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Affiliate Summit West 2010 is now open and the first sessions is beginning. I’ve decided to go to Effective Social Media Techniques. This is my first attempt at ‘live blogging’ at an event, so forgive me for any errors or attributing things to the wrong people. The convention center being big, my being stopped in the hall by friends, and not quite knowing where I was going made me a bit late.
Brett Tabke, Pubcon
Keith Plocek, Mail.com Media Corporation, Social Media Manager
Rebecca Kelley, 10e20, Director of Social Media
Andrew Wee, WhoIsAndrewWee.com (moderator)
First up is Brett Tabke, @btabke on Twitter
he has 22,000 followers on Twitter
Here are his experiences with Twitter & how he uses it
Focus on retweets
RT +1space +@nickname + space or color + tweet 130 character max
never start with their name, then it looks personal & if someone is not following them they won’t see your tweet
Tweet poaching
70% of retweets contain a link
retweets with a hashtag are more likely to be retweeted
retweet the classics – classic stories that hold up
know when your audience is online
is it morning or afternoon? – timing is everything
Good tweets can be tweeted again
Their highest tweet day is Wednesday
retweet days are monday & wednesday
highest # of retweets are from 2:15pm to 3:30pm EST
#1 Twitter city is London
ABO – always be optimizing
troll friends of competitors – if they are following them then they may be interested in your content too
scout hashtags & trends
contest & giveaways are heavily retweeted
put tweet it buttons everywhere
retweet buddies & ask them to do the same
Klout is PR (page rank) for twitter
RT’ers track them & thank them
Keep score and remember to retweet friends
one offs “payback” retweets at odd hours
Dell did $6.5 million on Twitter last year, so it is viable for sales
next up is Keith Plocek
the mail.com portal is moving towards content
large focus is on entertainment – Nikki Fink, Bonnie Fuller, & Mark Lisarti are their personalities – they encourage them to be themselves on Twitter and not be bland
give people a reason to care what you are saying – you don’t need to be rude though
with these various personalities they have the opportunity for cross promotion
varied personalities require varied solutions
there is a need to build & maintain which means long range planning
Social media is a bit like sex:
-be kind
-don’t just take. give
-variety is key
-hand crafted
-take your time (don’t waste it)
they do some automated tweets, but click throughs are less
quick tricks = traffic
a little extra effort = quality traffic
drive engagement:
bland- what did you think of Avatar?
better – was Avatar overhyped?
Linkbait – good quality content doesn’t have to be complicated
Top 3 reasons why lists are awesome:
1)easy to write
2)easy to read
3) they get conversations going
Digg, Stumble Upon really like stories with comments
People love charts & graphs
His Twitter list is here: http://twitter.com/keithplocek/mail-com-media
Rebecca Kelley wants to talk about Do’s & don’t’s
Tactics of the Social Media Douchbag
#1 Spam – think you can spam the masses
Spam on IM – introduce first, how you found me, request to exchange diggs, a freaking greeting every now & then – some people are too aggressive
Spam on Twitter – DM spam is not effective – not worth getting banned over – personalize your DMs more – don’t drop shady links
Spam in comments – don’t spam blog comments – very old tactic that is played out – make sure there is a reason to link back to your content – use a name not your keywords – it is very bottom feeder
#2 Aggressive Self -promotion
always blogging about your company/tool/products
tweeting nothing but links
dropping comments about yourself on blogs
incessantly inviting friends to become a fan of you/your company on Facebook
social media is a two way street, it is supposed to be a conversation
#3 Censored
Dominoes wanted to revamp image on their new pizza – they were running a twitter feed on a micro site that was cutting out bad comments some felt
stifling comments can make people very angry
#4 You just don’t get it, do you?
Kurt Greenbaum of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, wrote an article – someone used profanity in the comments, so he deleted them – the person posted again, so Greenbaum used the IP address to find that he worked for a school – he contacted the school and got the person fired for it
-he now has a bad reputation online
Her final comment was everyone’s an “expert” these days
Andrew Wee then took a turn as the moderator to ask questions of the panel.
Which platform do you find the most effective?
Brett & Keith both responded with Twitter – Rebecca answered Facebook for clients
Brett – schedule Tweets on obscure stuff, then when you share your own content it is more effective – retweet competitors if it is quality and especially if it is linking to a third party
Rebecca – if you want everyone to see tweet don’t start with @ – not everyone can see it
What would you do differently with social media if you were starting over?
Brett – would start focused on commercial brand and not a personal one
Rebecca – doesn’t think quantity over quality – build relevant audience by searching for your topic – who is discussing it?
Keith – search for stuff that interests you and follow those people, follow more people
What Twitter apps & analytics do you use?
Keith – going to use Klout because Brett recommended it – used Hootsuite because he likes the tabbing best
Rebecca – likes Tweetdeck because she can toggle back & forth between accounts – can be bad for tweeting from the wrong account though – easy tweets – also wants to check out Klout
Brett used Tweetdeck until lists and now he uses it on the web again – he recommends the service Cotweet for companies that have several different users tweeting from same account – it makes the tweets in the background so you can keep track of who tweets what
And that was the end of the session. I have a bit of a break and then it is off to my next session in half an hour. Short amount of time to check out the Meet Market.
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