Day: September 16, 2010

Introducing #Link4Lunch ~ A New Way of Sharing!

Always thinking about methods of encouraging and improving the productive sharing of quality information on Twitter, this week I have come up with the #Link4Lunch Hashtag.

It seems that many folks around the world are now are foregoing reading a paper at lunch and instead are looking at what others are posting on Twitter on a relatively random basis while scarfing down their sandwich or tofu & avocado salad.

So the concept is quite simple and aims to improve this user experience of casual lunchtime Twitterowsing through utilizing #Link4Lunch. What I am suggesting is that each tweep interested in participating in #Link4Lunch select what they think is the BEST and MOST INTERESTING link they have come across in the last 24 hours and post it between the hours of 12:00 noon and 1:00 pm using the hashtag #Link4Lunch.

I would suggest that each person only select and tweet one link each day and ensure that it is of GREAT quality to be their #Link4Lunch tweet. And honestly if you don’t have something you think is a great post, article, pic, comic, news story or something else then DON’T tweet a #Link4Lunch that day.

So here was the very first #Link4Lunch tweet I made today at 12:20pm and I plan to do the same everyday with the BEST link I find to share with all of you in the Twittersphere who follow @TheSocialCMO

To make it easy to follow everyone’s #Link4Lunch contribution each day I have already established a page on WhatTheHashtag http://wthashtag.com/link4lunch so that you can easily watch the #Link4Lunch stream without getting any mustard on you!

So I hope you all will give #Link4Lunch a go tomorrow between 12:00 noon & 1:00pm and we’ll all see where this one goes!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

What shape is your funnel?

Put random folks in at the top and loyal customers come out at the bottom…

A billboard leads people to a website, which gets some people to subscribe via email which drives some folks to respond to a promotion which leads a few to come back for the stuff that isn’t onsale, which leads to someone who can’t live without you.

That’s the obvious path of outbound marketing. Most people you pour into the funnel hop out long before they become loyal customers.

The thing is, some funnels are more efficient than others. Expose your idea to ten of the right people and it catches on with three of them. Other ideas or offers need to be exposed to far more people (and go through more steps) before they’re likely to convert someone.

The mistake we often make: thinking that the problem is that there’s not enough people starting the process, not enough people being exposed to your offer. In fact, it’s almost always a problem with how efficient the funnel is and how likely it is that loyal customers tell their friends. If you take care of those two elements, you have a lot more to invest in promotion, and delightfully, the promotion is more effective as well.

Google advertising puts the funnel shape under stress. If you can make your funnel more efficient, then you can afford to spend more money on each person you put into the top of the funnel via a paid ad. If your competitor can convert twice as many people as you can, she can spend twice as much per person, no? And thus the smart competitor will buy up as much of the market as possible.

The only response: shape a more efficient funnel.

Seth Godin