Some of us on twitter figured it was about time that Huntingdon Twitter people / Tweeters got together for a tweet up at the local pub.We’ve held a couple of these and they were great so we are trying to make them a regular event:
Every 2nd and 4th Weds at The Barley Mow in Hartford, Huntingdon from 6pm
Follow the hashtag conversations on twitter #huntstu (nice and short) to see Huntingdon tweeters tweeting about who’s attending and general twitter conversation.
What’s a Tweet Up all about?
It’s a chance to meet people that you tweet with. It also means that you get some time devoted to talking all about twitter. No spouses, bf/gf, relatives or friends telling you to put your phone away and it’s rude to tweet when socialising!
So far people have been great with sharing tips and advice on some of the ways they use twitter and 3rd party applications. They share their lessons learned, mistakes, and what has worked for them.
So if you fancy a bit of twitter inspiration or want to join in the twitter conversation perhaps sharing or seeking help from others over a pint (or in @hr_katherine’s case a cheeky smirnoff ice ) then come along.
Couple of points to note:
1. It’s free (but the drinks aren’t)
2. It’s informal
3. Turn up at any time after 6 and leave when you want
4. Don’t feel obliged to turn up to every one
5. You don’t have to have tonnes of followers to join (more than one will do )
Hope to tweet and meet with you soon
Leave your twitter name below to tell others that you are a Huntingdon Tweeter
… and don’t forget to check the hashtag conversation #huntstu before you arrive if you want to know who is attending and what the discussions are likely to be about in advance.
I was asked this question this week and it occurs to me that not everyone will have had an experience of an internet troll just yet. So in anticipation of your first encounter, here is a bit of an explanation and a couple of tips.
What is an internet troll?
An internet troll is someone who is a pain in the backside online. They post comments, threads and responses online purely with the intention of causing bad feeling and stiring up a kerfuffle. They only want attention and drama and like to make people look silly or stupid or just discredit for entertainments sake.
Common places for trolls to hang out are forums, youtube, blogs, and facebook, (not so much by my own experience on places such as Linkedin, Quora but interested to hear other peoples views). Trolls especially hang out in places where they can post anonymously or under fake profiles and cause the most fuss. The larger the audience, the more chances of an encounter with a troll.
“Don’t feed the troll”
What people generally mean by this is to not give in to temptation to respond or provide further material for the troll to use either against you or to keep conversations and posts going.
Like a bully the best thing is to ignore the troll.
Easier said than done especially if the troll is taking pot-shots at you online and trying to discredit you and your business.
Business Forum Trolls
They usually look like an anonymous or fake person with remarkably rude or aggressive comments. They tend to repeat themselves in their effort to get a response and provoke a reaction.
Trolls love business forums (or forums in general) due to the audiences and that posts are not easily editable by people. Some business forums only give you a 10-30 minute window to edit a post before it stays forever (and indexed possibly by search engines).
Tip 1: Some forums have an ignore list. Just put the person/troll onto your ignore list and don’t even bother to read their comments.
Tip 2: Flag the post to the admins/moderators so they are aware of the trolling and can watch out, delete, warn or ban in line with their rules and guidelines. Business forum mods tend to rely on posts being flagged as inappropriate as they cannot read every post on a busy forum. It also means you deal with away from the public eye where you may “feed the troll”.
Tip 3: If you have built up a rapport online with other forum members or if the forum has a nice community feel about it then regular members will quickly recognise the person to be a troll. There may even be one or two people who you can private message for a bit of help and support.
Youtube, Blog, Facebook Trolls
I am sure we have all laughed at a few troll comments on youtube, facebook groups and pages, and blogs but there is a difference between being funny, amusing or a bit contentious in a view and being outright rude or aggressive as a troll.
I have put these in the same category as they are controllable by the owner. You can choose if and how you want to receive comments and moderate them.
On youtube you may decide not to allow any comments or ratings. But, if you do this then you might also be missing an opportunity to have conversations that might be useful for other visitors.
The same is true that your subscribers and friends or even just visitors are likely to stick up for you if you let them.
Tip 1: Be nice. It’s hard for someone to be horrible if you keep being nice.
Tip 2: Don’t say too much. A “thank you for your comment” might even be enough.
Tip 3: Ask your connections if they agree or would like to comment. It can be useful sometimes for someone else to come along as an authority or 3rd party to give their view.
The same could be said for blogs. You can decide what you allow automatically and what is set to moderation but personally I like to let as much through automatically and manage the rest by exception. We can’t go through life thinking everyone is horrible can we?
Facebook page or group trolls can be rotten but if you can then it is nice to go away and make a cup of tea and trust the community to sort out the troll.
The behaviour of some trolls is quite shocking. For example in Oct 2010 a troll was sent to prison. What’s the world coming to eh?
If you are ever on the receiving end of an internet troll then remember the person is just trying to get a response from you. The more responses you provide, the more you are encouraging them.
So don’t feed the troll!
You may also hear the term “keyboard warrior” where someone is brave to type out whatever they want without consideration for a persons feelings, online presence, reputation etc. These can either be another type of troll or they could be someone who just feels passionately about whatever is being discussed.
Tip: A good way to find out whether the person is a troll or just an opinionated/difficult/in-it-for-the-pr kind of person is to spend a minute or two looking back at their previous posts to see if they have a track record of this before you respond.
If it is on a forum you may have the option to “find all posts from this user”. Alternatively you could put their name into a search engine and see what comes up.
I don’t mean to alarm anyone with this article as you may never come across anyone horrible online. But.. if you do then don’t take it too personally. I know it’s hard but step away from the keyboard You are still trying to manage your online reputation and don’t need to respond too quickly with something that may do you no favours at all. If it is a business forum or a forum that is followed by search engines then each post adds to the content of the thread (kind of enhancing it’s importance and possibly resulting in it ranking higher than it would have done if it had been removed earlier or ignored).
The process of making decisions and emotions and influences involved always fascinate me. I’d like to share some recent experiences and reflections with you. I believe this is right up there near the very top of the list of leadership skills for successful people.
1. If you could have any superpower what would you have?
This was a table topic question at my toastmasters group last week. The speaker answered with the power to make decisions. Odd. Why not choose time travel or invisibility I thought, along with other members of our group. The speaker went on to explain himself further. In his view there was nothing much more powerful than the ability to make decisions. Otherwise life passes you by when you are still thinking. Plus too much wasted time regretting decisions or compromising to keep too many people happy or keep too many options open. It was an interesting viewpoint for me.
2. Personal development and decision making
Within a day of listening to the speaker at toastmasters I had another conversation with a lady new to running her own business. She explained to me that she was attending a mastermind group and the subject of decision making came up. She said I was very lucky to be able to process information and make decisions quickly as some people feel very uncomfortable and frustrated with their inability to do this. This made me stop and think about what she had just said.
Am I lucky? Yes, I am. This is quite a big thing for me as in my latter years working as a senior manager in a corporate environment I had become unaware of having had that decision making instinct squished out if me by leadership and development coaches who came out with things such as “it’s not about right or wrong it’s how you make others feel” and “it’s about buy in and taking people with you not making decisions on your own”. Does this resonate with anyone reading this blog? I can laugh about this now especially when leading turnaround or high pressured IT projects and recognise that my trait of not sitting on the fence trying to keep every committee happy was a strength that I didn’t appreciate at the time.
I have a guest of Ann Hawkins at a TIG event for reminding me of Belbin’s team roles and some of the picture is a bit clearer for me as I remember scoring highly as Plant and Monitor Evaluator. What a combination and real treat I must have been as a boss. Coming up with most ideas and spotting most risks and “challenges” (which I was groomed into using as the politically correct way of describing big fat hairy problems). If that isn’t bad enough I pretty much have always been ENTJ with Myers Briggs. But that was ok provided I “took people with me!”
3. I read a blog today about a business owners frustrations with doomed project management!
Boy did I chuckle at this article. What really bought this home to me is how different emotions, skills, and cultures exist when running your own business compared with being an employee.
As an employee it’s pretty much all about managing upwards. Another area I was coached on and it really made a difference to my career. Bigger pay rises, nicer reputation, more rewards even though I was delivering less and faffing more! There’s a skill in that and if you ever get the opportunity to develop in this area then grab that one with both hands. I’m sure we can all think of someone who we thought was a poor at their job yet somehow the boss loved them. Well I wasn’t one of them, but the managing upwards stuff was useful from time to time to get things done!
That all vanishes when you run your own business as you are the upwards! If you faff then you live with the consequences. There’s no board of directors to impress or influence. No minutes or meetings about meetings. Blissful. But perhaps not so blissful to people who struggle with decision making.
4. Tonights apprentice – sacked for dithering
Lord Sugar really is turning into a modern day Easop Fable of the business world. Show after show gives business lessons that we see magnified and exaggerated on the big screens but essentially there is substance and truth in the messages. Just as there was a lesson for the little boy who cried wolf too many times, there is a lesson for the person who doesn’t control costs, understand the competition, and in this week’s show make decisions!
I hate it when I work or collaborate with someone who tries to keep everyone happy for all of the time and whose favoured approach to everything is compromise. It’s such a feeble and annoying thing to do that rarely achieves anything. Yes it has it’s place with conflict resolution sometimes but if it overdone as a method of making decisions then quite frankly it drives me batty! Even in sales I would much rather have a no than repeated don’t knows! People move on to other things from a no or a straight answer. Don’t knows are blood suckers!
So decisions decisions has been my topic of reflection this week? Any thoughts? And please don’t say I dont know
If you haven’t added a link to your facebook business page or fan page from your personal profile then you may want to think about this. It’s a lot more interesting than arriving at a page for an employer or place of work name that just shows a boring little briefcase!
Here’s how to do this in just a couple of minutes. Many thanks to Ruth at Complete-Proofreader for letting me use her as a case study
If you didn’t see last night’s apprentice caused a bit of a stir with accountants who are keen to respond that Edward isn’t representative of all accountants. Of course he isn’t. The apprentice as we know is exaggerated behaviour and makes great telly but usually there is an essence of reality there. If you didn’t catch the show you can view on iplayer here.
In this episode Edward the accountant led the team to failure. Despite his background in training by one of top 4 firms, he sat in the back of one of the Apprentice black cabs saying “He wasn’t interested in margins”.
He also went on to squeal “I’m more than just an accountant” in the boardroom.
Lord Sugar shared his views in no uncertain terms that nobody should be ashamed of being an accountant and basically Edward should have used his accounting strengths rather than pretend or strive to be something different in tasks where the accountancy strengths would surely have led them to a win.
So I’m writing this article as increasingly we get approached for telemarketing for accountants where there is additional service being offered by accountants. More commonly these are services such as web design, email marketing, IT software, Business Mentoring, Marketing services, and also Social Media advice and consulting.
The feedback that we get day in day out is that people want their accountant to be relied upon for accountancy and to be the best choice in that specifically for them.
What’s important to people is that they feel safe and reassured that they have the right accountant for them to save money, maximise profits, steer and support financial decisions, and solid compliance. They want accountants to communicate well and have a good level of customer service.
They may be vaguely interested in their accountants views on things such as software, HR, internet marketing, social media, websites etc but mostly if they want a supplier of those services they will find one that does that for a living. The main view that people share is that they do not want their accountant to be distracted from their core service as they want to trust their accountancy supplier completely to do the job.
Accountants who forget to file annual returns for clients but who can recommend brilliant pay-per-click strategies really ought to be shot!
So thanks Lord Sugar for bringing that point home. That accountants should not be ashamed of being accountants and understanding their strengths, and to be relied upon when those skills are called upon.
Edward can be quoted as saying “I don’t need to show off that I can work out margins as I’m an accountant” but really it’s not about working out margins is knowing why they are important to a business and how to use that knowledge to drive decisions. No wonder so many accountants are face-palming this morning!
I’ve just added my comments to an article at Accountancy Age but it hasn’t been published yet so I thought I would add my comments here for people to see straight away.
The general gist of the article is that neither Social Media or Telemarketing for Accountants are good marketing methods for new business development.
Hmmm. Let me think… that’s the two aspects of accountancy marketing that are on the increase for me then.
Unfortunately there is a tendency for people to jump in with or without the help from a consultant, get blogging, link to twitter, facebook and linkedin with the aim of blasting broadcasts. People quite quickly reach a conclusion as you have, that it is the emperor’s new clothes and that social media for accountants doesn’t work.
Heather (Townsend) is spot on with Social Media being valuable in identifying people to connect with. Whether that then becomes an online or offline conversation is a different matter but I would remind people that there are remote working accountants who sign up clients without ever meeting them at all face to face.
My business is cold calling and telemarketing for accountants. I am not short of customers and demand is increasing. I also know what our ratios are in terms of hours for appointments, conversion rates etc so can be objective about this return on investment.
Not only is traditional cold calling and telemarketing for accountants popular because of the attractive return on investment from a well thought out campaign, it is evolving to incorporate social media as a lead generation method. Conversations and people are identified via social media monitoring tools, connections are made, and where appropriate marketing and sales approaches take place.
Maxxy has been making cold calls from social media discussions since around 2007 (from business forums mostly at that time) so it’s not a new thing. What makes it feel different is the huge increase in online conversations. People will always be drawn to sticking to what is comfortable and so social media or cold calling may not be for everyone but that doesn’t mean it isn’t successful.
You may be interested in this white paper produced by social media examiner this week from a base of 3300 marketers. Page 16 gives an overview of how people rate benefits of social media marketing with 51% indicating their main benefit is generating qualified leads.
The next page talks about Improved Sales demonstrating it takes time to develop relationships that lead to actual business. The people who achieved the most benefit are self employed and small business owners with 2 or more employees. Another interesting statistic is that 52% of people see lead generation benefits from only 6 hours per week.
So, are all these marketers wrong?
I can only say that based on my experiences of using social media for my own business and on behalf of clients which includes accountants it seems pretty accurate to me. I know what leads we generate from cold calling and social media and I can’t recruit staff quick enough!
So what are your thoughts?
I would love to hear them either here or over at accountancyage.com
I’ve been asked what mistakes I have made with twitter and there are a few that spring to mind. I’m not too proud to share them …
Mistake 1: Linking twitter and linkedin account
Conversation on twitter is more casual than linkedin and some of my connections on linkedin are more traditional in their views and careful of what others in their network see of them. Some of them are job hunters who want to make a good impression for prospective employers for example.
Therefore, when I retweeted something with a swear word it linked through to my linkedin profile. Subsequently it showed up on someones profile as a recent update! eek.
I learned very quickly from that mistake to NOT link my linkedin and twitter but to use the hashtag #in instead when I deliberately want something to be updated to linkedin.
The other consideration is that people using linkedin feedback that they get intolerant of reading twitter updates from their connections.
Mistake 2: Linking Youtube and Twitter
Another linking mistake! I totally underestimated the annoyance of tweeting updates from youtube and activity such as subscribing to a channel, liking a video, posting a comment on someones channel was being updated. Well, actually I had realised but at a time when I wasn’t on youtube very much so it didn’t matter. Then after a flurry of activity liking videos, subscribing to channels and posting comments I realised that I was filling up the whole of peoples twitter timeline! Another eek! I find it easy to use the share button instead to share via twitter, facebook etc instead of linking twitter accounts.
Mistake 3: Using tweetdeck for multiple postings
It’s quite easy to compose a tweet on tweetdeck and send from several accounts. I know I am not the only person to have done this as I have seen other people do it too. It’s a complete giveaway if you are tweeting on behalf of someone else and people who follow both or more of these accounts get to see all the updates at the same precise moment. Be really careful of this.
Mistake 4: Using www.who.unfollowed.me on my phone
I went to expand the screen so I could see it better (iphone) and as I did so I touched the tweet this button. Aghhh. This meant that I had just shouted out about the person that had recently unfollowed me. Oops. Be careful of this otherwise you will look a bit confrontational and upset that someone has unfollowed you (which is not the case for me).
Mistake 5: Linking Facebook and Twitter
My friends who are not on twitter were very puzzled with updates using twitter jargon such as @mention, RT, #ff, and especially when replying to someone as it was like hearing one half of a garbled message. I only did that for one day but still see quite a lot of other people doing it and it looks pretty weird for a facebook user.
Mistake 6: Following other peoples lists blindly
This was a mistake as I had underestimated the amount of inactive accounts that were in lists so I don’t so this now. Instead I select active and interesting accounts to follow
The biggest challenge that I hear from Accountants looking to market their practices is to get the marketing messages right for Features & Benefits.
Yes we know that accountancy is not the most riveting subject on the planet however don’t underestimate how important it is for some people.
Lots of accountants take the view “It’s just accountancy” but really it isn’t! Here’s what I mean …
1) What is compliance to you is reassurance for others
2) What is tax planning for you is saving money for others
3) Fixed fees for you is value for money to your customers
4) Management accounting is confidence to make decisions
5) Payroll is comfort from things being done professionally and properly
Have a look at your website and see if you have listed a load of features instead of benefits.
See if you can further translate these into benefits from the accountancy services provided.
Does this overflow from your website to other marketing literature such as sales literature (brochures, direct mail templates, business cards etc) and other marketing information such as Telemarketing scripts/briefs?
It can be really advantageous to try and put yourself in your potential customers shoes.
Try not to think about the actual task or service being provided but rather how that particular potential customer can/will benefit from using it.
There will also be other pockets too where the benefits can be articulated either by size of business, industry, stage of growth etc.
Big warning here though… Don’t overcook it!
Too much waffle about benefits without actually describing services leaves people to guess what the actual thing is that’s being offered and they won’t do that, they will just give up.
I actually had a telemarketing call today (I won’t say what the product was) but I was in the market for it. However the telemarketer was completely useless and just kept referring to their script/checklist/guide and kept banging on about benefits of saving money, being more efficient but at no time at all had she actually told me point blank what it actually was. I was left guessing and after asking her THREE TIMES I admit I gave up and said send me an email just to get her off the phone as I was bored with listening to her. I really hoped that the email would be more useful but NO, it was even more of the same waffle just in a written form so the delete button was hit.
If you would like to discuss this please call on 01480 878082 and we are happy to share our experiences of other accountants who have worked through this particular challenge. We also work with a number of marketing consultants so we also have the option of pulling in some outside help for you too if you need it.
We specialise in working with accountants and busy professionals. Our telemarketing is complemented with support solutions to maximise results to suit your needs, style, your audience and your budget.)
Huntingdon Tweet Up – 8th June 2011
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