Blog

Home  /   Blog

Spam, Spam, Wonderful Spam

No Comments18/03/13
Uncategorized

For our community management clients, we often check who’s following competiting or related businesses on Twitter to see if there’s anyone who might be a good fit for us to engage with on behalf of that business. After all, if you like one local brewery or Grandview Heights neighborhood business, it’s probable you’ll be interested in discovering more!

While searching through one such business’ followers today, I found something pretty amusing. And by “amusing” I mean “upsetting because someone is charging for this and calling it social media marketing.”

SpamSpamWonderfulSpam

Aside from the fact that the usernames are all random letters and numbers, the bios are all generated from the same word pool. Either that, or there are a LOT OF PEOPLE WHO LIKE BACON AND ZOMBIES AND GURUING.

There were hundreds more but after a few dozen my screenshot hand got tired.

Spam bots randomly follow everyone on Twitter. Hundreds of spam bots from the same generator do not randomly follow one account at the same time. Someone is passing this off as a service and promising “more followers on Twitter.”

Sigh.

A thousand fake followers do absolutely nothing to help market your business.

Cool Tool: The Noun Project

No Comments08/02/13
Cool Tools

I often find myself needing artwork for a new website, presentation or document. I could use Microsoft clip art, but I don’t hate myself or my clients. I want something clean, crisp and professional.

The Noun Project delivers just that: simple, beautiful iconography for just about anything. The black-on-white images, though created by hundreds of different designers, all have the same feel so they “fit” together. In fact, the icons on our “Services” page came from The Noun Project.

All of the images are available for free with attribution, or can be purchased outright for an absurdly affordable $2.

the noun project

Great moments in speechbubble history, volume 1

No Comments25/01/13
Great Moments

Recently I checked in with a yet-to-launch new client to see if the time was right for us to start promoting.

This was the response.

Hi there Cheryl,

We are now over 2/3 of the way on our funding and I have a meeting tomorrow to hopefully secure the last third. It should not be too much longer. More than likely though, when I get all of the money I need a zombie apocalypse will break out and the need for a —– store will evaporate so I should probably start looking into making a duct tape and shot gun store. That’d do pretty will with zombies running all of the place. Stupid zombies.


That moment when you know a client is a perfect fit.

Three keys to successfully outsourcing social media

No Comments18/01/13
Social Media

1) Your Community Manager needs to be on call 24/7

OK, maybe not 24/7. You can probably give them a few hours to sleep. But seriously, they need to be getting real-time updates every time someone mentions your brand on Twitter, or in a blog post, or writes a Yelp review, or comments on your Facebook page. By setting up these profiles, you’re sending the message “Here’s a new way to get in touch with us!” Imagine if someone called your business and left a message, and you didn’t get back to them for three days. Or even one day. Do you really think they’re going to give you money?

2) Your Community Manager needs to be empowered to act

Since you found someone who is getting real-time updates from customers about your business, they need to be able to do something about negative situations when they arise. If someone Tweets that they got the wrong order (instead of taking it up with their server), the Community Manager needs to be able to call the on-duty manager and inform them of the situation – and the manager needs to be willing to make it right. If someone writes in a Yelp review that your contractor was drinking in their house instead of installing their new carpet, then you need to listen to your CM when they tell you about it and fire your contractor and apologize to the customer. Your business (especially if you’re in hospitality) already has special circumstances offline where a manager can comp things, or issue a refund, or take other corrective action. The CM needs to be able to do these things online.

3) Your Community Manager needs to be kept up to speed with the business

They need to know what’s new, and what’s changing, as quickly as you do. Raising your prices? They better know that the lampshades that were $10 yesterday are $20 now before they talk about them. They better know that there was a popular band added to the benefit show lineup so they can talk about it. They better know that you’re closing early tomorrow. Otherwise, how are they going to tell your customers?

A version of this article was originally published on beingcheryl.com

Page 3 of 3<123