I find it funny … I created a website in erm was it October 2009 ? (not a website but a parody page / graphic) Donkey Fluff … love the phrase Social Media Guru

Of course I do think that social media has a place in things … its a bloody costly place that can be difficult at times to judge the effectiveness of but it has a place none the less.

Like (<-- had to start the post with that) a lot of web people I've a pretty full todo list. It doesn't seem to be shrinking at all. Thankfully however it doesn't seem to be increasing exponentially at least not to my understanding of maths anyways ... one of the things I've had on my todo list for a while has been to create a Facebook Landing Page for Blacknight. I’ve toyed with various ideas on and off over the last few weeks and had a pretty cool one made and then Michele points me at an extremely simple welcome page on facebook today and I just had to completely backtrack.

I generally don’t do that much “social media” stuff apart from interacting (oh wait isn’t that what it’s all about) … but I’ve never marketed myself in any way as a social media guru (unless of course you count Donkey Fluff). So it is rather nice to get to play around with things. A while back I created the Town Hall Theatre Facebook page … I hadn’t been asked to but it really is something that can be setup in two minutes (to actively man it is going to take a lot of work I’ll admit) and well I wanted to make sure they got their facebook username. 1300 fans later give or take and it is doing ok … it’s the kind of page that should maybe have 4 or 5 thousand fans I guess for galway (popular around 80k) maybe more. Anyways for minimum effort their Facebook page is up and doing rather nicely. The Town Hall Theatre gang have gotten on board as well and a few of them man it from time to time and I’m going to guess it will become a bigger and bigger line of communication for them over the next while similar to a lot of the theatre groups around Ireland. All in all I think of that as a nice little social media success with limited effort.

Back to the Future or the present at any rate and Blacknight’s landing page. We’ve come up with something rather simple. We’ll see how it works out over the next little while a woman pointing to the Like button … hopefully a clear enough message. Like us … it’s the goal of the page we want people to come back and interact. Limit the amount of text … don’t confuse people with way too much info … and we’ve included a few screen shots of a few of the Blacknight sites some people may recognise. Hey presto it is live. We’ll just have to see how it goes over the next little while and potentially tweak it (but as you know there are countless factors involved … how often we link to it … are people on holidays … times we tweet things online and so on big list)

On a side note … I opted to use a semi generic image / no face on it as half the time people start to ask oh who is she / he and hell that isn’t what this is about … it’s about pointing to the “Like” button so what do you think? Obvious enough? not working for you?

Here is the landing page www.facebook.com/blacknight (of course if you’ve already liked blacknight you’ll need to go to http://www.facebook.com/blacknight?v=app_6009294086

As always I love getting feedback … yes sometimes I’ll be gutted by the responses but meh democracy in action says the majority rules or something like that

My name is James and I made the Greatest SEO Marketing Guru website ever I also made the theme for the site Social Media Expert

Like most people using “social media” I’m constantly amazed by the amount people seeking advice / how to’s and so on. I’m also heavily amazed by the amount of people offering their services to them. While I realise there is always a need to have some advice with new technology / ways of doing things the social media guru stud guy coaching type thing is a bit extreme no ?

So really what you’re wanting to ask is WTF is social media marketing ?

In a nutshell … its spamming the **** out of your friends initially in the hopes things will take off and you’ll get more people following you. This in turn will lead to every “tweet” / Post / Message you make getting read by an ever increasing number of people.

Wow you make it sound so great where do I sign up?
Well like most things I’d first advise you have a website to redriect your “fans” (people that follow / stalk you) to

This will help and who knows a few might even end up book marking your actual site instead of just seeing the off message from you. I’d also recommend you get and RSS feed onto your site. A what now ? .. ( an RSS feed is simply put … a list of the recent posts / activity on your site) People will see updates from you in an RSS reader of their choice if they use one. I actually being quite computer il… er … literate don’t use one. Why … again its down to time and how much time you have at the end of the day. There are so many posts to read things to check and so on it can be a bit overwhelming.

So you’ve got your site .. you’ve got something that you can drag people back onto your site with (RSS feed) .. what do I do next.

Well you pretty much start telling people about what you do. Its social media … can you be social ? .. can you be social online ( its potentially a lot easier to be social online than in real life) and away you go. Follow people you find interesting .. interact with people … let people know whats happening … open up your “company” to the world and interact. O…. K … you say … erm really thats what its all about.

1. Interact with people
2. People may follow you back if you’ve something interesting to say
3. You’ll follow them back
4. Connections will be made .. you’ll say hey to them they’ll say hey back
5. You’ll update info … people will see it .. some might like it and let their friends know
6. Interact Interact Interact ….

So … erm … that sounds simple enough doesn’t it? This is what social media is about … you’ll have people telling you its all about the number of followers you’ve got following you. NO … this is pure BS for example … I could have 10 people following me who are my customers and who might like to see I’m available for work … or I’m interested in doing XYZ … and there’ll be some interaction … or I could have 10000 people trying to sell their services to me .. following me … me following back … cluttering up my stream ( twitter stream … updates from people ) … which is more useful … well to be honest the 10 people you’ll interact with. Of course if you’re huge and can hire a marketing department and get loads of people involved in your twitter account then go for it. If its just you .. then … erm forget about it … follow people have them follow back or not … and let things happen naturally so to speak.

All this said there are a few things you can do to speed up the interest in you / your product or service …

Special offers … ooooh wow 20% off and save now today only .. <-- you like the look of that no ? well why not make a few discounts available for people. What will it cost you ... hopefully not that much .. you've probably got margins worked out on what you earn / profit and so on already ... so factor in what you've got in your marketing budget as well and go from there.

So all this been said it sounds pretty simple no ? Well hell it is .. its not rocket science ... its basic human interaction ... if you say hi, people will say hi back.

Things not to do:

1. Don’t spam … don’t spam your product .. don’t spam messages …
2. Don’t direct message people about your products
3. Don’t auto message people saying thanks for following
4. Forget about the .. you can earn $50,000 a day with my social media tool!!! click here to find out more … type offers. They are BS
5. Don’t read posts online and think they are the number one way of doing things … Trial and error should be heavily involved in your process ( We all make mistakes .. I’ve made them others have made them .. we try and move on )

Do realise that all the social media interaction is free BUT its damn expensive …
1 Tweet – 20 – 30 seconds of your time … (thats nothing you say)
.. reading the tweets of others … add on another bit of time …

We’ve 5 minutes gone just there like that … what have we done .. posted one message read a few others tweets.

Lets speed up things … how? … erm … social media is about building up a following .. interaction … respect (respect is import .. if people like you or your product they’ll help you promote it .. if they don’t .. you’ll have pointless twitter accounts RT’ing (Re Tweeting .. sending one your message to people who follow them) .. all your messages .. end result you’ll pick up useless followers

You will come across the odd thing which takes on the Viral nature … you say something clever .. you write something clever and suddenly lots of people are linking to you RT’ing your message ad so on … GREAT … WOO HOO and I’m happy for you .. but generally you can’t force this to happen it just does and if it does congrats and well done

So this ends part I of maybe a one part article .. maybe I’ll write a bit more ( For most people reading its hopefully DUH! material .. for others hopefully its something of an eye opener to the magic that is Social Media) Let me know what you think

James

(PS: Please note I’ve been really using twitter as my social media tool of example here … similar would apply to facebook and so on)

Twitter … hailed as the buzz buzz social media buzz buzz marketing tool buzz buzz

But what is it really … I’ve no doubt its a great tool, its full of interesting people … its full of useful tidbits of information its full of the mundane .. “Drinking a coffee” / “I need a coffee” … its full of live news updates “was that an earthquake ??? #galway” … its full of the fake “oh my god XYZ just died” …

Its full of advertising “Thank you XYZ your product C was great” .. promotions “use twitter1111 now and save 10%” … support “you’ll want to check the config file in your root folder”

For me … its all the above and its also a HUGE time drain.

I am @Forbairt on there I use it mainly to chat with I guess the web dev community of Ireland and not to mention some great people I’ve met at the BTW’s and other events. I can quickly ping my hosting company @blacknight

I enter the mundane I enter in useful bits of information … respond to code requests and generally pull the piss.

I also realise that I have coming up on 15,000 tweets on there. WTF!!! How on earth did that happen … I’m on it now since erm the end of 2008 … (not one of the first … not one of the originals … a pretender to the throne)

15,000 tweets you say hmm… I type fast … 40 – 80 words a minute … I can’t be exact some words are bigger than others and hence take longer to type. A tweet is what 144 characters long .. so that’ll make up a good 20 – 30 words ? without the dreaded txtspk. so a tweet will take me a minute to write give or take.

15,000 x 1 minute … = an hour or two no doubt … 15,000 / 60 mins / hour = 250 hours .. wow ok not an hour or two … 250 hours … only a … hang on there are 24 hours in the day (though as a freelance web developer I try to cram a few more in to make it an even 30) … Hmm 10 days you say give or take … no .. 10 complete days gone in the last year and a couple of months … and thats just entering in the tweets. O … K

I also madly enough … read other peoples tweets. I like to think I’ve it done in a rather sensible way.

I’m using the wonderful tweetdeck. It allows me to have multiple accounts. It allows me to sync between computers and most importantly for me it allows me to setup groups / columns.

I’m following 568 people I’ve 961 following me if I had one big stream of info I’d never get to see what I want to see so I’ve those 568 people broken down into groupings.

My main column I’ve got Friends / Persons of Interest … next over I’ve my Others Group (I certainly am original with my naming conventions) In here I’ve got my hosting company a few high profile web devs I follow and a few clients. Over from that I’ve my RSS feeds group. I’ve the Irish Webmasters Forum listed in here along with all the Tutorial Sites / Sitepoint and so on. I gave up on using an RSS reader a long time ago truth be told I never really got into it. Beside my RSS I’ve what it tells me is All Friends (everyone I follow) and beside that I’ve got Direct Messages and then come the searches #dropped.ie (its my baby so I like to keep tabs on if its being talked about) and a few more searches.

My point is I’ve probably read a million tweets ? madness … probably not or probably more .. I’ve no idea .. but factor those into the equation of my 10 days of just writing the messages and erm .. *gulps* … have I just gone and lost a month of my time on twitter … oi WTF is that all about.

What do I have to show for it ? well erm .. er … friendship is priceless isn’t it ? … they are my friends right ? .. ( actually a few are and I’ve gone for pints / meetups and its generally good craic) but what about the rest ? … erm. .. *gulps* … Has it brought me fame … power … WOMEN!!! … well if Tiffany69x is anything to go by then yes yes it has … If not then *gulps* … Has it brought me work. Well yes yes it has. It has not however brought me in 2 – 3 months of work and given my “overheads” again for want of better words … its a bit mad Ted!!.

la la la .. I’m not reading this anymore … la la la .. I’m not even writing it any more …. la la la.

I complain that I can’t write content … I complain that I lack the motivation to do content writing I seem to be capable of generating enough content right there. Again I’ll ask what have I to show for all this time on twitter. Well I’m now in charge of one of the biggest “Social Media Stud Guru Guy Coaching” Websites out there .. its had an immense impact on people. I mean look at Todd’s quote. Do I have an understanding of Social Media … Yes … do I need to step back … hell yes … I’ve just spoken about twitter here I’m also on boards.ie … various other forums .. Facebook

If I say I’ve spent 20 days on twitter … thats 20 x 24 hours … 8 working hours in a day … thats potentially 60 working days gone on twitter.

La La La … I step back … for now at least and try to work on a few projects for personal development / mental gain / monitary reward

Please note: figures quoted were exact at time of going to press / All calculations are rough and with no scientific basis