Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 55

What Is the Value of Getting Lots of Followers or Following Lots of People on Twitter?

On February 16 BookBuzzr.com sponsored a webinar about using Twitter for book marketing.

The webinar panel consisted of Carolyn-Howard Johnson (author of the HowToDoItFrugally series), Joel Friedlander (proprietor of Marin Bookworks), Laurel Marshfield (professional writer, ghostwriter and developmental editor), Penny C. Sansevieri (CEO of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.), and me.

The conversation was so lively that questions not answered in the webinar were addressed later by email. And although the discussion started out about

Twitter for book authors, the following exchange is relevant for anyone on Twitter.

Here is the edited email exchange between me and webinar listener Jacqueline Windh PhD, who is @jwindh on Twitter and graciously gave her permission for me to share this exchange:

Jacqueline's webinar follow-up question for me:

Interesting info that you check out each person before following them. But I see you follow over 5000 people. I am wondering how many of them you actually read the tweets of?

This is one of my concerns about getting followers: When someone who already follows thousands of people then follows me, I know it is unlikely that this person will actually read any of my tweets. So what is the advantage to me to get followers who are not reading what I say?

The important part of my question is: Then what value is it to me if Phyllis follows me but never reads what I say?

I replied:

First, those 5000+ people I follow and who follow me are not an overnight happening. This took 2 1/2 years of growing organically — slowly making connections on Twitter. And I think that the recent advent of Mashable's customized software http://paper.li — for which several people have picked up posts from my company blog — has helped increase the number of new followers for me.

And I do take into consideration how many followers someone has before following that person back. If the person has 10,000 followers and his/her topic is not related to what I tweet about, I probably don't follow back because I figure that person isn't really interested in my tweets but interested in adding to his/her follower numbers.

Here's the big advantage if someone following you has lots of followers AND these followers are related to your brand (business, book, cause):

If that person happens to share something of yours — or if you tweet to that person and he/she responds to you by your username — you will be getting in front of people who might not have otherwise found you.

And a couple of these people may click on your username, find you of interest to them, and start following you. And these people are usually qualified connections.



Jacqueline replied:

Obviously different people have really different approaches to Twitter — in what they put into it, what they want out of it, and what they do actually end up getting out of it.

I started out in Twitter thinking I would only follow people whose tweets I actually wanted to read. But then I found out about this Twitter etiquette that you are supposed to follow people back. I soon got up to 100 people I followed and found that I just could no longer read every tweet that those 100 people posted every day.


But it also seemed what's the point of following them if I don't read what they say?


My way of resolving this has been to create a private locked list of about 35 people whose every tweet I read. That way I can follow anyone who fits my criteria (I also check each one out individually; they must be at very least a real human being who tweets regularly and they must have something interesting to say, not just advertising products or only RTing).


But for the 300 or so who are not on my locked list I very rarely read anything they post. So I am questioning: What value is it for them to have me as a follower?


Or, to turn it around: What value would it be for me to have you follow me when you are already following 5000 people and I know there is only a slim chance that you will ever see any of my tweets?

I would love for others to add their own thoughts to this discussion. Please do so in the comment section below.

And you can now listen to the recording or read the entire transcript of the BookBuzzr webinar.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

How to Switch Your Identity on Facebook From You to Your Page

As I said in my post "The Good News and the Bad News About Facebook Page Changes":

Another major change is that you are able to switch personalities while on your Facebook Page. In other words, you can switch from being logged in as yourself to being logged in as your Page. Then you can leave comments on other Pages in the identity of your Page rather than yourself.


(But you won't be able to do this on your friends' profiles because Pages can't have friends although they can now "like" other Pages.)

This one change is going to be a huge social media marketing advantage for those who use it. And that's why I want to devote this blog post to explaining how-to switch identities.

When you sign into Facebook, you'll see "Home Profile Account" in the right-hand side of the blue bar across the top of your screen (visible from any place on Facebook when are you signed in). Click on "Account" and you'll get a dropdown.

Click on "Use Facebook as Page."

At the top of the revealed box you'll see:

New! Select Switch to get a newsfeed and notifications for that page. You'll also be able to interact with other pages as your page.

You will then see the list of all Pages for which you are an admin. Click on the "Switch" for the Page whose identity you want – and that's it.

You're now that Page. You can "like" another Page and leave a comment on that Page in your new identity.

To switch back, you again click on "Account" and click on "Switch back to [your first name]." Or you can again click "Use Facebook as Page" and now switch into the identity of a different Page for which you are an admin.

Another new social media marketing option on your Facebook Page: When you are working on your Page, click on "Edit Page" (now moved to the top right-hand side of the new Page format) and then click on the option "Featured."

From this box you can choose to have the Facebook profile photos and profile links of the Page owners displayed. (For an example, scroll down on the left-hand side of www.facebook.com/powermarketing – and while you're on the Page, I'd appreciate it if you would "like" it.)

One additional note (although this can change as Facebook responds to issues pointed out by users). The notification of when someone writes something on your Page appears to have a very long time delay before it is actually sent.

For now I would recommend continuing to rely on a third-party application such as HyperAlerts for speedier notification (by several hours in my experience). See Miller Mosaic post on HyperAlerts.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

The Good News and the Bad News About Facebook Page Changes

A few days ago Facebook released its new format for Facebook Pages (formerly called fan pages) – which are intended for businesses as opposed to your personal Facebook profile.

And some of these changes offer new opportunities for using your Facebook Page as part of an effective social media marketing strategy.

That's the good news. What's the bad news?

Facebook Pages will be even more complicated for business owners to use.

Let's start with the rollout date. While you can preview the format change on your Facebook Page now, if you click to upgrade to the new format you can't change back.

Then there's the confusion as to the date on which everyone's Facebook Page will automatically change to the new format. First I read March 10th, then I read March, so people are guessing March 1st.

And then there's the problem that you won't be able to use FBML tabs (which allow you to create customized tabs with simple html coding) after March 11th. But if you already have these tabs, they supposedly won't go away.

Confused? This is just the beginning.

One major change is that the dimension size for customized art on your Facebook Page is going from 200 X 600 pixels to 180 X 540 pixels. I've already upgraded our Miller Mosaic Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/powermarketing — and I think the customized art looks okay reduced in size. (Obviously from now on we'll create the art to the new size.)

Another major change is that you are able to switch personalities while on your Facebook Page. In other words, you can switch from being logged in as yourself to being logged in as your Page. Then you can leave comments on other Pages in the identity of your Page rather than yourself.

(But you won't be able to do this on your friends' profiles because Pages can't have friends although they can now "like" other Pages.)

I've already run into obstacles because I wanted to create a new Miller Mosaic Facebook Page before the mandatory change to the new format. But when I tried to create the Page, I got different create options than the old ones. Now I have to go back to the drawing board to decide on the strategy for this new Page.

Let me make myself clear: I'm not against change. As I said, there are some good opportunities for businesses in some of the changes. But I'm not sure that we needed so many changes at one time.

When the personal profiles changed, there weren't that many changes on the backend. Now the Pages for businesses are changing on the surface to be similar to the new personal profile format, but the changes on the backend of Pages are much more complex.

This will be an interesting learning curve for all of us who use Facebook Pages as part of our social media marketing strategy.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

How to Create an Official Tweet Button

The simplest way to get the official tweet button is to log into your Twitter account and go to http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton and choose the options that you want.

Note under #1: "Button" "Tweet text" "URL" and "Language" are all options of where to click to further customize the button.

You copy the code that is generated and put it on your static site where you want it.

I didn't use the above method to get the button on our WordPress-based site http://www.millermosaicllc.com — rather I created a tweet button myself.

I used insights from Twitter's official Tweet Button documentation and WPBeginner's How to Add Twitter's Official Tweet Button in WordPress.

First, let's look at what my tweet button outputs. Click on the tweet button at the bottom of our most recent post at http://www.millermosaicllc.com/blog

The text that starts off the tweet is the title of a post (on a page it would be the title of the page). Next is the URL of the post (or page) as an official Twitter shortened-URL. Next it says "via @MillerMosaicLLC"

I use "via @username" on Twitter in a specific way. If I'm visiting someone's site and I see a blog post (or page) I really want to share and the person is on Twitter, I will put on the tweet "via @usernameofblogpostwriter"

I customized my code because I didn't want a tweet counter and I didn't want to recommend a person follow me. Below is the code I use:

Tweet

Instead of manually inserting the tweet button on every page and post, you need to tell WordPress to auto-generate the button. Here's where it can get a little tricky.

If you use a WordPress theme that uses hooks (a hook is a pre-established position in a site's layout where custom functions can be added), it's much easier. The theme's hooks will give you a list of where you can insert the tweet button.

If there's a hook plugin for your theme, you install it and just drop the above code where you want it. (I tested Thesis Openhook for Thesis and Genesis Simple Hooks for Genesis and both worked)

If you prefer not to use hook plugins, below is what I did for our site which uses Thesis. (Place below in custom_functions.php):

function custom_after_post () {
?>

Tweet
<?php
}
add_action ('thesis_hook_after_post', 'custom_after_post');

If your theme doesn't use hooks, as WPBeginner says: "This code [the first code in my post] can be installed in single.php, loop.php, index.php, page.php, category.php, and archive.php as long as it is placed within the post loop."

Please note that if you have HTTPS for Twitter enabled, the tweet button does not appear and you only see a clickable link that says "Tweet." When you click on the link, it might only output the URL of the post (or page) as an official Twitter shortened-URL. Then you must fill in the post or page information.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

eBay Brings You Eyeballs Online for Your Products and Services

Amy Weintraub, owner of eBay drop-off location ShopItLA, says that "nothing brings more eyeballs than eBay."

She shared her wisdom when my social media marketing company partner Yael K. Miller and I took in a serigraph to have listed on eBay through Weintraub's business.

As we hadn't used eBay before either as buyers or sellers, Weintraub graciously answered our questions and shared some tips, including the opportunity for anyone to write an eBay guide.

Weintraub explained how eBay can be a wonderful marketing opportunity for lawyers and other service professionals. She did warn us, though, that marketing a service such as social media on eBay would be too broad.

I acted immediately on her advice: I signed up on eBay under the username millermosaicsocialmedia and set up just one of our Miller Mosaic offerings: Facebook (business) Page Creation.

This offering is particularly important now because Facebook has just rolled out the new Facebook Page look. Page owners can try the new look now or wait until the change becomes mandatory on March 10th.

I admit I was surprised by some of the eBay items that Weintraub's business handles. For example, she recently shipped a designer couch from LA to Japan.

While she has one physical location, she separates her offerings into three virtual site categories, each with distinct items for sale. Check out her three sites now: ShopItLA, ShopItBeverlyHills and ShopItHollywood. Plus you can follow her on Twitter at @shopitla.

And check out our first Miller Mosaic eBay listing for our Facebook Page Creation right now.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

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Mindset Shift Required for Social Media Marketing

In answering an email from a prospective book author client, I explained that social media marketing is very different from traditional marketing:

We are all accustomed to TV ads that blare out their promises whether we're interested in the products or services. Yet in Internet marketing, if you truly believe that your products or services can help a specific niche, then you have the responsibility to share with that niche.

And what you share is information that can be of help whether your product or service is purchased. In fact, this free giving of information helps establish your expertise.

But if people then do decide to purchase your product or service, they already have an ongoing relationship with you through social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

And this is why email marketing can also be so important. You want to keep "top of mind" with your past, present and future customers or clients.

While most of us already get too many online newsletters, you can send out a weekly short email message with valuable information. This weekly connection can be an excellent way to stay "top of mind" with your prospective clients or customers.

Email marketing is just part of the mindset shift of sharing information with your target markets about the products or services that can help them.

For some people this mental shift is more difficult than for others. If you find this difficult for yourself, get Carol Dweck's book MINDSET: THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF SUCCESS. Understanding Dweck's thesis on how fear of failure may keep us from trying new things can free your mind from its imprisoning thoughts.

And if you've been considering email marketing but don't know how to do it, check out the Miller Mosaic email marketing setup service.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Online Marketing: Reaching Different Target Markets

We often speak about a company's target market as a monolithic entity. For example, Miller Mosaic's target market is businesses that want to effectively use social media marketing to reach prospective clients and customers.

Yet the truth is that a company's target market is often multi-pronged. And two major prongs are 1) people who are actively connected to us online and 2) people who are not actively connected to us online.

This distinction was brought home to me when a client new to online marketing said: "My email marketing is for people I'm connected to who may not be active on Facebook and Twitter, while my participation on Facebook and Twitter is to connect with people who are active on those sites."

And while of course I knew this, I had never stopped to truly think about what this means in terms of marketing messages:

Depending on your company's business, the two groups may need to receive different call-to-action messages. Again, as in most things, one size may not fit all.

Let's take an example:



You have a website and blog about book marketing services. At the end of each blog post you may ask people to leave a comment or to follow you on Twitter or to "like" your Facebook Page.

Yet, if you send out an email blast with book marketing information, these action requests may not be appropriate for people not active online. Instead you may want to ask this sub-market of your target market to hit reply to request being emailed a copy of your newest free report.

I'm definitely going to give this concept more thought.

What about you? What do you think of this concept of different approaches to your different online sub-markets?

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Online Marketing Is All About Relationships

Meeting with the staff of a local Los Angeles business, I explained how social media has changed all online marketing.

Thanks to the overwhelming popularity of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, our prospective customers or clients today expect to know about us and to

have a personal online relationship with us before buying our products or services.

I explained how this concept impacted the company's very nice special offer for returning customers.

The problem is that the offer is currently buried in a long chart of rates. And, yes, in the past such a chart would have been the norm.

But now people expect to glance quickly at a website page and instantly get the "specialness" of what's being offered to them thanks to the relationship they have with the company and the company's owner.

In other words, this very nice offer needs to be front and center on the website page, not simply listed as part of a rate chart.

And, yes, as with most things, there's a time lag element. If you look at a random selection of 10 websites, you'll probably find nine of these sites still offering information without any of the owner's personality or relationship-building apparent on the site.

But the 10th site would embody what I'm talking about here. And even if currently nine of the 10 sites are not relationship-based, those nine need to hurry up and become relationship-based if they don't want to lose out big time to their competition.

Social media is here to stay

For those people who continue to stick their head in the sand and believe that social media is a fad, they have a big shock coming to them. The ever-increasing penetration of smartphones means that more and more business will be done on mobile platforms – and your website will soon need to be mobile-friendly as well as social media-friendly, people-friendly and search engine-friendly.



Upcoming information product being planned



Yael and I have started planning an information product to address the biggest problems facing business people who want to get their arms around effective social media marketing.

If you want to give us feedback on the biggest problem facing you right now, email us at socialmediamarketing@millermosaicllc.com with the subject line: Biggest social media marketing problem



And if you haven't already read the post "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" read it now.

© Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...

Branding: The Importance of Language

I was working on branding with a fellow member of the Beverly Hills Leads Club chapter.

Her teenage daughter overhead the conversation and told her mother that I was dumbing down the language used to describe her mother's special talents.

Actually I was demonstrating a technique of effective fiction writing – NOT interrupting what's called the fictive dream.

Here's what I mean:

According to this technique, which I utilize both in writing and speaking, if you use a word that requires a person to spend even a nanosecond thinking of the meaning, you risk losing that person's concentration.

(And we know in social media and websites that means risking a click away.)

What I was actually referring to was a guest's announcement at our weekly Leads Club chapter meeting. The guest had used the words "glycemic index."

I said that this concept "glycemic index" took time for the mind to process. Then I added that it would have been better to use the word sugar in connection with this concept.

(Wikipedia says: "The glycemic index, glycaemic index, or GI is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels.")

Here's the important question regarding the language you use for your brand:

Is it important to use words that are specific to your business? Or is it better to use words that your target market readily understands and probably searches for on Google, Bing, etc.?

I'd love to hear your opinions in the comments below.

And if you are a writer, check out Carolyn Howard-Johnson's blog Sharing With Writers.

Plus, if you have a business in West Los Angeles, check out the Thursday morning breakfast invitation at www.BeverlyHillsLeadsClub.com

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing. Download the company's free report "5 Tips for Staying Top of Mind With Your Prospective Target Markets" at www.millermosaicllc.com/los-angeles-s...