Lessons Learned from Scott Stratten “Bouncer of Twitter”

About two weeks ago, I attended a conference in Orlando called “Extreme Business Makeovers”. One of the speakers that weekend was who is known as the “Bounce of Twitter” Scott Stratten (@unmarketing on Twitter) of Un-Marketing.com. He shared with us some strategy to use Twitter if you want a responsive following and not just a tool to broadcast. If you use Twitter as a glorified RSS feed and not as a tool to build relationships, then you have two choices: Leave now because you won’t like this or Read through this and implement it immediately.

Scott’s message revolves around his philosophy of marketing (or should I say unmarketing) “Stop marketing and Start Engaging”. He explained this by saying that “If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.” This is a powerful statement if you read it the same way I did. Your business is not your product or service, your business is building the relationship which will lead to sales of your product or service. This follows the old adage of “People buy from people they KNOW, LIKE AND TRUST.“

Another interesting fact that Scott showed us was the study of reasons why people buy. Here they are in order:

1. First and most obvious reason is they are a current satisfied customer. They have tried your product or service and know that you will deliver again.
2. Next biggest reason someone will buy from you is because they were referred to you from someone else that they know, like and trust.
3. Being a recognized expert is the next reason people will buy from you.
4. The most shocking is the last place people will look and buy is from Google. People go to Google or other search engines because they couldn’t find the answer to their problem any where else.

This really opened my eyes. The main place I was trying to do most of my marketing was on the search engines. Now I realize that relationships should be the main goal of my marketing efforts.

Now, in order to build that relationship, you have to take advantage of multiple streams of communication. And that is what they are, communication tools and not broadcasting tools. You have social media, newsletters (go sign up for his newsletter at Un-Marketing.com and see what he does) and blogs. Since this post is mainly about social media, I will focus in on how he suggests you use social media as a tool to build solid relationships.

He likes to use the term social currency to explain how to get something out of social media. He says that you have to invest you social currency into the network before you even try to get monetary currency out of it. I loved the metaphor he used:

“Social media is like a bank. You can’t go into a bank, open an account, deposit nothing and then ask to take money out of your account. There is nothing there. You have to invest in it and give to it first and then you can even begin to think of withdrawing from it.”

Now, let’s get into Twitter specific information. The main reason that Twitter is his favorite social media platform is because it’s open-door social networking, meaning you don’t need permission to learn from people. Unlike, Facebook and Linkedin that require both parties to agree to the connection.

Don’t split your social time.

This was one piece of advice that I took seriously. I was splitting a lot of my time between Facebook and Twitter at first. Now that I am focusing 95% of my time on Twitter relationships, I have seen a huge increase in followers and interaction among those followers. This is important since having followers mean nothing without them listening and communicating back.

Twitter makes live meetings less awkward.

I can vouch for this statement from personal experience. When I went to this conference in Orlando, I met a ton of people that I felt I already knew because of our connections on Twitter. It was a quite awesome experience.

Be your company’s CRO (Chief Relationship Officer)

“If you are your authentic self, you have no competition.” This is such a powerful statement. Especially with such a large platform available, you don’t have to please everyone. Just be who you are and share it with the world. People will be attracted to you because they will be able to tell that you are speaking from your core and being genuine. Remember that there are still businesses and people that need you and now more than ever it is important to build that relationship to get that business.

Scott’s Plan of Action for Twitter:

• Take 5 minutes everyday to read other tweets and comment/reply/retweet others. Nothing about you! Build, interact, give.
• Make sure your profile has a picture of you (not a logo) smiling, a bio and a link to a blog or website, not a sales page.
• Follow 10 interesting people per day. People you can get value from.
• Tweet 1 retweetable per day. Make a tweet that is original and thought provoking. Someone will retweet it if it’s good.
• Reply to 10 tweets per day.
• Retweet 3 per day (they will notice)

I hope this helps you and I would love to hear your thoughts about all this stuff. Please leave me a comment below with any thoughts you have or questions you might have and I will personally respond to you. Thanks for reading.

Tagged as: Bounce, Bouncer, Business Speakers, Google, Interesting Fact, Lead, Lessons Learned, Main Goal, Makeovers, Marketing Efforts, Old Adage, Other Search Engines, People, Philosophy, Relationship, Relationships, scott stratten, simple twitter guide, Twitter, twitter business, twitter guide, Two Choices