Social Media: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Audience Doesn’t Like You

Are you struggling with social media engagement? Struggling with building your audience? You have thousands of Twitter followers, maybe even 50 or 100 people who have clicked “like” on your Facebook page.

However, even with this early success you’ve seen in social media, people just simply aren’t engaging with your brand? You are not feeling the social media love that others talk about.

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Audience Doesn’t Like You

1. You are not engaging. You spend all day listening or retweeting. You are not genuinely engaging with your existing network. You are on the sidelines watching the game go on.
Tip: Engage. Have a conversation. Get in the game.

2. You are not providing value. Your website may lack content that resonates with your audience. Your tweets are well let’s say, tweets. They look, smell and act like everyone else.  There are more than 10 Billion Tweets sent  in a year.  Tweeting a simple tweet that looks and smells like every other tweeter will get you no where.
Tip: Provide value. Inspire and connect with your audience. Get in their head and learn who they are and what they need.  Provide content that helps them solve real business problems. Provide tips that help them move their business forward with new skills.

3. You are not following people back. If you have people following you and you are sitting on your arrogant Twitter mountain thinking you don’t have to follow them you might want to think again. This thinking drives me nuts. Show the love. Be a good friend.
Tip: Develop a follow-back strategy. There are different schools of thought on this. My personal recommendation is at minimum make an effort to follow people back. Don’t sit high on your Twitter mountain with the expectation everyone owes you something. They don’t.

4. You are not a good social media friend. You don’t retweet. You don’t thank people who show you love. You never follow back. You don’t comment on other blogs in a genuine way. You don’t thank people who comment on your blog.
Tip: Show the social love. Genuinely engage and make your audience and network know that you care about them. At minimum let them know you know they are there! Often times if I don’t have time to thank all of my retweeters or send a series of #FF follow friday recommendations on Twitter I will send a couple tweets during the day thanking my network.  I let them know I appreciate them and all the social love they gave me!

5. You are boring. Sorry folks but it could be you are just boring. I am seeing many people who have a boring profile picture, boring content. They are the same ones who sit all day and retweet news feeds of mortgage rates or market news. They are providing no value and not engaging.
Tip: Brand yourself.  Understand your audience. Who are they and what do they need. Who are you and what can you offer them. Give your business and brand a personality. Dare to stand above the norm.  If you shoot for status quo that is exactly what you will receive, if you’re lucky. It may be less.

6. Your website stinks. If you are boring, your content  is boring and your website stinks you have three strikes and you’re probably already out of the social media game.
Tip: Social media is about conversation. Engage in conversation with interesting content, design and brand.   Hire a web developer and freshen up your website.  If you don’t have the funds to do such then find a self-help site or teach yourself WordPress blog at minimum.

7. Your social profiles stink. If your Twitter background is the default and your Facebook Fan Page has no customization you once again are shooting for status quo.
Tip: Hire a consultant or an agency to spice up your profiles. If you don’t have the funds the leverage an off the shelf service. There are several Facebook Fan Page engines you can use yourself that are affordable.

8. Your Facebook Fan Page is all about you. What are you doing to engage your audience?
Tip: Engage your Facebook audience.  Have fun.  Ask them questions? Do some research. Ask them what they need, what they want.  Leverage the discussion tab to invite people to introduce themselves.

9. People don’t know the real you. You are hiding behind an avatar (social media profile photo). You are not sharing the real you. You are using corporate speak. You aren’t using video, no interesting blogs.
Tip: Let yourself shine. Try out video.  Come out behind the avatar and let people get to know you.  Don’t be afraid of video.  If you use video you will attract people who like you, people who want to business with you.

10. You are afraid. Because of what I said above you are afraid to come out and play in social media.  You have been intimidated by the mean blog posts that are surfacing the net on social media gurus, wannabe gurus etc.
Tip: Don’t let the bullies scare you! Be confident. Have fun. If you don’t you are never going to make it in social media, business or life.

This article is published by socialmediatoday.com, click here to read the original article.

Mobile Twitter Use Explodes

Mobile usage of the Twitter social network has increased more than 60% in the past five months, according to data from Twitter.

Mobile Twitter Usage Grows
The total number of mobile Twitter users grew 62% between April and September 2010, according to statistics compiled by Twitter. In addition, since that time, the number of Twitter users who start out using Twitter via mobile device has risen from 5% to 16%. Furthermore, close to half (46%) of all Twitter users at least occasionally access the network via mobile device.

Twitter cites its April 2010 purchase of the Tweetie iPhone application, which it turned into the Twitter for iPhone app, as the catalyst for this explosive growth. In addition, Twitter has partnered with mobile OEM RIM on a BlackBerry app and also developed an Android app since that time.

Twitter.com Remains Top App
Tracking log-ins by unique Twitter visitors in the past 30 days, Twitter finds that the main Twitter.com site is still by far the most popular Twitter application, used by 78% of visitors (percentages add up to more than 100% because a single visitor may use multiple log-in methods).

The mobile m.twitter.com site followed with 14% usage. Other popular mobile means of accessing Twitter included SMS and Twitter for iPhone (8% each) and Twitter for BlackBerry (7%).

Mobile Website, SMS Beat Smartphones
As this data shows, while smartphone clients are important, there are even more people who use the mobile Twitter web site and/or SMS for mobile Twitter access. In addition, third-party clients continue to play an important role for many people, with what Twitter terms a “disproportionate” amount of the traffic from Twitter running through such tools.

Smartphones Drive Twitter Adoption in US and Europe
An analysis of Twitter usage via mobile for the six mobile markets currently reported by comScore (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy) revealed that Twitter is gaining adoption among smartphone users.

In the US, 8.3% of smartphone users (4.2 million people) accessed Twitter.com in a month via the browser on their mobile devices, outpacing each of the European markets. In Europe, 2.8% of smartphone users overall accessed Twitter.com (1.7 million users), with the UK experiencing the strongest penetration in the region at 5.8%, followed by Germany with 3.1% and France with 2.1%.

This article is published by marketingcharts.com, click here to read the original article.

E-commerce Spending Declined For The First Year Ever In 2009

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written by Gavin O’Malley is a reporter for Online Media Daily.

Thanks to the ongoing recession, 2009 will go down as the first negative growth year in the history of U.S. e-commerce. That’s according to comScore’s 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review, which saw etail spending decrease 2% year-over-year to $209.6 billion.

Weighing down the broader numbers, travel e-commerce spending dropped 5% in 2009 to $79.8 billion, while retail — non-travel — e-commerce spending actually remained flat at $129.8 billion.

In stark contrast, most of the last decade was filled with annual retail growth rates in excess of 20% annually, which tapered off by 2008 when the economy began to buckle.

“2009 on the whole fared significantly worse than the previous year with year-over-year growth rates remaining negative throughout most of the year,” according to comScore.

That said, the 2009 holiday season represented a bright spot in this largely negative year for e-commerce as it marked a return to positive growth rates, with both November and December showing gains of a few percentage points. Yet, this growth could be attributed to more favorable year-over-year comparisons versus the disastrous 2008 holiday season.

Though few and far between, 2009 did have its winners. In particular, the books and magazines category showed an impressive 12% growth rate, bolstered by category-wide price-cutting and the release of numerous high-profile bestsellers.

Computer software purchases were up 7% online, followed by sport and fitness — up 6% — and jewelry and watches — up 4%.

In the search category, Microsoft sites grew from an 8.3% to 10.7% share of all search queries — with nearly all of that growth coming in the second half of 2009 subsequent to the software giant launching Bing.

Overall, the U.S. core search market grew 16% in 2009, driven by a 6% gain in unique searchers and a 10% gain in searchers per searcher.

Despite its well-established leadership position, Google Sites’ search query volume still managed to grow 21%, driven both by gains in searches per searcher — up 10% — and unique searchers — up 9%.

Led by Facebook and Twitter, social networking established itself as a serious pastime among many Americans. Social networking activity now accounts for 11% of all time spent online, while 4 out of 5 Web users visited one network or another in December.

Facebook finished the year with 112 million visitors in December — up 105% year-over-year. Twitter finished with nearly 20 million visitors — up from just 2 million visitors from the previous year. In addition to its surging membership, Facebook grew substantially across nearly every performance metric in 2009. Unique visitors, page views, and total time spent all increased by a factor of two or more. For more information about the demographic compositions of social networking, read the original article here.

In 2009, U.S. Internet users viewed a total of 4.3 trillion display ads — standard and non-standard IAB ads, including both static and rich media, but not video — representing a growth rate of 21% versus a year ago.

These gains were driven by an 8% increase in the number of people exposed to display ads online, and a 12% increase in average frequency.

Mobile phone network providers AT&T and Verizon ranked as the top U.S. online display advertisers in 2009 — with 84.3 billion impressions and 56.8 billion impressions, respectively.

With regard to online video, 19% more people in the U.S. viewed more videos for longer periods of time in 2009. In December, a full 86% of the total U.S. online population viewed video content.

“2009 on the whole fared significantly worse than the previous year with year-over-year growth rates remaining negative throughout most of the year,” according to comScore.
This interview is published by Online Media Daily, read the original article here.

Fun Video: Into the Twittersphere

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Learn more about the Social Media tool Twitter.