If you’re currently sending email newsletters to a list of subscribers, or considering doing so, there are plenty of resources out there offering great tips on how to do it well, such as this excellent guide.
Here’s a real basic tip … don’t make it look like this:
I’m in the software business, and a lot of our focus is educational technology (not incidentally, that’s where my masters is, too). Since I need to keep up on edtech news, as well as general education news, I subscribe to a number of email newsletters, including this one from EducationNews.org.
But few are as badly designed as this one.
The colors are uninspiring, even muddy. The titles (which also serve as links) are anything but highlighted – they’re lowlighted. And the blurbs about each article are obviously automated – often serving as very unreliable clues as to the actual content and worth of the article.
The result is no shock: I click on links from this newsletter least of any that I get … and I probably won’t be subscribed to this one much longer.
WestJet is having HUGE issues right now with a reservations system conversion … which means that it has been extremely hard to book a flight with them for at least 3 days.
I just posted this to their customer feedback form:
- I cannot book online because I’m doing a round-trip to Calgary on the same day, and the site does not give me options to leave from Abbotsford in the AM and return from CGY in the PM.
- I had to make separate 1-way reservations to do the above.
- I have to re-login every other page.
- The site said it would cancel my reservation if I did not call in within 1 hour – I guess you’re having some issues. I spent over an hour on hold yesterday trying to call in. No answer!
- This morning I’m calling – on hold now for 15 minutes. No telling me how many are on hold, how many agents, what order I’m in, or anything like that. Horrible user experience!
- And, on your site, my reservations now say “canceled.”
To put it mildly, I am not a happy camper. This is a textbook lesson in how NOT to serve clients.
For the flights I’m trying to book, WestJet is the most convenient. But too much more of this and the convenience of the flights will be vastly outweighed by the inconvenience of doing business with a company that can’t book business!
At last … the information you’ve always wanted: how to get un-followed on Twitter.
If you use Twitter, you’re familiar with the following scenario: someone follows you, and you find out via email, or some other software you’re using for the purpose (unless you’re automating Twitter, which is usually a bad thing in itself, but we’ll deal with that another day).
You take a look at the user’s stats, and if he or she has a decent number of tweets in relation to following and following numbers, you consider following back. You also check to see if the user is following way more people than are following him or her … because that’s usually a sign of someone trying to game Twitter to develop a big megaphone without putting any significant energy into earning that megaphone.
Sometimes when you’ve done this step, and even noticed that the user’s tweets are potentially of interest to you, you notice something else. Like this, for example:
I followed this user, then read a few more of his tweets. Lo and behold … multiple repeat Tweets.
This is a sign of a user with one or more problems:
- Boring
This person does not have a lot to say … but like the boring person at the party that you can’t detach yourself from, insists on saying it over and over.
- Lazy
This person probably actually has a lot to say, but is too busy or otherwise occupied to put appropriate attention on Twitter. So she is putting her account on autopilot and just repeating the same thing over and over again without the bother of having to think up (or experience) new things to communicate. This is the broken record (remember those round spinning black things) that keeps on keeps on keeps on keeps on …
- Forgetful
This person just says the same thing over and over again … like the old sales guy who has chatted up (sorry, networked) so promiscuously and with so little emotional investment that he forgets who he has told his stories to, and keeps repeating the sames ones to you every time you meet.
- Rude
This person doesn’t care about the signal to noise ratio, and doesn’t care what any one individual might think of his or her behavior. It’s all about the mass to this person, and to get to mass attention, they’re repeating everything twice or a hundred times, like old-fashioned advertising spewing out mindlessly and repetitively to an essentially unknown audience.
As soon as I saw all the repeat tweets, I un-followed this user. The funny thing here is that I’m actually interested in some of the topics he’s covering. But his behavior smells like spam.
Moral of the story? Old methods may not work in new media.
I’ve previously posted on how to measure the success (or failure) of a social media marketing campaign. But why do social media campaigns fail?
This is an apocryphal quote – and I can’t find the source – but I’ve heard Alexandra Samuel talk about the default state of a social media marketing campaign being “fail” … mostly because it ain’t easy.
But why?
I recently read a great list by Darren Houle at Communicopia. In brief, he lists 5 reasons for social media marketing failure:
- Lack of organizational buy-in to company culture
- Lack of organizational tie-in to company goals
- Short-term objectives
- Lack of planning for the inevitable sticky situations that will arise
- Quitting after the first failure … “we tried that, it didn’t work”
The reality is the same one facing those who want to get rich quick, become famous quick, become an instant expert, or go from 90-pound weakling to 240-pound Schwarzenegger: it does occasionally happen, but only fools plan on it.
Social media marketing campaigns that are successful over the long term arise out of a company culture, mission, and vision that is conducive to openness, creativity, responsiveness, humor, and change. This takes time. This takes effort. It’s not as easy has hiring an SEO firm and writing a check.
The biggest clue
Successful social media marketing campaigns aren’t campaigns at all. What do I mean?
I’m simply saying that they’re not episodic, they’re not short-term, and they’re not something that you can pick and one day and throw away another day … like a magazine ad or a TV spot.
Successful social media marketing, like all great marketing, tells a story that draws in an authentic way on the larger, longer story of a company or organization. It’s a chapter in a book, an act in a play. There was one before, there’ll be one after.
The biggest question – as in all marketing – becomes: is your organization’s story worth listening to?
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
