I’ve just had a rather heated argument with someone on a Linkedin discussion group that’s had the side benefit for me of clarifying what I feel is the “right” way for professionals to promote their businesses.
I’ll summarise the background briefly:
The person in question posts regular articles on a Linkedin group I’m a member of. His posts are pretty much “best practice” from a copywriting perspective. The headlines are always controversial and intriguing – they always make you want to read the article. And the articles are well written, opinionated and again, controversial.
Essentially, he’s differentiating himself through his writing. He’s not bland – he has clear points of view that I’m sure attract a lot of readers.
Last week, however, he posted on a subject I know something about. The business value of Twitter.
In a post entitled “Twitter is for Twits” he opined on how Twitter was a complete waste of time for businesses.
This is where it became intriguing for me. His headline was effective – it got people to read the article. The article was well written and got across a clear point of view.
The trouble was, I know a lot about using Twitter to get new clients. Both from my own experience and from others who I’ve talked to in depth about how they’ve used twitter to win new business. And my experience was very different.
His position massively oversimplified reality. In my experience, Twitter can work well for some people, in some circumstances, and used in certain ways. It’s not a simple black or white, good or bad situation. Just like any other business development or lead generation channel, it requires careful thought to figure out if it will work in your circumstances, and to figure out how best to use it.
I wasn’t the first person to answer the post – someone else posted a really thoughtful reply full of examples of how twitter could bring value. I posted my experience. I explained that I had 50,000 followers so I had some experience in the matter – and I went on to describe both how I had won (at least) a couple of clients via twitter and how others had done so with rather fewer followers but using a strategy of building deep relationships with a small number of people.
A few days later I received a Linkedin direct message from the person saying he was going to make a second post effectively using me as an example of how twitter was a waste of time because I had only won two clients despite having 50,000 followers.
I replied saying that that would be misinterpreting the facts. I use twitter for 10-15 minutes per day – and not every day. Getting two clients (and probably more, as I can’t track all the clients who initially found me via twitter) and a bunch of other side benefits for 10-15 minutes per day in my spare time when there’s not much else I can do for business development is actually a pretty good ROI in my point of view. Especially since I’m really, really expensive so those clients are very high value.
I also explained that whether twitter would be a valuable investment for people was not a simple question and required thorough analysis, not a blanket answer. And that I typically advised clients not to try to build large followings, but to use twitter to help build deeper relationships with a small number of potential clients.
Today I noticed he had gone ahead and made a new post on the Linkedin group exactly as he’d said. He’d completely ignored all the information and explanation I’d sent him.
Instead he made up a spurious calculation of how many people I must have touched with tweets over a year and claimed that only getting two clients from that “captive audience” viewing my tweets was an awful ROI.
Now measuring success with twitter in terms of new clients per tweet is like measuring success in advertising in terms of new customers per reader of the publication you’ve advertised in. Never mind that the one customer you got spent $1m and the advertising was free. Apparently it must have been a bad ROI because number of new customers per reader was low!
What he did was in many ways good copywriting. He continued to have compelling headlines and interesting, controversial and well-written material in his post.
But it was bad, bad advice. Worse, he deliberately gave that bad advice despite knowing better.
I can forgive him the initial post. We all sometimes write on a subject we’re not experts on but which we feel passionate about. And sometimes we’re wrong.
But I gave him detailed information which he then ignored when writing the second post.
Knowingly writing misleading information just to make an impact is wrong.
It may attract more viewers. It may build your reputation. it may make you more popular with people who share similar viewpoints.
But it’s wrong.
People reading it will make bad decisions as a result that will cost them significant time and money – or worse.
And that brings me to my point.
As someone who writes a lot, I’ll admit to trying to construct intriguing or controversial headlines to get more clicks to my site or readers to my articles. I’ve even constructed headlines to try to help my ranking in google.
But as professionals our primary duty is to our clients. We must give them the very best advice we can – not just say what best promotes ourselves.
Now sure, I may not be right all the time. And my passion may get the better of me and cause me to write or say something when I’m not in full possession of the facts.
But it is our absolute duty as professionals not to twist or ignore information to best serve our own interests.
So it’s most definitely best to be truthful.
Interesting gets more readers and more traffic. But truthful is the right thing to do.
And it allows me to sleep at night.
And I like to think that in the long term, it wins loyalty and trust.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Ian – It seems the guy was so convinced of his viewpoint that his mind made him refuse to listen to anything that could jeopardise this conviction.
It’s prejudice basically – a point-blank refusal to take into consideration arguments from the other side.When there’s a prejudice going on, “truthful” becomes blurred. He probably thought he was being truthful.
It leads to an interesting thought however – if we’re reading something online about a subject we know nothing about, it’s probably worth the time to check out a few different sources and build a rounded picture.
You know, you could be right Reeta. He could well think he’s being truthful and he’s just blocking out my biased opinion!
ian
I have to split the difference and say you’re both right, but you are more right than he is. For you, Twitter is a great tool. You are the brand and Twitter is great at promoting a personal brand. Therefore, connecting this way works for you. I follow yours and I think you follow our “corporate” one as well. However in my last couple of speeches I make the distinction in how Twitter works for different people. People don’t use Twitter to find a restaurant when they are hungry, but they would try a restaurant that someone talked about in their Twitter cloud. So Twitter really is limited in what it can do for sales. Same way that people don’t look up dentists 500 mile away on Google. So he gets a point on his side, in that Twitter is indeed lousy for a lot of marketing. That is really where the difference matters. You have a large audience. If you flat out stated, “I need some work” you would see a lot of work from that, however you would lose some audience if you did that very often. You have the ability to do what I would call reflection marketing. “I had the Bloody Mary soup at the Anchor for lunch and loved it!”, the Anchor gets new people in the door to try their soup because you can always convert a certain percentage with a group as large as yours. You aren’t really using your Twitter to drive new business. You are using it to establish your authority and communicate with your community. By not using it as a selling tool, you are afforded a larger community that pays more attention to your message. That poster really doesn’t understand that there is more than one thing you can do with Twitter and some things it does very well. If you are a restaurant and posted your daily specials, you would get a lot of followers. If you posted your daily specials and ten messages about how long it is until lunch time, you would lose a lot of followers. This is why so many corporate blogs are junk. They think they are in a one-way conversation like a radio commercial, when they are in fact in a two-way conversation with their audience. When they figure that out they will have a chance.
Nah – I’m right, he’s wrong – lol.
My point is the same as yours really – it all depends on the exact circumstances. Twitter is sometimes useful, sometimes not.
His point is that it’s always a waste of time.
He’s wrong.
But my main point is that (unless he’s really stupid) – he knows he’s wrong. I sent him detailed information and facts about when Twitter can be useful – and when it can’t.
He chose to ignore all this in order to make a more controversial and opinionated post. Best practice in terms of copywriting. I’m sure he gets a lot of readers because of it.
But he’s knowingly misleading readers in order to better promote himself. He’s putting his interests instead of theirs. That’s wrong.
Ian
I can totally agree. The only absolute is that there are none.
After careful consideration…you’re right and he’s wrong, by about, oh, say 100% to 0%. Especially with respect to willful disregard of contrary information.
A couple of related comments.
First, what is it about Twitter that makes otherwise intelligent people make such basic mistakes of writing, research and logic? Here’s another example: a blogpost by Steve Coll at The New Yorker. Zero data; evidence offered to the contrary; evidence ignored. Sheesh. See
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2010/02/does-twitter-have-moral-characteristics.html
Second, what is this mad rush to evaluate new software and communications tools in terms of sales ability? Somewhat the same thing happened years ago with voicemail; people wanted to know what it could do to improve sales. Huh? It’s plumbing; what’s wrong with plumbing?
The same sales-driven criteria seems to have dominated our thinking about most new tools these days; why does everything have to sell? why can’t some things just be products, or devices, or techniques–or just cool?
And anyway, your example is huge ROI. I’ve only got 1,000 followers, but it’s already way paid off to me–in connections, contacts, learning, openness. Sales? Hard to pinpoint, but that’s not my point. Which is my point.
It’s a very good point Charlie. I must admit I have a tendency to evaluate everything in terms of impact on sales (I guess that comes with the territory) – but there are plenty of other benefits too.
I get a lot of people contacting me with questions via email after initially finding me on Twitter then reading my blog. Like I know you are, I’m very happy to write back to people and offer advice and thoughts. That’s the way communities used to work. The elders felt it their duty to give back and share their experience. And it just makes you feel good too. We’ve kind of lost that in business but maybe all these ways we’ve found of connecting with each other are bringing it back.
Ian
Having an opinion and polarising people towards or away from you is what marketing and selling is all about. However, purposely ridiculing people when you don’t understand something yourself is an ineffective way of creating trust which is equally as important. The fact is what works is what works and its different for everybody and smart businesses test and evolve their strategy no matter what the channel is. Personally I would rather be interested than interesting AND truthful.
You’re right, of course, Nic.
Sometimes it’s not possible though. Sometimes the truth is a little bit dull – particularly when it relates to shades of grey rather than black or white.
And then it’s time to be truthful first.
Ian