Is it Time for a Marketing Yardsale?

This past weekend my friends and I had a yard sale (ok - technically a driveway sale but I digress!). In the weeks leading up to the big day our friends and family began dropping things that they wanted sold off at my house. Now mind you - I had plenty to get rid of without their contributions, but I wasn't going to complain!

I looked around and shook my head. There were piles of 'treasures' all over my driveway. I didn't even know what was in half the boxes we pulled out of the basement and back room. As time ticked on I thought about how I was going to pack all of this stuff up and what I was going to do with all I would have left over.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to yard sales: you have them to make money or you have them to get rid of 'stuff'. I grew up with Grandparents who believed that yard sales were to make money, and if it didn't sell, you boxed it up and sold it at the next yard sale. My mom straddled the line...she didn't want to give up the money, but she didn't want to have to deal with keeping the stuff either.

I fall into the latter category. I just wanted to get rid of everything I had. I sold a lot of 'treasures' and I sold them cheap!!! Surround sound, stereo, TV, laptop (brick) - you want them - $5 each! Curtain rods - take them all for $0.25! Actually - most everything went for $0.25-$0.50. And it worked. I had 40 feet of driveway covered in 'stuff' that became someone else's treasure.

When the day was over we packed up 5 boxes of things that we figured we could sell at later yard sales, filled up 4 trash cans with stuff that we wouldn't even give to Good Will, and put together a few bags/boxes for Good Will. All told, I made a whopping $150, and could have easily made more than that. The feeling of getting rid of all of that junk was priceless!

I think of a marketing arsenal the same way. What is the point of having all kinds of pricey items (brochures, give-aways, web designs) if they aren't bringing you business (or joy). Maybe now is the time to step back and take a look at everything you have and decide what actually drives leads to your company. Maybe a fancy website isn't as important as a really good strategy. Why design and print expensive brochures if your sales team only sends pdfs?

Don't think about the money you spent creating all of the things you don't use. It's already been spent and you can't get it back. Think about the money you will save by not re-creating items you won't use and the money you will make using only the tools that are effective. Do research into where your leads are actually coming from before you approach sales. An informed recommendation is always better than one out of left field!

And finally, put some ideas away for future use. Just because you're not using that really cool tool today doesn't mean that you don't want to keep it in your back pocket just in case! Just like after the yard sale, pack things up for the next round. What today might be trash is tomorrow's treasure!

To Follow or Not To Follow - Was There a Question?

(Recently read Ari Herzog's blog - ariwriter.com - and found I loved his latest "Why My Twitter Train is Stopping". Take a few moments and read it - it's good and inspired this posting!)

I, like many it seems, have been thinking about the mass follows that have been happening more and more these days, and the best way to deal with it. I don't have thousands of followers, and I don't follow thousands of people. My numbers have crept up recently, but are still well under 300.

My theory on the follow (which I hope you can appreciate!):

1. Just because you follow me doesn't mean I will follow you back. Reasons I won't follow you back can include:

• You have 6 updates, are following/being followed by thousands.
• Every single update in your stream includes a link to your website.
• Everything you say is nonsensical - there is no point to your post!

2. Just because I follow you doesn't mean you have to follow me back. I could be interested in what you have to say, but my ramblings are of no interest to you. That's ok. I don't expect it. (but it makes me happy if you do!)

3. When and if I decide to follow you it is based on your description, website and comment stream. I could care less how many followers you have. If you don't have a description and your stream includes any of the reasons listed above I will not follow you.

4. Just because I follow you doesn't mean I want a(n auto) DM saying 'Thank you for following! Click here for my latest super fabulous whitepaper on some topic you could care less about and will make you money on twitter'. Chances are that if I get such a DM I may just unfollow you. If you want to send a DM thanking me then personalize it already!

And finally...

5. Getting thousands of followers in one day, week or month is stupid. Sorry, had to be said. Some of us don't have cool tools like tweet deck or twirl or whatever else is out there to help organize tweets and filter noise. I only have so much time to spend on twitter (ok - I spend more time than I should but that's another story) - and I really don't want to waste it reading another ad on how to grow my list of followers. Enough already!

Bravo to Ari for unfollowing all and starting from scratch. It makes a lot of sense to me as it should to a lot of others.

How do you handle followers?

Small Biz and Twitter, Perfect together?

I have been reading a lot of bogs and articles lately that go on and on about Twitter. Quite a few talk about how small businesses can get lost on Twitter and should only do it if they are unique and can really stand out. Many more are going on about the number of followers a person/company has says everything about how successful a twitterer you are. Me, I'm not really sure. I recently changed my ID from my stand-by, use it for everything login: htrout13 to a variation of my 'business' (hey - I've been doing freelancing under this name for over 7 years - I guess I'm a business now): padgettmrktg. Whether that drives business to me or not - so be it. I'm having fun, learning a lot, and that's what really matters to me.

I have been on Twitter for nearly a year. I have just over 100 followers and I'm ok with that. I see so many people touting their plans to boost the number of followers into the thousands in less than 24 hours...and that doesn't interest me. I only follow 130 odd people (not that their odd...well some of them are...you know what I mean!) and I actually try to read every tweet. I can only imagine if I had 10,000 twitterers to follow, and thousands of tweets each day. I wouldn't get anything done ever! It would become a full time job (does anyone want to pay me to do this??). I don't have a fancy application to sort tweets for me so that I only look at tweets directed to me (actually containing @padgettmktg). If I did that I would lose out on reading a bunch of interesting things, and miss the opportunity to follow some very engaging people.

Many companies are looking for e-marketing people to help build their online identity (and if you're out there - I'm always available!!!). Unfortunately, they haven't fully decided on an off-line identity yet, so their efforts are not always rewarded. They throw good money after bad. Why? Because someone read an article that said that they should be doing something. Just because companies like Zappos (@Zappos - great twitterer!) incorporated Twitter into their marketing mix successfully doesn't mean that every company jumping on the Twitter bandwagon will see that same success.

My favorite small business on twitter are the ones who actively search for people asking questions or making comments on topics relating to what they do. I once tweeted that I was heading to the dry cleaners. I was then followed by two different dry cleaning companies; one of whom asked if I was local so that I could get a discount by following back and mentioning their name in the store (I wasn't, but it was the thought that counts!). If I am working on a project and hit a wall I will tweet it in hopes that someone who knows the answer will respond, or that someone in my network will re-tweet it until an answer comes back to me. I've found some good providers that way.

Basically it comes down to 2 things. Time and effort. Do you want to spend the time necessary to follow the 'right' people, learn more about your followers, and post meaningful tweets? Or do you want to want to obtain as many followers as possible regardless of why they are following you - because it is all about the numbers?

I'll stick with my way. Low numbers but meaningful content. Hopefully my clients and employers will see it my way as well.

Now in Love with Hulu!

I love Hulu now - better than Tivo! Started to catch up on shows I've been missing in the little free time I have.

Gotta love today's technology! Now I need to figure out how to get these on my ipod or phone so I can watch on the go!

Fun, fun!

What else is out there that I haven't found yet?

Finally Breaking Down and Thoughts on Twitter

So after many attempts of blogging I am finally going to do this. Blog that is...

It's funny, after twittering for well over a year now I am amazed by the people that push for thousands of followers... and the people who follow everyone regardless of similar interests.

I got into the whole #followfriday thing - but I found that different people do things very differently... some people just post a ton of names in hopes of building followers; others actually identify why they follow certain people. I find the latter makes so much more sense. I want to follow people who have interesting and informative tweets. I don't want to follow people that don't think for themselves and only RT what others have posted. I find that extremely annoying. So these days I actually view people's tweets, visit their websites and see what kinds of people they are following and who is following them...only after all of that will I follow.

The one thing I have cut back on is sending tweets to my cell. I've cut it back so that now I only get them from a few select people...especially now that I can get onto Twitter at work! (Thanks to my current boss for understanding social media!)

Does anyone else get annoyed by those who only re-tweet and never have anything of value to say themselves?