Hi guys! Just wanted to invite you to the Social Media gathering the Hilton Cancun is organizing at their lovely japanese restaurant. All you need to do is RSVP at http://twtvite.com/h1je25 A twitter account is needed to RSVP. Don't have one? What are you waiting for to open your twitter account? lol Anyway, hope to see you there! Cheers! Camilo
Who from here is going to this? As I mentioned in another thread, I'm not sure I really want to get wrapped up in social media marketing. To me it sounds like a lot of effort for too little return, but maybe I just don't "get it". I might well go along and see if I can be convinced though. There are quite a few bloggers and Internet marketers here, what are your thoughts on this kind of stuff?
re: Hi Steve! Don't take it as an offense, but I'm fairly sure you're not getting it. =) hehe Have you heard the Dell story? http://www.nevillehobson.com/2009/06/12/twitter-drives-3m-sales-for-dell/ 3 MILLION USD IN SALES EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH TWITTER. Does 3 MILLION USD sounds like "too little return" for ya? There are many more success stories like that. =) Cheers!
Steve: Don't feel bad. I didn't "get it" for a long time either and then one day it just clicked as to how I could make it work to drive traffic to my website. Yes, it takes time and know-how and it is not the answer to everything but it can and does work to get people to your site and more people converts to money when done right.
3 million in sales, lets say after Dells manufacturing cost they make a 70% profit on each unit. Leaves 2.1 million profit. 40 staff at say 30K a year is another 1.2 mill cost leaving 900,000 profit. 40 staff to generate $900,000 profit = $22,500 profit per staff member. I'd want to make a lot more than $22,500 a year full time twittering. Also of those 3 million Twitter driven sales, how many would have bought a Dell anyway if Twitter didnt exist? A good percentage I'd guess.
Oh I dont feel bad Jim Just wonder whether devoting more time to this kind of thing would be more financially rewarding than what I do currently. If I spent more time on social marketing then there would be something else that I wasnt doing.
Well... I think you're missing the point Steve. The point being, twitter is FREE, as most Social Media channels are. You are making ZERO investment here. Any return of investment when you are investing NADA, sounds sweet to me. By "investing nada" I'm referring, of course, to the DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL, *not* the people. Of course you need to invest if you want to get better results, and this is the part that most people don't get. The majority of people think that since "this social media thing is free" they wont have to invest one cent. Ever. This is simply wrong. Also, they are _not_ "full time twittering". Schedules are set, tweets are programmed to be sent, etc. Oh, and just to do some quick math: $22,500 USD = 303750 MXN a year. That's 25312 MXN a MONTH. I dont know about you, but thats more than DOUBLE what I make monthly at my current job. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. But anyway, the bottom line is that SM isn't for everybody. If you dont believe in it, are not sure yet, etc., better not make a move, cause if your participation fails to engage & deliver, it'll backfire on your business. Like Jim said, "when done RIGHT", it works. When done wrong, it fails. Cheers!
Steve has long counseled me to move towards a business model for myself where I have money rolling in regardless of whether I feel like talking to anyone or not. My current business model has me pretty much holding my clients' hands full time. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is about social engagement. It's not right for someone who doesn't want to engage with people. You cannot just Tweet it and have them come running. You have to pay attention to your Twitter audience and engage with them. If you do that it's very effective, and I believe it's cost-effective if you have enough followers who are paying attention to you. Our friend CancunCanuck "gets" Twitter naturally. And it's about time she landed a job where she can now get paid to engage with her audience. (You go girl!) Lots of people use Twitter wrongly imho, they don't engage with their audience, they just Tweet their news bits and expect results. Well, no one cares about you unless you care about them first, at least that's what I see. Twitter works best for people who put their audience before their product. There's a great book called "Social Media Marketing: An hour a day" by Dave Evans. I recommend it for anyone interested in SMM. One of the bigger pictures issues with SMM is the whole search engine results issue. I created a Flickr account for a client on Tuesday, on Wednesday it was number 1 on Google for the keywords I targeted. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other SMM sites are Google-magnets. So nowadays part of "owning your brand" means creating SMM profiles on all those sites to insure that accounts related to your brand are popping up all over search engines. At first it may seem like you are scattering your brand across lots of sites, but if your message is consistent, and all your SMM sites link to your main site, then the net result is more targeted traffic to your main site. SMM just means casting a wider net across the search engines. Steve, I think that CancunCare could have a great Flickr following if you posted a boatload of beach pix there. You could develop a following around photos of this area. I would go to the Tweet Up at the Hilton except that it's on my birthday and I have a hot date with my viejo! So forget it!
Kim for president! Agree with Kim 100%. Even on the her viejo part! I would totally ditch any tweetup for a hot date too! lol Well friends, its Friday and time's up at the office! Time to chill at home! Have a great weekend everyone!
Re: Well... Ah, but to me it isnt a zero investment. It's time. Time that I could otherwise use on projects that I already know work. So, to me, it would be a gamble. What I'm trying to weigh up is, is it a gamble worth taking.
