From 2008 sometime…….

The other day I got an email in my inbox. It said in part….

Dear Lynda Partner,

Hi, this is Nick Longo the CEO of CoffeeCup Software, you have been selected
as one of the few that I would like to personally invite to become a CoffeeCup Ambassador. This is an exclusive club of our biggest fans, best users, and closest friends.

If you would like to become an Ambassador please Click Here:

……..

Please join us today. We need you as a Fan and Evangelist to spread the word
about CoffeeCup Software.Thank you so much for participating. I am honored to invite you.

Nick Longo
———–
CEO | Founder
CoffeeCup Software

My first thought was “I don’t know any Nick Longo”. My second thought was “How did this person get my email address?”

Sound familiar?

It took me awhile but it turns out that when I opened a web hosting account recently, the hosting provider offered a free download of Nick’s software. I  did not download it.

So how did they get my email address and why were they sending me emails I didn’t want that did not even have an opt-out link.

Fearful that my brand new, shiny clean email address was out in the big bad world of impolite marketers, I wrote back an equally personal email to my new friend Nick.

Dear Nick
I did not opt-in to receive email from you. Please remove me from your list immediately and confirm that I have been removed.
Thank you
Lynda Partner

OK, so maybe I wasn’t as flowery was he was in his email, but why waste his time with marketing speak? At least I was clear, and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, didn’t come right out and call him a spammer.

The answer came two hours later

Lynda
When you selected to download the software from CoffeeCup you became a user of our software. You can unsubscribe from our e-mail news letters at www.coffeecup.com/email
Scott

Hmmmm, looks like I’ve been bumped off the special CEO list. Nick has passed the baton to Scott. Now if you read the beginning of this article, you know I did not download any software. Even if I did, downloading software is not opting in to get email. I am now a bit peeved – when someone writes to you telling you they didn’t opt-in and requesting that they be removed from your list would you not remove them and send a nicely worded email apologizing?

I decide to pull out my credentials to see if that makes any difference. As my husband says “My, what big credentials you have dear.”

Scott

1) I did not download your software
2) Sending me emails that I did not request is called spam
3) Your unsubscribe link does not work

Why won’t you just take me off your list and confirm back to me?

Lynda Partner
- Founder and former CEO of GotCorp – permission-based email marketing software
- Past Board member of CAUCE Canada (Coalition against Unsolicited Commercial Email)
- Member of the Anti-Spam Task Force for the Canadian Federal Government
- CoFounder of the Email Service Provider’s Coalition

So now Scott has an unhappy well-informed person emailing him 1) that his unsubscribe method is flawed or at the very least unclear to the person using it, and 2) that for the 3rd time they’d like his company to remove a name from their list

What does Scott do next? I know you are waiting with bated breath…

Hi

As I said you did download the software. The IP address information all
matches up. I would agree that many you did not know what you were
downloading, but never the less the download occurred and this is how you because a CoffeeCup member.

You can also unsubscribe at any time through http://www.coffeecup.com/email
Scott

What would possess him to use  “As I said..” in a customer service email. Is this guy well? How many times would one of your prospects have to ask to be removed from a list before you’d do it for them? And signing someone up as a member does not give you permission to send them emails.

I confess at this point, I am no longer hoping he’ll do the right thing and restore my faith in him. I may have been a bit terse in my next email to him.

Did you even read my email?

I clicked your unsubscribe button. I want you to confirm
that  (email address spelled out) is not in your database any
longer – Today please or I will be obliged to report your company to
the many black list spam sites in my database

Lynda

At this point he does write back confirming I have been removed from his list and because my mother raised me to be polite and I am a little ashamed of my last outburst, I send the following

Thank you – after 5 requests we are finally where I wanted to be before I ever heard of your company.

I strongly suggest you change your practices – they are going to come back to bite you, especially if I ever get another unwanted email from you.

I figured we were done right? He finally did the right thing and removed me from his list. But no, a few minutes later I get the coup de grace.

I would also suggest you contact LP (the hosting company they are partnered with) because we show clearly that your account accessed and downloaded our software. You should have them cancel your account or you will still receive e-mail from us.

Scott

So I need to cancel my hosting account to avoid being spammed by a third party software vendor?  What can I possibly say at this point, except dear readers, the importance of following best practices (or even common sense) when sending emails to your prospects and customers. If not, it could be your company in a blog posting.

Such a little thing, such a big negative impact.

The survey is done, and I find myself unable to push the GO button because I am afraid.  There, I said it.  I AM AFRAID.

I am afraid that nobody will complete the survey
I am afraid that nobody will retweet my posts
I am afraid that I’ll annoy my followers if I talk about it
I am afraid that my voice is so very tiny that nobody will even hear it, and that will hurt

Where did this fear come from?  Since when did I become too polite and too timid to “Just Do It”.  I think it must have something to do with using a personal brand instead of a corporate brand. It’s MY NAME on this project.  If it fails, it’s all on me.  It’s like that feeling when you throw a party and for 30 minutes before people show up you are convinced nobody will.

Or is this a Canadian thing?  Too polite and too timid to “Just Do It”?  Is that why Nike is not a Canadian company? But I digress.

Now don’t get me wrong, I also truly believe that far too many people (especially marketers) jump into things prematurely – throwing up a website without thinking through who the target audience is and what they want to do on it, opening a twitter account and only tweeting about themselves, writing press releases in 20 minutes that are so full of Blah, Blah Blah text that you couldn’t pay a reader to understand what they’re saying.  The real challenge is finding that perfect balance of Preparation and Planning vs Doing It without thinking.

I know I am too far on one side of that continuum.  I have been sitting on this project, coming up with reasons why I should delay – It’s the 4th of July, Summer is a slow time, It’s raining, I have a headache – you get the idea.  Then I watched Danny Brown run a live 24 hour Tweetathon to raise money for charity. Now that took guts. He had no idea if anyone would show up and 24 hours is a lot of dead air to fill if they didn’t.  But he did it, he pushed the GO button. I actually have no idea how successful he was but I think that’s my entire point.  I have no idea how successful his event was but I am left admiring him for not being afraid, for believing in what he does, for going out and asking people to participate, for Just Doing It.

I  have never met Danny except on Twitter,  but he was my inspiration, the one thing that got me over my fear of failing, the person who virtually put his hand over mind and helped me push that Go button.

There – I’ve done it.

Now we’ll see what happens but for better or for worse, I am no longer afraid.

I hope you’ll join in and take the survey.   This survey is for us, the curious people who use social media.  It will tell us more about us, who are we, what we have in common.  It’s a not-for-profit project, all the results will be shared with anyone who asks and all the questions were contributed by folks like you and me.  Instead of a prize, I have also decided to donate $1 for every completed survey to Danny Brown’s 12for12K charity of the month, so why not do some good – for you and for others.

1. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get a blog going”. You ask who is going to blog about what. They say “Nobody has time but we can just summarize or talk about other people’s blog posts”.

2. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter”  You say OK, what will we tweet?”  They say “Our press releases and product info of course, what else would we tweet?”

3. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter” You say OK, who will tweet?”  They say “Everyone in the company, but we’ll need legal to approve each tweet first.”

4. Your CEO or client says “We need to get everyone talking to each other” You say OK, what do you have in mind? They say “We just sent out a link to < latest corporate social media platform >, that ought to do it.”

5. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter” You say “OK, are our customers and partners on twitter?”  They say “Why does that matter, we just need to say we use social media”.

Here are 5 questions to ask when they say they need to get some of that social media stuff going.

1. What part of our corporate strategy does this contribute to? This is the key question, ask it first and don’t go any further till you agree on the answer.

2. Who is the intended audience? Are the people we want to reach (customers/prospects/partners/influencers) using it?  If they aren’t, who do you think will hear and engage with us?

3. What do we want to accomplish with our use of social media? Is it to nurture leads, provide support, do market research?  Knowing this is critical.

4. Are you prepared to invest in this program for the long haul?  Social media is not free, just like real life relationships they need ongoing nurturing and engagement from the company.

5. How will we know that our programs have been successful? Spend the most time on this question – be sure everyone agrees before you start.

The answers to these questions will tell you 1) if you should be using social media, 2) if you are ready to use social media, and it will start you down the path to deciding what form of social media makes sense to you.

The bottom line is that social media, like all marketing programs needs a plan, a budget, and an ROI. It is not just something you just start “doing”.  We know it, now we just need to share this knowledge before too many companies waste more time and money.

Logically I know I was reading a description of what XZY company does, emotionally all I heard was “Blah Blah Blah”. I had no idea what this company did, none! Be honest, you’ve done it too right? Read something and had absolutely no idea what the product was or why you might benefit from buying it. You’re probably like most of us, who don’t admit this for fear of looking dumb or uninformed.

How easy it is for many marketing people I know to pump out words, they can jump right up and start writing, often on their first day on the job or project. Their words simply flow onto the page, looping into just the right sized paragraphs, nicely spell checked and usually containing an abundance of the latest buzz words.

These words turn into product brochures, web sites, press releases, white papers and blog posts, and prolific marketing writers are praised for their ability to “produce” and “deliver”. They measure their clicks and down loads and honestly believe they’ve done well.

I beg to differ.

In 1868, writer Mark Twain said “Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

In an age where attention spans are shrinking, and 140 word sound bites are all you are allowed on marketing vehicles like Twitter, it is once again time for writing less to become a valued marketing skill.

Writing less actually requires more work, not less, but here are 10 tips to help you along.

1) Start with what your company does and describe your company’s focus in no more than 3 words. Yes, you heard me correctly – 3 WORDS, not 30 and not 300. Mine is “Results-based marketing”. Disney’s is “innovative story telling”. Coca Cola’s is “liquid refreshment”.

2) Before you start writing your next piece, write a summary using less than 100 words. Make sure you don’t cheat – less than 100 words, and then make sure that these words support the 3 word focus phrase you came up with in point #1.

3) After you’ve done your summary, go back and highlight the one thing that you want your reader to remember after reading your piece. If you can’t find the one thing, go back and rewrite your 100 word summary.

4) If your document is going to be more than 500 words, write an outline before you start to keep your thoughts organized – your readers will thank you for it.

5) Use simple words. If you make software, say you make software. The people who like software will want to read more. If it takes me an entire paragraph to figure out that you make software, even if I like software, I won’t be reading it. People don’t like their heads to ache when they read and they don’t like feeling stupid because they can’t figure out what you are saying.

6) Once you’ve written your piece, cut at least 1/3 of the words out. The best place to look is the first paragraph, for some reason it’s usually the weakest. If you can’t cut your precious words, ask a colleague to do it for you.

7) Count how many times you used your product or company name or the word “we” , if it’s more than once in every 500 words, ask yourself if you are writing about you or for your reader. For every statement you write, answer the question “what does this mean for my reader”.

Find a way to add words that complete this sentence “what this means to you is…..” after every statement you make.

9) Let your words sit before you finalize them. It’s amazing how much easier it is to edit your work after you’ve stepped away from it for a day or two.

10) Go back and chop some more – yes you can do it!

I won’t tell you how long it took me to write this blog post and it’s still not even close to crisp enough, but I hope I have hunted down and eliminated anything resembling Blah, Blah, Blah. If not, I hope you’ll tell me!

The Aggregator – They scan, skim and read more quickly than most human beings. Passionate about their particular interest area, they want others to share their interest and happily tweet links to interesting articles. Strangely they don’t retweet as much as you’d think, perhaps because they feel their value comes from the effort they put in to find the articles in the first place – I bet they can all tell you how many tweets they’ve made in the past week.

What’s great about them?  They can be like your own personal clipping service, reading through the dross and finding the juicy interesting articles for you.  A good one is invaluable.

When Aggregators go bad… they figure out how to use the “tweet this” button on bogs and news sites and suddenly the frequency of their tweets increases to a feverish pitch.  They begin to think they can only win if they tweet more than anyone else and they start tweeting more and more obscure articles.

The Life Detailer – You know them instantly when you get to their twitter page, not a single link to be found among the vast numbers of tweets that chronicle their life in minute detail.  The entire twitterverse knows what sports team they follow (not the San Jose Sharks anymore – hah!), what they had for breakfast (nothing as they were too hung over) and what they think of their mother-in-law (not much and someone should tell them tweets never die!)

What’s great about them?  Any time you think your life is really boring, you can reassure yourself knowing there are more people out there with even more boring lives.

When Detailers go bad – They become obsessed with adding more and more detail for public consumption. They are exhibitionists with a keyboard and we just know that they have tweeted while doing their business in that room where computers simply don’t belong.

The Promoter – every tweet is about their business, every tweet.  Did I mention it was every tweet?  Subtlety is not their strong suit.  Rarely are they subtle but they are almost always incredibly persistent. You know them, they are the same ones who email you a press release every 2 weeks and who don’t include an opt-out.

What’s great about them? – You gotta admire their persistence.

When Promoters go bad – they start bad, don’t they?

The Commentator – they tweet their opinions, they tweet other people’s opinions, they tweet what they see happening around them.   They are like bloggers with an attention deficit, not quite ready to invest the time required to write an entire article or post with a beginning, a middle and an ending.

What’s great about them?  Finally some original content on twitter – often funny and sometimes insightful, if you can find and follow a good one, you’ll be well rewarded.

When Commentators go bad – they start to turn into Detailers, it’s a fine line folks, walk it carefully.

The Socialite – you know them by their ratio of @ in their tweets.  A ratio of more than 1 @ per 100 characters is a dead giveway.  They are the folks who love CC: on email, the more people who hear them the better. They tend to be the group leaders and organizers and twitter is just another tool to help them communicate.

What’s great about them?  If you find a socialite you respect and admire, you may also enjoy their friends and want to follow them too. Click through to their @names and see who is out there, I’ve added many people to my follow list using indirect referrals from Socialites.

When Socialites go bad – They start tweeting famous people, suggesting that they actually have a relationship with these famous people, thereby increasing their Twitter status (would that be a twatus?)  At some point you gotta wonder why anyone wants to follow one side of a bunch of conversations even if it’s with a celebrity – it smacks of teenage girl talk. (Note added May 5th, my friend Gillian Brouse (@gilliebee) pointed out that every twitter account owner can choose not to see all these replies with only a few simple key strokes – RTFM Lynda!)

The Lurker – representing the majority of twitter users, the lurker follows many people (a friend told me yesterday he follows over 1000 in each of two accounts) but doesn’t tweet himself.  Lurkers are sponges, soaking up knowledge, gossip, news and creating impressions of people and products without feeling any need to contribute to the noise.

What’s great about them?  I believe they are the reason Twitter will survive long term. They are the ones who actually absorb what’s going on. They will eventually become your customers, your champions, your supporters and even your friends.  Let them lurk, and if they ever tweet you, be 100% sure to tweet them back.

When Lurkers go bad – they start to think they know you from reading your tweets. Recently I was being twitter-stalked (OK, I made that term up).  A lurker came out of the closet at a business event I was at and felt that his understanding of my tweets afforded him some special privileges.  It was a bit weird talking to someone I had never met who felt he knew me well.

So what’s the best Twitter type?  It really depends on why you use twitter.  I started out using twitter to learn from others who shared my business interests so I tend to follow Aggregators and Commentators, especially Commentators who have figured out how to add value in their tweets. I also learned that Aggregators and Commentators who don’t add any personal life tidbits quickly become boring, so a touch of Life Detailer is really important to me too.  I really don’t enjoy Socialites but I can see how others would.  The good news is that there are so many people out there that matching followers to your most comfortable twitter style is just a question of patience and persistence.

Why not follow me at www.twitter.com/lpartner and you can tell me what type I am and whether it works for you.

Technorati Profile

3 out of 4 marketers are using Twitter?  Hmmm…. that seemed really really high to me so I decided to do a bit of research myself.  I belong to an association of 1800 marketing executives based largely in the US.  The association keeps a directory of member twitter accounts which currently numbers 181, or 10% of members. Now it may be that only a few actually bothered to submit their twitter Ids but 10% is not a very high number.

This gave me a sample of at least 181 twitter accounts set up by marketers. I then went through and viewed each and every twitter page to determine if they were actually actively in use. My definition of active was more than 10 updates, with at least one of those updates submitted in the last 21 days.

I learned that only 55% of those twitter accounts were by my definition, active, or in other words, about half of the marketers who “used Twitter” to set up an account, had either never posted to it or had not posted anything for the past 3 weeks.

If the list of twitter accounts in the directory accurately reflects the total twitter accounts held by the group’s membership, then active twitter usage among this group of marketing executives is closer to 5%.

Admittedly “using Twitter” can mean many things. If I have set up a twitter account just to see what it’s all about, am I using Twitter?  If I search for my brand on twitter, am I using Twitter?

If you read Stelzner’s study and started to feel like you were really behind the times, perhaps you can rest more easily.  If only 5% of marketing executives are really using Twitter to actively promote their brands, you have some time.  Time to learn more, time to decide if Twitter is right for you, time to build it into an integrated marketing strategy, time to do it right to get the best return.  BREATHE!