In looking through Direct Messages over the past few months, and not really seeing an increase of targeted uses of DM’s, I thought a view to the Top 10 ways I see to use DM’s was in order.

So, as you read this, please add in what you see out there in  Twitterville on the creative Direct Messages that stop you in your tracks, make you click and take an action so that everyone reading can learn more on this topic. I see so many abuses of the DM function it’s scary.

So, here we go:

1.

Sending automated DM’s to somone that has nothing to do with them makes me think you are (wait-you are) a spammer. This strategy of DM’ing everyone who follows you with a link to your crappy products, or to become a Fan on Facebook (oh I mean Like) actually puts you in a less influential position with your audience that has chosen to follow you. Do some homework if you are going to automate your DM’s with specific keywords that only send relevant DM’s to those who match these keywords. To find those keywords look at your Brand DNA, heck just think of what you actually sell and provide and start with that first. Remember, nobody cares about you only what you can do to help them solve their business challenges.

2.

Send a DM after you have looked at the Twitterers Profile. As you look at their Profile, find things in common, work or personal that will cause a reaction to the User. If they fall within your highly targeted keywords, their Blog talks about the same things your Brand sells or produces, then build a relationship with them. I have been doing this since day 1 of my time on Twitter. Guess what happened? I have built my Influencer network to over 26,000, having been asked to speak on shows like Friday night with Warren Whitlock, at Speaking Events just a few weeks ago with Jason Falls and projects that resulted in ongoing revenue for my firm. It works just like that but takes a little time to do it right.

3.

Send a DM after they posted something that you found useful, or very creative. If the user normally pushes out links to their blog post, be sure that after you have read it, send them a note once you have commented on their site with some added value links that they may reference on their next post.

4.

Send a DM around a hidden valuable link to content that matches what they do and adds value to their day-use that research that you so handily put together around your keywords that I showed you how to do, send them links that they may not have seen before. Look for things that they may share with their CEO’s or upper management around their competition. Wow, now we are getting somewhere. Watch for the responses. Look for others in their lists that are with the company and send them the note to. Really started to get the hang of this DM thing now hey?

5.

Ask a question after you have researched them that only they can answer. Be sure there is value in what you send, such as a Tip that may bring something to their business or a how-to-tip on helping them understand something they are discussing. After looking at their stream in Twitter, look for things you can answer, sort of like LinkedIn Answers. Look for posts on StumbleUpon or Alltop.com that can bring content they may need to run their business. This is meant to be a friendly, sharing environment not a sounding board for your messages only.

6.

Sending names of other Influencers that user may or should know. This is something I rarely see done so there are no bad examples only what I feel you should do. So let’s look at how this would work. You have identified the Influencer(s) that you want to build a relationship with first. Next, you have read their stream and understand what they discuss, how they share and engage with their audience in conversation. You have also researched other Influencers that match the profiles of the target relationship User you want to Influence with your messages by sending them people in a DM that they may want to know. Of course you may have to look to see who they are following or are friends with first, which may take some time but well worth it. Even if they are following this person, they may not have mentioned them in conversation but may want to. Now we are “connecting the dots” and building value in relationships.

7.

Offer the user something that they cannot get anywhere else. Be sure this is on-topic with their keywords. Be sure it’s something that only they get, unique to the Influencer. Create a bit.ly for this link, a landing page that’s meant only for them. Watch your bit.ly to see if they clicked on it. Keep an eye on how this works. Only use it one time, and if the test doesn’t work, no worries, go back to adding value to their day by steps 1-6, rinse, repeat but be sure that it’s great stuff you send.

8.

If you have a product that you can send a sample to the Influencer, do that. Be sure to personalize everything you can on the package and the sample, if possible. Look at how many send Chris Brogan T-Shirts, Books, Liquor and other items for his review. Follow up with a DM that let’s them know you are sending a package. Look for a response or question about it. Take the conversation off-line, which normally happens. I have sent Chris DM’s and, he responded because I added value to something that I saw, a project or a discussion that he may have been having. Guess what? He responded with a nice note back. He also let me know when things were off topic by gently saying that there was no fit or by not replying-I got the message.

9.

Offer to help the user work through a problem they are focused on and have made public in their stream. It doesn’t hurt because at this point you know that you must be on topic, be on time and be clear about what you are asking. Many people are very responsive to DM’s when they are helpful, and remember what Zig Ziglar said many years ago “Help enough people get what they want, and you will get what you want”. Warren Whitlock and I just talked about this Friday on his Blog Talk Radio Show Friday night.

10.

Determine synergies across their organization and yours. Look at their website to see if what you do may be an area that you see a fit in, to partner. Complimentary services or clients that you could work on together to bring a powerful solution. Look for ways that you can drive revenue to them by sending referrals-seems old school but missed opportunities lie everywhere (heads up Sales people). If sales hasn’t built a Listening Dashboard yet, please do. Marketing should listen for their keywords but maybe of higher importance, look for those partnering opportunities around business strategies could prove powerful.

So there it is. I believe that these strategies will certainly help drive you closer to becoming a non-spammer. As for all the spammers out there, take note. No one cares about your product or service. Think about what this activity of spamming actually does – diminishes your Brand currency when done wrong. Does more damage than good, and the more you send, the worst it gets. The farther you push the farther away your audience will put you away from building the relationships.

Not much talk about this out there around a DM strategy, but with so much opportunity to use this functionality the right way, I see a shift needed here for business. What do you think?

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 steps for consumer brands to earn social currency (e1evation.com)
• Five Most Essential Social Media Infographics (viralblog.com)
• Social media traffic: do you know where your website traffic coming from? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Social media traffic: do you know where your website traffic coming from? (myventurepad.com)

Still working on my ROI Social Media Video… just haven’t found the right algorithm yet

Related articles by Zemanta

• Social Media ROI video by Socialnomics (nickburcher.com)
• In Socialnomics we trust (socialfish.org)
• FILESHARE: Social Media ROI – Socialnomics by Erik Qualman (graymatterminute.com)
• Who looks more strange? Geeks using social media or lawyers avoiding social media? (kevin.lexblog.com)
• Social media ROI can be entertainment (nevillehobson.com)

Seth has this one right, no doubt

Think anyone cares about you in Social? You may want to adjust how you are pushing and not inviting conversation.

Its one of the trickiest and easiest things to ignore. Watch the video and give me your thoughts on how your friends, followers and connections think about you. So think about this next time you begin a conversation.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 Ways to Attract and Empower Your Crowd (mashable.com)
• Squidoo Aims To Make Brands Pay For Dedicated Web Dashboards (techcrunch.com)
• Seth Godin on Social Networking (markevanstech.com)

I figured that many of us on Twitter, all with varying strategies of how to build not only a quality following, but quality content, would benefit from my recent find of this video showing how Guy really uses tools and applications to drive engagement and followers.

Not only do you get to see how, but you also get to see in great detail, what he uses to get his message out and the thought process behind this legend in Marketing.

On a side note, I sent a Tweet to guy after his trip on the USS Nimitz, where he spent time (offline oddly enough) sharing with Charlene Li and others, their stories with the crew. Guy actually responded to me, via his personal account on Twitter (No I am not giving out the link – sorry) to let me know how his trip went (Thanks Guy).

So here is an inside look at how Guy does Twitter. Let me know if you too learned something new, as I have, such as the Alltop Framing platform… very slick.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Crowdsourcing Charlene Li’s new book (superhypeblog.com)
• Twitter Lists (socialfish.org)
• Alltop goes for the clean look (inquisitr.com)
• Social Media Engagement Directly Linked to Financial Success (innovationtoronto.com)
• A Tweet-based interview with Josh Bernoff (redcouch.typepad.com)

Just as I was looking at the re-post of my post that I posted this morning (dang-that’s a lot of posts hey) “How to push Messages via Shareaholic”, I saw a great video from Scott Willoughby of SEOmoz, showing how you get Retweeted and thought I would share this.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – How to Get Re-Tweeted from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
As you can see there are some numbers behind getting the engagement levels up, and a strategy behind how you should be doing this Twitter thing if you want to build relationships (there’s that word again).

Enjoy and Scott would appreciate any feedback, as I would, on how you have been able to get RT’d.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Whiteboard Friday – How to Get Re-Tweeted (mt-soft.com.ar)
• Whiteboard Friday – Crawling & Indexing (mt-soft.com.ar)
• Whiteboard Friday – Getting Indented Listings (mt-soft.com.ar)
• Whiteboard Friday – Market Forces & SEO (mt-soft.com.ar)
• How the world wakes up to Twitter (blogs.msdn.com)
• Why I Love Communities (taylordavidson.com)
• WOW: Twitter to Raise $100 Million in New Funding (mashable.com)
• Some New Twitter Lists (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com)
• Twitter-Microsoft AND Facebook-Microsoft deal confirmed (thenextweb.com)
• 20 Funniest Hash Tags on Twitter (pastemagazine.com)

Blue Collar Joes Become a Fan on Facebook (Tell ‘em Dean said hi)

Lets talk about competing in this space we call Social, don’t worry, you will love the details ahead…

Even if you are a small Brand, and most importantly, if you are competing against Big Box Retailers or organizations with bigger marketing budgets, you can still make an impact.

We take a look at the power of Reach (just for examples) but I will also mention ways to find audiences, on less than a few bucks for marketing budgets, at home in your pajamas, at night, after a long day of running your business. So let’s get started.

First, let’s run a few exercises to see who is talking about your brand today, within a localized area, to see what you may be up against.

Open Google Insights (http://google.com/insights/search) to see what you can find here as Insights are concerned. Here’s a look at a local business, that I am friends with (selfish plug for Daniel and Pru – love those guys):

1. Pick your location first – yes even my town has a search in Google: Here’s is an example of what we are looking for

2. Next, I searched for “Food & Drink” to get a flavor (yes I said it) for overall keyword terms

This chart reveals that some key searches have resulted in a lift in people looking for this term but a forecast shows a slow down, which means that either Google’s “rhythm’s” predict that Social is going to have an affect (my opinion not data driven) and you may want to look into increasing your online and social presence to make up for the lack of “Google” specific keys tapping away to find you.

3. Now let’s take a look now at “What” (Most Important here) people are really looking for inside this category:

Interesting you might be asking… Hummm…. Recipe, Recipes come up as a top search in the Food Category and may just hold the key to an online, Social play to garner some Fans, or some new trends to discuss. Say for instance, you have built a Facebook Fan Page. What if you offered your audience Free Recipe Downloads, if they sign up for your email list, all within Facebook, using the “FBML Static” Tab on your Fan Page with a Sign Up Feature that keeps them right in the Community they want to remain in, because they love it. Wallah, many ways to play the game here, just need to find the right mix.

4. Another look at a favorite of mine is this one that reveals a “Peek in the Box” of Google’s Search Forecasts

This may not be a shocker here, but does give insights into some interesting things. Is Rachel Ray coming to my town soon? (Rachel-hit me up if you are, have your people get in touch with my people, we’ll do lunch). I need to look at Events of upcoming possibles here, especially if I am in the Food Business. I would want to reach out to the Food Network, Rachel Ray and others to see if I could supply them with FREE food from my Restaurant, in this case a Doughnut from Blue Collar Joe’s (If you haven’t had one, they are the best I have ever had) and see if there may be a way to get a mention (there’s that magic word) on her Blog. (Free PR and big PR too).

So, the net of the story is there are ways to do some fairly sophisticated marketing online, with limited budgets, and effectively.

Let me hear back from you on how you may have been able to use Social in ways not mentioned above (so we can all learn).

If you are looking for Blue Collar Joe’s (not a client):

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google and Its PR Push (arnoldit.com)
• How to Add a Custom Tab to a Facebook Fan Page (kimwoodbridge.com)
• Watch Out Google, Facebook Is Gaining in PPC (battellemedia.com)
• Google and the Ikea Tactic (arnoldit.com)
• Understanding Google Wave… (blogoscoped.com)

Dear Twitter Management Team:

Felt compelled to write today to see if I may provide some help as you may be struggling with the incredible growth you have seen of late.

It seems that there is an issue with Twitter. As I see it, you may need to learn some social sharing with your audience, as many of us get little to no feedback, emails, explanations, about anything going on at Twitter when things change. The biggest issue that needs to be addressed is the hazardous manner that you seem to ban accounts, with little or no reason given. You come to our accounts and delete followers, with no notification at all – now that’s not really nice is it?

Twitter is social. People are people. Given the increased audience that has taken to your platform, which we really like, it would be nice to at least know when and why things change that could have a big impact on our business, our clients businesses that we manage and the culture you are trying so hard to become. Chris Brogan says do good work. Please see to it that you at least try to provide the many users here with some kind of idea of what may take place, and when something goes wrong with our accounts, that you at least notify us, with some idea of how we can get in touch with you to resolve it.

I am a believer in Twitter but the lack of response (for some major brands) to help get their accounts back online and learn what they did wrong is not only “social” but educates all in building a better environment. To point us to your terms, which was written by the legal beagles, is not only ridiculous but a slap in the face of so many Twitter users – almost a “well this is the way it is, so read these crazy rules and if you don’t then too bad”.

Come on… play nice in the sandbox and at the least give us a way to communicate in some timely fashion, with you (4 accounts have been on your desk for repair for 3 months now) a little long don’t you think. We are all behind you, and want a better platform, but with little “Voice” from you, we are left to make up our minds on our own, which could mean a big shift in users on Twitter and no means to monetize the business model (we) have worked so hard to build.

Should I wait by the desk for your response? Readers – what are your experiences?

Sincerely Upset.

Dean Holmes

http://twitter.com/deanholmes

There’s a new ART to the understanding of Crowd Behavior and it’s not just getting people to follow, connect or read your blog posts.

In today’s fast-paced 140 Character, highly-limited bandwidth of your audience, you must know your audience and how to alter their behaviors with the vast tools available to your Marketing Strategy. Just being there (Online) isn’t nearly enough. When Senior Leaders at your organization begin to see how your Online Strategy is affecting your overall Marketing efforts, only then can true adoption by the organization take place.

This is not easy. Make no mistake – this (again) is not easy. It takes a solid 6 months of planning, mapping, and research to begin to put this into action. Marketing leaders must know their audience first, by segment and persona’s, to fully know who and more importantly why, you will be talking to them – or you lose their attention faster than ever. Let’s start with Analysis of your audience:

If your salesforce is out there calling on whomever they want, you are already in trouble… This not only leads to problems for Revenue, Sales Cycle and Margin creep but over time, leads to RISK within your customer base (let me know if you need help on this one). dean@deanholmes.me Every organization has a core group of customers that make up 80% of their profits, however, the risk you will face in focusing on this segment only could be big. Let’s say that you are focused on four key industries, and the future “PEG” or Price to Earnings Growth for these industries are below 5%, you may face risk in revenue, profit and pricing pressures due to the cost-cutting measures the customer is forced to implement due to long-term growth. Another issue you will face is market share. By looking at industries that are outside the comfort zone for marketing and sales, you could be missing out on potential growth opportunities that working with industries that are growing over the long term.

Bottom line here: If you are not segmenting out your customers, and know who they are and more importantly, that you know them – get to this quickly. I have seen this with many organizations both in sales and marketing, that developed a strategy around problem audiences from the beginning only to ask themselves “why did we do that again”?

First Step: Perform Analytics of your current customers
Second Step: Profile the Risks within your customers industries
Third Step: Know where your best customers are on and off-line
Fourth Step: Talk to them, engage with them, in the manner they want, not what you think – but what you now “Know”

Take a look at Chris Brogan’s article here , or Jason Burby here and Tom Now here – and of course download the many help documents here. Also have a look at a good friend and colleague’s awesome tool to help you visualize where your customers are here – this tool works for sales and marketers for easy to use analytics.

Do you know who your customers really are? What issues do you face?

Talk to me by leaving comments or reaching out for help in knowing your audience.

#Opportunity-is-knocking-and-you-are-not-using-hashtags-properly

Small, medium and large organizations take note: Hashtags can drive opportunities if used correctly.

Let’s take a non-likely industry, say Freight Carriers, and look at some scenarios of how they could be leveraging Social Technology to drive business.

Problem:

A Freight Haulers main business challenge is “Back Hauls”, which means that they carry freight one-way, and drive to another destination without freight. That divides their profits in half or causes a higher per mile cost to their quotes for existing and new customers they haul for, which means they won’t be competitive.

Solution:

Say that a Freight Company, not the biggies, like UPS, FedEx, Yellow, but a sole proprietorship with 50 trucks has someone in their office, who handles the demand of freight and distribution trafficking were to Tweet about open capacity to the community using the tools many of us Socialites use, like Integrated Facebook, MySpace and other applications to get the message out by #freight, #trucking. #opencapacity or #ltl.

Given a built-up network of customers they currently have determined are using these tools, and invitations to join them at their respective Social communities, opportunities on both the customer and company side are tremendous. The customer gets to take advantage of a just-in-time shipping option, and possible reduced rates for a back-haul that was empty to begin with.

Let’s play this out from a Business Model Innovation perspective:

- Reductions in Fuel Charges to customers x # of trucks one-way empty x # of miles = HUGE Savings in Gas (Go Green America)

- Shipping Charges are much lower due to reduced shipping cost basis by the companies we buy products from = IDK but big numbers

- Reduced costs associated with Tire wear by cutting out 50% of the one-way empty freight routes = Less Tires in Landfills (Go Green America)

- Less Oil Changes Per Trip x # of Trucks = Less Oil demand by the USA (Go Green America)

and probably many more of these benefits exist (Freight companies feel free to add yours in the comments that I have missed).

This would serve as a solid business case for many organizations using a free and simple strategy to drive Business Model Innovation. I have read IBM’s CEO Report since it’s first release, which is a summary of thought leaders and the strategies they deployed to make their business stay ahead of this curve. Many of them remained positive during this most recent economic situation. You can get your free copy here: http://bit.ly/IBMCEOStudy (Not an affiliate link).

Ping me to learn more about driving Business Model Innovation to your bottom line at contact me .

Thoughts and comments please on this multi-faceted subject?

Chris Brogan wrote a very short but intense article http://www.chrisbrogan.com/spread-your-wings-get-more-retweet-action-today/?dsq=10418994#comment-10418994 that has received over 30 comments from others, that contains great tips, which is how this whole Social thing works.

As you read Chris’ posting, be sure to sign up for http://disquis.com to add your comments as well. This posting leans toward a solid, hands on approach to what you should be doing with  (Social Marketing) as you begin to deploy many of the platforms and social bookmarking sites to gain access to audiences that have previously been untouchable.

On that note, I thought I would give you a look at my strategy for platforms and sites that will help you get started – if you are a power user, please forgive the redundancy:

http://Twitter.com (Chris lives here)

http://LinkedIn.com (Chris is also here as well)

http://disqus.com (Comment tool for your blog – I use it on my blog – saw that Chris was using it and went with that as a recommendation)

http:/bit.ly (Great site with integration add-ons for Firefox see: http://www.mozilla.com )

http://delicious.com (Search for highly ranked content by others to use in your strategy)

http://digg.com (Goes without saying, but again great content)

http://flickr.com (Great for Pics and a personal touch to your Brand – encourage people to post on your Brand)

This is not meant to be a full listing of all sites available to us in the Social space, just a few of the basics.

Please submit your sites you use in your Social Strategy in the comments.