I started this thread on Flyingsolo.com.au last weekend after pondering on a conversation I had at work with a colleague. Twitter is full of why you should be using twitter. So many of the blogs and magazine sites that I read are also full of stories as to why social media can make such a difference to your business.
The reality however is that most people just aren’t convinced that social media can be used to generate leads let alone actually make sales. I can see why and if you read through the 50+ comments that the thread has generated in a week (outweighing every other thread in the technology section and probably every section for that matter) there are plenty of small businesses out there that just aren’t convinced that social media can help them. Given the lack of resources and money that most small businesses are faced with, they stick to what they know works (or worked).
Face to face networking was the call in the first 15 – 20 replies that the thread produced (I haven’t had a chance to read them all). Many called this the most effective way to market their services, however I wonder how many of them actually did this regularly like even once a week.
I have invested over two years and 4000 tweets into Twitter and can honestly say that it has benefited Carbonite in the following ways:
- generated awareness
- developed new customers
- developed vocal advocates
- given the product a voice and a community through which to discuss backup and small business needs
- generated a channel of communication that is almost 24/7 with customers and resellers of the product
Whilst no one’s time is free, in order to achieve these benefits using common media efforts, it would have cost us significantly. Money we really don’t have.
Speaking to friend who is also the Marketing Manager for a large fleet operating business in Australia, her feelings regarding Twitter and Facebook where very much in line with “Twitter is full of people talking about what they are eating for breakfast” Julie couldn’t comprehend what there was to talk about and who would be listening.
The simplest way I could explain Twitter to her was that it was like visiting a networking event and not knowing anyone. At first you stand alone and listen to what is going on. Gradually you gravitate to a group of people and try to join the conversation by adding small remarks. Once established in the group you exchange views confidently. Over the course of the evening you have moved around and conversed with lots of groups. The conversation isn’t however always business. You have to talk about the food, weather, sport, listen to stupid jokes and comments. It is all part of making conversation.
Twitter for me is exactly the same. I also explained to Julie that my conversations on Twitter where not about self promotion. Yes 10% was but the other 90% was about Backup issues, small business issues, website issues, technology plus some general chit chat.
Whist my friend might still be looking to hand out business cards to people she meets, I can only recommend that she explore all forms of networking, not just the types that the text books from last decade talked about.
With the working week over and everyone’s backup issues taken care off, I settled in for some light tweeting and preparing for my weekly backup blog post.
On Thursday however, I caught site of a tweet from one of our twitter followers and recent subscribers to Carbonite having a few problems with their PC. It read something like this:
that would be the sound of a completely corrupted hard drive – fortunately I took out a subscription with @CarboniteAU about a month ago
I kept an eye out for progress and it seemed a few people where interested in what the result of the hard drive crash was.
See this tweet:
Have you been happy with @CarboniteAU? Looking to switch from external HD to Cloud.
The exchange continued
let me see how well my data on @CarboniteAU restores to my system – I have not started that process yet
This was all happening yesterday (Friday) in the afternoon. I contacted the person who was following the events to offer assistance to them should they wish to also trial Carbonite. They were happy to look at it in a week or so.
The day’s events took over and I didn’t hear or see anymore on what was going on with our restore process. However at about 7.50pm it started to get a little tense. The restore had started but being what the internet is in Australia, it wasn’t exactly going full steam ahead (which is what most people expect)
Here is a transcript of what was happening:
Is the @CarboniteAU @Carbonite server down at the moment?
I have reinstalled the @CarboniteAU software – now to try and reinstall my lost file #harddrivecrashedlosteverything
So @CarboniteAU back up has supposedly started – but I can see no evidence of it – gets confusing because flips between AU & US site
OK I found the information about @CarboniteAU restore process 45 535 files to be restored – 4 files restored – things are starting to move
What is fascinating about this is that it is so real and during the day I had tweeted about keeping your backup simple so that you can understand it and then restore it confidently. Our Carbonite customer was confident on the PC and so I was confident that they would work Carbonite out. However you could sense some insecurity.
Then the comments regarding AntiVirus software popped up. The transcript goes like this:
Does AVG cause a problem when restoring ?
At one stage the files restored with updating regularly and now again they seem frozen?
Would guess AVG & any AV sware would scan new files & slow.
Thanks Sonia I think I have managed to turn off AVG but may only be for 15 minutes
AVG Disabled! Thanks
Carbonite has never had any conflicts with AVG anti-virus software. There are some that at the point of installation we do have problems with but not AVG. However removing the need to scan files as they were being restored would have relieved some pressure on the PC. Glad this was resolved.
Now whilst all of this was going on, I was advised (via twitter) of a conversation regarding Carbonite was going on via Whirlpool. You can see parts of it here.
Had to place 3 posts there to ensure untruths where not being said about the product. Carbonite is not for everyone, particularly those with big data requirements (and especially video).
I do my best to never promote via Whirlpool, they think everything is spam for some reason. Anyway, whilst keeping an eye out on what was going on via Twitter I applied myself to whirlpool.
Now that status at 9.34 from out Restore was as follows:
@CarboniteAU 172 files since 8:08pm seems slow moving when I have 45363 files to restore
It seems we might have been keeping a few people entertained.
LOL we are AMISH tonight! only thing happening here on my superfast internet is @Carbonite @CarboniteAU RESTORE
Ok the next check was a little later (11ish),
All is good! The older version of the file I needed for tomorrow has been restored awesome work @CarboniteAU
So we did the important part of our job, which was to get people back to work.
@CarboniteAU no status is unchanged – the restore status says 45 539 files pending restore – but in fact many have been restored
That was enough for the night (11.30ish). In the morning I received this:
Overnight 7500++ files were restored thanks to @CarboniteAU a quarter of the way there!!
And then 10 minutes ago (3.30pm on the Saturday) I received this:
Must say @CarboniteAU back-up has worked very well – highly encourage you to invest $70 per year into this online back-up service
So a happy ending. We expect nothing less. We say it will save you and we expect that it will, over and over. I read an interesting quote about hard drives this week. There are two types of hard drives, those that have failed and those that are about to. Get yourself protected so that you can be up and running in no time.
Carbonite went in the direction of social media pretty much from the day we started our website. As we started to design and develop it a key part of it was going to be the blog/news section.
At the beginning I used to update it every couple of weeks. However what I started to discover was that targeting particular topics or industries began to deliver traffic. It didn’t mean sales but it did mean awareness, which at the time was our biggest challenge.
You can read the whole story at the Smart Business Solutions website.
My second story is about a work from home mum (Effie) that I was speaking to last week who opted to buy her domain and redirect it to her Facebook page, rather than actually build her own website. By building a Page on her personal Facebook profile, she has managed to build over 100 followers and believes that using Facebook was the best way for her to market her small business.
Babushka Designs makes Unique Event Stationary & Cards, Canvas Peg Boards & Personalised Noodle Boxes.
Whilst this small business owner had been on Facebook personally for a very long time, Effie quickly realised that she could build a Facebook page and then use her own friends to Like and promote her small business for her. What really changed her mind however was using her profile to connect with other similar businesses on Facebook. One in particular with over 12000 Likes profiled her work recently which lead to 40 new “Likes” over night. who have actually profiled her work and lead to significant traffic to her page and many “Likes” in a short period of time.
Effie is now looking at ways to use the various Apps available on Facebook to improve what she can do via Facebook. Apps like Reviews and even down the track a shopping cart app might be on the cards.
So an actual website isn’t the only way that you can build an online sales channel, Facebook and other social media services can get you up and running in no time and even help you tap into the right customer segment.
Over the past few weeks there have been a few articles on creating Facebook pages. It is actually quite easy (having done a few myself) and there are lots and lots of guides out there on the topic. Here are some articles worth reading on the topic to help you get started.
A Facebook Page, sometimes referred to as a Fan Page, is a single page that you can create for anything you want: a particular subject you like: a celebrity, a business profile, whatever your heart desires (as long as you have the legal rights to do so). Think of it as a one-page meeting place, with information, links, a message forum box, RSS and anything else you want (actually, it’s kind of like making a Squidoo lens!) Best yet, anyone can create them. All you need is a Facebook account!
This Squidoo post gives you some great ideas on how to create your page.
This is recent article via Dynamic Business which talks about this very topic of using Facebook as your website.
If you don’t have a website for your small business then perhaps Facebook is a good alternative. In a matter of minutes you can create a Page about your organisation, giving you an instant web presence, as well as the added bonus of being readily accessible to millions of active users via Facebook search.
And last but not least, you can also get a very thorough in in-depth look into how Facebook can work in your business via Luke’s great masterpiece – Facebook Pages for Business Guide.
Carbonite Australia has officially been tweeting for over a year now, closer to 18 months I would say. It has been an interesting journey. Obviously Carbonite is the US has been active for a lot longer and lot more successful given the number of followers it has managed to attract. However for us here is Australia, it is steady as she goes.
We have always looked at ways to better connect with the technology community and the everyday consumer who has a PC, has data and has a need to back it up. We trialled Live Chat for a while and I found it to be a great service, but it was purely support that we were able to provide.
Services such as Twitter are a little different. Over the past 18 months we have been able to grow our following, most followers being in small business and many of them with a liking to technology. What has however been interesting is that Twitter has allowed us to send out message directly to this community, tell our story, educate, but also provide support.
At the moment we get at least 1 question per week from someone wanting some form of clarification about how our services work on twitter. By being constantly on it we are able to provide this support pretty instantly.
These interactions are kept on twitter somewhere I suppose. I have never really thought about it. Over time however they may become quite critical, particularly if the conversations are support related as well as if they have something to do with a promotion. Ideally we should be keeping records of the somewhere. How long does Twitter keep them for? I have no idea.
What I have done however is look at how we can back these information up and the services that can do this for you. Below is a list of some of the more popular services and what they offer.
What’s at risk however isn’t just the tweets that you make, also at risk are the tweets you receive and the followers you have.
So it’s a good idea to backup your Twitter archive on a regular basis in case of a Twitter mishap. As we all know, there has been numerous times in the past where users have lost followers, tweets, and DMs. Therefore it might be worth considering one of the following methods to backup your Twitter archive.
- Tweetake is a web-based application lets you to back up all your Twitter details to your PC. You simply type in your Twitter username and password, select what you want to back up (Followers, Friends, Favourites, Your Tweets, Everything etc.). Your data is presented to you in a downloadable CSV file, which you can download to your PC.
- TweetBackup is an online Twitter backup tool that can auto-backup your tweets daily and store all your Twitter data online (ie in the cloud). To set up all you need is your Twitter ID and email address. Data can be exported RSS, Text or HTML format. Additionally there is no limit on the number of profiles you can backup with TweetBackup.
- Backupify provides daily automatic backups, archiving, and export for all your social media and SaaS data. This service allows you to backup your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, Basecamp and other online services.
So now there is no excuse not to find a way to backup your twitter and other social media accounts.
