I have tried a lot of different things. I have been on twitter, facebook, youtube and other video sharing sites, social bookmarking, and much more trying to build social contact with a business purpose.

The outcome can only be described as mixed but mostly poor result.

I love the social aspect of it. It’s fun to get to know new people with shared interests, but when doing it for business purposes you have to see some results. That’s why it’s so important to do it right.

I just watched a video by Don Crowter. He claims most people (like me) are doing social media all wrong. Their systems make them lots of friends, but little money. In this video Don shows you the deceptively simple, but highly effective secrets that will hopefully put you and me on the right track with social marketing.

Watch the “Social Media Doesn’t Work” video here

Until next time

Peter – Your Software Marketing Secrets Guide

PS. Check out the downloadable PDFs to get a bearing on how you are doing with your Social marketing. Hint

PPS. In the interest of full disclosure the above links to the video are affiliate links.

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Increase Your Software Sales with Twitter

Did you know you can increase your software sales by using the Social Media tool named Twitter in your marketing and sales efforts?

I will come to the “how to make money” part shortly, but first I will tell you a little bit about the phenomenon Twitter, in case you haven’t heard about it before or are unsure of exactly what’s going on.

Imagine the coffee machine or lunch restaurant at your workplace. The place most people meet up and share both gossip and hopefully get some work talk done too. If you can picture that, then you have an understanding of what twitter is about. It’s a gathering point for a lot of people online. It’s a dialog between people and as you will discover shortly it opens fantastic opportunities both socially and for creating business. And you don’t need a website, blog or marketing funds. It’s all free.

So how can Twitter assist you in selling and marketing software? As you soon will see links are a big and natural part of the conversations going on in Twitter. People are also much more inclined to click your links in Twitter than for example in email marketing, links on websites or blogs. And it will also take you very little time to write your Twitter messages. I spend about a minute to write a twitter message.

So, I just told you why you can make money. Now let’s dig into the how…

Step one, sign up to twitter. Go to twitter.com and create a new account. This will take you a couple of seconds.

Step two, sign up to a bunch of twitters. You find Twitters in twitter. The process is very simple and you will understand it as soon as you have tried. The easiest way to find interesting Twitters are through people that are already authorities in your marketplace and other interest areas. Authors, bloggers and so on.

Twitters you may find interesting to follow: @gillberg, @colligan, @softwareguide (this is an example of a business twitter with messages related to software). If you want to follow an example of a twitter dedicated to one software you can follow me on @snagitguide as well.

My initial tests suggest you can get a ratio about one to four, e.g. for every 4 people you follow one will follow you. And if you follow me, I will follow you

Step three, after signing up and subscribing to a few Twitters it’s time to set up your account. For people to sign up to follow you it’s important that you have a short bio and if you have a website or blog, include a link too.

This should help you get a higher ratio of followers and the followers will also be more targeted. Say you are interested in affiliate marketing. If like minded people see you in Twitter and check out your bio they are more likely to subscribe to your Twitter messages.

When setting up the account I recommend you use a picture of yourself. This will make you more trustworthy and human.

Step four, listen to the communication. Twittering is pretty straight forward process, but it’s good to get a feel for the general communication.

And finally, step five — time to start twittering.

Some Twitter tips.

• Be personal. Tell people a little bit about yourself, this will make you more human and trustworthy.
• Use mystique to get the click. For example; Check this out: [link], Wow, this is cool: [link] and so on. I think you get the picture.
• When it’s appropriate, interact with other Twitters using the reply button.
• Share valuable information, if you spam you will end up without anyone reading your posts pretty soon.
• Don’t talk about yourself too much.
• Use tracking for your links. I use klikdeal (klikdeal.com) for to set up my twitter links. This will pretty soon give you an overview of what is being clicked and what’s not. Avoid tinyurl as this doesn’t give you tracking capabilities. When measuring the results of your links with klikdeal you get an understanding of what subjects your audience is interesting in. This can be very valuable for your other software marketing efforts as well.

Looking forward to see your Twitters and click your links. A big thank you goes out to Paul Colligan for introducing me to twitter.

PETER GILLBERG is the owner of www.SoftwareCasa.com and responsible for millions of dollars in software sales. He also owns a consulting business for software publishers, teaching them how to implement online marketing and sales strategies. You can reach Peter by visiting his website: www.SoftwareMarketingSecrets.com

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Video Marketing

Are you marketing your software via video. You should. And naturally you should be on the biggest video sharing site of all – youtube.

Julie Perry has written an interesting article filled with tips on how to effectively market via Youtube. Thanks Julie, we will be designing our own channel soon

I recommend you go check the article out, but here’s a quick summary of my takeaways…

1) When linking to your youtube videos, use the user portion.
2) Choose a relevant and keyword rich username for your youtube account.
3) Edit your channel
4) The channel description should be done like a mini-salesletter

An example of a professionally designed channel, see Youtube user horrorfest. You will not believe you’re still on Youtube.

And don’t forget to read Julie’s post on how to effectively market via Youtube!

Until next time

Peter – Software Marketing Secrets

PS. See what I’m up to on Twitter.

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