It was very interesting watching the #motrinmoms saga on Twitter this weekend. For those who missed it, this ad is what is causing all the fuss. And if you’re like me and hate reading all that (literally) flipping text in the ad, here’s a blog that has posted the text of the ad.

I agree, the ad was a really poor choice on Motrin’s part. They clearly know nothing at all about babywearing, or that done right it’s not going to hurt. Not to mention how good it is for the baby. Most mother’s really enjoy the experience.

But what has been interesting to see from a business standpoint is just how quickly word spreads through social media. Ladybug Landings created a YouTube video on the responses.

Motrin responded pretty quickly, considering this started on a Saturday. The ad came off their site on Sunday. They also emailed some of the bloggers who had posted about it.

Where do I think Motrin blew it?

Primarily, they made babywearing sound like something moms do merely to be trendy. If they had talked to mothers who actually do wear their babies, they would have known better. It’s highly practical, and there’s a reason mothers have carried babies in slings for thousands of years. It’s also easier on the back than just carrying baby.

The word choices were very poor. Many moms expressed offense at the use of the term “supposedly” when the ad talked about the effects of babywearing and bonding with your child. Add in phrases such as “it totally makes me look like an official mom” and “if I look tired and crazy” and of course you’re going to leave mothers feeling insulted.

When you see something like this happen in social media, take some lessons from it.

Lesson 1: Know your audience.

If the ad execs had known much at all about babywearing, this ad would have been very, very different. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out the aches and pains of motherhood or of attachment parenting, but don’t mock it without understanding what you’re mocking. The attempted humor fell completely flat.

Lesson 2: Use humor with caution.

Done right, humor can make people remember an ad better. They may or may not remember the associated product, but the ad will be more memorable.

Combine this with the potential to deeply offend your target market, and humor can be very hard to use. It’s always a risk. People might remember the joke but not the product. They might hate the joke so much that they won’t ever want to use your product again.

Lesson 3: Keep an eye on social media.

This can be difficult. There’s a lot of social media options out there, and deciding which to pay attention to isn’t easy.

A simple Google Alert can help you keep track of what’s being said about your business, of course, although it’s not always enough. The Motrin fiasco spread in just a few hours, with many mothers tweeting their feelings on the ad.

Lesson 4: Consider the positives.

It stings when social media slams your product. It can’t be easy for any business to watch people trash their efforts and swear to never use their products. But you can take some positives away.

People are talking about you, for example. You know the old saw about bad publicity being better than none, right? It’s true enough. People start talking because you got them interested.

When people are talking about you through social media, you have the chance to interact with them. Figure out what went wrong and publicly do what you can to make it right. Contact the most vocal people who have been talking about your mistake and let them know you’re trying to fix it.

I’ve been enjoying using Twitter these past few months. It’s an interesting way to meet people and to generate some traffic. Not a ton in my case, but some. Meeting people has been working better for me.

Twitter is highly social, a sort of instant messaging to a group, but you never know which of your followers will be paying attention at a particular moment. I’ve had interesting conversations with people who I know pretty much nothing about, aside from what they’ve posted recently on Twitter.

But yesterday I started seeing discussion on a new service, called Magpie. I put a nofollow on that link, folks, because I really don’t like the service. It’s just not what using Twitter should be about, even if you do other kinds of marketing there.

You see, it’s a service that puts ads into your Twitter stream.

If you’re marketing your own site or products, that’s one thing. But adding in someone else’s ads just strikes me as over the line and a great way to lose followers. I’m already seeing people say they will unfollow (link shows people’s thoughts on Magpie as well as what I think are Magpie tweets) anyone who uses that service to send them ads, and honestly, I don’t blame them at all. I’m likely to do the same.

Might hang around long enough just to see if people let it get obnoxious.

Really, I can’t see this as being worth anyone’s time. I know it will be easy to sign up, but do you really want to annoy people who decided to follow you because you say interesting things?

If you want to earn money from your use of Twitter there are better ways to go about it. Use affiliate links for products you really love. Mention your own sites. Above all else, keep it real.

Your followers on Twitter grow to have certain expectations from you. They quickly learn who does nothing but self promotion or promotion of other products, versus who has something interesting to say. Go ahead and market, but be sure it’s interesting.

Otherwise, you’ll soon be talking to yourself.

As you work on your blog, it’s good to read up on ways to improve your chances for success. There are so many things you can do to bring up your readership or generally improve your blog.

You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it all out. You’ll even find strong opinions on what seem to be little things.

Full vs. Partial Feeds

This one can get quite a bit of debate. Full feeds are great for people who use feed readers and just want to get their blog reading done, but the blog itself may lose out on traffic from those readers.

Partial feeds mean that the first part of your posts must drag people into clicking to read the rest of the post. But some readers will unsubscribe if you require this of them.

There are some strong feelings on both sides of this. Some bloggers worry about their feeds being scraped if they use full feeds. Others want readers to come to their blogs to hopefully improve the number of comments and maybe even ad clicks.

Personally, I go for full feeds simply as the most functional option for readers. Anyone who is moved enough to comment still has to click through to the site. Properly added product recommendations will still make it through to the feed reader, so you can still get affiliate commissions.

Displaying Feed Counts

Having a lot of readers is a wonderful thing for a blog. It’s one of the things that makes blogging worthwhile. Some bloggers display their feed counts, while others don’t.

And of course some fake the numbers so that they look popular. All too easy to do and generally too easily discovered.

I’ve seen general agreement that if you have fewer than 100 subscribers to your feed, you may as well forget about displaying the count. You aren’t getting the social proof that you should want from this. Some will say to wait for even higher numbers, but that’s up to the individual blogger.

Even some sites with a huge number of subscribers will prefer to not show numbers.

Don’t bother faking counts, as being caught out greatly damages your reputation. Instead, think about why it is you want your count to show.

In many cases, it is for that social proof that a lot of people are subscribing to your site. Feed subscriptions don’t tell the whole story, but it’s a number that is easily made public.

Just keep in mind that there are other ways for people to tell how much traffic your blog is getting. The number of comments is a good clue. A high subscriber count displayed with few comments (assuming comments are turned on) can indicate a problem.

Using the Right Social Media Sites

Social media websites have proven to be an amazing way to get the word out about individual blog posts. But if you try to sign up and participate in them all, you’re going to drive yourself crazy and possibly be counted as a spammer if you do nothing more than self-promote.

I’ll be perfectly clear. Social media can make a huge difference to your blog and the traffic you get. But overdoing it is not the answer.

Pick one or two to start with, and participate on them. Promote your own things occasionally, but your main focus should be on being a good member. You’re looking to build a solid reputation and some trust. Network with people doing well on those sites as well as with others just starting out. Get a real feel for what goes over well.

Don’t give yourself too hard a time about learning it all right away. There’s a lot to figure out and taking your time to understand what you’re trying to accomplish will do more than plunging blindly in.

While any of these can make a difference in how your site grows, they really aren’t that likely to make or break you. Even your own use of social sites, which can drive serious traffic at times, can matter far less than if your readers use them. Give yourself time and work the way that is best and most productive for you.

I shared a bit of news with a friend a few days ago. I told her that I’m pregnant. Unplanned, but sometimes babies like to beat the odds.

What amazed me was how fast word got out. A few days later the father of one of my daughter’s friends asked me about it. The girls had been friends in preschool but were now separated. The friend I told was the mother of a kindergarten friend.

Makes me really curious as to the path the rumor took. So far as I know, those two people don’t know each other.

I don’t mind word getting out that way, but I did find it amusing.

If only it were that simple to get word of mouth marketing going for a business. As a rule, it’s not. How many products get people talking the way word of a coming baby does? How many blog posts do that?

Of course, it can be done. That’s the whole idea of viral marketing. You create something that people want to talk about, that they want to share with all their friends.

It’s quite the challenge, although you can take a look at the various social media sites and see things that have taken off well in that area. These are a little different from things that get talked about in the real world but similar principles do apply.

Humor can work. Then again, it can fail miserably. That’s just how it goes. But people like to laugh and if you can make them do that they may tell their friends.

Extremely useful items also get talked about. That’s what gets people going on about their favorite new gadgets or even a cleaning product that works really well.

Engaging people’s enthusiasm matters. People are generally enthusiastic about babies, whether they be their own or someone else’s. Think about what really gets you really enthusiastic.

It’s not easy to get people to talk about your business but you can do it. Look at things from the customer’s view and figure out what there is to rave about to other people.

I’ve been using Twitter for a few weeks now, so I decided it was time for an update on my experiences with it.

It is interesting. I’ve been able to interact with a variety of marketers, some quite well known. I’ve been directed to articles I never would have noticed otherwise, but were quite interesting.

I have 92 followers as of this writing. That’s not bad considering that I don’t really do much to build the following there, although I do have links to my Twitter profile on some of my sites. But that’s 92 people who might just notice what I have to say.

I do a mix of tweeting things going on in my daily life with links to articles I’ve written or found interesting. I don’t really have the focus I think I should, yet.

How Many Accounts?

Right now I have one account. I am considering spitting it out to a second account, so that each is more focused. Considering that I feel you need to tweet several times a day for any particular account I can’t say I can see going beyond that.

I haven’t decided for certain to do that yet. There are advantages, certainly, to focusing things on a particular niche with an account, just as there is for any other form of marketing. But it’s an additional amount of work I’m not sure I want to put into Twitter yet.

How Responsive Are Twitter Followers?

I can’t say that I’ve gotten a great response on Twitter yet. Some of it is due simply to numbers. 92 really is a small number there, and people are not terribly likely to notice a tweet if they aren’t online at the time. Matter of fact, it can be easy to miss a tweet just by stepping away from the computer, depending on how you check on the people you’re following.

But at the same time I do understand that people can be very responsive on Twitter. People have asked questions there and gotten dozens of responses, just about instantly. That’s not something you can get just anywhere.

Making Twitter Easier to Use

I use Twhirl to keep up with what’s going on with the people I follow on Twitter. As I recall, it was a tweet from Maki that brought it to my attention. There are other programs that do similar things, and of course you can use it from your cell phone if you can do SMS messages.

Who Do You Follow?

Finding interesting people to follow is a big part of the fun. I started out searching for a few of the names I knew would be on there, and then added in by using keyword searches and seeing who looked interesting.

As with anything of this sort, a lot of accounts weren’t particularly active, some with many months since their last tweet. I don’t follow those, as a rule.

Another tactic I used to find people to follow was to look at who people I already follow are following. It’s a way to see a lot more accounts than I would have otherwise.

I also found Who Should I Follow while using StumbleUpon. It’s an interesting concept. You enter your Twitter name, and it makes recommendations. I thought the results were interesting, and did follow some of the people it recommended. Only time and tweets will tell me for sure if they’re good choices.

The Hazards

Biggest hazard to Twitter is that it can be a time suck. Reading all the tweets, following interesting links, tweeting… it can add up.

On the plus side, tweets are short. Reading them doesn’t take much time, nor does tweeting.

It’s just like forum marketing or anything else where it’s possible to get sucked too deep into the social side of things. You need to remember why you’re there and keep some focus on your goals while still having fun and being interesting. No being an obnoxious marketer!

Benefits on Other Social Media Sites

Tonight I had one of the people I follow on Twitter locate me on StumbleUpon. That’s another friend on a site I use regularly, and someone I’ve made some sort of impression upon. Not a bad deal at all.

Other Twitter Perspectives

Of course many other bloggers have posted their thoughts on Twitter, so I’ll close this out with more links you may enjoy.

5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 2 - Pre-Prepared Tweets
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 3 - TweetBaiting
Twitter Networking 101
Tweeting Outside The IM Niche…
Social Marketing Pitfalls & The Twitter Time Suck
Why Twitter Is Not Stupid!
So How Do You Find People on Twitter?

Social media marketing has become one of my favorite ways to market a website. Most specifically I like StumbleUpon. It’s fun from both a user and a marketer perspective.

It’s best to first get to know StumbleUpon, Digg and other social media by using them as a user, not as a marketer. You need to get a feel for what people are after, and maybe to build a solid profile.

You absolutely do not want to be the marketer who bookmarks, diggs or stumbles his or her own posts only. People catch on fast, and your efforts will soon be dismissed, even if the quality of what you are offering is good.

Worse is if you’re doing that with no care for what people want to see. Promoting your quick work rather than your best is a rotten idea.

Getting Visitors to Socially Bookmark Your Site

It’s tough getting anyone to bookmark your site, whether it be in their bookmarks on their internet browser or in social media. But one of the delightful things about social media is that it’s easy to put up links to encourage people to think about it.

There are a few different ways to go about this. On this blog right now I’m using the AddThis plugin. It places a link for bookmarking that gives users a tremendous range of social media sites they can bookmark this site at.

Honestly, I’m often thinking that it’s overkill and really isn’t doing the job. While AddThis means that my posts can easily be bookmarked through any service, sometimes offering lots of options means you’re offering too many. But the stats are a nice feature.

You can do this service by service. A very good option to consider is to figure out which social media sites are your priority, and put up chicklets or links only to them. You do not want to have a bunch of them at the bottom of your site. Too many definitely gets confusing.

Digg also offers a nice way to integrate it into your posts. They provide a couple of options using Javascript that allow you to show how many times a given post has been dugg. The advantage is that if you’re getting dugg regularly, a high number shows how popular the post is. But if you aren’t getting many diggs, the constant 0 diggs showing on your posts can be a kind of drag. No one wants to know how unpopular you are! (grin!) Some of the other sites offer similar integration options.

But is the Traffic Any Good?

There’s the biggest question! Does social media marketing do you any good at all, aside from driving up your traffic stats?

Maybe…

Social media can be enough to take down your server. It rarely pays off in terms of immediate revenue.

What you do get varies by site. People like getting on the front page of Digg because it gets you in front of a lot of big bloggers, and they might link to you, as will smaller bloggers. The attention can overall do your site good.

In my experience, StumbleUpon can bring a lot of visitors who just bounce right back out of your site, but it also brings some who explore a little. You can get the host crashing peaks of traffic, but Stumble traffic also tends to endure longer. I can get bits of traffic for weeks for a given page that Stumbled well. It can also peak more than once.

Do Friends and Fans Matter?

Social media generally includes the ability to mark other users as friends or to be a fan of a member. Advantages can be both real and theoretical.

If you’re on Digg, for example, you can see what your friends have been digging, and they can see what you’ve dugg. You can send out shouts to friends to try to get more attention to things you want to do well.

You can do similarly with StumbleUpon, but people have theories about what else having friends and fans on there might do. Many think that if you have a lot of friends and fans, the power of your Stumbles goes up and you can send more traffic. It’s pure theory, but the idea is that you’ll only get a lot of fans if you stumble well, so a lot of them is a sign of trust.

Being a Good User

Bookmarking quality resources is part one of being a good social media user. Another part is writing quality reviews and comments about what you bookmark.

Posting good reviews and comments about the sites you bookmark helps to build your reputation. If you’re the first to bookmark a site, so much the better in many cases. Most will note who discovered a given page. This puts your profile right at the top and may even help you to come to the attention of the site owner.

I Want to Bookmark My Own Stuff! I Need the Traffic!

Go right on ahead. Just choose wisely.

On most services you should not bookmark every page of your site. It’s not too bad on del.icio.us, but on other sites that is a sure way to annoy other users.

If it’s traffic you’re after, don’t oversubmit your own work. If you already have some traffic, your best stuff may be submitted by users anyhow. It’s really nice when you don’t have to do your own submissions. Looks a lot better too.

It’s hard to resist, however, when you don’t have enough traffic to generate natural submissions. You’ll need to be highly critical of your own work, so that you can select that which is worth submitting, versus the ones that might not do the job.

On Digg you can send your friends a shout about things you would like to see dugg. That doesn’t mean do it every time you digg something. That’s a great way to shorten your friends list. You can also send pages to your StumbleUpon friends through the toolbar. Same principle, of course. Don’t do it much.

Overall, I have seen some good benefits from using social media. But the key word there is using. It won’t be nearly as useful to you if you see it only as a marketing tool.

Starting a Home Business Series:

Get Your Home Business Going in the New Year
Brainstorming Your Home Business Ideas
How I Research a Market for a Niche
How Do You Get a Website Going?
How Much Does an Online Business Really Cost?
How Complex Does a Website Need to Be?
How to Set Up a Wordpress Blog
These Are a Few of My Favorite Themes
Can Article Marketing Work for You?
It Sounds Like a Lot of Work - Is It Really That Hard?
Building Your List
Getting Social with Your Blog (current page)
Is Your Site Ready for Pay Per Click?
Article Marketing Statistics
Putting the Pieces Together

I’ve developed quite a fondness for StumbleUpon. Not only is it good for marketing a website, it’s fun. It’s hard to beat that kind of a combination.

Now, I know a lot of articles on building up a Stumble account really annoys regular Stumble users. That’s reasonable, considering that many tactics do nothing more than annoy people who Stumble because they enjoy it so much. I think it’s important to consider how to use StumbleUpon correctly.

Take the time to Stumble

People debate whether or not you should Stumble your own content. I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with it, provided the content is something that is likely to be enjoyed by other users. Before you start submitting your own content, figure out what appeals to other Stumblers.

The easiest way to do this is to pick interests to show in your profile related to your topic, and start stumbling. Look at the reviews the pages that get your attention get.

Doing this will help you to figure out just a little of what appeals to Stumblers. There’s no easy formula, but you can get some idea as to what qualities you should consider when creating your own content.

Pick your Stumbles carefully

Whatever you do, do not Stumble just any article you’ve posted on your website. I see far too many sites that I have trouble picturing being of interest to people using StumbleUpon. Pages focused purely on selling something, for example. If it’s something unusual or funny it can work, but without something like that, I have trouble picturing them doing well as Stumbles.

Similar for purely self promotional items. If you wouldn’t want to read it about someone else or their site, your fellow Stumblers probably won’t want to see it from you or your site.

Pick articles that are well-written, have a unique perspective, have a humorous slant, or are otherwise interesting. Same for images, videos and so forth. Stumblers get very tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, so you don’t want to submit something that you’ve seen on several other sites. Be more creative than that.

Don’t Stumble your own site excessively

While the limitations are guesses, most estimates I have seen say you can Stumble a given site no more than about 15 times. However, I have seen some people say you can get cut off after far fewer Stumbles. The more honest you are about your Stumbles, I suspect, the more freedom you have in Stumbling your own site.

Make friends and fans
It’s not entirely clear whether or not having more friends and fans on StumbleUpon improves the power of your Stumbles, but most people believe they do. People who have interests in your field are great choices, especially if they are also regular Stumblers.

Stumble often

And Stumble honestly. Submit pages that aren’t your own that you genuinely enjoy. Thumbs up pages when you like them. Enjoy yourself. Stumbling can be incredibly addictive if you relax and don’t worry about whether or not you’re getting anything out of it.

Think before you contact friends

Contacting StumbleUpon friends is a feature I’ve never taken advantage of personally. I know you can do this, but it is a feature to use with caution. Overuse is a great way to alienate friends. But if you’ve written something that you especially want attention to, and think it will do well, give it a try. But I wouldn’t send it to your entire list of friends right away, or possibly ever. Send it to a few and see if it was really a good idea.

And do so rarely.

Remember that traffic for traffic’s sake means very little

Stumble traffic may not be right for your website. It doesn’t necessarily convert or bring links. But it can.

The better the content, the better your chance of getting something from it. But it’s also the greater the chance you have of getting a ton of traffic, possibly too much for your server. You do want to be aware of this impact and certain about whether or not the potential extra costs will be worth it.

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, stumble, stumbling, social bookmarks, social networks, building traffic, oneline business, home business

Sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon can drive delightful amounts of traffic. If you want to have high levels of traffic driven to your site, they’re one of the great ways to get it. But actually getting the traffic is difficult. So many people look for ways to cheat their way to traffic.

There are ways to do this. There are groups that will Digg, Stumble or bookmark on various other websites for you, just as you do so for other members. I won’t name any here; if that’s the solution for you, search them out on your own. You’ll find them.

However, a lot of people really don’t understand what they should be having other people submit for them. They’ll put in just any old blog post and hope for traffic. But what you really want to submit are things that will get people interested in what your site has to offer. Otherwise, all you are doing is burning up bandwidth.

If you’re going to do something like this, start out by using the service you’re targeting. What kinds of pages tend to do well? You don’t want to be copying anyone, but you can be inspired by the general topics that tend to do well. Read the rest of this entry »