Twitter for Business — What’s Appropriate?

As a brand-new Twit, I read Ron Shevlin’s post on Twittiquette with interest. If this thing’s going to work for me, it’s going to work as a business tool — if I want to communicate with my vast network of friends, I can call him on the phone.

So for the business users among you, a query — how much is too much? What do your customers, prospects and business associates want to hear from you. What’s so important that they would subscribe to a feed that gives me regular access to them?

What constitutes appropriate business Twitter behavior, and what constitutes an annoying repeated intrusion?

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Phil Bernstein is a Twittering Fool!

You can subscribe to my blog. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can “Friend” me on Facebook. And now, I’m on Twitter, too.

Frankly, I’m not sure why, exactly. But supposedly, this blog is now synced up with Twitter, so my “followers” (assuming I have any) will get a “tweet” when I publish this post.

Do you use Twitter for business? If so, leave a comment, and tell me why, and how you use it. And if it helps you at all.

Enquiring minds want to know.

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Using Radio To Get Customers to Your Web Site — 7 Proven Techniques

Many of my long-time customers are now, finally, using their web sites as selling tools. They often ask how they can most effectively drive prospects to their sites, and convert them to customers. Here are seven techniques, based on education and trial-and-error in the field:

1. Have one call to action in the ad — a command to visit your web site. Having both a phone number and a URL will hurt your results. If the listeners have to make a choice of actions, it gives them a reason to hesitate, and a significant percentage will do nothing at all. Copywriting guru Dan O’Day taught me this at a seminar, and my experience has confirmed it.

2. The success of your URL will depend to a large extent on how simple, and how memorable, the address is. You’ve got a better chance if it matches the company name exactly, or if it’s a natural expression of the value proposition. If there are hard-to-spell words, or people have to think about it at all, you’re in trouble.

3. Insist on “dot com”. “Dot net” or “dot biz”, or other suffixes, will lower your response because people remember Dot Com no matter what they actually heard.

4. If your URL is hard to remember or spell, consider using the radio station site as a “short cut”. Most stations promote their web sites heavily these days, so listeners are trained to go there already for news, entertainment, and contests. You can put a banner on the site, and then the call to action is to go to the station site and click on the banner. For example, “Go to K103 dot com and click on the VanderVeer Center logo.” CAUTION: banners are often sold in rotation. To get the results you need, you must make sure that the banner is up on the site 100% of the time.

5. Many stations have a search box on their web site. An alternative to the banner is to buy a keyword, and use that as your call to action. “Go to K103 dot com and type in the keyword ‘Botox’. That’s K103 dot com, keyword ‘Botox’.”

6. Make sure your site is set up to capture customer information for later follow-up. If people come to your site, read a few things, and leave, you may never get them back. Offer some value in return for their email address — a free report, coupon, or other premium that would convince them to tell you who they are.

7. Once you have the information, follow up quickly. Your prospect will find other things to think about if you let time go by. An email autoresponder can help you automate the process.

If you’re a Portland area business owner or manager, I can help you set all this up. After all, it’s what I do.

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The Gardenburger Mess — How Not to Handle a Crisis

It started last weekend, when small signs at Burgerville outlets notified customers that the chain was temporarily taking Gardenburgers off the menu. The story picked up steam when Burgerville placed a huge order with a small local meatless-patty manufacturer. Now, it’s exploded into public view as grocery giant Fred Meyer announces that it has pulled the product off its shelves.

From the outside, it appears that Kellogg, owner of Gardenburger, has done its best to keep the whole thing quiet. By attempting to sweep the issue under the rug, Kellogg has guaranteed an extra level of public attention — and done enormous unnecessary damage to Gardenburger’s reputation.

The story is still developing, but here’s how it looks right now:

1. More than a week ago, Burgerville workers unpacking the product noticed something they didn’t like. Burgerville officials contaced Kellogg, weren’t sastisfied with whatever they were told, and pulled the product. To its credit, Burgerville announced the change to its customers with signage at the stores.

2. A few days later, Burgerville announced that they would carry a different meatless burger — the first public indication that this problem might be a big one.

3. Later in the week, Kellogg announced a “voluntary withdrawal” of Gardenburgers, but refused to say why, beyond a vague statement that food safety was not an issue.

4. Kellogg apparently didn’t bother to mention any of this to the FDA. Charles Breen, the agency’s regional director, found out by reading about it in the Oregonian.

5. As of the time I write this, concerned customers who visit Gardenburger’s web site will find no information at all about the problem.

It is often the case (see Nixon, Richard) that when there’s bad news, a cover-up will make things much, much worse. Kellogg has lost their opportunity to have some control of the information flow.

This is in sharp contrast to Johnson & Johnson’s prompt and aggressive outreach following the Tylenol deaths of the early 80’s. Gardenburger should follow J & J’s playbook — tell the public exactly what the problem is and what they intend to do about it. The unnecessary damage they’re doing by remaining silent will haunt them for years.

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Can Your Advertising Create Demand?

Advertising can take demand and drive it to your business. As a general rule, it won’t create demand where none exists. If people aren’t experiencing the problem you exist to solve, advertising won’t suddenly create that problem for them.

But there’s one exception — advertising may change the consumer’s perception of their situation. They may have been content with things, or may not have been aware that what they’re experiencing was unusual, or solveable. In that case, an ad campaign can create demand.

Deborah Brody’s blog tipped me off to an interesting story from the world of pharmaceuticals. According to MSNBC, GlaxoSmithKline managed to create a near-epidemic of restless leg syndrome by launching a campaign for a drug called Requip. Thousands of patients who either never realized they had a problem, or never thought there could be a solution, headed for their doctor’s offices after seeing the Requip ad on television.

“Restless legs syndrome is a great example of a suddenly out-of-the-blue disease,” said Dr. Christopher J. Earley, an associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who treats the disorder.

Advertising created an overheated demand for diagnosis among consumers, while easy-to-dispense drug samples provided a convenient response for busy doctors, he said.

Now, however, the first generics are going on the market, so Glaxo has pulled the campaign. Some experts are predicting a decline in the reported prevalence of the disorder. Advertising giveth, and advertising taketh away.

Here in Portland, a local roofing company has created a market for roof inspections. Roof Life of Oregon has been running a radio campaign recommending a roof inspection every five years. Until now, most homeowners wouldn’t think about their roof until a problem made itself evident. Roof Life has managed to convince them to allow the company to “look under the hood” on a regular basis. This brings in some inspection revenue, establishing a regular relationship with the homeowner, and increases the chances of getting the job when replacement becomes necessary.

Can you get your prospects to recognize a problem they didn’t know they had?

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.