social media Archives - Page 6 of 9 - WeGrowMedia

Huge Opportunity for Publishers & Professionals: Social Media, Education & Niche Markets

As I mentioned the other week, I am unbelievably excited about the future of online education. Today, I want to talk about this topic in terms of professional niche markets.

When people talk about “education,” it is often assumed that the target audience is those under 21 years of age. But I’m interested in how we educate ourselves as adults, how learning is a lifelong process.

I have been studying various ways that people are approaching more formal classes via the web. And I see incredible things happening, and incredible potential.

I am not talking about simply connecting people with information, that is only part of the equation. Education goes beyond delivering content, it extends to mentoring, fusing connections between students, and supporting the many psychological needs around learning. Giving someone a list of things to study is very different than teaching those things, and forming a teacher-student relationship.

People don’t pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to MIT just for the information in the book. People don’t pay thousands of dollars for continuing education for the course material alone. People don’t travel to expensive conferences just to hear the sessions on the stage.

They go for the connection – to other students, and to other experts.

Roger Ebert recently wrote about how Twitter has given him a voice again. What this means is that social media gives EVERYONE a voice, regardless of your location, age, economic class, experience, etc.

Access to information was the first phase of the online revolution. Access to each other is the second.

What I am seeing is our ability to scale this access. One way is forums – I have leveraged two of them in the past six months, both focused around online marketing:

Third Tribe Marketing – a monthly subscription site for those looking to grow their business online.
DIY Themes – when you purchase one of their WordPress themes, you are given access to forums, filled with amateurs and experts, sharing ideas and technical knowledge on how to leverage and customize the themes.

In both cases, access to these forums are a compelling selling point in their products. And both deliver – if you choose only to read, there is a TON of useful information shared by a variety of voices. If you choose to engage, you see powerful relationships form, and reputations being built as people help and grow their expertise.

And both of these forums require payment in some form or another. For Third Tribe Marketing, I pay $27 a month (the cost has since gone up), and for DIY Themes, I spent $160 with them, and was given access (I could have spent much less – around $80 and been given the same access.)

Everyone talks about ‘free’ on the web in terms of both content and networks. And sure, most of the web is free and will remain free.

But for specialized niches where people have targeted needs and a deep desire to connect with experts, grow their own skills, and become a part of a community – it is not unreasonable to put a price tag next to that. In fact, for many online businesses (and especially online publishers), I think this is a HUGE opportunity for revenue.

This is not about finding a way to ‘monetize’ their audience – it is about providing incredible value, and truly growing their careers and interests. Sure, professional organizations and business media can build out these systems. But I also think you will see more independent groups begin creating curricula around business & professional topics, and even brands leverage education as a form of content marketing.

For online publishers, this is an opportunity to move beyond the fragmented culture of simply producing article after article (or blog post after blog post.) Education is goal oriented, and can profoundly shape the lives of those you serve. The measurement is not if an article was published, but if a student moved their career in the right direction. If value was created in your market.

Thanks!

-Dan

With Social Media, All Businesses are Small Businesses

Did you have a local community store growing up? The grocer, coffee shop, newstand or diner? A place where you knew who ran the shop, they knew you, and you built a relationship one small conversation at a time.

Well, all businesses can now build this type of relationship with their customers, regardless of location, product or industry. One Tweet at a time. One comment at a time. One post at a time.

Business now have the ability to listen to what their customers are interested in, what bugs them, and engage in small conversations. What’s more, you don’t just get to see how they interact with your brand, but with your competitors, with their friends, and their entire network.

But sure, this is a lot of work. It’s not enough to ‘monitor’ your customers on social media, you have to constantly work to build real relationships, and be constantly watching your customers’ preferences and behaviors.

A few months back I was picking up lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant that I go to regularly. The owner is always behind the counter, a man in his late 50s. On that day, he was on the phone with the cable company talking about when they can fix his TV at home. He laughed when they asked him if they could stop by when he gets off work – he said, “You mean at 11:30 at night?” It was noon when this conversation took place, and he had clearly been there for awhile already. It was his store, and he worked it every hour it was open. It’s not that he didn’t have staff – there are many other employees around, and its a fairly large space, at least 25 tables, plus a healthy take-out business. But when his store is open, he is there, connecting with his customers.

Social media gives all businesses this kind of access to their customers – 24/7. Is it work? No, it’s an opportunity, to listen, to help, to grow your business. With social media, all businesses are small businesses.

Thanks!

-Dan

Social Media is About Quality, Not Quantity.

There are many ways companies talk about their customers online: users, followers and page views are three that come to mind. Sure, these phrases are convenient sometimes, but when considering your online strategy, they can be dangerous terms.

Social media is about quality, not quantity. And yet, when we move our businesses online via blogging, social media, video, etc – people often default to the most basic ways of measuring their success. It’s all about the numbers, and more is better.

And that’s just silly.

If you are a niche publication, do you want 20,000 people delivering 30,000 page views to your website, or just the 1,000 who care passionately about your industry, and spend their budgets with the brands that you cover? You know, the people who will actually sign up for your newsletter, comment on your articles, email you with follow up questions, attend events that you do, and are shaping the industry that you love.

Sometimes, to feel professional and like adults, we talk about those who read our stuff as “users” or “page views.”

But do you have an amazing conversation with a “user,” a “page view,” or a “follower?” No, you don’t. Is this how a business is built? Is this how a community is created? One ‘user’ at a time? Nope. That’s how FAILING businesses are created. There is a difference between a group of people standing around next to each other, and a community.

When building your brand online, consider ways to segment your audience. Who are your tightest connections – reaching out to you again and again, engaging with you, sharing what you do?

What segment of your ‘traffic’ is a mistake – people who came to your website via Google by accident and left after 3 seconds? They aren’t a part of your community. Those page views don’t count.

This is how web stats lie – not because of the numbers themselves, but in how we use them. Web analytics can be powerful tools, if used properly – but often not by focusing on basic metrics about quantity.

Twitter follower counts are misleading. Do you know how many of your followers are spammers, people who follow 40,000 other people or who haven’t logged on in more than a year?

Do you know who are your most valuable Twitter followers? Do you know why?

The goal is not to view web stats to increase the quantity, but rather, decrease it. Find ways to segment and segment until you are left with a core group of people who care desperately about the things you do. This applies to your Twitter followers, to web analytics, to the many ways you measure performance online.

Then, focus intently on those PEOPLE. Engage with them – the targeted few, not the masses who never really cared about you and what you represent. Consider how even if you identify 300 core people who follow you on Twitter and love what you do – that even they might break out into 6 distinct communities, and that you may serve each one differently.

When you walk into a restaurant, do you want to be treated like a ‘user.’ Or do you want to be treated like a valuable customer – someone who wants to have a great connection with what is being offered. Do you want to be just another number on their daily ledger, or do you want to be Norm from Cheers – where everybody knows your name?

Thanks!

-Dan

The Virtual Handshake

Likely, there are people you would love to meet that inspire you and who could give your career a big push forward. More and more, you can access these people via social media – a simple web search will turn up their Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, personal blog, Flickr photos, Tumblr, Facebook profile, and the like.

Before you give them a virtual handshake, consider how much of a contribution and commitment you have made to the ecosystem they value most.

Like a handshake in real life, the manner in which you are introduced to someone is often as valuable as the handshake itself. For instance:

Did you shove your way through a crowd, stalk them while the person was involved in another conversation, and at the slightest opportunity, run up to them, already halfway through your elevator speech, with one hand on the stack of business cards in your pocket?
Or, were you introduced by a common associate, someone who is familiar to them, who they trust, and who you have established trust with as well. Have you slowly built a sense of familiarity – that you are someone who is helping to create the world they value most?

I suppose sales people delineate this as cold or warm calls – how far along are you in the sales funnel, etc. Never is this more valuable than in how we interact as a culture – because so much of what we do is based on trust.

With the advent of social media, the ‘virtual hand shake’ is a way that we come to meet each other more and more often. And building trust before the handshake is not only about who we are and what we say, but in who we know, how well we play with others, and how effectively we are building a better world.

When you consider approaching someone via social media, don’t bug them. Instead, understand their world. See who they follow on Twitter, who they share links from. Find out what topics inspire them, especially the topics outside of your given market.

Understand their network. If that is the world you want to be a part of, then you need to make a commitment to the entire ecosystem, to a series of relationships, and not just rely on some pitch to get what you want.

The handshake is not the first step, it is the result of a commitment you have already made to that person, to their world, and to the common things you both care about.

Thanks!

-Dan