But unfortunately, it was no match for whatever the virus is that I caught and am still fighting against Actually, my symptoms have changed and shifted: my throat and chest are not so sore but I still have a cough … though it’s different to the way it was before. Anyway, on the grounds that generally speaking I am lucky enough to be fit and healthy, I feel as if I ought to be doing better. Truth is though that whatever it is, this bug continues to suck my energy.

So every now and then, I have to take time out and have a breather. Well, more often than not, a little nap. Let’s face it, at the moment, I’d be a gold medal contender at the Sleep Olympics ! BUT … I have to say that whilst I have been suffering like this, I have been able to do some good things.

For example, I have been able to do some research on twitter, something that I have been long overdue in getting to grips with. I am steadily building my following and hope to break through the four digit barrier in the next couple of weeks. I am also looking in to a number of different tools to use with it, although IMHO, this is dangerous territory.

Why ? Because there are so many of them ! In some ways, it’s very possible to get lost down the rabbit hole investigating tools for use with twitter in the same way that it is when you’re actually using twitter manually. However, I have found one or two ideas which I think will prove useful.

I read somewhere recently that twitter has now gone past “The Threshold” where it’s a geeky, nerdy thing and that it’s now “Mainstream” … whatever that means exactly ! Whatever, it passed 50 million unique users this summer and growth continues at a seemingly exponential rate. I guess this puts quite a strain on the IT infrastructure. My own subjective experience is that at busy times, it just drops offline for very short periods. It usually comes back pretty quickly, but it must be something of a nightmare for their IT guys.

We’ve also seen Facebook announcing what look to me like “me too !” features, adopting the @name nomenclature as well. In terms of numbers, I understand that Facebook is still light years ahead of twitter. But, a recent report on brandrepublic.com suggested that it’s actually serving two increasingly distinct audiences. The report quotes Nielsen as saying that only 16% of twitter’s users are under 25.  It goes on to say …

According to one theory, teens are more interested in Facebook than Twitter because their lives tend to revolve around their friends and Facebook is more oriented around friend groups.

Twitter however is better for broadcasting comment, ideas or products to the outside world, to people users have never met.

Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Many people use [Twitter] for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news.

“Because it’s a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.”

Source: brandrepublic.com, 26 August 2009

Interesting, no ?

Meanwhile, back in the real world (whatever that is !), my researches have caused the seed of an idea to germinate. It combines the use of twitter with some of the ideas taught by my internet marketing mentor, Alex Jeffreys. As best I can at the moment, I am looking in to setting up a little trial and when I do, I’ll let you know about it.

Final word today: I will be dosing myself with all the necessary to allow me to stay up and listen to my co-student Rob Canyon give a totally unique talk to a strictly limited number of people. The title of the talk is How I Made $3,758 In 21 Days Online With My Double Click Blueprint Strategy. I know that Rob is a great marketer some I am signed up already.

The thing is that for tonight only, he will explain this strategy for free ! After that, he’ll be charging several hundred dollars for people to discover his secrets. Time is tight now and there’s a limit of 200 people for tonight’s webinar, so I can offer no guarantees as to whether you’ll get in. But if you have a chance, click on that link and follow Rob’s instructions. Hope to see you there.

I like to think that, as a fully qualified “old git”, I am reasonably well up on the landscape of the internet. After all, I have had email since 1993 (lol) and have been tinkering with my own web sites for several years. But by and large, the various social media have passed me by. I’m not quite sure why this is so – even my 80 year old uncle is on Facebook ! But anyway, although I know that there is a lot of marketing activity using it, I’m not entirely sure how it’s done.

Or how effective it is. In my mind, this is the crucial point. Too often, internet marketing is subject to The Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome  i.e. there’s a lot of fuss made when, in actual fact, there’s not a lot there !

But the mere fact that Alex is spending an evening talking to us about it tells me that this isn’t the case and that there’s stuff in there that we really need to learn.

At the moment, it seems to me that the main reason for utilising these channels is two-fold. First, to establish and build a relationship. I don’t know who it was that first coined the term “relationship marketing”, but it seems to me that they knew what they were talking about !

Secondly, you want to use these channels and the relationship that you’ve built, to get people back to your web site and/or blog. And with the blog, you can continue to build and strengthen that relationship. And when people know you and trust you, they’re more likely to act on your suggestions.

I know that one of my fellow students got something of a “Twitter-slap” this week because he posted something that some of his followers objected to. To be honest, it wasn’t a big proportion of his total following, so obviously, a whole lot more people didn’t object than did ! But as I told him at the time, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

We agreed that you can’t be too indiscriminate with what you tweet. And if you do have a mishap like that, you need to be flexible enough to adjust your tactics if needs be.

But what do I know ? At the moment, I am a real social media newb, so I’ll be very interested to see what Alex comes up with and then how I can implement it !

And I think this point in our training represents a landmark. Most of us have our blogs set up and most of us have our “PPP” as well. (If you’re not sure what that is, please click here.) After learning about social media, we should be in a position to really start driving traffic to these. So I think it’s time to rev up and change gear !

As a newb to Facebook, I am finding this fascinating. I must admit that I didn’t realise that this was another internet phenomenon that started with a couple of students, though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised ! (And because of that, nor should I be surprised that it seems that the initial creation of what became Facebook was driven by a desire to connect with the opposite sex !)

In the UK at least, you can “listen again” for about a week after each broadcast, so if you’re interested, be quick ! I’m not sure if this facility is available to those elsewhere in the world – see where the link takes you.

More later …

As a member of Alex Jeffreys’ Marketing With Alex 2.0 coaching program, I’m very lucky in being able to connect with lots of people like me that are taking advantage of the fast-track that’s Alex’s coaching provides. One of the channels we’re using to connect is Facebook.

Now, I have to confess, I’m a real novice with social networking. Twitter is something of a mystery at this point (though I will be getting to grips with it very soon). But since I have access to the Facebook addresses of several of my fellow students, I figured that I ought to sign up.

After sending friend-requests to my fellow-students, I left my PC for a while. I returned to it about an hour later and I was amazed to discover how quickly my contacts had grown. And I can see how that growth can be magnified very rapidly.

But it has reminded me of a story that I read a week or so back. Basically, it seems that Facebook can use your profile pics in ads that they display to other members. Check out this story, to find out what one guy saw one day when he logged on to Facebook !

Meantime, if you want to be my friend on Facebook, you can find me here.