so that they aren’t compelled to put a borderline illiterate, mostly irrelevant comment on my updates.

I can understand why they are compelled to write “at me” – I’m a heavy Facebook user, but I’m not over the top. I publish a new status update every day or every other day. Some days I’ll post a handful of comments as if something is unfolding – I did so when we had a party or major event. I might post a few comments during a television show that I know is in common with many of my friends. But in the long term – I post frequently but will rarely post more often than 2 times per day.

The irritant from this individual is that they are moderately illiterate commonly screwing up simple terms like your/you’re, to/too and there/their. It’s as if they choose the opposite spelling deliberately. Now I understand there is some accountability on the part of Facebook – we don’t get to spellcheck. However, I doubt this person would ever think of using it if it was a feature for us to use.

So my conundrum – this is a nice person, but one I don’t have a heck of a lot in common with. I’m not going to modify my Facebook behavior & I’m not going to be a jerk and tell them “don’t post on my comments….EVER”. Yet I feel annoyed any time they choose to post on my Facebook page. Their comments are often irrelevant to my comments….it’s like they picked up on one word of my status update and felt compelled to write about that one word and in that effort, completely go off the context of my post. The comments are often full of misspellings, capitalization errors and terrible abuse of grammar. So the posts annoy me, yet, I hesitate to defriend because I have a history with this individual.

I’ll close this post with this thought: This person is hanging by a thread to my Facebook friendship. It’s really complicated for me to figure out what I’m going to do at this point. I guess I’ll revisit when/if I decide to take action (or decide not to). Food for thought – really read & pay attention to what people write on Facebook. You may have a typo here and there, you may misunderstand their comments, you may not comment when you’re completely aligned with them – but be considerate more often than not and you’ll probably be able to keep all your “Facebook Friends”.

BTW: I use the 'group filter' functions on this individual as a last ditch effort to minimize thier commentaries. Let's see how this works!

Obama vs Social Media

Honestly, I'm not going to use this post to offer up my political opinion of Obama. I'm a reasonable person just like most Americans, personally, I think he's doing well in some areas and other areas leave something to be desired. But, again, what he's doing is not the focus. I want to talk about how Social Media is going to reveal sides of Obama that were never seen before in history. The light bulb went off when he took to Twitter to campaign, my call to action was when he called Kanye West a "Jackass" after the MTV Taylor Swift debacle.

President Obama needs to watch his mouth! Not because I care about his personal opinion on Kanye West, the weather or whether or not he likes cats. It's because anything he says can and will be used. He is going to get publicity for anything he does...a moment of crass humor, an outburst of temper. Whatever he does is going to be exploited not only on record but off record, much like his comment on Kanye West. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Kanye's ego is so out of control that he's one embarassing incident with an underaged girl from being the next Michael Jackson. People already think he's a loose cannon. I read a full commentary on how this is not likely to impact Kanye's career because he's known for these escapades. (Sweet Taylor Swift is now even more of "America's Sweetheart" for dealing with this with more grace at a young age.)

So back to Obama. He's going to sneeze and someone is going to take to Twitter to confirm he's got swine flu. The more media we have, the more he's going to be recorded, reported and exploited. He's now got the pressure to be cool at all times and whenever he speaks, even the most inane comments will be up for public fodder. This comment will not be his last to make news...let's see if he really puts his foot in his mouth! I'm sure Mr. President will find himself tangled in some messes thanks to this age of hyper-communications.

Friend Request Experience

I get really excited when I see a friend request on Facebook. It's like going to the mailbox on your birthday - there's usually something special waiting for you when you open up. I treat facebook as a social tool - I do not use it as a networking tool - that's my LinkedIn account. So when I get a friend request that is from someone I don't know, or someone I think isn't really interested in keeping in touch so much as being nosy, it's a bummer.

There are a few rules of thumb I keep in mind when I'm accepting or sending a friend request. First, am I really interested in what's going on in this person's life?

Do I respect them? Do I care about them?

Am I friends with their spouse too? (I often find I'm uncomfortable friending my friend's husbands - there are a few exceptions to the rule.)

I guess the spouse benchmark is the big hang up for me. My husband and I have some families that we are friendly with, but when we boil it down, in many cases, I'm friends with the wife & not the husband. It's not that I don't like the husband (ok well maybe in a few cases I dislike him). It's just that when I talk to the husbands of my friends, it's often a surface conversation. I don't have a connection with them that makes me feel comfortable labeling him as a friend.

I recently posted an ambiguous comment on facebook that hinted at some changes going on in our house. I made the post late in the evening and early the next morning I had a friend request from the spouse of one of my facebook-friends. This is someone who talks down to me every time I see them, has a know-it-all attitude towards many people and has clearly seen friendly comments to their spouse (posted by me.) So it's rather suspect that NOW, when I make a comment that could be an indication of what's up in my house, do I get this friend request.

All I can say to that is NO THANK YOU. If they really were my friend, they would have picked up a phone a long time ago...or sent a friend request a while ago, not when I'm all of a sudden interesting. The only thing I wish I could do now is archive the request (like LinkedIn) so they can't badger me to 'be their friend'. Obviously I could block them, but since I'm friends with the spouse, it would be obvious. I don't want to be rude, I just don't want to open up our interaction to facebook.

So at the end of the day, I did not accept this request - and won't accept any future requests from this individual!

Holy Missed Marketing Opportunity

I like the cliche marketing opportunities that come up in the world just being the world. I wasn't REALLY thinking too much of 09/09/09. Yes, it's all cutesy and 9 cubed jokes are cascading through my Twitterfeed. But Steve Garfield's RT caught my attention and hit me in the head. Why isn't the 99 Restaurant capitalizing on today's date? Hmmm?


People love the opportunity to have a small celebration in life. Why do you think St. Patrick's day is so popular? There are so many things the 99 could do with today's date!

What about:
Two eat for $9.99?
Every 99th customer gets their meal free?
Drop the price on all of their meals over $9.99 to $9.99 for today?
Offer the 3 course meal for $9.99?
(They DO have a 9 meals for $9.99 offer up, but it's not related with the date at all.)


The 99 is a lower price-point restaurant, so they could easily attract many people for a meal out - even in this struggling economy. I guess that opportunity is gone for the next 100 years! Hopefully they'll smarten up their Marketing before then.

Twitter: Think About Who You Follow

The mantra on Twitter is "it's not about the number of followers, it's the quality". Which is great, true and legitimate for using twitter to market your business. If you are working a highly regionalized industry, particularly a niche industry, you are going to have a smaller number of followers on twitter. If your target market is Dentists in Middlesex County in Massachusetts and you know that there are (this is an arbitrary number) 4,000 practicing Dentists in this county. Then if through some Twitter genie you find out that 20% of the Dentists in your target area have Twitter accounts, you would want those 800 people to follow you, right? Ok, so you might find a few Dentists in other surrounding counties might follow you, dental students might follow you and it's all okay. There is potential value in all of these people. So you may have about 1,000 total followers within your target and potential target demographic. This is all quality followers - any one above and beyond that niche is 'waste' audience(to use an old marketing term). I prefer to call them 'bonus' audience because twitter is free and you're not wasting money, or intellect on them. So this whole thought and theory is right on. Check out the thoughts of this mantra to further my point. Soshable has a great post that really fleshes out the quality vs quantity theory with followers on Twitter.

But that's not the bee in my bonnet today. My issue is with the people trying to do business with Twitter who are following without thinking. There are two local businesses (who shall not be named because I'm trying to land them as clients) who are not paying attention to the value of following. One is huge, well-known and is only following their sister locations. Another is a small, super funky business who is following more celebrity-tweeters - in fact when I went through their following list, I was hard pressed to not find a "verified" Twitter account. Neither of these companies are following their clients. Uhhhh, how do you expect to Listen when you're not looking at your marketplace? Yes, you can get a Google Alert - but they miss some things. Set up a filter on tweetdeck, but you're apt to miss something there too. (Not everyone 'gets' hashtags. ) So please tell me, WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING MASHABLE, ASHTON KUTCHER & OPRAH, but not your CUSTOMERS?!?!?! Having twitter is great and all, but if you aren't going to use it with some thoughtfulness, then don't be disappointed with your results. Okay, enough with the crabbing.

What I'm trying to get to is - when you use Twitter to market your business, signing up with your brand name is not enough. Tweeting your promotions and partners is not enough. Following interesting people is NOT ENOUGH! Find your customers, listen to them, talk to them - ENGAGE with them. You will be surprised with the awareness you get. And yes, what you are doing right now is not enough, what you will do is never enough. You need to practice KAIZEN with all of your business processes and put your Twitter marketing at the top of your list.

Ashton Kutcher is a cool guy, but he lives in California. He's not in Massachusetts where my two "doing it all wrongers" are - so what good is he going to do for your business? Follow your customers on Twitter to see what they are saying about you or your competition. Then take the initiative to talk to them, encourage them and engage them. Then you won't be disappointed with the results.

Takeaways:

• Dentists and Marketers to Dentists - don't believe my stats. They are arbitrary to help illustrate my point. (and Send me kudos because I floss regularly.)
• Identify your audience in twitter
• Follow your audience in twitter.
• Have fun in Twitter (okay, I didn't go over this, but don't you like doing things better when they are fun?)
• Talk to your audience in and out of Twitter.

Thank you, my rant is now over. And it appears so is my blog writing block!