#baratundethurston on #hashtags

Baratunde Thurston spoke at a Web 2.0 convention recently about the use of hashtags on Twitter. Baratunde is a standup comedian who works for The Onion and is a twitter genius. You will see in the video he has started joke twitter accounts and developed followings for each of 2000+ in two weeks through the brilliant use of hashtags.

If you don’t know – hashtags in twitter are the things you see with the pound sign before them (i.e. #swineflu, #howblackareyou, etc.). Hashtags connect you with people who don’t follow you. Search a hashtag in Twitter search and you will stumble upon thousands of conversations, you may want to jump in.

Deeper Meaning

What interested me most about Baratunde’s talk was this use of “crowdsourcing” information. Using hashtags to tap into the ideas of the crowd. It’s a way to start a conversation in 140 characters or less. This is an opportunity for you to tap into the masses and see what they have to say.

Experiment

Create a hasthag for yourself and start the conversation around it. See what kind of response you get back. Make it a question or a bold statement and hashtag it frequently. As the conversation grows it will breath a human aspect into your brand 140 characters at a time.

Watch the video, try it for yourself, tell me how it goes. Mention me – I will jump into the conversation! @jakelarson.

Level up!

I just discovered this tool called TweetLevel. You just punch in your username, wait a minute, and get your tweet score.

Your tweet score is comprised of four things: your influence, popularity, engagement, and trust.

Nothing too deep today. Just check out TweetLevel!

Twitter Tips: 9 Must Read Blogs

Twitter is great. It has grown into an invaluable tool for businesses to keep people engaged in their brand and what they are up to. Staying involved and up to date with the latest developments and tweet strategies can be key to the steady growth of your business.

Here are 9 blogs you must follow to keep up with the times:

1. Twitterati
2. Mashable – look at the twitter section
3. Twitter Blog
4. Twitip
5. Twittercism
6. WhyFacebook
7. Rotorblog
8. Twittips
9. Tweetyourblog

Let me know if this list helps you as much as it helps me. Are there any I should add to the list?

The dishes are done – what’s next?

You’re probably tired of reading blog posts and articles about networking. But hear me out, because I think the networking I’m about to write about isn’t the type of networking that makes your stomach turn. This style of networking will get you somewhere — or at least it did for me.

I’ll start with a story:

I have been working for a woman who needs help with household tasks every once and a while. It is a nice arrangement — I go over to her house for a little while after work about once a month, do some heavy lifting, hang some pictures, clean some gutters, or whatever she needs and she gives me a little cash. It’s great for both of us. Last night, we got to talking about what each of us does for a living. She’s a publicist for a handful of artists, and I work for an artist management company and am starting a web marketing consulting business on the side. Long story short — I got hired to consult (my first clients actually, this is very new for me) all of her acts.

My point:

You don’t have to be a schmoozer. You can do the rubbing shoulders thing and attend networking events, but you have to be genuine. Most of all: What are you good at? Better yet, what can you do that someone else can’t? Clean gutters? Move a couch? Pose for a live re-enactment of a Da Vinci painting? (That only makes sense if you love Arrested Development as much as I do). All in all, be available. Help people. Be genuine. It WILL work in your favor.

I know there are great stories about how this style of networking helped you. There are so many ways to be creative in how you help people. How did you do it? Tell me some story about how you painted all the doorknobs in someone’s barn and they gave you a job as a web analyst.

Bootlegged content is for music lovers

People don’t pay for products anymore. They pay for experiences. If you are trying to make it as an artist selling CDs — good luck. Scary as it may be, giving your stuff away might be the best thing you can do for your career.

The music industry is collapsing, it’s no secret. The big record label model is driving this ship straight to the bottom of the ocean. Why? Because they refuse to change their business model away from selling full length CDs at unfounded prices.

Fans need something new and fresh that they can take part in, that they can experience. In today’s market, there are 10 year-olds who know their way around torrent sites better than their own playgrounds. Everyone steals music — unless they can get it for free from the artist.

How can you boost your bottom line? Give away your music.

I know, it sounds ridiculous. And, sure, this will not work for some, and others will be too scared to try it. But if you build an experience around your free content that will get your fan hooked into your world, you have created a loyal brand evangelist. That is worth much more than $9.99.

If you simply cannot give your stuff away, then create free content outside of your music. Example: Recently I heard of a band called Live, whose lead singer tapes a flip camera to his mic stand at every show and gives away the video on his website. The result? Live’s loyal fans visit the band’s merch store to download the video — and many of them add an album or a shirt to their cart while they’re at it. This a great model for driving up sales without spending tons of precious marketing dollars.

Check out this blog post on Copyblogger about free content.

I feel a rant about the music business coming…

Don’t be dumb, use the Internet – A guide to wild success.

I walked in to the small rented space – a tiny lobby, an “office” smashed into the corner, and a warehouse the size of my living room and thought I was in the wrong place. I doubled back and looked at the door to make sure I read it right, saw all of the band merch hanging on the walls, and was completely dumbfounded.

I hired this company called MissingInk to run the web merch stores for all of our clients. From the start they seemed like a huge operation. They have a giant list of clients and their services are virtually endless. On top of that, their customer service is outstanding. They are amazing. I even dreamt of working there every once and a while.

The other day I had to drive to their office to drop off a car load of CD’s and realized the power of the internet. There are literally three people in that company. The owner, his wife, and a warehouse manager – who I think is a long time friend of the owner. Check out this companies website. After working closely with them for months, I couldn’t believe my eyes at the sight of how much output these three have in this cozy little space.

What makes this work?

Smart people.

That’s what makes this kind of company explode into a new stratosphere of output. The tools for anyone to grow their business or personal life are there on the internet for everyone. Smart people use them. Smart people find a need and fill it – then make themselves look awesome on the internet. They are genuinely good at what they do, and they genuinely care about their customer.

Don’t be dumb. There is always a smarter way.

How do I get smart?

Keep reading this blog. When I figure it out I will tell you for free.

Mailing lists – use them or lose them

Your list is important. Use it

It’s a lot of work to build a strong mailing list of fans or followers who give you permission to send them news about your business. Your list can become your most effective tool to meet your fans where they are and build your credibility. You have  a group of people who have gone out of their way to personally give you permission to email them about your brand. This list is your target market, your loyal fans, and no less – your brand evangelists. You can count on them to tweet, facebook, or blog about your brand within their own network. Your mailing list is a vital tool.

It’s true, you can lose it if you don’t use it wisely

I am working with a well established and highly credible band right now who just lost their entire mailing list. Thousands upon thousands of fans who can no longer receive the updates they individually asked for over the past 15 years. It was devastating. What went wrong? They didn’t use the list for a couple months – the next time they went to send an update to their fan-base, only 300 emails went through.

Why?

Mailing lists are “permission based” by federal law. Every time you send an update to your fans, whatever email client you use will file all who clicked, read, forwarded, blocked, opted out, reported as spam, or just passed over your email. This tracks each individual address’ permission granted to you to send them updates. By filtering out all who opt out or report you as spam, you can keep your updates to those who give you permission. Large lists have various checkpoints to clear before hitting the inboxes of your fans. These checkpoints review your list to be sure it is not spam – meaning you have the permission you need to send your update.

Here is what you may not know…

These checkpoints also check the last time you sent a blast to this specific list. If it has been too long, the checkpoint will consider your permission lost on all accounts – your list will be no good. You can kick and scream on the phone with anyone you like – I have – it doesn’t work. If and email client sends out an blast that is potentially considered spam, according to federal law they can be blacklisted and you both can get in big trouble. No one will risk it for you.

A loophole if you lose permission

After being told five times by everyone I talked to that the list was dead and gone – that we had to start over, here is what I did: Exported the old list from our email client (Constant Contact) and ran it through a mail merge in Microsoft Office. I had the frontman write personal letter to the fans apologizing for not keeping in touch, and he would love to continue to be connected to everyone. He briefly explained that we were switching email clients and if they would like to continue their involvement in the bands community they would need to re-sign up at the new mailing list (hyperlinked to the sign up form). Then I set up a dummy email account and let my computer send one email at a time to each fan on the old list requesting them to join the new list. Voila – permission.

This will not guarantee your entire list back to you, you may only get a small percentage of those fans back.

Use your mailing list, and use it wisely, or you will lose it.