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Twitter - SEO & Social Media Marketing

Netflix Scores a Qwikster Marketing Faux-pas

Good marketing advice?

netflixdvd Netflix Scores a Qwikster Marketing Faux pasMaybe you’ve heard that Netflix has decided to rename its DVD delivery service “Qwikster.” A catchy name and one that would be easy to brand, but there is one slight problem; the Twitter account is already owned by someone.  A whois search shows that Qwikster.com has been registered by Netflix, but www.youtube.com/qwikster is also owned by someone not related to Netflix.

qwikster twitter Netflix Scores a Qwikster Marketing Faux pasAre these insurmountable problems? Maybe not, but IMHO Netflix didn’t do their homework when researching the name they chose to do business under. When I deal with a client that is looking to brand themselves online, developing a suitable name is only part of the challenge. Making sure that you can brand that name on the social networks is paramount.

Netflix has the option of buying those accounts from their owners (lucky owners), but that could be prohibitively expensive for companies with fewer resources. Better to find a name that is available for your domain and the related social media sites. If nothing else, Netflix should have approached those owners (silently through an intermediary) and acquired the accounts prior to making their public announcement.

Whoa boys – slow down!

It seems that Netflix is moving so fast that they are making a number of faux-pas of late. They just came under a lot of heat for a pricing announcement that wasn’t received well by their customers.

Don’t misunderstand my intentions with this post, I love Netflix and was a customer of theirs for many years. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to assume that my advice is better than what they are receiving from their marketing team. My comments are geared to businesses facing similar decisions.

When you are choosing a domain name to brand a company, service or product, do your homework and ensure that the social media sites can support the marketing effort with accounts and channels that are also available. Replicating your brand name with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social sites will make the marketing effort easier and create more awareness with your audience.

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+1 for the Weiner story?

In my previous article I talked about Google’s new +1 button and this is a short follow up. Using the Drudge Report’s headlines, I clicked through to most of the stories on today’s page.  My purpose was to see if any of the websites were using the +1 button yet.

The funny thing was that of all the stories, I could only find one that was utilizing Google’s new voting button. In Google’s defense, this social rating system is less than a week old, but we’re used to seeing webmasters jump when Google sets a guideline. The only story I found using the +1 button was “Weiner on wife support” (New York Post)

weiner wife support google plus one +1 for the Weiner story?What I found most interesting was that as popular as this news story has become, 321 people Liked it on Facebook, 40 Tweeted about it but only 2 people clicked the Google +1 button. I would not draw conclusions at this stage, but I found it odd that most online agencies hadn’t yet launched the +1 button and the only instance of it being used was surprisingly low.

Anyway, no conclusions or conjectures…I just thought this was interesting and wanted to share it with you. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and ask if you are planning to add the +1 button to your website or blog? Leave a comment below and BTW, be sure to Like, Tweet or +1 it…(we need a new term for “plus one” – any ideas?)

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Facebook, be very careful…

Back in March I posted an article, “Facebook Internet Coup d’état?”, in which I gave my opinion about using Facebook as a company’s primary website.  The upshot was that I didn’t think it was prudent to permit Facebook (or any other 3rd. party) to have control of my public online presence.  Remember Google’s famous tagline…“Do no evil”?

hear see speak no evil Facebook, be very careful...

Anyone who has ever tried to contact Facebook will tell you that they offer virtually no customer support.  You’re on your own if you have questions.  This is bad enough for those who have basic questions about using the service, but it becomes a serious problem if you wake up one morning and discover that Facebook whacked your account.  Presto!  Your ‘Page’ has disappeared, your friends get an error message and you can’t login.  What can you do?

Unless you know somebody who knows somebody, you could be out of luck (SOL).  There is no support line or email address where you can go for help. David Fagin, an AOL News Writer, discovered this when he was identified as a ‘Spammer’ by Facebook for soliciting new friends and his account was closed.  He is now suing Facebook for $1 to bring this issue to public attention.

Facebook recently took down pages from Ars Technica, a highly regarded tech company.  According to WebProNews.com, this action was taken because one person complained that they were violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Can you imagine what it could mean to your business if a disgruntled customer or employee, or worse yet, a competitor of yours complained to Facebook about your company?  Imagine your Facebook presence disappearing because of one malicious prank?

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not anti-Facebook and I don’t think the sky is falling.  However, as a business you need to be aware that Facebook is still an infant company and is in spite of their meteoric growth, they are still shaping their policies and stumbling around defining their services (or in the case of customer service – the lack of it).

Can you imagine what it could mean to your business if a disgruntled customer or employee, or worse yet, a competitor of yours complained to Facebook about your company?  Imagine your Facebook presence disappearing because of one malicious prank?

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not anti-Facebook and I don’t think the sky is falling.  However, as a business you need to be aware that Facebook is still an infant company and is in spite of their meteoric growth, they are still shaping their policies and stumbling around defining their service.

Facebook is one of many business tools

Facebook is a marketing tool for businesses wanting to reach customers and expand their reach. You should view it as such and not diminish the efforts you in building your brand on your primary website and blog.  Use social networking to augment your business promotion, not replace it.  I saw this description somewhere…

Linkedin is for people you know.
Facebook is for people you used to know.
Twitter is for people you want to know.
YouTube is for getting Google to know you!

Social adds SEO juice!

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Does Twitter drive traffic to a website?

Let’s say you have a website that is highly focused on a particular product, service or geographic area. You may be a house painter, a boutique retailer, own a restaurant, barber shop, lawn service or any business catering to a local clientele.

Reluctantly you are now trying to utilize Twitter and Facebook to reach new customers. Hey, you’ve been told that you must do this or face being left behind. You don’t know who or what to believe, but you know that you can’t sit back and do nothing.  You’ve seen traffic to your website decline and you’re hoping that this Twitter and Facebook involvement will stop the bleeding.

Anyone who has attempted to create a Facebook ‘Page’ for their business will admit that Facebook’s instructions are confusing and not the least bit intuitive. Twitter on the other hand, is so blatantly easy to set up and configure that you think you must be missing something – nothing can be this easy, can it?

We’ll focus on Twitter in this article and cover Facebook in an upcoming post. Once you have opened a Twitter account and configured your profile and tweaked your layout, you’re ready to start tweeting and following people. And this is where Twitter requires some attention.

There are scores of programs and online services available to help you manage your Twitter account and you will need some of these to save time and make the right decisions. Just searching for the right people to follow (and accepting the right friends) is a chore.

You operate a local business, there is no reason to follow or become friends with a bicycle shop in Taiwan or a pizza shop in Toledo, and you will get requests to follow such companies. Ideally, you want to find people to follow who are in your geographic area. The whole idea is to network with potential prospects and existing customers.

When you begin to accumulate followers there is a tendency to follow-back anyone who follows you. I mean, it’s only the polite thing to do, right?  Wrong. Stick to the plan and only follow local people who will add value to your network and hopefully become a customer or source of new business.  If you don’t do this, a few months down the road you’ll find yourself with hundreds or thousands of followers that offer no value to your business.

I use a program called SocialOomph to manage my personal accounts and clients’ accounts. SocialOomph will let you schedule Tweets to be published at a later date. Better still, it will let you schedule any tweet to recur 1 day, 3 days, 1 month, etc. The beauty of this is that if you created 20, 40 or 100 tweets they could all be appearing in your feed as you specify. This is handy way of keeping activity in your account while you tend to your business.

SocialOomph will let you automatically follow people who follow you and unfollow those who unfollow you and you can manually approve new followers. You’ll receive daily reports and discover a host of other features that make managing your Twitter account painless.

tl 468 60 01 Does Twitter drive traffic to a website?

So, the big question everyone inevitably asks… Does Twitter drive traffic to a website? The short answer is yes.  The longer answer is don’t expect to see an uptick in traffic three days after you open your Twitter account. Like any networking experience, it takes time for people to get to know you or trust you.  With Twitter, it takes time before anyone may even see one of your tweets.

In my case, I sell a digital book; a product that can be downloaded immediately. To my knowledge, I did not sell any books that I could attribute to Twitter during my first month.  On the other hand, I may have sold 50 books, but I had no proof that Twitter was responsible for linking people to my website.

Over time I have heard from people on Twitter who have sent me a ‘Direct Message’ or Tweeted about my book. People have told me they bought the book after reading my tweets.

Twitter works, but like any other promotional or marketing effort, it will demand your attention and your time to bear fruit.  So, if you derived any benefit from this post, please do me a favor and Tweet about it…click the social icon below and share this with your friends.  Thanks!

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