30 Days to 1,000 Loyal Followers - Is It Possible?

September 15th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

In my last post, I talked about going to Borders and looking for some literary inspiration at the adult professional level, as opposed to the board book, 9 month old level. I came home with several books, including

1) Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”
2) Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

3) The Upside of the Downturn: Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath

Seth Godin’s book is a great start, because it’s a fast, easy read. If you’ve heard the following phrases a lot, they’re either picking it up from Seth Godin, or we’re all saying the same things now:

- change status quo
- it’s going to be a game changer
- managers have employees, leaders have followers

I’ve seen status quo and game changer several times in the past week on the political front and in articles, which of of course get recycled numerous times on Twitter.com and other social media and content-sharing sites. Seth Godin’s book talks about being a leader, and how we need YOU - think the US ARMY - to lead us. He talks about previously unknown people, or possibly still unknown to you and me, social media leaders or bloggers on the Web that have a true following. Godin says you need 1,000 loyal, true followers to do amazing things. I’m in 100% agreement. I recently launched Bizwatch, a new search analytics platform that integrates the most important aspects of search marketing into one place, one web-based console, one data warehouse. I told my technology team that I had a goal of 1,000 customers, or when we have achieved $2M in revenue. Instead of marketing to everyone, I’ve chosen to market to multipliers first to test the market. I’ve received excellent feedback, and new customers.

The product has been fully tested, and we’re getting some exciting offers to license the application in various markets, verticals and customize the application. But to further promote the market, I believe and have always believed that education is key to marketing. Thus, the timeliness of Seth Godin’s suggestion that we need 1,000 loyal, true followers to succeed.

I’d like to test this theory with Bizwatch, and our Twitter following. Currently, I have a Twitter following of 340 true followers, meaning I clean out the spam on a weekly basis. You won’t see many, if any, adult followers on my @bizresearchlmt account. Most of my followers are therefore genuine people, not robots or sale-centric followers. I have an assortment of followers, including a representation of my hobbies such as @animalplanet and @cesarmillan in addition to @josephmorin, @gregboser @widgetgirl and @prominentplacement. So, to get to 1,000 followers, I need approximately 660 new true, loyal followers.

So how do you achieve 660 new true, loyal followers? And, could I do this in 30 days? Do you think this is possible, and of course, it’s important to note that I am a single, working new mom of a child less than a year, and add onto that - a dog, two cats, four fish, and a life! :-) I’m also in charge of the application design for Bizwatch, and also maintain current client service accounts for SEO, PPC, and Conversion Analytics.

I figure I have six hours a day to fulfill client services, five days a week (30 hours), and 2 hours, four nights a week (8 hours) to do some type of social media monitoring, and or contribution, along with keeping up on any issue related to Bizresearch agency services and Bizwatch search analytics product development and maintenance. So, some would say, I have absolutely NO time for Twitter, or LinkedIn, or social media. So, is it possible to gather 1,000 true loyal followers within 30 days (660 net over the current 330), and in only four to eight hours a week for one month?

And of course, what would I do with 1,000 loyal followers? Would I sell more Bizwatch Search Analytics accounts? Would I sell more search marketing services? After all, it’s a tough economy and people are hesitant to spend more money? How do I convince others that what I have to sell is worth their time and money, and in fact, could save them time and money?

I’m going to work on this for the next 30 days. Please check my @bizresearchlmt Twitter account to see if I’m adding on new followers, about 20 a day, between September 15 and October 15th.

September 15 - 340 followers

Goal:

October 15 - 1,000 loyal, true followers - this is the important part - it has to be loyal, true followers - no adult-rated automated let me show those single guys my boobs type of followers - ’cause they’re out there and they’re likely automated to some degree.

What’s my tactic? That I’ll have to reveal later. After, I’ve achieved 660 new loyal followers, in 30 days, on top of the current 340 followers. Also important: how do I keep from disengaging the current 340? I want to attract new loyal followers, and not detract the first 340, whom I consider to be quite loyal.

Stay tuned at http://www.twitter.com/bizresearchlmt and here.

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Looking for Inspiration? Do Something Remarkable.

September 6th, 2009

Like many weekends, by Sunday, I always feel the need to venture out in the early evening. Chores aside, exercise complete, my child’s needs met, and yet a feeling of restlessness rises that only a drive will quiet. So off we went to no specific place. We ate dinner at a favorite healthy spot. Then we ended up at Borders.

With a 9-month old, you can imagine that trips to the bookstore usually involve a board book or two, and that’s the extent of our budget some days. But tonight, I found myself wandering over to the business book section. I noticed that Border’s bookstore looked old and worn for some reason. There were fewer bookshelves. You could actually see most any section of the store, from one point, and yet, I couldn’t easily see the business books. Tonight, I was feeling the need for some inspiration in the form of a book.

I’ve often let books choose me. I don’t know why that is, but I like to journey along a bookstore aisle, and let a book jump out at me. I don’t follow book clubs, I simply let a book pick me. If the cover or heading catches my eye, and the inset further catches my attention, we might be headed somewhere. I finally settled on three books for business, and one for my 9-month old. Testing books on my 9-month old is easier - I simply drop the book into her lap and see if she thumbs every board book page and doesn’t toss it on the floor. If she starts talking to the book, I know we’re in good shape. But for me, it’s different. Tonight, I was looking for inspiration and I wasn’t sure of the form that it would come in.

I found it interesting that books written and published in 2007, just didn’t appeal to me. In fact, possibly those books in 2008 were also not grabbing my attention, or offering me a stamp of credibility. I mean after all, does anything we did two years ago still apply? Does it still work? Don’t we have to do things very differently now? I think we do. We have to do something remarkable.

That’s the one word that I kept seeing pop up tonight in an assortment of business books, written in the past year. “Remarkable”. Do something remarkable. Lead a tribe of people. Don’t manage employees. Lead. Look for heretics (Seth Godin’s word in “Tribes”) who challenge the status quo. And look for people who influence with ideas and get things done.

Think of someone you respect - what do they do that’s remarkable? What is remarkable in your mind? It’s something that impresses you. Something that maybe you even wish you could do, or had already achieved. It’s the extra-ordinary. That near impossible. It’s something that affects many others in a positive way, or affects change in a positive way. Godin also references how being remarkable might not always get you credit. You might not always be liked for being remarkable. You might even be marked as extreme in some way. But it’s about influencing, leading, and affecting change.

Remarkable to me is preferably something good, that’s over the top good, that’s extraordinarily effective, and in terms of business, it has to derive revenue in some way. I’m often struck by kindness, something unique, and something that serves the greater good. And so that for me, is something remarkable. I hate to say that in this world we sometimes distrust kindness, we question the agenda behind it, the intent and that’s a real shame. It would be better if we could simply do something remarkable and not have others wonder why we did it. But in general, depending on your audience, politics aside, when you do something remarkably kind for another, when you really go out of your way to help someone, they are often impressed by its remarkability.

It reminds me of when I hosted a luncheon at the SES 2006 Chicago conference. I spent $10,000 on food, and $10,000 for the right to sponsor a luncheon, in order to provide a hot Asian style buffet, which at the time was something quite rare at the conferences. We were all tired of the lunch box sandwiches. I saw this as an opportunity. I was a small company but needed a forum to communicate with my session attendees. As a speaker you often get in front of 1,000 people, but actual face time to talk one-to-one, is next to minimal with a handful of attendees. I handed out over 1,000 tickets, but only 125 would be accepted at the luncheon. I suggested people come early. And sure enough, there was a line half an hour before the lunch started. We had to close the doors at 15 minutes to the hour, and apologetically tell people to put their name in the basket and we’d make it up to them in some way.

The lunch was a major hit. But in the line of people that were turned away was one person, Chris Baggott, whom at the time I did not know. He was downstairs in the bar later that evening, in a group of influential conference organizers. Honestly, Chris pretty much lambasted me about the luncheon - and how I had turned him away. I asked him a few questions and realized that he had shown up much later than the luncheon had started. But as Chris talked, he admitted, what I had done was “brilliant”. I got his business card, and was determined to “make it up to him.” I had a gourmet wine shop up the road send him a really nice bottle of wine, in fact at the time, one of the nicest wines you could get. Chris Baggott then talked about this through a community of LinkedIn colleagues that eventually made its way back to me.

Everything about that luncheon was remarkable. I received blog attention from colleagues. I noted that hot luncheons became the new trend at the SES conferences, and even the SMX conferences. The ice cream sundaes were the highlight of the luncheon, and that received blog attention as well. And, I had a $2M opportunity within a week of that luncheon.

When you do something remarkable for another, it’s inspiration not only for them, but for you. You find yourself extremely appreciated. People will talk about you, and in most cases, in a very good way. And in todays’ economy, combined with today’s social media where everyone is talking about something online, and in many cases about someone else, you just might get talked about in a very good way online. But you may not have to spend a lot of money, if anything, that might be a turnoff in today’s world. What can you do, that doesn’t cost a ton of money, for others? How can you do something remarkable, and lead a tribe to do something remarkable? You can use Twitter to do it, and that doesn’t cost a lot of money.

While Twitter gets alot of bad press from the naysayers, that people just talk about what they ate, or about themselves, or if you see trending topics, coverage on a person who died, or a publicity stunt, but there are some keywords that I noted in terms of something “remarkable”.

If you search on Tweetvolume.com, you’ll note “remarkable”, “love”, “hate”, “food” - has some interesting search volume. I noted that food and hate were not as widely talked about as “love” and “help”.

Twitter Search Volume - TweetVolume

I think it’s interesting to see that two extraordinarily popular terms are “love” and “help”. I decided to compare this to “jackson” as a publicity figure that we can not seem to avoid being talked about in the media even 75 days after his death. I was pleased to see the comparison (chart below).

Michael Jackson Tweets vs “Love” vs “Help”. Clearly help is more popular than Jackson, but more popular Twitter term than even “love”.

So, in the essence of doing something remarkable saturated with kindness, look up on Twitter.com to see who is tagged or writing on behalf of helping another. Click on Find People & type in the word “help”. Sure enough, you can find people looking for help on a particular issue, which is exactly what Seth Godin talks about in his “Tribes” book. Twitter offers the way to communicate, and it helps people who want to lead, who want to help, who want to do something to communicate - to talk to one another - and in the end, do something really good for a lot of people or in this case, animals. @HelpAnimals had the most followers, over 29,000 followers at the time of this writing. And this Twitterer is just trying to help, by doing something remarkable, by being kind to others, and using Twitter as the social platform to gather a tribe with a common interest.

So as you go to bed tonight, as you wake in the morning, consider what you could do to do something remarkable, for another? Could you lead a tribe with a common interest via Twitter? Could you locate a tribe and see if you want to join? I’ll write some more about tribes of interest to me, professionally & personally in my next post.

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