I recently wrote about Erik Qualman’s #awarenessinc webinar titled ”Socialnomics: It’s a People-Driven Economy, Stupid.”
Well Erik had so much content to cover during the hour long webinar that he didn’t have time for Q&A at the end. I asked Erik if he would take a moment to answer some of the questions that came through via Twitter and, the nice guy that he is, he graciously agreed to do that for us.
We received many questions and Erik went through and picked out the top three questions that he felt the audience would benefit from the most and provided answers to each. Those top three will also receive a copy of Erik’s book, Socialnomics, provided by Awareness, Inc.
Here you go!
Q: @woodarml: “Ravelry” Do you think niche social networks are equally impt/worth your time as larger ones like Facebook?
A: Great question. Some of it depends on what you are selling. If you are selling Yarn or knitting patterns than Ravelry will be near the top. For most, it’s analagous to when the search wars were going on. You’d start with Google and than work your way to Yahoo, MSN, Ask, Excite, Looksmart, etc. So, always focus on the ones that give you the greatest return and once you think you have a good handle on that go to the next one with the most potential and so forth rather than trying to boil the Ocean all at once.
Q: BuckLLC: How do B2Bs use Twitter effectively? Harder than B2C, yes?
A: A good use of Twitter for B2B is to see and capture insight into your customer’s customer. Hence, if you are Intel and sell chips to Apple and Dell you will want to know of any issues or benefits the customer is experiencing from your product. Whatever it is you sell having insight into what pain points and benefits your customer’s customer is experiencing will always make you a more valuable supplier. This is particular true if your customer isn’t very savvy on social media so they may not even know this type on “intel” is possible.
Q: aharbourne: Quality vs quantity of followers? How targetted/niche should SM activities be? Multiple strategies per segment?
A: It’s all about quality of followers. Quantity may look good, but if they aren’t active they aren’t going to do anything for your business. This is similar to e-mail from this standpoint. Good companies constantly update their e-mail data base to purge inactive accounts rather than “fool” themselves with an inflated number of e-mails.
