I previously wrote a post about the difference between active and passive attempts at obtaining followers; basically passive attempts likely result in a dramatic increase of overall effectiveness  If you take your time and answer the following 4 questions completely you will likely have a successful strategy.

1. What is your goal? - It’s not enough to just act, you need to first take a step back and think… what exactly is it that we want to achieve?
2. Who are you trying to market to? - Understand who your target market is. Determine exactly what your typical customer looks like.
3. What does your target market value? - Determine what your target market likes or values. What is it that makes your target market tick. What is it that they seem to enjoy?
4. What value can I provide (give away) to my target market? - Determine what you can give to your target market that they will love. This is the critical part; you need to provide your target market with something that they will truly enjoy.

It’s important to understand that followers are not interchangeable. A follower is actually a person and depending on a person’s individual wants and needs their interest in your message changes. Therefor followers the sheer quantity of followers is not enough, you must consider their quality.

Passive followers care: If a person wants to follow you because of the message and the value that you provide, they likely will be “high quality” followers.

Passive followers will likely result in:

• Increased CTR
• Improved Interactions & Conversations
• Improved Amplification of Your Message
• Sustainability
• Long Term Growth

Back to the question: How can I get more followers?

Well, there really is no simple answer. A question like this cannot and should not be answered in 140 characters or less. In order to fully answer this questions one needs to have a full grasp of your company, your product, and your customers. You also need to understand what a customer will see when they look at your Google+ page or your Twitter Page. What will they like? What will they dislike? What will make them want to follow you? What type of content do they want from you?

Bonus: What if not all of my customers value the same thing…? this is where circles in Google+ (market segmentation) comes into play.

Use your Google+ Circles to divide your followers into categories based on what they value. Provide value accordingly.

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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While this might seem like a very important question to ask… after deeply thinking about exactly why people are asking this question I would like to offer some advice. Don’t actively try to obtain Google+ followers, obtain them passively.

Please keep in mind this applies to any social network (Facebook, Twitter, ect) and not just Google+ Pages.

The difference between obtaining followers Actively vs. Passively

Actively Obtaining Followers – consists of an active attempt to get users to add you or follow you. This can be done by offering a promotion to users e.g. a customer will receive a $25 discount if they follow our twitter account. Or exploiting reciprocal following e.g. I plan to follow 100 people, wait 3 days and unfollow those who didn’t follow me back, rinse and repeat until I have 100,000 followers.

Passively Obtaining Followers - consists of employing a passive strategy that will make users want to follow your profile. This can be achieved by providing content (or value) that is unique and targeted to a specific type of person (your followers or your target market).

Why are Passive attempts better?

You need to understand that all followers are not treated equal. Followers are not interchangeable. A follower is a person, a customer. I don’t care if you have 100,000 followers or 1 million followers… what I do care about is WHO your followers are. Quality is much more important that quantity. You need to obtain followers who are REAL people (not bots), who care about what you have to say, and who can actually be clients (for the most part). For instance: if you have a local pizza place and you just started a Twitter account you need to understand who you want to follow you and you need to think about how valuable a follower that is that lives 100 miles away.

By their nature active attempts at obtaining followers usually result in low quality followers who are not very interested in your content. Passive attempts result in high quality followers and a much higher CTR for any links you post. Remember: passive users will always care more about what you have to say.

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Thanks for reading, I will be adding more articles about passively obtaining followers in the days to come. Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Scott

Next up: A Best Practices Guide to Passively Obtaining Followers

This article series was inspired by the HubSpot #inboundchat on Twitter about Google+ Pages as well as HubSpot’s article: 10 Guaranteed Ways to Get More Google+ Page Followers.

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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Here’s why: Google is incorporating  Google+ information into search results.

The image above shows a sample search that I ran when I was logged into Google+. Notice how the search results include information that is entirely unique to my personal Google+ profile, specifically including what the people and pages in my circles have shared. While it is possible for people to share your website even if you do not have a Google+ you need to consider the following:

1. If Google+ users add you or your business to their circles you will be able to influence what they see when they do a Google search.
2. Shared pages on Google+ will likely have a greater chance of being clicked in the Google results pages.
3. Google search results may help you expand your online influence, presence, and followers – Danny Sullivan’s result has an “add to circles” button.
4. Google+ Direct Connect will give your brand even more exposure in Google’s search results.
5. Google is sure to incorporate further integrations with Google+ Pages in the near future.

With over 65% market share Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Google now gets over 165 million unique visitors a month making it the popular website on the internet. With the amount of influence that Google has on the internet shouldn’t you be taking Google+ more seriously?

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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Google+ pages was launched today.  They also released Direct Connect  as “an easy way for your customers to find your Google+ Page on Google search”. Google Plus pages along with Direct Connect will provide companies the opportunity to connect with their customer base on a closer level. The Google search engine results page now can contain Google+ Page results allowing Google+ users to follow companies (by adding them to their circles) directly from the SERP’s. This eliminates the amount of steps that are required for a user to follow a company potentially increasing the participation.

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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StumbleUpon is growing fast. This graph (from Compete) compares StumbleUpon’s traffic with Twitter and Reddit to help illustrate StumbuleUpon’s much higher growth rate. In August 2011 Compete reports that StumbleUpon had 6.7 million unique visitors. In September 2011 Compete reports 12.5 million unique visitors… a 187% increase in traffic! For a better illustration see the picture below:

StumbleUpon’s Unique Visitors and Growth Rate

So the question remains: Is StummbleUpon going to be the next big social media platform?

I don’t think so but with a traffic increase this dramatic it might be worth a deeper look. StumbleUpon released an InfoGraphic explaining how their platform was better than every other social media platform including both Facebook and Twitter. But I’m not to sure that StumbleUpon showed all of the important data. What do you think?

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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Market Share – SumbleUpon had the highest market share by traffic referrals with 50.34%. With Facebook at: 37.4%. Reddit: 4.26%. Twitter: 3.23%.

After 24 hours – After 24 hours a popular website was shared with StumbleUpon it will get 80% more stumbles. Facebook will get 5% more likes. Twitter will get 0% more retweets.

Link Half-Life – The half-life of a typical link at StumbleUpon is 400 hours. On Facebook: 3.2 hours. On Twitter 2.8 hours.

Average Time on Page – The average time on page for a typical link on StumbleUpon is 69 seconds. Facebook and Twitter are at 23 seconds.

So What Does This All Mean?

Put bluntly, not much at all. The beauty of statistics is that they can be shaped and twisted to convey any message that you want. While all of this data might make it seem like StumbleUpon is the best choice for Social Media Marketing, it might not be. Here’s a few reasons why:

The data fails to compare the percentage of popular links to not-so-popular links. StumbleUpon might be comprised of only a small percentage of websites that get all of the referral traffic.

The data does not look at the type of content shared. All content is not treated fairly in StumbleUpon. Users seem to like highly graphical content rather than some company website.

The data fails to consider the type of users that are viewing the content. If StumbleUpon sends a bunch of referral traffic to a website and they are not at all interested in purchasing any products, how useful is that referral traffic when it fails to convert?

Market share of referral traffic does not consider the spread of the pageviews among pages shared in StumbleUpon. A lot of the referral traffic is likely to be from a small user base leading to a small amount of unique vistors.

The data ignores any other interaction with the content besides clicking on the link. Links that are shared on Twitter and Facebook usually come with much more than just referral traffic. Users have the ability to comment on the content or send tweets about it.

The half-life does not consider the extent of the engagement. While Facebook and Twitter have a much shorter period of engagement they could have overall more shares by a broader audience (because there are so many upfront).

Leave a comment below and tell me what you think.

Source: StumbleUpon Article

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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1. To Improve The Image of Their Brand

Used as a Feedback Avenue - allows the company to reply to customer feedback in a meaningful way.
Responsiveness - allows the company to respond to complaints as they happen, rather than after.
Public Exposure of Remedies - allows for free publicity of how the company treats its customers.
Person Behind the Brand – allows the company to put a person behind their business creating closer relationships with customers.
Transparency – allows the company to be completely open and honest with customers.

2. To Leverage the Value of The Property

The Value of the Followers - allows the company to convey a message across an entire network of interested customers.
Getting Closer To Customers – allows the company to go to where their customers are rather than waiting for them to come to the company.

3. To Provide Social Connectivity and Brand Exposure

Spreading the Word – provides followers with the opportunity to share information about the company with their friends through the following: Retweets, Potential free celebrity endorsements, and @YourCompany showing up on millions of feeds.

Scott Bartell

Scott Bartell is currently a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, with a Marketing Concentration. Scott has over 7 years of digital marketing experience at V.M. Marketing Group based out of Buffalo, NY. He has extensive knowledge in: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Web Development, and other related fields.

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