Category Archives: King of Social Media

Here is the link for the report I mentioned earlier today on the minimal influence of social media on online holiday purchasing: http://ow.ly/4OWUY #GSIchat

(Note: An interesting piece of correspondence from one of my colleagues in Australia. I’ll publish the actual report once I make sure it’s permissible to do so.)

Alan, I thought you might be interested in this report I just ran across being advertised on an Australian Small Business site. It looks at the US retail sector—last year’s data—mapping purchasing “paths” for online purchasing.

The analysis indicates that even in the online retail space, social media were correlated with less than 2% of online purchases over the US holiday periods in Q4 of 2010. That is, social media as yet has very little impact on people’s buying.

As you have said many times, social media have very little impact on true economic buyers for consulting services. Granted this study is strictly for online purchases but if, as this study indicates, social media currently have so little influence on purchasing patterns of those who are deliberately looking for retail products on the internet, how much “truer” is it for consultants offering high value services?

I “wonder” how social media gurus would respond?

Regards,

Peter McLean

Managing Director

Lamplighter

Today I was notified that I had my thousandth friend on Facebook. What is the proper etiquette? Do I buy them all gifts or throw a party? Or should they each send me $100?

I post something of marketing value on Twitter every morning. Yesterday, I received this:

Alan,

Yesterday, you posted this on Twitter, http://twitter.com/BentleyGTCSpeed/status/15856333967:
“Would you spend this? No! Would you invest this for X return? Yes! Watch your language.”

I used it immediately…

“Would you spend $120,000 ($20,000 per month over six months) to receive $800,000 worth of advertising/publicity for your product? And If we don’t hit that number, month seven is on the house!”

…and it worked immediately. I’m now meeting with the CEO next week. Great tip!

Thank you for sharing.

Jason Mudd, APR

I delivered the keynote at IMC’s Confab yesterday, to a wonderful audience, and we all had a lot of fun. I talked about the very positive future of consulting and the need to “be in the moment” with clients and prospects, as well as the role of developing communities.

During an extensive Q&A period, I noted that social media platforms were good examples of communities that were largely personal and avocational, but were not the major marketing routes for consultants selling to large corporate clients. It was a good discussion.

Of course, immediately someone is Twittering that I’m a Luddite (you’ll note that they came to hear me, not him) and I’m assuming that he had help spelling “Luddite.” Apparently, he wasn’t even in the audience, but had heard some snippets on Twitter.

Have you noticed that you can argue with clients, prospects, colleagues, and others about business on a factual, mutually-respectful basis? But once you take on the social media fanatics, name-calling and mudslinging is unleashed. This is the trait of cult-like thinking. You’re with us or against us, and we’re not about to listen to opposing argument.

There are millions of intelligent, reasonable people using social platforms for personal and professional reasons. It’s too bad the zealots hang around like plaque on teeth. They need to be scraped off.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

I now have about 1,040 people tracking me on Twitter after just a few months. This is the most fun of all the social platforms for me, and I spend a whopping ten minutes a day posting on it (I follow no one). It beats Facebook, and its great “tests,” such as, “How well do you know your own rear end?” No, I’m not exaggerating (by much)!

If you haven’t yet, join my twice daily contributions of pragmatic value: @BentleyGTCSpeed on Twitter.