Scott Stratten aka @unmarketing is one of social media’s must-follows on Twitter for his common sense speak-the-truth advice on how to use social media tools. He’s just released his book, UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, and it’s already a best-seller. The Triangle social media community was rewarded with a stop on his UnBook tour at the Triangle Chapter of the American Marketing Association’s lunch on Thursday due to Chris Moody’s persuasive efforts. If Scott comes to your town, you must go see him. He’s full of wisdom about social media, communication, business and people, and he’s hilarious.
He started off by telling us his UnRules. I know that all my event and association tweeps will like these.
- Turn on your phones.
- Turn the ringer on if you think I’ll like the song.
- Tweet what he says and use the hashtag.
Scott loves Twitter. He once called it “the greatest mastermind group in the world, 24/7.” At first he didn’t get it, so he lived on Twitter for a month to figure it out. He discovered that Twitter is all about people. He says that if your market niche is human, Twitter might be for you. Heck, even cats are on Twitter (paging Mr. Scrubby). But, it’s not a business platform; it’s a communication platform that businesses can use – a big difference.
Be consistent, present and responsive on Twitter. Spend a half hour a day on Twitter. His Twitter stream is 75% @replies. Twitter is about talking with people, not to people. Focus on pull and stay, not push and pray. I’ve often seen this advice of his retweeted: “Reminder to take at least five minutes to reply/retweet others. Nothing about you. Interact, engage, give.” He advised us to check out our tweet cloud. The highlighted words will give you a clue about your Twitter behavior.
Conversations –> relationships –> trust –> business. The key to business relationships is trust; you do business with people you know, like and trust. Twitter doesn’t replace real life networking, but it enhances it. But remember, relationships take time.
Twitter is publicized customer service. We avoid confrontation so instead we whine on twitter to the world. Be present and responsive. All we want is validation.
Just because you say your video is viral doesn’t make it so. People spread awesome, not meh. Evoke emotion from people and they’ll spread the word.
If your product or customer service sucks, it sucks harder in social media. If you are a moron in real life, you’re a bigger one on social media.
Someone asked how to reach people who aren’t normally on social media. He said to write great content. That’s the best SEO.
There are a lot of tactics on his “stop it” list. Pay heed.
- Don’t piss people off with slimy sales tactics like obnoxious buy-now pop up windows, fine print and cold calls.
- Don’t automate tweets to Facebook. That’s confusing and obnoxious to those who don’t use Twitter.
- Don’t automate Facebook updates to Twitter. They usually result in cut-off tweets with a link back to a lame Facebook status update.
- Don’t schedule tweets to go out if you’re not going to be present to participate in the resulting conversation. The shelf life of a tweet is about five minutes. Be present or be an unresponsive jackass.
- Don’t RT others’ compliments about you. That’s just you talking about you. Lame.
- Ignore the trolls. They live in their mother’s basement and have bad moustaches. There are too many other good people on Twitter. “My job is not to be the jackass whisperer.”
If you couldn’t make it to the lunch, here are some resources to check out:
- #triama hashtag archive from 9/16/10
- @unmarketing’s Slideshare page
- Three short videos of his #triama talk
- Triangle AMA’s Facebook page
- Morgan Siem’s blog post about the talk — awesome post and not just because she’s an Arrested Development fan, hands down the best show on TV ever.
Photo credit: David Armano on Flickr
September 17, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Really GREAT recap, Deirdre! You captured it all beautifully.
One of my favorite quotes of his yesterday – “People don’t spread meh. They spread awesome.” Amen!
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September 18, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Thanks! He had sooo many good one-liners, just like his tweets.
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September 17, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Deirdre, this is a fabulous rundown of what I know now that I missed yesterday! Love how you summarized the stuff Scott – @unmarketing said about twitter with the do’s and dont’s of it. I am going to next check out the resources you listed at the end. So thank you for that! 🙂
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September 18, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Thanks! The What the Hashtag transcript really gives a good flavor of the talk. The videos give you a sense of his style. Almost like being there! The book looks good with an easy-going writing style. You may want to look for that too.
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September 18, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Hey! Thanks so much for the write up! You’re too kind. You were an awesome group to speak with, I could tell many felt the same pain 🙂
I can’t wait to come back!
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September 20, 2010 at 8:55 am
You’re are very welcome, Scott. I can’t wait to dig into your book, I know it will be great reading. I skipped the book-signing line because I was too busy chatting, so I look forward to meeting you in real life the next time you visit our fabulous community.
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September 20, 2010 at 3:56 pm
[…] also recommend reading Deirdre Reid’s event recap, reading Morgan Siem’s recap at MediaTwoPoint{OH!}, and watching Chris’ […]
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September 27, 2010 at 11:32 pm
[…] the speakers! Scott Stratten (aka @unmarketing) is a keynote, along with one of my long-time copywriting heroes, Sonia Simone, plus Problogger […]
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