Ethically Influencing People Using Web 2.0 Technology

A few months ago I rediscovered a Web 2.0 technology that can be easily used to influence and persuade people to visit your blog or website. Coincidentally, I first read about the technology on a blog. Then Jim Turner, a direct response copywriter and social networking expert, suggested it to me in an email. Upon visiting the website for the technology I immediately noticed these two comments:

New York Times reported,”It’s one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet,”and Wired reported it is,”Incredibly useful.”

By now, you’re probably asking, “What is this Web 2.0 technology?.”

The technology is twitter.com.

In an effort to assist you in understanding practical ways you can use twitter to ethically influence people to visit your blog or website, I will first describe the “how” and “why” of some of the basic uses of this technology.

Here’s how twitter developers describe their service: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

After you’ve signed up for your twitter account, you’ll quickly realize that the developers weren’t kidding when they included “quick” in the description. You literally have 140 characters to deliver your message aka updates to the “twitterverse.” Your updates can be about anything you care to “tweet.” However, I’m recommending that you post updates with the honest intent of making friends, being helpful, inspiring, entertaining, or contributing useful information to the conversations on twitter. As you use these common relationship building activities to establish rapport with your “followers,” you will experience higher click-through rates on links in your updates.

Before I elaborate on the types of updates you might send out, let me quickly cover how to find people who might be interested in your updates. Go to search.twitter.com and enter a phrase that’s related to your business. For instance, when I first signed onto twitter I entered “influence and persuasion.” The results yielded all of the recent twitter users’ updates which contained my chosen keywords.  Using each twitter user’s profile and the content of their updates, as a basis for judgement, I then decided whether or not to follow their updates.

Why is this process good news for you? Read on.

Once you have chosen to follow the updates of users within your target market, they will be notified that you have become a follower. Consequently, there is a high likelihood that they will visit your profile to decide if they, in turn, wish to follow you.  Experience shows that people visiting your profile will click on the link you include there. If you enter your blog or website address in the field provided, it will translate into free traffic!

By the way, if I notice particular updates that amuse, inspire, or entertain me, I occasionally comment on them. I also send similar updates. As a result of this, new people eventually start following my updates. A common practice of mine is to send personalized messages to people who have reciprocated my decision to follow their updates by following mine.

As a busy executive, small business owner, or professional service provider you are probably saying to yourself, “I don’t have time within my work day to do all that.” My response to you is Tweetlater.com. As its name suggests, TweetLater.com gives you the ability to schedule updates to be sent to twitter at a later time of your choosing. I generally send famous peoples’ quotes, inspired thoughts of my own, Mastering Persuasion Tips, or reminders about my radio show.

I also highly recommend that you use a desktop client to monitor twitter updates.  Take a look at twhirl.org and tweetdeck.com, both of which I have used. I prefer twhirl for its simplicity and the fact that it takes up very little real estate on my computer screen. It also shows updates in a small pop up in the bottom right
corner of my computer screen. That way, I can perform other tasks while monitoring my twitter friends “tweets.”

I do, however, also like tweetdeck because it has some special functions that twhirl doesn’t offer yet. For instance, tweetdeck gives you the ability to create a special column that helps you monitor specific users’ updates. My columns include friends, clients, and strategic alliance partners.  If you are totally resistant to getting heavily involved in twitter but you want to communicate privately in real time with key executives, employees, partners, or friends, I suggest you look into GroupTweet. GroupTweet allows you to send updates via twitter that are instantly broadcasted, privately, to only the people you select.  Find out more by visiting grouptweet.com.

Let me back up for a moment to discuss why it’s important to monitor twitter and how to easily do it yourself. As you know, twitter is a community of people having discussions in real time, 24/7. Those discussions may include a complaint about your company. Not a big deal? It’s a very big deal. Keep reading to learn why.

A lady on the east coast complained on twitter about the company that provides her internet, phone, and cellular service. Within the span of about 15 minutes, 40 other “tweeple” were discussing this lady’s problem. Think about that for a moment.  Let’s assume that I, and every other twitter users, follow and are being followed by 100 people.

Even if you and I follow each other it’s almost inevitable that I have some (more likely many) followers that do not follow you. While you may not be directly communicating with these other followers of mine, they will become privy to bits and pieces of our conversation via my responses to you. If they then choose to weigh in on the conversation by responding to what they see in my responses, which were initially directed to you, then all of their followers will suddenly become part of the audience and, potentially, part of the conversation! …and so on, and so forth…

Do you see how bad news, or good news, about your company could spread like wildfire?

Fortunately, the company had someone monitoring the twitter updates and the complaint was resolved quickly. How did I find out about this story? It was aired on the national news! Since you might be thinking that was a fluke, I want you to know that that account was the third such story that has aired on the national news in 2008.  Are people complaining about your company on twitter? If you want to find out, you can sign up for a tweetbeep account.

Tweetbeep.com quickly alerts you anytime a twitter user has typed your company name, your name, or any word or phrase related to your product or service in an update. Can you see the benefit of tweetbeep?

Now, I’m going to delve into some ways you can use twitter to ethically influence people to visit your blog or website. Here’s one real-life example: After posting this article to my blog, I will type an update that all my “Followers” will see immediately.

All I will type is:
My new post,”Ethically Influencing People with Web 2.0 Technology” is available for your reading pleasure at http://www.immediateinfluenceblog.com/. Enjoy!

Did you catch how that is an influence and persuasion tactic? This blog post title will be attention grabbing and intriguing to most of the people who follow my updates.  You see, the people who follow my updates have come to expect me to deliver good content related to influence and persuasion. Most of the time I deliver the content on my Immediate Influence radio show, a teleseminar, a blog post, or twitter update. By the way, you can learn more about my radio by visiting:  http://www.immediateinfluence.com/

How do I know they’re interested? Let me count the ways:

#1 Shortly after I post the update that announces this article, I will see a spike in traffic to
my blog. I will also see an increase in the number of people listening to my radio show.
#2 People will comment on twitter or they will send me direct messages through twitter.
#3 I also use tweetburner to track the number of clicks on links I include in my updates.

Go to tweetburner.com to find out more about their service and sign up for your account today.

Moving on.

Basically, if you type keywords or phrases in which your target audience will be interested, you can expect three things to happen.

1) People who aren’t following you, but are interested in your keywords or phrases, will select to “Follow” you on twitter.

2) They will visit your blog or site, and return to it, if you offer good content.

3) They will tell other people about you resulting in more people following your updates.

By continually following that methodology, I’ve grown from 0 “followers” to “433″ at the time of this post. You might be saying, “So what!” That’s a fair response.  Let me ask you a question. Okay?

From your perspective, would it be beneficial to be able to send one update that would attract 22 people to a free teleseminar on a Saturday afternoon? With the unsolicited help of 3 or 4 of my twitter “followers,” I led a 90 minute, free teleseminar that turned into more “followers,” more listeners to my radio show, and a few more sign ups on my website.

Again, it’s important, very important to remember that the purpose of twitter.com and other social media technologies is to build relationships, so make sure that you mix up your posts with fun messages. Building this kind of rapport is an essential tool of influence and persuasion. For example, one morning I posted this message:

“I’m so sleepy right now, I need toothpicks to hold my eyelids open.”

Corny?

I don’t care.

It has been similar updates that have turned twitter into a viable part of my online marketing efforts.

As an added note… One more technology you should be aware of is Ping.fm.  “Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap,” say it’s developers. The short list of social networks you can update simultaneously with the press of a button are twitter, Linkedin, facebook, friendfeed, and plaxo.

Additionally, Ping.fm allows you to update from anywhere! You can use iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS E-mail, AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and WAP. Surely you can see the benefit of the Ping.fm technology on your own, so I’ll only spell out this one reason to use it: It will make your influence and persuasion strategies so much easier to implement. It adds the element of convenience to your toolbox! Just go to http://ping.fm/ and sign up for an account now.

In summary, by making use of the technologies such as twitter.com, tweetlater.com, tweetbeep.com, grouptweet.com, and Ping.fm you can begin to quickly and simply influence your followers to take a closer look at your services and/or products. These technologies are reliable vehicles through which you can begin relationships and stay in contact – but also to create a unique identity for yourself that will attract people to your blog, website, teleconference call, seminar, webinar, etc. Now, aren’t you glad you read this post?

Have a great day!

With your success in mind,

Ron

P.S. Be sure to listen-in to my BlogTalkRadio show Immediate Influence that airs on Monday nights at
6:30pm PST, 8:30pm CST, 9:30pm EST: www.blogtalkradio.com/immediateinfluence