Comments on: How to use social media to unlock true fan marketing

By: Scott Olson

Scott Olson — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:59:22 +0000

Thanks for all the great comments. I've gotten a ton of great feedback on this article. One thing I didn't mention is how useful Twitter lists are for organizing sub-groups of your fans to listen to and engage with. Glad you enjoyed the article.

By: Molli Megasko

Molli Megasko — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 02:25:16 +0000

I think you nailed this on the head. Especially the last note of giving your fans the tools to market for you. We know it’s about sales, but it’s also creating those brand ambassadors to help create sales for you. Nice post.

By: BKF Engineers

BKF Engineers — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:45:42 +0000

Great article! I also believe in targeting your message to a specific audience. I think the listeners and followers (fans) of your message are highly attracted to something that would interst them vs. a general message to a global audience via mass email. And as we are more innundated with mass email, my experience has been to delete the email before it even reaches my inbox. Careful positioning of your message is key to being heard, followed by careful listening!

By: GaryG197

GaryG197 — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:51:31 +0000

Great article Scott! I agree that it's become useless to send out a mass e-mail to everyone in your industry and that it's more valuable to have one true fan than a ton of strangers. Luckily all the new social media tools make it easier to connect with your fans in a less time consuming manner. The most important thing to remember is responding to your fans though- there's no point in having social media if you're not even listening to your customers!

By: EliotD

EliotD — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:08:29 +0000

I agree completely with what you said about being “highly specific in your search terms. Otherwise you are flooded with irrelevant data.”When using tools like Plotonic or HubSpot, I found that I got more accurate results by being more specific and leaving out terms that were generic. For instance, if your brand is “Target,” you should look for phrases like “at Target” and “in Target” instead of just “Target,” which will yield you mostly noise.Thanks for the article!

By: JasonR

JasonR — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:08:07 +0000

Great article, but your opening comments on purchased lists really hit home for me. My former Marketing VP manager was a big fan of purchasing lists to “fill up our lead database.” He could never figure out that it was just turning us into a spammer and wasting thousands of dollars of our marketing budget.But, as a good quantitative marketer, I had to do some analytics to see if he was actually on to something. Looking at the data, contacts from purchased lists who were marketed to over the past 18 months had an open rate of 0.7% overall, and that's probably high. In fact, some of the individual lists, with 4,000+ contacts, returned absolutely ZERO opens across multiple email campaigns.Sigh – these times they are a changin', and marketers need to change with them…

By: leeodden

leeodden — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:00:57 +0000

Great article Scott. I think the most important suggestions were to identify and listen. Doing that solely through participation keeps you close to where the action is but it's a long road. Social media monitoring software which ranges from free to very expensive, can shorten the time it takes to identify true fans and can make listing a lot more efficient. The ironic thing is, that social participation can be a great source for the lists used in email marketing.

By: Scott Olson

Scott Olson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:52:08 +0000

Greate comment Fiona. Harassment is definitely not engagement. If you are actually listening to your true fans you will find that more often than not they will start a conversation you can participate in. Thanks for your thoughts.

By: fionabosticky

fionabosticky — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:40:44 +0000

I like the “Engage with your Fans”. I think some people should be told that this doesn't mean – “harass”. Consumers have developed little tolerance for spam or harassment now, so I think it's important to have a plan or strategy on how to engage with your fans or potential clients. Carefully handled and managed over a long-term basis, this could generate some amazing results.

By: Scott Olson

Scott Olson — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:28:08 +0000

Glad you liked it Virginie! I think there is a lot of room for improvement in engagement tactics in social media and people are still figuring out a lot of it.

By: Virginie Glaenzer

Virginie Glaenzer — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:58:42 +0000

This is one good post! After several years of social media monitoring which ultimately creates noise, laser targeted and community focus is becoming the new approach, where tools like eCairn Conversation brings tremedous value. Thanks for this article!