Four ways you lose me

It's a fact that you can use twitter for marketing your product. I, myself, have bought an item from someone who I found during a twitter search. I was searching for "paypal alternatives", they happened to have made a post about paypal. Long story short - I saw her website, liked her product and bought one (using paypal). Enough "twits" have lost my interest lately, for stupid things, I just had to rant.

• Follow to Unfollow

Sometimes it takes me awhile to process the information on your service. I like to research things, compare, then make a decision - nothing loses my attention more then when someone "follows" and then "unfollows" me just as fast. In the last week I have "tweeted" about my interest in a new web merchant service. A few tweeters who offered (or was affiliated with) this services started following me - and I was actually interested in their info. However, when I went back to find their "twitter name" I saw they had "unfollowed" me within 24 hrs. HUH - well I guess they weren't really interested in my business. It felt....rude. I know who they are and I refuse to entertain their service now. Nor will I recommend them.

• Auto Direct messaging

I hate when someone acts like they are soooo interested in you. They ask what you do. OK listen, if you were interested in me - well you would have checked out my twitter page. It tells you right there in my bio what I do. HUH Don't act like you want to know if you can't take the second to look at my page. People who respond with my name really impress me - they took the time. I want to be their friend :)

My favorite auto DM was when I followed someone to message them that they were infringing on my image copy rights. I wanted them to immediately to cease and desist before I took legal action. It knocked my socks off why they auto DM'd me "Thank you for following, we appreciate your interest in us and look forward to your business" Are you kidding me?

• Empty Twitter profiles

I actually check out peoples twitter pages, their blogs too. I enjoy reading others opinions. I'm all for information sharing and learning. I even read the things I don't agree with - just to try to understand. If you have nothing to say I don't want to follow your page. So those using twitter to spam or fill space it feels like an insult. I don't feel like buying anything from someone who insulted me! Sometimes I don't know what your selling even - I don't get it.

• Fake sharing

This one irks me the most. Someone sends me an interesting tweet. I get excited about how freely they want to share information. Maybe it's from someone who I have some experience to offer back - freely! I follow the link only to find out you want me to buy it! I mean, that's like someone offering you their seat on the bus and then demanding a quarter for it. Offer me something of value will you! Then let me decide if I want to trust your opinions enough to pay for your information. And NO I'm not comfortable "just" providing my email - thanks anyways. I'm on to you.

Video Insights

I've noticed a positive development this last week - thanks to youtube insights. What did I noticed? The video, embedded on my website, is slowing going down in the percentage of total views.

Your video viewership from your website is going down? And that's a good thing? Let me explain...



Out of the 100% of my videos viewers only 68% were from people viewing it directly on my site. That means a WHOPPING 32% of views came from people who did not even know my website existed! And never visited (yet).

If you looked at the graph above the 32% breaks down as follows;

• Google Search 8.0% (youtube insights even reports on the keywords that were used to find your video).
• External Links 8.0% (this includes sites such as twitter, yahoo, bing, blogs, icq search etc.)
• youtube and related 12 % total
• Viral 3.6 % (this is when your video link is shared by email and instant messaging).

From the 32% above more than 20% is from some form of social networking. So yes I think it is a very positive development when my web sites percentage of total views is falling. NOT to be confused with the videos traffic declining.

;)

Wake up and smell the...social networking?

click on image to make it larger

I was "catching up" on my friends facebook pages and saw a perfect example of the powers of social networking for those companies who still wonder what it is. I found myself thinking that maybe I'll try this coffee too! 2 of my friends say it's great...I never heard of it before but I TRUST their opinions. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to figure out how to get them to talk about YOUR product.

• Provide a quality product

• Provide great customer experience

• Understand your customers

"bing - bong" is that opportunity ringing the bell?

I have been hearing (or rather reading) a lot about MSN's re-vamp of it's re-branded search engine "Bing". A lot of what is being said is that Bing can not possibly give Google any grief -as people are loyal to Google and have been for years.

So? If you have been online for the past few years you'll notice many sites popping up and dominating their goals....look at twitter. I'm sure facebook did not foresee the ruckus they would cause.

I hope bing survives - hell I hope it does well! Nothing wrong with a little more competition - it keeps the other guys honest (and keeps their prices down in PPCs).

What do I like about Bing?

• I love the image search on Bing - all images load into one frame so no clicking to the next page. You can choose the size of image you want to search even (weeds out the small icon-ish images). I found a new copy right infingement of my images that google missed (as the page is not linked to the sites main index).

• I love the pop up window in search - it scans the site - gives you 2 paragraphs of content - contact info and an idea of what other pages the site has - too kewl. No more clicking to open new windows or tabs (or back peddling to the search page). I Like it!

• I like that the 3D map program actually runs on my laptop (never could get google earth to work).

• I even like the daily background images Bing uses on it's main search page. I have heard rumors that you can find easter eggs if you mouse around (I never found any - yet).

I also love that BING.COM now shows up as #10 in my top 10 traffic sources in google analytics a week after the official launch.

Facebook and digg pull their ads from MSN...with the growth in social networking there may be an opportunity to getting higher search volumes (thinking with my ppc cap now). Go Bing GO....or should I say "BING-GO"

:)