Simon Says Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

How can your business learn from Seinfeld and Facebook to make you more money?

When it comes to the attention of internet users, social media is fast catching up to search engines or even overtaking them.

According to Experian Hitwise (via The Independent), in the UK in May 2010, “search engines accounted for 11.33 per cent of internet visits … while social networks accounted for 11.88 per cent.”  Experian found that in the USA, “for the seven days to 13 March, Facebook received 7.07 per cent of website hits in the country, overtaking Google which had a 7.03 per cent share.”

Specifically in the UK in May, Facebook attracted 7% of total hits in the UK whilst Google accounted for 9.2% of hits.

As fellow Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle member, Maritza Parra, says in her “7 Universal Laws of Social Marketing”, successful use of social media in your marketing is all about your followers knowing, liking and trusting you. As Dan Kennedy describes it, you want to be influential with your followers.

Connecting with people

Maritza explains one of her seven laws, connection:

“People are hungry for connection in all its forms. They are just as hungry to feel a part of something greater than themselves.

“One of the strongest human needs, after air, food and water, is a sense of belonging. This is one of the reasons that Social Media is so popular and so powerful. Social Media in all its many forms provide a sense of belonging to something greater than yourself.”

When you create that connection with customers, contacts and prospects, selling what you have to offer is much easier and more profitable than the alternatives like cold-calling or waiting for the phone to ring. As the statistics from Experian Hitwise show, people are looking for that connection in growing numbers.

What does this have to do with Seinfeld?

The Independent newspaper also reported today on the earnings that repeats (re-runs) of Seinfeld have netted Time Warner since the show ended 12 years ago. The company has earned an astounding $2.7 billion from Larry Seinfeld’s “Yada Yada”, whilst new shows featuring Seinfeld and his old co-stars, Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss,  have failed to hit the mark. Seinfeld’s new show on NBC, “The Marriage Ref”, has been panned by critics, yet it has been booked for a second season. Perhaps NBC are hoping that Jerry Seinfeld can work his magic to ultimately produce another winning show.

Seinfeld (the show) had a connection with its audience that still banks top dollar today. The show ended just as the internet was coming into its own, long before the advent of Facebook or Twitter. Despite Seinfeld’s lack of internet connectivity, the connection that audiences had with the show translates even today into major revenues for the rights holder. Somehow Seinfeld got it just right, giving people what they were looking for, at least in terms of entertainment programming.

Seinfeld was great at generating water-cooler conversation the day after each episode aired. It created a whole community of people who wanted to share their love of the show with others. Many of these people are tuning into the same show a dozen years later to recapture the enjoyment they had, to reconnect with that experience. And to have a good laugh (TV comedy isn’t what it used to be, sadly.)

Both Seinfeld and Facebook demonstrate that the money lies in connecting with your audience. In your business it doesn’t have to be about Facebook specifically, or writing a muli-billion dollar sit-com. Something as simple as responding to customer feedback about typos on your website shows that you care and increases the depth of your connection with them.

What can you do to increase your connection with your audience and your customers?

Simon Says Media works with companies and business owners to develop their “Secret Sauce”, connecting them with their customers for lasting, profitable relationships.

Call us today on 020 3358 3321 to find out how we can help you connect with your customers.

The London Eye celebrated its 10th anniversary on Tuesday 19th January. To mark the occasion, they offered the chance to win 10 pairs of tickets if you tweeted @TheLondonEye #LondonEye10 between 9.50 and 10.00 am on the day. I was one of the lucky people who won a pair of tickets.

Considering that Twitter is an instantaneous medium, I was pretty surprised that it took until 3.40 pm for the folks in the press office at the Eye to announce who had won. Surely it needn’t have taken so long to pick 10 winners. The competition was a pretty swift affair with a 10 minute window, yet it took them nearly six hours to figure out and notify who would be the lucky recipients of a pair of London Eye tickets. In the Twitterverse, that’s a lifetime!

As requested, I emailed over my name and address, along with my Twitter name and waited for a response. And waited.

On Thursday I emailed them to enquire whether they’d received my email, prompting a response on Friday to say that they had and that the tickets were in the post. In fact they arrived later that day in the lovely card you see above. I’m delighted with my free tickets and waiting for some great weather to use them.

I asked by return whether they were going to make any further PR hay with the giveaway and, again, I didn’t receive a response.

Being the proactive chap that I am, earlier today I called the lady in the press office at the London Eye who sent my tickets over. To save her dignity, I’ll call her Marjorie.

It seems that the folks over at the London Eye Press Office don’t really understand Twitter.

Here’s a transcript:

Marjorie: Hello London Eye Press Office, Marjorie Speaking.

Simon: Hello Marjorie, Simon Aronowitz speaking, one of the lucky 10 people on your 10th anniversary.

Marjorie: [downbeat] Hiya.

Simon: Hi! [Pause] Happy Anniversary!

Marjorie: Oh thank you.

Simon: I was wondering what you were going to do about the ten people who won, whether you were going to use that as a PR opportunity, whenever people turn up with their tickets.

Marjorie: Erm, I don’t think we are because we’ve got a lot of planned activity happening in March. So that was more of a message to let people know that the Eye was re-opening after its maintenance work and it is our anniversary year. I don’t think we’ve actually got any planned activity as such planned for them.

Simon: I think you’re missing an opportunity. You’ve got 10 happy people there who are going to turn up and be absolutely delighted that they got free tickets and you’re going to do nothing about it.

Marjorie: Well I think it was just more of us just saying thanks and getting the message out though, as opposed to…

Simon: Oh yeah, but leverage it! Leverage it! Social media, it’s all free!

Marjorie: Yeah, of course I know but like I said I think we’ve got a lot of activity at the moment, so I think we’re just concentrating on that.

Simon: Sure, although that’s March. I mean, I might turn up in April – you might have a quiet month in April, it would give you something to talk about.

Marjorie: Er, yeah, maybe. I can suggest it, but I’m not sure obviously how far that would go. The story is more about us celebrating our anniversary and giving out complimentary tickets because obviously we do it with quite a lot of charities and whatnot.

Simon: Sure, but as I say, if it’s just a tweet, if you’ve got a picture of happy me in May with my guest cos we’re enjoying our free tickets, you’ve got one more tweet of someone happy where, you know, you tweet that and it’s about me, or a two-line blurb on your website and you tweet about it, I’ll re-tweet it and I’ll tell everybody else all over again about the London Eye. I mean, that’s what social media is all about.

Marjorie: Yeah, okay. Erm, well thank you for the suggestion. Like I said, it’s noted. Obviously we’ll see. We have all you guys’ contact details so if we do anything, obviously we’ll be in contact. Okay?

Simon: Although, I think you probably want to invite the nine other people as well as myself to let you know when we’re going to be down there because I would never miss a trick if it was my organisation.

Marjorie: But we’re not using it for media purposes, as I said. It’s more of a thank you and just a treat. We obviously wouldn’t exploit them for media purposes.

Simon: But even then, you see Twitter is all about narcicism and egotism, so if you say “Please let us know when you’re coming down, then you can tweet and say “@supportlounge came down to redeem their free tickets”. That’s all about Twitter. It’s a two-way conversation, it’s feeding into it.

Marjorie: Okay, well like I said, thanks for the suggestion. I will definitely feed back to my team and see what they think about it.

Simon: Okay, you’ve got my details.

Marjorie: Yes we have, thank you, bye.

Am I being harsh, or are The London Eye missing a trick?

Last week I interviewed Erik Qualman, the author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms The Way We Live And Do Business.

We discussed how the internet has moved beyond search and how businesses are using the latest technologies in social media to keep in touch with exisiting and prospective customers.

If your business hasn’t started to explore how it can use social media to its advantage then you really need to listen to this interview

Erik Qualman on Socialnomics

To get a copy of Erik’s book, go to Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

Erik’s Website

Earlier today I interviewed Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms The Way We Live And Do Business. You can find his website at Socialnomics.com

If your business hasn’t started to explore how it can use social media to its advantage then you really need to listen to this interview. We discussed the value that social media can bring to businesses both large and small, how every business can use the principles of Socialnomics and how easy it can be to get started.

I have to edit the recording down slightly and will be posting it online in the next couple of days.

To be notified when the interview is posted online, fill in the form below and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s available.

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