Social media and marketing tips for the little guys
Many beginner bloggers are under the impression that it takes years to build real connections with your audience.
This is simply not true. There are bloggers who were able to drive thousands of readers to their blogs within only three months.
[Read more...]
When was the last time you had experienced personal touches from your favorite store or business?
Last week, I was queuing to order a drink from one of my favorite tea stores in my local town called “Gong Cha”. When it was my turn to order, the person behind the counter asked if I wanted my usual and keyed my order in before I could answer her. Guess what? I told my friends about it.
[Read more...]
I had so much going on recently I had to temporary abandon this little blog to prioritise on work that needed more focus. I’ll admit that I have not been spending much time here but things are about to change!
I recently wrote a post on for Ian Cleary on the tools I used to grow an amazing community of 400,000 followers. If you hadn’t read it yet I recommend you head over to his blog to check it out.
When I first started using Twitter, I had literally zero connections out the usual group of friends I hung out with in Uni. Back then I was searching for a way to grow my readers on a coffee blog I created and it was then that I stumbled upon an article on twitter. I read about its potential and I thought I could use it to connect with people. I was sold.
On the 20th of March 2009, I registered my account and tweeted the following.
On the same day, I started following people in my industry, and on my third tweet someone responded to me, proving the potential of what Twitter could become.
Do you remember the first tweet you sent? Today’s post will help you find out what was your first tweet.
The good news is. You don’t really need a tool for that at all. It can all be done inside Twitter. Here is how you do it.
1. Go to Settings
2. Scroll down and click request your archives. Your archives will then be sent to your email.
3. Check the email you used to register your account on twitter.
4. Click download
5. Unzip the file you’ve download.
6. Once you’ve unzip, you’ll notice several folders. Simply open the file called “index.html”
7. You’re done. Here is what it would look like.
Now simply go back to the very first time you tweeted and relive the memory. Using this, I found that I was still connecting with some of my very first friends on twitter.
Why did you tweet that? Did it remind you of why did you started using Twitter?
As of today, my Pinterest account and I are getting a divorce. I’ve officially deleted my Pinterest account and won’t be using it anymore.
The truth is, while I’ve used it to help me design my room and had tons of great memories, it’s just not working out on a business level for Ask Aaron Lee. I can’t even remember the last time I use it……..
Sure, I could use it on a personal level but I believe it’s not worth the time as I could use it on networks which are more relevant to my core business.
I guess you could say that I’ve gradually been cheating on Mrs Pinterest. I’ve spent so much time on other networks and seeing beter results from it. I personally feel that other networks have more potential for my business compared to Pinterest.
Recently, I’ve been spending more time elsewhere. I also believe Google+ will play a huge role for my core business this year and I want to focus on that. 2013 is the year of focus for most businesses.
We clearly don’t have the time to be on too many networks…. and VINE?? Come on! how many can we manage?
It’s all about choosing social networks which fit your core business.
Having said that, my girlfriend is still using Pinterest for her women’s apparel business and it fits very well with her products.
I’m not condemning Pinterest of course. They are an amazing network, an inspiring network. Some of my friends are getting more traffic on Pinterest compared to other networks. For them, Pinterest fits with their core business because their demographics are spending a huge amount of time on it.
I believe as a business, if you want to really grow your business quickly, you have to focus and not try to be everywhere at once. Unless you’re a huge brand….. then be my guest.
Focus on where your community is spending a lot of time at and grow your community there. The important thing is building a supportive community before branching out on to other networks.
What do you think?
No matter how much you plan for something, things tend not to go according to plan.
Today is all about having fun and gaining insights from some campaigns, tweets, and situations that went horribly wrong this year. After the laughs settle, the hope is that it will help all of us avoid similar situations for the coming year.
You ready? Let’s count it down to our first ever Social Media Epic Fail Award 2012.
A few weeks ago someone posted a photo of a dog with a limping leg begging for food from people in the streets on a page called Malaysian Dogs Deserves Better, a non profit helping and rescuing dogs. He was in bad condition and was in desperate need of help.
Since I live only 30 minutes away from the area, I knew I had to step up to help rather than wait for someone else. The following day Jin Lee (my girlfriend) and I went to the place described in the photo. We searched high and low for the dog but it was nowhere to be seen.
After walking around for almost an hour, we nearly gave up our search and called it a day. While we were walking back, we saw the dog resting under a car. He was so weak he barely noticed us approaching him.
As I approached him, I could smell his wet coat as he was soaked from the rain earlier.
We fed him some treats, but every time we went closer, he would back away and continued hiding under the car. It took us nearly 3 hours to get him and we brought him to the vet to be examined.
While we were patiently feeding him, a few thoughts flashed in my mind. This humbling experience got me thinking the way I am running my business and it taught me some important lessons. Let me share them with you:
I had no idea how and what to do with the dog. Jin Lee and I never rescued any dogs and never had we planned one before. We just went for it and thought our instincts were enough.
As you might have already guessed, our plan to just go with the flow didn’t work (duh). Our treats to bribe the dog finished before we could even get close to him!
Running a business requires a well-thought plan as too. This is why most businesses have a business plan before they start a business, and preferably many, many more backup plans other than that. In business, we have to be prepared to take every wrong turn – but the problem is most of the time we are not lucky enough to be able to turn back.
Rescuing a dog required a strategy.We knew the dog wasn’t going to enter into our car on its own and we had to find a way to get him into the car. We came up with the strategy to get the leash on his neck so that he wouldn’t be able to run from us. From there, we came up with a couple of tactics on how we could put the leash around his neck (good thing dogs don’t speak English, otherwise he would’ve known our tactics).
In our business, we require strategies on how we’re going to accomplish our goals. We sometimes need step-by-step strategies to help accomplish one complicated goal.
Our tactic to capture the dog didn’t go according to plan of course. We came up with so many plans but they didn’t work as we couldn’t foresee how the dog would react. Knowing that, we improvised and changed our strategy until we found one that worked for us. Even so we had to try it a couple of times before we finally put the leash on the dog.
In business, you have to continuously improvise. If something doesn’t work for you, you have to constantly change and find what works and fits your business.
One of the most important factors in business, life and …. in this case rescuing a dog, is trust. If we don’t have the dog’s trust, we couldn’t go near him and he would just run away each time we tried to. We had to gain his trust before we try to catch him.
In business, if you don’t build trust with your customers, they won’t buy from you. Sometimes we tend to forget this and go for the sale straight away without knowing what the customer really wants.
Call it ‘bribing’ if you will, but giving out rewards do work. We had to bribe the dog with food so that he stayed in place and it’s the same with business too. You have to reward your customers. You could reward loyal customers with gifts directly or run contests to gain new readers, subscribers, buyers, viewers, etc and reward their participation with a gift.
I thought rescuing a dog would be a walk in the park. It wasn’t. I’m not going to lie to you and say that it wasn’t a little frustrating to approach the dog and have the dog run away. I mean we only had good intentions. A few people even saw us trying to help the dog and they offered their help too. That got the dog to run even further as he was too afraid of all of us.
This is the case in business. I’ve seen so many good businesses – with brilliant intentions, ideas and improvements to offer to the world – fail because they tried to expand too quickly with the hope that people will see how good their products are and just buy them. They invested so much in so little time that they simply couldn’t stay in business.
Jin Lee and I knew we couldn’t just abandon the dog. We followed him literally everywhere he went. Soon he was tired and just stopped, that is where we gained his trust. We fed him, sat with him for nearly an hour and a half before we managed to put the leash around his neck.
When you’re running a business, it can be frustrating sometimes. But trust me on this, it doesn’t take a day to grow an apple tree, it takes a few years with care and patience to grow it before you can reap its rewards. That’s the way business works too.
What happened to the dog now? He’s part of the family now and we gave him a home and we named him… BOY
Growing up, I wasn’t the most popular kid in school and I chose to be that way. I never felt the need to blend or fit in with the crowd. I never followed what people perceived to be ‘in’. I never tried to be someone else despite the negative perceptions I get from people about the friends I mixed with or what decisions I chose.
This is a guest post by Vivik Krishnan.
Professional blogging has hit the internet industry in a big way. While some are only mulling about it as a career option, some have taken the plunge into blogging a big way and making a living out of it. Anyone looking to become a professional blogger in the coming future should learn these 3 lessons from existing professional bloggers. It is what they do differently which makes them so successful while others remain mediocre.
Warning…. rant ahead.. sorta..
Everyone wants to achieve greatness but how many of us are willing to put the work to be one step closer to it?
One of the common mistakes that most individuals or businesses do when they go on to social networking sites is thinking they are Seth Godin
Wouldn’t it be great to be like him? Seth Godin is NOT spending any time at all on social media but is seeing great results from it.
I mean how great will it be to simply push out a contest and see people sharing it immediately.
I don’t want to pop your bubble and I’m going to be brutally honest with you, the sad reality is it’s not that easy.
Every day I see businesses push out content after content, links after links, posts after posts without seeing any results or lack of engagement from it. But what’s the problem with these contents? It’s not quality content.
Even Facebook doesn’t want those rubbish on their network. I bet that is why they created Edgerank in the first place – an algorithm that highlights the pages you’ve engaged with before and decides who should be on your newsfeed based on the level of engagement.
Edgerank knows that if you don’t respond to them, it means that you’re not interested and therefore it won’t show it to you in the future.
To be able to achieve success on social media, I believe that there are at least three basic fundamentals. Most of you may be familiar with it and it really isn’t some big secret. The three pillars are:
I’m not here to tell you whether you should build audience or content first. I believe that it is like a chicken and egg situation, so I will say… build all three at once.
You’re not Seth. He doesn’t need to have engagement. That is because he has built an amazing network of influential people who are using social media from his New York Times bestseller books, his seminars, and his events. They do all the engagement and sharing for him.
We’re different. We all need to start from the bottom and work up to be a thought leader like Seth. YES, that involves you doing work…. lots of it.
If you don’t want to do it, then you might as well hire someone who is passionate in doing them for you and you can focus on what you’re great at.
When you go to a conference, do you shout and talk about your products all the time?
Well if you do, I hope we don’t meet at any conferences…..
Social media is like a conference. Your likes and follows are like exchanging business cards. (sorta)
It doesn’t translate into immediate business straight away. Sure, you can get a million business cards, but if you aren’t following up, sharing your knowledge, networking with people. You get nothing.
You have to work at it. You need to talk start putting an effort to listen to people’s problems and show them how your products can help them. It takes a lot of time.
A solid network takes time to nurture …. <tweet this>
…. and so does building relationships on social media. Some people will want to know you, some won’t. Hey that’s life.
Don’t focus too much on those who won’t, but focus on those who will. That is something I truly believe in.
People always say “relationship is key” in social media. Why? That is because you need to gain their trusts if you want them read, share your content, or buy from you.
Here is a quote from an amazing man.
The more people trust you, the more they buy from you.’’
–David Ogilvy
So…. Stop being an ‘askhole’. An ‘askhole’ is a person who keeps asking but isn’t giving. We have plenty of them already. Start by giving and not asking.
Start by building the three pillars I mentioned earlier. Start by joining twitter chats, guest posting, engaging with people, networking with at least five new people a day, commenting on blogs (comment on mine too), share other people’s post, compliment someone and really mean it.
What I am trying to say is, social media essentially takes a lot lot lot lot lot of time and effort. We have to put in the time and effort before reaping its rewards.
Image: by Umair Mohsin (creative commons) , _neb’s
When I started using twitter 3 years ago, I was using it for personal reasons until I saw the potential of how it could be used to connect with others on a personal as well as professional level.
[Read more...]
Recent Comments