Your Goal Should Not Be The Most Fans, It Should Be Fans That Will Support You

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Michael Brandvold

I and many others have stated that its not the number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers you have that matters, it is the relationship you have with your followers and the ability to engage with them and get them to convert on a action. 1000 very active fans is better than 100,000 inactive fans.

Here is a nice example of that concept in real life. One of my clients is Curb Records recording artist Andy Gibson. I have been working close with Andy for months on building up his social media world. A couple weeks ago a country radio station ran a promotion on their website, WYRK Draft Day Poll. It was really just a basic poll, vote for your favorite artist. Andy was up against Scotty McCreery, season ten winner of American Idol, Hunter Hayes, Jana Kramer and Kip Moore who’s debut album recently entered the Billboard charts at #6.

The poll was open for 24 hours and the results according to the website were, with 25,037 votes in, Scotty McCreery is the winner of the new artist draft poll getting 10,883 votes edging out Andy Gibson who received 9,357 votes. Hunter Hayes was third with 3,895, Jana Kramer with 688 and Kip Moore getting 214 over all votes.

But here is where it gets interesting.

Andy Gibson had 8200 fans on Twitter and 14,000 on Facebook, but Scotty McCreery had 508,000 on Twitter and 1 million on Facebook. With all those fans Scotty only had 1,500 more votes. Andy’s fans were a powerhouse in supporting him! He has spent the last six months building a great relationship with his fans. A million and a half fans were nearly beaten by 22,000 fans. Andy actually had the smallest combined fan base on Facebook and Twitter of all the acts. But his relationship with his fans allowed him to easily beat the three other acts.

Stop thinking it is all about a bigger number. It is about the relationship with the fans you have.

How To Clean Up Who You are Following on Twitter – UnTweeps.com

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Michael Brandvold

I seen plenty of tips on what your Twitter profile should look like. What you should do on Twitter to engage with your followers. Even what you shouldn’t do on Twitter. But I don’t recall reading much on the topic of how to clean up who you are following. Over time the number of people you follow will grow, and it should always grow. But you should actually take a few minutes to clean out who you are following. Why would you want to do this?

Well Twitter has a followers to following ratio. You might actually find yourself at a point where you can’t follow more than 2000 people because you don’t have enough people following you. If this happens the only thing you can do is delete who you are following so you can add more. Here is where you would need help in determining who to remove.

There is actually a very fast and easy way to do this clean up. I use a website called untweeps.com. This site will link to your Twitter account and then give you a list of people you are following that haven’t made a post in XX number of days. Example, have it give you a list of everyone who has not posted in 365 days. Unfollow all of them. If someone has not made one post in the last year, you don’t need to be following them. Of course you can trim your list down to maybe as short as 30 or 60 days if you desire.

This is a simple little way to remove the dead weight. You might be surprised how many people you are following that have not posted in a long time.

10 Reasons Why You Won’t Get Followed on Twitter

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Michael Brandvold

You want me or someone else to follow you on Twitter, here is a great list of 10 reasons why you won’t be followed. Look and act like a professional, don’t waste my time with the same post 1000 times, don’t always try to sell me something, tell me more than just where you are every minute, and we all can’t be experts, lol. Seriously, I just want to know a little something about you, and get to know more about you through your posts.

10 Reasons Why You Won’t Get Followed on Twitter

1- You have no avatar

As pretty as the Twitter egg may be, it’s not what’s gonna’ attract me to you. I don’t care if it’s a snapshot of you on your worst day, or one of your favorite cartoon character or even if it’s your blog or company logo – I simply care that you have one. Not much else to say here since this should go without saying.

Bottom line - come out, come out, wherever you are!

2- Your profile says zilch

If I don’t know what you or your blog/brand/company are about, then what incentive do I have for connecting with you? It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to fill this field out. It’s not like you’re required to write a 500 word essay. How hard can it be to talk about yourself or your company in one sentence? Most people can’t shut up when they start talking about themselves! Heck, I can talk about myself for pages!

Bottom line – say anything, but say something!

3- You follow 41,734 people but only 86 follow you

I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but how interesting can you and your tweets possibly be if only 0.0001% (too lazy to calculate the actual percentage) of your connections follow you back? And that’s if they’re following you back.

Bottom line – work on the ratio!

4- You follow 58 people but 1 gazillion follow you

First off, I’m flattered and super excited that you’d like to include me in your elite and worthy list of people to follow. That’s where my exception comes in. If you’re a news service or someone like @mashable, @techcrunch, @tamar, @ViperChill, @chrisbrogan, @ProBlogger, @FamousBloggers, @ladygaga, @aplusk, @Oprah, @TheEllenShow…and not someone who’s just looking to grow their list and then later unfollow, then hell yes – I’ll follow you (if I don’t already)! I don’t quite see what Lady Gaga and I have in common and why she’d want to follow me but it would rock if she did! But Ellen on the other hand…I think she could relate to my sense of humor .

Bottom line - you’re too cool for Tweetschool!

5- You haven’t tweeted since the first “Twilight” movie came out

I’m not the biggest vampire flick fan, but it seems that many people are these days. I’d like to think that 4 or 5 weeks of a Twitter free life is somewhat acceptable – but not more! It may just be that you’re on vacation and that’s fine – I took a pretty long one myself this summer. There’s always a valid reason for taking a break. But if I visit your page and I see spiders crawling through webs or I see that your last tweet is as old as Edward Cullen (the 104 year old hottie vamp from Twilight), then I’m not interested in engaging with you since it seems you’re not interesting in engaging with anyone.

Bottom line – come out of your coffin!

6- Your tweets are in a foreign language that I don’t understand

I’m lucky to have followers from all around the world. But they tweet in 1 of the 4 earthly languages that I speak. Actually, 99.99% of them Tweet in English as do I – I just wanted to toot my own linguistic horn by telling you that I’m fluent in 4! Fellow Peeps of the Twittersphere – I don’t speak Hindu, Farsi or Chinese. I also don’t speak Swedish or German, so you’ll have to please forgive my first name for misleading you to think that I may.

Bottom line – no English, no follow!

7-You’re a self-centered twitterer that doesn’t RT or @ reply

This may be hard for you to swallow, but the Twittersphere does not revolve around you! The whole point of Twitter is to share and engage and not simply self promote. So if that’s all you’re interested in doing, then I’m not interested in you. If I look at your stream and you haven’t RT’d or @ replied to anyone in 3 pages, then why on earth do I want to follow you if you don’t seem to be engaging or interested in others? There are loads of fascinating, insightful, talented, funny…people out there with awesome stuff to share. Help them spread their word because they may just reciprocate your gesture. If you think about it, this is pretty good relationship advice as well !

Bottom line – don’t act like a spoiled little brat who doesn’t want to share his toys because if you do, none of the other kids are gonna’ want to play with you.

8- You’re all about where you are

I’ll be honest here. I don’t give a hoot about where you’re currently located and what town you’re the Mayor of. I’m all for people using Foursquare and other location based services – they’re great – but if that’s all you’re willing to tweet then Twitter off! Having a few of these in your stream is totally cool but don’t over do it.

Bottom line - you’re nowhere but here to me!

9- Your profile rocks but we just don’t click - Sometimes it just happens. You may have an awesome profile and seem like an A+ guy or girl, but it may just be that I’m not interested in the same things as you are.

Bottom line - please don’t take it personally, but we just weren’t meant to be!

10- You are a self-proclaimed “guru”, “master”… of Social Media or other

I love Social Media too, but I’m simply an enthusiast and avid learner! I’m not a guru, master or expert of any kind. Having these ‘greater than God’ type adjectives on your profile don’t tell me much about you – because after all, in this day and age, who doesn’t like Social Media? The folks who actually have a proven track record in that field don’t refer to themselves in these ways.

Bottom line - guru’s are so passé!

via Why I don’t Follow those Twitter Peeps.

The Number of Friends, Followers and Likes Mean Nothing if You Don’t Engage With Them

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Michael Brandvold

This post by Peter Shankman hits the nail on the head when it comes to discussions about social media.

I have personally been having discussions lately that social media today is like a web site was 25 years ago. It is the hot word, hot topic. Something every marketer is jumping into. Everyone thinks they need to be in social media and quickly jump into Facebook and Twitter with no idea about what to do. Just like companies did 25 years ago when they said they needed a website, so they quickly built one, but had no idea what to do with it. 25 years ago companies measured website success by hits to their site, eyeballs. The dot bomb was proof that eyeballs mean nothing if you are not making money. Social media is the same… a million Twitter followers is useless if you are not making money. Give me 1000 followers who do engage with me and you can keep the 999,000 other followers who do nothing.

It is very easy for someone to hit the LIKE button on your Facebook page, and never bother to come back to your page. Does that LIKE mean anything? No! Friends on MySpace, Likes on Facebook, Followers on Twitter… mean nothing if you are not engaging with them. What is your plan to drive all those “eyeballs” back to your website? And how do you plan to convert them on your website? Why are you just driving people to Facebook, for Facebook to monetize them? Get them to your website and convert them!

What are your thoughts about this? Is there too much attention on the number of Likes, Friends and Followers? Do people “get it”?

I spent a day last week speaking to a Fortune 100 company about the best ways to integrate social media into their marketing plans, and how best to use social media to help their marketing to continue to generate revenue.

The majority of questions they asked me afterward fell into the following categories:

1) So how do we get more followers?

2) So how do we get more likes?

3) Should we hold a contest to get more followers/likes?

4) How do we get our followers/likes to spread the word about us?

These are smart people. These people are the marketing force behind a company that interacts with millions of people through multiple brands every day. These people aren’t stupid – They didn’t just come off the bus this morning.

But you say “social media” to them, and you have the ability to lead them around by waving a shiny object.

Perhaps, short of a cattle prod, we need to start being more forceful not only with our clients, but our bosses as well? Perhaps it’s time to smack some sense into people, and pull back the curtain? The Emperor has no clothes, Oz is a small old man, and they both need to go back to basics.

Basic #1: IT’S ABOUT MAKING MONEY.
If you walked into your boss’s office with a marketing plan that involved spending twenty million dollars on advertising, two Superbowl ads, a bunch of events, and fourteen different venue advertisements in nine cities, and the goal of the plan was “to make people like us,” you’d be kicked out on your ass so fast, it’d make your head spin. So WHY IS IT OK to do the same thing by changing “marketing” to “social media?” It’s NOT! Everything we do in social media should be tied, in some way, to generating revenue. You think that any major company puts together marketing plans without thinking about how it affects revenue? NO! In fact, I was in a meeting with a very large company where the CEO (a brusque, very frustrating man to work with) said it quite effectively: “If you spend one dollar, it better be to make two.” If we really want social media to be taken seriously, we’ve got to start thinking less like social media geeks, and more like effective marketers.

Basic #2: YOU DON’T MAKE MONEY WITH CONTESTS, PROMOTIONS, OR FREE STUFF.
Holding a contest DOES NOT bring in new customers that want to buy. It brings in NEW CHEAP PEOPLE who want to WIN FREE SHIT. Contests are futile for attracting new, spending customers. Want to hold a contest? Do it for the customers you already have! Let the contest work on enforcing your brand in their heads, and making them think about how much they love you. Contests and promotions are NOT a good way to drive new, engaged users, and anyone who says differently is lying.

Basic #3: Number of Twitter followers are the new Penis Envy.
Gary Vaynerchuk said it best: I’d rather have ten followers who engage with me on a regular basis than a million who don’t give a shit. And he’s right. I’m probably one of the only people out there who actively try to GET RID of followers to whom I don’t believe I’m adding value. I’ll actually DM some followers who have never interacted with me and ask them if they’re finding value in my tweets, posts, or the like. If they respond with “no,” I suggest they find other people better suited to following that will provide them with better value. When it comes down to it, the number of followers or fans you have doesn’t matter if nothing you do or say to them moves the marketing and dollar needle in any way.

Basic #4: CONVERSATIONS happen over beers. ENGAGEMENT happens over cash registers. Yes, it’s lovely when a brand converses with me. But you know what? A conversation isn’t going to make me buy. A conversation is something I have with my running partner during my cool-down run about how shitty my non-cool down run was. I don’t want to converse with Nike or Pepsi. I want them to notice that I’m buying their product and reward me. I want them to help me when I have a question, and I sure as hell want them to engage me when I reach out with a problem. Conversation? Leave that for the Friday night bar-after-work scene.

Basic #5: Much like charity, all this stuff starts at home.
When it comes to reacting or putting out fires, social media shouldn’t be your go-to-guy. It shouldn’t be the “Oh, not a problem, we’ll just monitor Twitter” common answer. If you’re really good, it shouldn’t even come to that in the first place, because your company’s customer service was so good to begin with, that it never HAD to make it online! I went to Verizon a few weeks ago to see if I could buy the new Blackberry at full price, out of contract. Was told by the woman at the counter that I couldn’t, even at full price. Right there, that should never have happened. It was obvious that the woman behind the counter was reading from a script. I don’t blame her, I blame Verizon for not letting her be adaptable. So I tweet to Verizon about the stupidity of them not wanting to take my money, calling it a fail. After six hours and no response (why does Verizon even HAVE a Twitter account if they don’t use it,) I tweet again about Verizon failing to fix my first problem, or essentially, a double fail. Two days later, I get an email from Doug over at [PR firm name removed after a very humble request], who handles PR for Verizon, asking what happened. I tell him. Guess what happens? HE DOESN’T RESPOND!! Congratulations, Verizon – You’ve just achieved a triple play of failure the likes of which haven’t been seen since the 1994 New York Mets. Well done.

It’s simple, people. We either get it, or we get eliminated. Bloody hell – Is it really that freaking difficult?

via Are we ever going to “get it?” | The Home Of Peter Shankman.