Twitter in Numbers: Marginal, Not Magical

100 Twitter Profiles Examined
100 Twitter Profiles Examined

I don’t write a lot about Twitter these days. I did back in the golden days, but many Twitter users don’t readily recall “The Golden Days of Twitter”. Today, I want to offer up some recent observations about Twitter, along with some rather curious numbers.

If you are an old timer with Twitter, you will almost undoubtedly nod and agree with a lot of this. If you are new with Twitter, this should help you understand the service in ways you may have missed. If you are one of those incessant spammers of modern day Twitter, oh yes … then you must be new, or you would have received the memo to explain how the Twitter Follower Frenzy just makes you look bad.

I want to offer a short bit about Twitter following, but then show you more about where Twitter is going for those people who are unwilling to adapt to a better, and smarter purpose for their tweeterizing. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to tell you the right or wrong way to use your Twitter … I will just give you some facts and figures and let you see for yourself.

Holy Bird Poop! Look at These Twitter Followers!

Once in a while, but less frequently than before, I check to see who is following me on Twitter. There are always a few new faces to greet me, and I like to know who they are, the best I can.

I used to try and follow most people who followed me on Twitter, so they could feel free to reach out to me directly with a private direct message if they should choose. It has never been because I was concerned they would stop following me if I did not return the “favor”, as if it is some amazing favor to follow somebody. Maybe they think it’ll make them famous … or at least feel famous.

This is just a bit of opinion, but it seems to me that following somebody’s Twitter feed should be because you are interested in what they share, or because you are interested in establishing some sort of communication with them. Am I right, or did I miss something?

Let me show you what I found yesterday when I looked through the list of people who, in theory, wanted to know what I have to say on Twitter. This table includes numbers I gathered from the most recent 100 people who followed my Twitter feed. I chose to follow a few of them, but I want you to take a quick glance through the list. Below the list, I will share some averages, and logical assumptions that a reasonable person could make.


followers following ratio more or less tweets
1097 1931 1.76 : 1 834 814
1015 1989 1.96 : 1 974 889
2977 2359 0.79 : 1 -618 815
66 311 4.71 : 1 245 917
202 1928 9.54 : 1 1726 30
579 2001 3.46 : 1 1422 1037
233 868 3.73 : 1 635 952
2099 2300 1.10 : 1 201 793
617 1170 1.90 : 1 553 91
6323 6459 1.02 : 1 136 1557
113 308 2.73 : 1 195 614
365 1002 2.75 : 1 637 456
12471 12861 1.03 : 1 390 18712
6265 6103 0.97 : 1 -162 4229
524 2001 3.82 : 1 1477 86
403 678 1.68 : 1 275 295
2362 2416 1.02 : 1 54 6160
9481 10427 1.10 : 1 946 9115
1938 1999 1.03 : 1 61 3486
1178 1956 1.66 : 1 778 1341
8439 8238 0.98 : 1 -201 144
1662 1956 1.18 : 1 294 325
1888 1902 1.01 : 1 14 714
112 138 1.23 : 1 26 504
2094 2305 1.10 : 1 211 451
729 1248 1.71 : 1 519 2588
5166 5597 1.08 : 1 431 7871
287 1685 5.87 : 1 1398 94
484 910 1.88 : 1 426 1069
334 745 2.23 : 1 411 7025
1123 1961 1.75 : 1 838 1448
285 351 1.23 : 1 66 4350
73 482 6.60 : 1 409 27
205 246 1.20 : 1 41 473
10859 11887 1.09 : 1 1028 1076
157 575 3.66 : 1 418 155
90 1229 13.66 : 1 1139 6
646 1252 1.94 : 1 606 1313
194 284 1.46 : 1 90 173
4169 3298 0.79 : 1 -871 4047
9107 9299 1.02 : 1 192 764
13779 10807 0.78 : 1 -2972 1650
990 1943 1.96 : 1 953 3135
174 393 2.26 : 1 219 115
175 376 2.15 : 1 201 58
35 242 6.91 : 1 207 22
431 905 2.10 : 1 474 10
1015 1113 1.10 : 1 98 1540
1691 1693 1.00 : 1 2 1237
1373 1979 1.44 : 1 606 527
272 571 2.10 : 1 299 457
438 1085 2.48 : 1 647 425
661 219 0.33 : 1 -442 154
1877 2055 1.09 : 1 178 3044
2204 2394 1.09 : 1 190 3359
2249 2393 1.06 : 1 144 350
168 796 4.74 : 1 628 6
60 922 15.37 : 1 862 54
301 717 2.38 : 1 416 124
401 2000 4.99 : 1 1599 76
48 405 8.44 : 1 357 10
3312 3635 1.10 : 1 323 2171
23141 20522 0.89 : 1 -2619 3126
329 720 2.19 : 1 391 13
12 41 3.42 : 1 29 27
2716 2964 1.09 : 1 248 1314
1066 2001 1.88 : 1 935 1405
242 601 2.48 : 1 359 53
272 373 1.37 : 1 101 10
806 1873 2.32 : 1 1067 447
1005 1628 1.62 : 1 623 67
1316 1442 1.10 : 1 126 48
134 653 4.87 : 1 519 152
293 1389 4.74 : 1 1096 76
149 2001 13.43 : 1 1852 11
138 638 4.62 : 1 500 17
4387 4788 1.09 : 1 401 55
4329 3688 0.85 : 1 -641 180
89 491 5.52 : 1 402 5
1121 1866 1.66 : 1 745 662
132 1030 7.80 : 1 898 20
135 226 1.67 : 1 91 66
2317 2551 1.10 : 1 234 618
380 1143 3.01 : 1 763 55
70082 73497 1.05 : 1 3415 1815
24118 21839 0.91 : 1 -2279 700
972 1384 1.42 : 1 412 522
140 146 1.04 : 1 6 472
877 1034 1.18 : 1 157 312
5337 5239 0.98 : 1 -98 410
65 257 3.95 : 1 192 108
3472 3779 1.09 : 1 307 1190
459 1025 2.23 : 1 566 73
572 1129 1.97 : 1 557 35
301 1097 3.64 : 1 796 489
548 2001 3.65 : 1 1453 2
116 1267 10.92 : 1 1151 1
194 1518 7.82 : 1 1324 121
130 177 1.36 : 1 47 15
61 400 6.56 : 1 339 1
avg. followers avg. following avg. ratio avg. difference avg. tweets
2820.18 3217.16 2.84 : 1 396.98 1202.23
total followers total following total tweets
282,018 321,716 120,223

What Do These Twitter Follower Numbers Indicate?

What I hope you will notice is that the average of these 100 users is following 2.84 other users to every one who follows them. That came out to the average person following 396.98 more people than are following them. A common strategy Twitter has tried to address is that of following a lot of people in hopes they will return the follow. Twitter has set limits as an effort to avoid this, but it is still alive and going strong. What so many people don’t understand is how worthless it truly is in practice.

Now, we could assume the 284 percent (2.84:1 ratio) means people are just doing a lot of “listening” to others, but I found reasons to doubt that. I have tested simply re-following everybody who follows me on Twitter, and you probably guessed it … my follower count goes up like mad! When I stop re-following everybody, it levels off.

This whole topic is much like I wrote about two years ago in an article titled “Follow, Unfollow, Re-Follow … What?!” In that article, I even offered a logical alternative, but apparently that memo missed a few desks.

Perhaps an even more important read for people doing this would be a popular piece I wrote titled “Social Media and The Absurdity of Implied Reciprocity“. Yes, I said “absurdity”, and based on public reception of that article, I think I built a pretty darn good case against this tactic.

What is Twitter Really Getting You?

I’m going to show you some real numbers that reflect user attention and engagement. Of course, there is much more to Twitter than just sharing website links, but since it is a valuable part of Twitter for many people, I’ll use website traffic to make the point.

Let’s look at some sobering numbers based on over 1,000 tweets, and their affect on website visits. Below is a table showing the ten most recent articles published here on my blog, along with the number of times they were tweeted at the time I wrote this. The total of tweets is 1016. The average number of tweets is 101.6, with the lowest at 48 and the highest at 228. Those are sufficient numbers for the point I want to illustrate.

Note: I’ll bet real money that if you click on the most popular ones, you will discover that they continued to receive hundreds more tweets over time.

In a perfect world, that will happen because they were just downright great information, but it also happens too often because enough people clicked and saw a startling number of retweets, and so they tweet it without reading beyond the first three lines.

Yes, in far too many cases, people will just assume it is good, because enough others thought it was good … neglecting that mind of their own altogether. Fortunately for you, you’re still reading, and you are judging for yourself.

I measure everything. Measuring and analyzing data is an important part of my job. So I’ll tell you what I found from those 1016 tweets, and their multi-million user exposure. The readership totals reflected great signs that readers were paying attention. They spent an average time on page of more than five minutes. That includes the 10 second clicks, and it is good time on page. The average pages visited by readers referred through a link from Twitter was 1.8, so a decent number of them clicked around.

Here’s the punchline! Out of this sample of 1016 tweets by many different users, the highest number of website visits attributed to any individual tweet was 21. The average number of visits per tweet came to 2.74. Maybe that doesn’t seem very surprising, but let’s add some contrast. Two years ago, I witnessed no less than 500 visits from a single tweet within the first hour of tweeting a link to my blog. My guess is that the past level of engagement and traffic generation from Twitter had a big role in its eventual degradation. Times have changed, and much of that change can be attributed to the following frenzy I described.

I Still Like Twitter … But …

I like Twitter a lot, and I don’t intend to stop using it any day soon. Twitter presently accounts for approximately 10 percent of traffic to my blog. I’ll take that 10 percent, but one thing I’m certainly not going to do is worry about whether a squillion people follow me.

The way I see the math, even if each and every one of those 100 users I listed above were to read an article and then tweet the link to my blog, on a sunny day I could expect 374 website visits from that (their 100 visits, plus an average 2.74 visits per tweet times 100). Based on their usage model, I think that would be a pretty steep climb.

The overall average engagement of Twitter users is very low. There is a relatively minuscule few who truly make good use of the service, and those are the ones I enjoy my Twitter time with.

What do you observe about Twitter?


P.S.

I hand-picked some articles I have written about Twitter. I hope you will enjoy these.

If you still insist on more, I wrote a book about Twitter.

SEO and Social Media Fear of Being “The D Word”

Beware of The D Word ... They May Be Right!
Beware of The D Word ... They May Be Right!

I believe there is an unrealistic fear that challenges many people in my line of work, and I am bold enough to address it even if others are not. I also seek your input, so please don’t be shy.

There are certain elements within the fields of SEO and social media marketing which cause many misunderstandings and hardships for reputable people with good means, and good intent. People have chosen many names for the people representing those bad elements, but one stands out more prominently than others. For now, I’ll call it “the D word”, and it is something that wise people must be cautious of being tagged with.

It seems that the bad elements in social media and SEO have caused some quality people to become unreasonably afraid to properly promote their goods or services. It affects many other industries, and it seems to have created an overall hypersensitivity which causes many people to only hint about how they actually keep their business running, rather than be upfront about it. This is often an unreasonable fear, but definitely worth some consideration. I’ll explain this with a story.

Not so long ago, I tried my best to be less self-conscious about what others might say, and become more promotional of my own services. Yes, more promotional, rather than less. It felt kind of awkward, because that is the opposite of what I often suggest to others. This is because over-promoting your own value is often looked down upon, regardless how worthwhile it is. Being less promotional and more promotable by focusing on others often leads them to do the promoting for you. The trick is in having a good balance. After all, even if you are astonishingly good at something, if you rely solely on others to do your promoting, you will often be let down.

Finding a Promotional Balance in Social Media

What I am describing can really go either way, and finding just the right balance between self-promotion and being promoted by others is a tricky matter. You see, there is this awkward little piece of our psychology that makes us far less likely to promote something that benefits somebody else more than it benefits us. This often holds true, even if we actually think something is worth promoting. It is a bit cynical, but it is a common reaction of people, and it is hard to change that.

An ideal marketing balance lies somewhere between remaining highly “promotable” by others while still effectively promoting things which actually sustain our business needs. To meet this challenge, it is often considered best to keep our efforts more useful to others than to ourselves, and I believe that’s an excellent goal. It makes us more creative and helps us to be more fun and entertaining. It can also have a really big downside.

In my case of seeking that balance, it is not about a lack of confidence. I know that what I do for others benefits them more than it benefits me. I work hard to be useful to others, and I have a solid record of helping companies to become very successful by implementing effective marketing strategies. I am extremely good at getting websites ranked in the top of search engine results, and I know how to make something very marketable … except my own services.

So why is it that I find it so challenging to create a balance? In simple terms, I don’t want to be one of “those people” who are unfairly chastised for trading money for the things in my brain. You know, because people often think things like experience and knowledge should be free. For more on that mentality, I seriously suggest reading “Strategic Marketing Failure: Are You Giving it Up Too Easy?

Why the Social Media Promotional Balance Occurred to Me

My moment of introspection came differently to me. It was not because anybody called me “the D word”. It came after several friends told me that my own self-marketing didn’t have enough “bite”. Really, they told me I needed to be more upfront by saying “Hey, look at me! I accept money from companies to make them more successful in their marketing … and I have a hell of a track record of success!” They said I needed to be more clear that the things I write about are the things I get paid to do, and that i don’t cost companies money … I make them money.

That should be simple, and I can support that with facts.

My argument was that I didn’t want to be one of those “douchebags” (the “d word”) so many people were talking about. I didn’t want to be berated for that horribly ugly term, “self-promotion”.

I am very critical of the way some people promote themselves in my line of work, because I can see through the hype. I despise the dishonesty and sleaziness of many people’s marketing approach in my industry, and I refuse to do it. I have always been extremely opposed to taking the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach, even to the point of under-hyping myself to less than half the level of my own credibility and experience. If I boasted with truth half as much as others in my field boast with lies, I could knock a bunch of them right off the totem pole … but risk being a “douchebag” by doing it.

I even felt really awkward the first time I placed ads on my blog, because “douchebags” do that. I was even more concerned when I added that awesome popup reminder to subscribe to my blog … but now I’m really glad I did it. I described the considerably tiny amount of friction I got from it in my earlier article titled “Social Media Goals and Complications of Winning“, but it has been an overall success.

The Cynics Are Not Buying your Lunch!

I have said it before, but it is worth reiterating … The cynics are not buying your lunch!

It is easy to forget that many people are cynical and insulting without good reasons. I realize some people will not immediately recognize that I actually teach people good and sensible no-hype ideas about their marketing. Most people who look a little closer change their mind once they get to know me, and my work. Unfortunately, that initial concern of a “douchebag” moniker held me back, and still does to some degree. The good news is that I’m getting over the concern and finding it easier to say “Hey, look at me! I accept money from companies to make them more successful in their marketing … and I have a hell of a track record of success!” I am also finding it a lot easier to say “I would like to talk with you about improving your marketing.”

I’ll tell you why it got easier … because it is all true, and it is how I earn a living. Just because some few outspoken people do not like it does not change the fact that I am still providing more value for free than many people do for pay.

I was reminded of all this today as I went through a list of new people following me on Twitter. I found myself making fast judgments about them. It all got me to wondering how I might look, on the surface, and before people get to know me. It made me wonder how many people suffer on one side or the other of this balancing act. It appeared to me that more of them were afflicted on the opposite side of the self-promotion equation.

I think it is an important thing to be aware of in either instance, and I hope I have encouraged you to step back and try to imagine how others see you. Maybe you are a little too “douchebag”, and maybe you are not quite enough “douchebag”. If you are like me and not making it clear enough about the action you want people to take, you may need some more “bite”, too. It is worth some consideration.

This sort of insecurity has begun to fade for me, and it is because I took another look at just how successful I have helped others to become in their businesses. Yes, in the end, I came to understand that I really am damn good at what I do. If you hate me for it, maybe you just hate me for being a “douchebag”. As long as it is totally unfounded, I’m OK with that.

I’d like to know what you think. Have you encountered this, too?

Photo Credit: Shattonbury via Wikipedia

Social Media Self-Analysis: How Are You Being Influenced?

Who Influences You, and How?
Who Influences You, and How?


I think it is safe to say that some people are self-conscious when it comes to social media. After all, as an audience builds, it kind of takes on something not so different from public speaking. Many people are terrified of public speaking, and being on a stage where others can pick apart every nuance.

Scarier yet, social media is kind of like public speaking where everything you say is recorded so people can go back later and catch all of your screwups, point them out to others, and make a mockery of you.

Those public perceptions, especially the criticism, can change how you think, how you communicate, and how others will treat you. In fact, I believe that strong peer influences like this can create a profound impact for many people. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes it is bad.

I think it is also safe to say that there is another opposite end of this self-awareness spectrum where people have little or no consciousness at all. They really don’t care what others say, and they take little benefit from criticism or good advice. These are the people begging for you to follow them on Twitter, sending Facebook friend requests to everybody … from a business profile instead of a Facebook Page, and have an urgency to achieve over 500 connections on LinkedIn because if the profile says “500+” it will make them feel more important. They are the ones using tactics without a strategy, and may never understand the greater value of social media.

They don’t let criticism from others affect their actions, and they think it is all done in the name of marketing … which really irritates me. These are the people who will send you automated messages promoting their website that you have absolutely no interest in, and use their favorite keywords instead of a real name when they comment on your blog. It is almost creepy to even glorify it with a mention, but it has become a huge part of our online world.

Here are some examples of utter absurdities in social media that I have discussed, and I think each of them are worth a read. Other people thought so, too, and the reader comments are definitely worth attention.

Does Bad Influence Become More Acceptable En Masse?

We should question whether bad influence becomes more acceptable in large groups, or if it is just more tolerated. What we should be really clear about, though, is that it does not become more effective or useful.

Spam and other ineffective thinking is here to stay. As society has adopted social media as a preferred communication medium, we have each encountered even more spammers and atrocious thinkers than before. As social media begins to reflect an even more accurate cross-section of our world as a whole, the smaller thinkers and late thinkers come in greater abundance. A few will develop excellence, while the majority will try to slide by on the least possible effort. This is very well defined and quantified in the long-standing Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.

This tends to affect us all, as we become more skeptical and we scrutinize things just a bit closer. Otherwise, in many cases, people just begin to believe whatever the masses (that 80 percent) tell them as they give up any “common sense” filter. After all, if the masses are saying that you need more Twitter followers, and you don’t already know any better … you must need more Twitter followers, right? It created a Twitter follower frenzy, and a similar frenzy is in place across other networks. It is absurd, but it is a strong reflection of where these people receive their influence.

As my father would sometimes question, “If everybody was jumping off a cliff without a parachute, would you jump, too?”

People Adapt to Their Surroundings

There is a whole lot of truth to judging people by the company they keep. I don’t care how hard you argue against this, it is a fact of life. If you spend enough time around people with a regional accent, you will likely develop an accent over time. If you consume bad information from small thinking people, you will begin to adapt to that, as well. People don’t even need to know the company you keep, because it is written all over you.

We Are All Influenced by Somebody
We Are All Influenced by Somebody
Fortunately, a similar type of influence occurs when you surround yourself with bigger thinkers, with better ideas. It is why some people try hard to leave a ghetto, while others settle in and join the gang.

I hesitate to imagine that the bad influences of social media are actually more influential than the more beneficial influences. However, what I can say for certain is that they are in much greater abundance, and can create a whole lot of noise.

The more tragic part yet is when the ones making the noise are the same ones I mentioned earlier that do not learn from criticism or good advice, because they don’t even hear it. It becomes a case of the blind leading the blind, and even helping to take away others’ vision.

Avoid Becoming a Schmuck!

Yes, I could rant on this kind of thing, but the question at hand is whether you give enough self-analysis to your online communications efforts. I think it is something valuable to consider, because it is what sets the tone of who you are, either as a person, or as a company.

Watching where you pick up your influence, and asking others’ opinions can be important to helping you avoid schmuckdom … or is it schmucknaciousness? It can also help you to avoid influencing others in a bad direction.

I was reminded of it today as I went through a list of new people following me on Twitter. I found myself making fast judgments about them, to decide if I should follow them back and get to know them. It all got me to wondering how I might look, on the surface, and before people get to know me. I was giving myself a cursory audit of sorts.

We often only have a brief moment to make an impression. I think it is important to be aware of those things we do which can tarnish that moment. It should not be so surprising that a lot of it can come from who we listen to and interact with.

I hope I have encouraged you to step back for a self-analysis. Try to imagine how others see you, and how much it is influenced by others. You may find that you are not making the best connections, or that you are accidentally imitating some of the wrong elements.

What do you think? Do you notice how the people around you affect how you think, and how you communicate?

Influence Can Do Strange Things
Influence Can Do Strange Things

Bashing SEO and Social Media Experts: Humor or Hazard?

Numbers Don't Lie ... People Do!
Numbers Don't Lie ... People Do!


I had to ask myself whether this is humor or hazard for me to give a swing at our ever-increasing population of SEO and social media “experts”. I guess the idea gave me just a little guilt pang at first, because I always heard that I should treat people the way I want to be treated. Who am I to tell anybody they don’t have what it takes?

Then I grinned from ear to ear, tucked my sweet love-everybody nature back in my shorts, and put my middle finger in the air. After all, this is not “biting the hand that feeds me” … this is harsh and very real truth. This is about educating, and saving a few lucky others from huge disappointments. This is about shining a spotlight on liars. This is a glimpse of reality! In fact, it is a reality that I intend to illustrate for you very clearly.

Are All SEO Liars?

No, not all search engine optimizers are liars. There truly is an enormous value in the trade, but because of that, it has attracted a lot of liars. Any good SEO knows that there is no reason to lie about the service. They may even help you to understand the most common lies of the industry. For example, here are a couple useful articles: “7 SEO Lies: How to Know When the SEO is Lying” or Good SEO vs. Bad SEO: How to Tell the Difference. Each of these include objective means to weed out the liars and cheats.

On the other hand, many self-proclaimed SEO will make claims like the one I found on Twitter pictured below. I am only listing one, but not because I have a problem with this one in particular. I just picked this one at random, but I actually dislike all of the squillion others out there lying to people about SEO. I just don’t want to waste more time making a huge list of them.

The Classic 2000 Website Visitors Per Hour Pitch
The Classic 2000 Website Visitors Per Hour Pitch

Khubah Jogja offers the opportunity to “make money online” and “get 2k visitor per hour”. That’s great, right?! I guess it may sound great, but then I checked out this Twitter user’s website and imagine what I found … some reality! The funny thing is that they actually have their website statistics viewable to the public using a service called “whos.amung.us”.

The biggest hour I found was three visitors, and the maximum visitors in a day was sixteen. In the image shown here, the one visitor represented was me. That is kind of a stretch from 2,000 per hour.

2000 Visitors Per Hour Reality Check
2000 Visitors Per Hour Reality Check

I don’t want to leave this up for too much confusion, so I checked with Alexa, Open Site Explorer, and others. Two thousand visitors per hour was not to be found. Then again I knew that already when I saw the article claiming that keyword meta tags make a big influence in search ranking. Not just that it was total crap, the article was not dated 1998 … it was from this year! If you think that old meta tags pitch is true, it will serve you well to read “SEO Meta Tags: Oh, You Must Be Another SEO Expert!

Social Media Expert / Cattle Farmer

Perhaps not every instance is so extreme as the social media strategist / cattle farmer depicted here, but I really need to share this with you, because it almost made me pee myself with laughter and sob at the same time!

It is funny, but actually sad when you think of how widely accepted total confusion has become in social media.

I know that farming and ranching is hard work. It is really tough to get ahead in that industry, so why not augment the income and work as a social media strategist? That may just be the perfect fit!

Social Media Strategy ... or Cows ... We Have it All!
Social Media Strategy ... or Cows ... We Have it All!

Yes, you can call me a jackass for singling this poor dear out. I mean, after all, at least she didn’t use a picture of some young hot chick in her profile, the way so many others do. In fact, she looks downright sweet, and wholesome. She is probably a really nice person, too … but she is also lying to herself and others. Her appearance would absolutely not turn me away if I was in the market for cows and chickens. Social media strategy, on the other hand, requires something other than just being sweet.

According to her website at Lynda’s Social Media Strategy she is suggesting to “Use Social Media to Promote Your Business”. She even has descriptions and very low prices for her services. It includes pricing for a service that I pointed out as an absurdity and largely a rip-off a while back when I wrote “Hourly Rate for Setting Up Social Media Profiles?!

How We Do it Down on the Social Media Strategy Farm
How We Do it Down on the Social Media Strategy Farm

Contrary to her own advice and service offerings, when I clicked on the social media links on the right side of her page where it says “Follow”, I found a non-existent Blogger profile, the link to edit a LinkedIn account, links to Digg and Delicious (but not to a specific profile), an incorrect Feedburner link, a Facebook personal profile with 28 friends, a MySpace account, and a Twitter account.

Being a social media strategist, you may think she would use social media a lot. She was pretty scarce across the board, but I enjoyed this example. Within the Twitter account, the last five updates included a lot of weather change as follows:

“Snow outside. Good time to do some ghostwriting.” (on 20 January)

Then, five tweets and six months later …

“It’s hot no rain pasture’s drying up feed bill going up everything’s going up except my pay. Oh well…could be worse.” (on 19 July … earlier today)

I thought to myself that maybe she is actually doing what she says, and using her social media strategies for her own business down on the ranch. No, there was not a single social media instance of anything whatsoever at the Belle Manor Farms website. Go ahead … see how Lynda’s social media strategy is working out for her. Check out the Lynda’s Social Media Strategy Facebook Page that I only found after looking it up on her personal Facebook profile (not on her website). Maybe you could give it a “Like” for sympathy, since nobody else has.

Perhaps I’m just not clear on this yet, but it seems that Lynda, like so many others, is struggling with confusion of the difference between social media strategy and social media tactics.

Now Let’s Bash Murnahan

I know I may seem to be a real jackass when I ask questions like “Why Do You Want to Become an SEO and Social Media Expert?

Maybe I’m just jealous of them for having a lack of a conscience. Maybe I’m bitter with them for becoming experts without actually having to spend decades to learn about marketing. Maybe I’m pissed because they get to have fun jobs outside of the Internet, while I am stuck here all day as CEO of a decade-old Internet company.

Sure, if I could have done it so easily, I would have a lot less gray hair today. Let me explain something for you, though, before you start calling me names.

Just because a person has a new computin’ machine does not mean they have an equal shot at this mythical money generator that people make the Internet out to be.

Just because “everybody” said you will miss huge opportunities by not being on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the many other social metworks, it does not mean those “huge opportunities” are what they told you, or that they will come to you without equally huge effort.

Maybe “everybody” was exaggerating just a tiny bit when they said you would “earn millions online … easy … in your pajamas!” Maybe “everybody” was not lying to you, but just made it a little easier to lie to yourself.

There are a lot of damn liars out there on the Internet! Worse yet, the online marketing fields of SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing have them breeding like cockroaches. I think that an astonishing number of them are lying to themselves.

I hope you don’t let them lie to you, too. There are no “innocent victims” in these cases, because we each have the same opportunities to gather due diligence. The victims are better described as “ignorant victims”.

So, was it humor or hazard that I chose to share this with you? In my opinion, the humor is that anybody could actually be fooled by such absurdities. The hazard is that such absurdities even exist.

Is Social Media Marketing the Hardest Job?

Is Social Media Harder Than Ditch Digging?
Is Social Media Harder Than Ditch Digging?

When you think of the hardest jobs ever, you probably don’t think of social media marketing. Maybe you think that digging ditches would be harder. Maybe you will even think it through a bit more and imagine that working with terminal patients in a children’s cancer ward, or hunkering down in a fox hole and hearing enemy troops coming close would rank right up there as the hardest jobs. Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you about the job of a social media marketing consultant and strategist.

People are very selfish by nature. They don’t always think about the others around them. It is ingrained in each of us, from the very beginning, to preserve ourselves and to do what we can, to get the things we need. By default, we think of ourselves, and our own preservation, above that of others. After all, we are less equipped to help others if we cannot help ourselves first. Acting otherwise is a learned trait, and still must come with oneself in mind. Unchecked altruism would actually have devastating consequences.

This selfishness often has skepticism closely in tow. Worse yet, it is common that once people have just enough of those things they need, or fail at something enough times, a mechanism of apathy kicks in, and they stop caring. They stop seeking more for themselves, and they become complacent.

If you mix the naturally occurring selfishness, apathy, and complacence all together, you have a recipe for some really dreadful results. These results are so common that it often takes someone with specialized training and experience to clean up the mess. The best social media consultants have this training and experience.

The job of social media marketing is to crack the human code, discover human emotion, and move it!

Maybe you thought the job was to just tweet some stuff on Twitter, put your ads on Facebook, or set up your social media profiles the right way, but that is not how successful marketing is done. It is not even close.

The Job of Social Media Strategist Gets Messy

To perform the job successfully means we have to reach into the messy inside of human nature and human desires. The job includes studying how to bring others to a desired action based on an emotional response, and not just on an individual basis, but as a pack. A well targeted pack, at that.

Without defining who the customers are, understanding what they will respond to, and getting their emotions on board with your plan, it is like herding cats. You will never get what you want that way. Well, maybe what you want, if complacence has already set in, but certainly not what you could have. That brings up perhaps the worst challenge between a marketing consultant and their client, to instill the mindset that is required to want more. It means helping clients to remove their own barriers of apathy, skepticism, complacence, and the fears they create. It is especially frustrating when you know damn well they can have it, and you can deliver it, if they will just heed good advice.

I have studied a lot of psychology, and my studies have left me with little wonder why there are so many psychiatrists who are totally bonkers. Getting inside the mess that is the human mind can be very rewarding, but also very punishing. When you gain insights about why people work the way they do, it is easy to over-analyze everything from why people riot over a hockey game in Vancouver, to why apathy is easier than giving a damn. This is an arduous line of work for anybody!

Social Media Consultants Are Apathy Slayers

The job of successful social media marketing is a lot more than what people imagine it to be. It is not just the simple tasks that it may appear on the surface. It is a deeper look into apathy, and how to bring people to overcome it. This is an important part of how we deliver more happy customers to our client’s businesses.

In the job role of a social media marketing consultant, we must overcome apathy from our client’s customers, but that is the easy part. From the perspective of selling this as a service to clients, their apathy is enhanced by their skepticism, and solidified by fear. It becomes bolstered by their confusion of the difference between implementing a strategy versus wasteful tactics. That is where the line is drawn between the average social media marketing and the marketing that builds true success.

The point when you understand a market is when it can become a quest to “heal them all”, and to help them understand the little ways they are broken. It also must be done without them even realizing you are doing it. If they realize it, their skepticism may kick in and ruin even your best intentions.

Is Social Media Marketing Really So Hard?

So, how in the heck can this job of social media marketing consultant and strategist be worse than that nurse holding the dying child’s hand as she desperately wants the child to eat another bite of Jell-O? How can it be worse than the soldier with every nerve on end as his friend’s miserable body gives up the fight, right beside him? That must seem ridiculous, right?

It isn’t harder. I made that up. It does not even compare. I love my work, and I find it extremely rewarding. I must say, however, that helping people to feel something, and bringing them beyond their own apathy and skepticism is a challenge most people are thoroughly unprepared for. That is why I am hired to do the work I do.

Once you reach inside the messy mind of your market, you will find it much easier to ask them to donate to cancer research, provide support to hard working soldiers, or in this case, gain control of their own apathy and take the next step to improve their marketing efforts.

A truth that I have realized over more than two successful decades in business, performing every role from a sole proprietor, to a corporate CEO, is that success is something we demand for ourselves. I quit rubbing lamps, knocking on wood, and wishing on lucky stars many years ago when I noticed that successful business comes with mathematical projections, and also overcoming psychological obstacles. That means the ones our market imposes, but even more profoundly, the ones we place upon ourselves. That means getting to the messy insides, and that may not be the hardest job, but it is one that crushes a whole lot of dreams.

Most people who read my blog want better results for their business. It would not make much sense to be here otherwise. That is why I brought you here for this discussion. I can provide you with a lot of great free tools and thoughts to help grow your business. If you really believe in your company strongly enough, and you can put aside apathy, skepticism, and complacence, you will do much better. If you are having trouble with that, I welcome you to contact me to show what you can achieve with professional help. (Yes, even if you think you are my direct competitor.)

Until then, be sure to subscribe and keep picking up useful tips that can help you to help yourself.