Whew! We hosted our first #TechChat last Tuesday with our special guest, Guy Kawasaki. More than 500 RSM (really smart marketers) joined us to chat with Guy about social media marketing for the high-tech industry. While the chat moved faster than any chat I’ve ever attended, most of us were able to take away a few key insights about social media marketing.
Here are my favorites:
1. Trial and error leads to strategy.
Because social media is still relatively new territory for most marketers, it makes sense to develop your strategy as you go along. You can’t plan what you don’t know. According to Guy, “I think ’social media planning and strategy’ is an oxymoron. Basically, you try stuff and see what sticks.”
2. It’s all about the numbers.
Let’s be real. Twitter is all about the numbers. The more followers you have, the more opportunities for developing connections you have. According to Guy, “The best way to get good connections is to get more followers. It’s the big law of numbers.” With more than 250,000 followers, Guy has played that game very, very well.
3. No one’s an expert. We’re all experts.
Again, because Twitter is so new, we all have the opportunity to be experts. Unlike other forms of marketing, we’re all still figuring Twitter out along the way. So seize this opportunity to own it like no one else. Guy says, “No one’s an expert at social media. One of the reasons I love it is we all have a fighting chance to use this thing effectively!”
A big THANK YOU to Guy for these insights, and thanks to everyone for attending. If you missed the inaugural #TechChat, don’t fret. WTHashtag has a transcript, the Isatis Marketing Blog compiled the best Tweets from Guy, and Stanford Smith wrote a great blog entitled, “How to Tweet like a ‘Beat Reporter—#TechChat Edition.”
Ready for more? Join us Tuesday, August 24 from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Eastern standard time) for the second #TechChat. We’ll be chatting with special guest, LaSandra Brill, social media manager at Cisco Systems, about social media for high-tech, B2B marketing. LaSandra is also presenting the new seminar, “Cisco and the Social Web: Our Adoption and Evolution,” on Thursday, August 26 at noon (Eastern standard time).
Tags: B2B, business, Social Media, Technology
These are “insights”? There might be a reason the session moved so quickly.
1. Trial & Error – Probably works if you are an independently wealthy business person, but most real high-tech companies don’t have room for this sort of “approach”; really, what other function in business would come into work each day and say “hmmmm, wonder what stuff I’ll randomly try today?”
2. The Law of Numbers – This has been disputed more than once (i.e., quality over quantity), but in any case did Guy have any concrete ways real businesses (who can’t really parlay their fame from the offline circuit) can get from 1 or 2 followers to maybe 100? That first threshold is the biggest.
3. Experts – What a nice way to close off the session and make everyone feel good about listening to his chatter, but after 3 years of this, there are actually examples you could use to give yourself some direction. Maybe this “anyone can do it” stance is actually reverse psychology by the social media gurus.
Oops, sorry, I forgot – there are no experts.
PS One other thing I find curious: 500 people listened to this, and over a billion million have retweeted this posting, yet no one has any comments to add?
Hi Kevin:
Thanks for the comments and for joining us for #TechChat. Someone always has to be the first one to comment, and this time, it was you!
- I wouldn’t recommend taking a completely ad-hoc approach to social media. However, since social media marketing is still in it’s infancy, we’re all (even leaders, like @Starbucks) are trying to figure out what works, and what doesn’t — more so than in more mature channels.
- I wish we could have covered how to build a Twitter following during the chat — maybe next week! However, I just put together a short, 10 minute seminar conveniently titled “How to Build a Twitter Following in Less Than a Week.” I think you might find it helpful. http://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars/278
- I tried to find you on Twitter — what is your Twitter handle?
Thanks again for your thoughts!
What a great idea. I missed the first one but I plan to make the next one. i have pushed out this information to everyone I know.
Christine Taylor
V/P Social Media Marketing
JTMarCom
Hi Christine -
It doesn’t look like you were able to make it to #TechChat this week. @LaSandraBrill of Cisco had some excellent insights. You can find a transcript here: http://wthashtag.com/Techchat
Hopefully you can join us Tuesday, August 31st for the 3rd #TechChat.
Thanks for stopping by. See you on Twitter!
[...] everyone. Tuning in to a conversation of this sort can help you to learn a lot! Big players like @GuyKawasaki have tuned in and added their two cents as [...]
This is the one that got me….
2. It’s all about the numbers.
Let’s be real. Twitter is all about the numbers. The more followers you have, the more opportunities for developing connections you have. According to Guy, “The best way to get good connections is to get more followers. It’s the big law of numbers.”
This needs a big caveat: The followers must be interested in your company, brand, products, industry, etc. What is the value of 250,000 followers? Zero, unless they engage with you and do something of value for your business. The metric of followers is a false indicator of influence in the same way that ‘hits’ is a false indicator of web traffic. You can gin up thousands of followers simply buy using any number of tools like TweetAdder watching the number of auto-followers grow your numbers. Do you really think that someone following 1,000+ members on Twitter is actually going to read your content? A better metric would be to look at the number of lists your account has been added to over the past year as well as the number of referrals from your tweets to your site’s landing pages followed by the number of visitors who actually took the action you wanted them to take. There is value there, but a simple count means nothing.
We wrote a blog post about this topic titled “Gaming the System: Why Follower Counts Don’t Represent Influence” (http://bit.ly/b1F8Jk).
As someone with experience, Guy should know better…I won’t even go into the “try stuff and see what sticks” insight (yeah, that will get you budget in today’s business environment)….
I agree with Kevin, 500 attendees but minimal comments here. Surprising metrics. Either people don’t want to disagree in public with Guy or they are satisfied with the “insights” given here.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the comments. I just followed you on Twitter and gave your blog a tweet.
I’m going to have to agree with Guy here — followers really are key. The larger the Twitter account, the more opportunities you have for developing meaningful relationships. You have to find magical balance of increasing the number of followers, while developing meaningful relationships with your followers and those you’re following.
Hopefully I’ll see you at the next #TechChat so we can continue the discussion!
[...] the famed Guy Kawasaki is promoting an idea that the more followers the better during a TweetChat on MarketingProfs…but his perspective is the larger the audience from a [...]
[...] am seconding Guy Kawasaki when he says: Because social media is still relatively new territory for most marketers, it makes sense to [...]