How I use social media to build brand and sell socks

Since launching NicSocks we've been lucky to have many people visit the site, follow us on our various social media platforms, buy socks and actually sign up for our subscription sock offering.After reading Gary Vaynerchuck's Crush It! I decided that I should really focus on communicating with people through basic channels and converting every opportunity to into a sale.Here are some things I've discovered about the different social media channels that I've been experimenting with over the past few months.

Twitter

Joined: October 2012Followers: 167Tweets: 248Following: 99I only really started tweeting in November when I launched NicSocks. Since then I have made it my goal to engage with people on Twitter about socks and sock-related fashion. All in all I find Twitter to be a great tool to interact with people about my brand, their concerns, questions and feelings towards what we sell, how we sell and where we sell.Most of my interactions are with people who have just discovered our brand of sock and want a bit more information.Numerous sales from direct interactions with people as well as retweets and references on Twitter.

Facebook

Joined: November 2012Number of posts: 63Likes: 133Here's a quick little "Insights" graph from the NicSocks FB page:Massive highs and lows. Half of the likes I've received to the page are from friends and the largest reach I've had from a post was a picture of an article that was written about NicSocks in Entrepreneur Magazine.I have received zero sales from my Facebook page and continue to receive likes from people who I know are already fans of the page and have purchased socks. I have focused a lot of my attention of Facebook thinking that it would be a great way to build the brand. I think that in the long, long run that may be the case but the last four months have seen very little actual impact on NicSocks from the page.I've said this a lot in my professional life but what exactly does one do with a "like" on Facebook? In my experience so far, nothing.Zero sales from Facebook.

Pinterest

Joined: February 2013Boards: 6 (Boards NicSocks created)Pins: 113 (Things NicSocks has pinned)Likes: 54 (Things NicSocks liked)Followers: 12Following: 54It took me a bit of time to realise that Pinterest was a social network that NicSocks would slide right into and could really do well on. With that said, once I joined Pinterest I wasn't really sure what to do next. I decided that Pinterest would be a great place for NicSocks to begin positioning itself as a Men's Fashion Brand.I created 6 boards and began pinning things that were relevant to Men's Fashion starting with pairs of NicSocks and things that Nic wore every day. I expanded into Statement Items, Shoes, Fashion tips and Outfits.So far it has been a very hard slog on Pinterest. Lots of work uploading things, repinning, following people and liking other pins with very little return. But I think this one takes time to build so I'm sticking it out.Zero sales from Pinterest.

Google+

Joined: January 2013Followers: 3Google+ is an absolute mystery to me. I've googled "How to build a page on Google+" with no luck. I've spent time looking at other pages and adding content, I've posted, shared circled and linked all without any joy. 3 followers and that's about it.Zero sales from Google+

Instagram

Joined:Followers:Following:Here's a quick snapshot of my Instagram:Numerous sales from Instagram, globally and in South AfricaTumblrIt's not really even worth entering details around Tumblr. I found that this particular platform was one too many for me. I had a website, a blog, a twitter account and Facebook. All I was doing was reposting on tumblr to try and build an audience that was probably not going to notice I was there.I started my Tumblr and about a month into it I gave up. Too much work to repost via mobile on so many different platforms. Tumblr was the one to get the chop.Zero sales from Tumblr.

Blogs

The NicSocks blog is a pretty important part of the social media strategy. It's where I post all of my content first, it's where all of my social media links back to when I want to direct users to a message or a specific topic that requires discussion. For this reason I feel like there is great value in having and using the NicSocks blog.I don't have a massive readership yet via the blog but it's something that I am building slowly, organically and using the various social media platforms you read about above.They blog definitely hasn't resulted in direct sales however it leads readers to my website, to sign up to my newsletter and to browse our shop so there is massive value.Social media is a nebulas pit of tricks and tips and effort and time. If you're willing to put in the time and effort to figure out the tricks and tips for yourself then you'll gain the value. If you think social media is a quick way to make a name for your brand you're hopelessly incorrect.

Mapping the Twitter networks of #legendsofecho

Ed's note: This is a guest post from Nicky Allen who has been doing some incredibly interesting data-mining and representation using Nodexl.Twitter is such a great way to gauge whether a brands PR campaign is working. Until now you had to rely on some dodgy report and some old fashioned press clippings from your PR agency .A few weeks back saw the launch of the “Legends of Echo” a multiplayer social game for mobile phones launched by The Grid team. It’s a cool game that maps South Africa in the echo and players build battle gear, trade and battle. So after a week of action I mapped Twitter activity of #legendsofecho and it’s pretty impressive.This nodexl map shows the action across Twitter on #legendsofecho. Everyone on the map has mentioned, replied or retweeted #legendsofecho in the first 4 days. The lines between the participants indicate a tweet containing #legendsofecho. The bigger and messier the birds nest, the better. This indicates lots of conversations and a dense network. The size of the images indicates the number of followers that participant have on Twitter, which indicates that there are a number of rockstar participants.So what does this really tell us?Right now Legends of Echo is on the right track, the right people are saying cool things about the game. This is what every brand aspires to in a launch phase. But Legends of Echo has a way to go because right now the tweets have not yet expanded far enough beyond the product team. While there is conversation around the core group, @Nicharry is still central to the tweeting. In time the team wants to see many duplications of the map above, see it growing and @Nicharry and the @Legendsofecho tweeting becoming less central, then they will have reached an effective virality on Twitter.I pulled this map a couple of days ago, about 5 days after the last one. It shows some interesting development. The twittershere around the core group has become quieter but there are some interesting developments, Legends of Echo has been picked up by people completely unconnected to the core group, this is show by the individuals and the small 3 and 4 connected groups along the bottom. This is good and bad news for the team. While it’s really exciting to see Legends of Echo picked up by unconnected others, however most of these peoples tweets were not retweeted or replied too (hence the isolated individuals). What one wants to see is that these groups grow to the size and bigger and mirror the birds nest type activity of the core group.All in all it’s been a good first few weeks for echo on Twitter, I’ll keep watching and map the progress with interest.*Disclaimer: Nicky Allen is the Marketing Coordinator for Legends of Echo.

I think Twitter killed my blog With the...

I think Twitter killed my blog

With the help of Justin Slack I have (read: "He has") finally managed to get nh [dot] com back up. Finally.I say this with much trepidation. I am not sure how I feel about having my blog back up and running. I feel a sense of pressure back and looming over my head. I feel a slight sense of relief that it's up and running and I think I feel a bit sad that I couldn't go on without it. Some part of me wants to let it go.But I can't, and I wont.Strangely though it took me almost a week to figure out that my blog had gone down. It took a further week for anyone else to notice and it took a further week for me to get off my lazy ass and ask someone for help.Three weeks of downtime. Three weeks of no blogging concerns. Three weeks where I just didn't care. Although I must admit that I think it is more than three weeks since I started the end of my extreme blogging days.Twitter has killed me blog. There I said it. I'm not sure if I believe it but I said it out loud for everyone to read.As a writer deep down inside it pains me to think that a service offering me 140 characters has usurped my focus from a platform that allows me almost endless freedom to write whatever comes to mind in as many words, sentences, paragraphs and pages as possible. Maybe this is a further sign of our times? Maybe the 30 second generation has become the 140 character generation and is soon to become the "Icanliketousesmallwordsandnospaces" generation?Am I the only one who is potential a bit concerned by this? Again I give you: Maybe...Nevertheless I love using Twitter and wont stop, I love writing and wont stop blogging and still am not fond of the book in my face.

Could someone please explain to me what ...

Could someone please explain to me what it matters if I change my twitter avatar to a shade of green? Apparently this is going to make a difference to someone in Iran, but I have my doubts. I have seen a few people I follow on twitter doing it and noticed a few tweets about it.I just can't understand the damn relevance. The people of Iran don't care, they aren't looking or watching and the green avatar you are now sporting is not going to change the world, in fact I think that these green avatars are way to appear cool. And it bugs me.It might just be my opinion but that's OK with me. It just gets under my skin when I begin to feel guilted in to doing something as meaningless as changing the colour of my picture on twitter to a shade of green.

This is P2. A microblogging wordpress pl...

This is P2. A microblogging wordpress platform that inspired Automattic to start blogging again. I've noticed how Twitter has begun to eat in to my drive to blog. So I thought that this might be a solution to the problem.

Using twitter effectively as a blog

SA Rocks is a blog that I own and run. And Twitter is a service that I absolutely love using and am fast becoming addicted to. It's also a service that is replacing my addiction to blogging.This is clearly evident in this blog. I tweet my rants now, I don't blog them. That takes too long.But with regards to SA Rocks I have been trying to figure out a way to make effective use of Twitter. I've struggled as many have been doing. I haven't managed to integrate SA Rocks in to Twitter at all.I don't think that punting blog posts via twitterfeed.com is the right way to go. I really feel like that is just pushing content and gaining no return on investment whatsoever.So I am trying more of a social feel attempt at integrating SA Rocks in to twitter. The pull of SA Rocks is that people want to feel good about South Africa. I know I do. Now what I am looking for is reasons for people to feel rocking in South Africa in 140 characters or less.I will then take my favourite rocking @ifeelrocking replies and put them in a daily blog post and tweet that via @ifeelrocking.Let's do it.

Tweekly.fm rocks my twitter music

I am a massive fan of two services at the moment. I have been using both for a relatively long time (for an online service) and am extremely glad that someone has put the two together.Tweekly.fm joins twitter and Last.fm. Twitter is a micro blogging service that allows you to communicate with followers in 140 characters or less (160 for direct messages). While Last.fm is a music sharing network. I use Last.fm's desktop application so I rarely visit the actual Last.fm website but nevertheless, everytime I play a song through iTunes my Last.fm App "Scrobbles" the song to my Last.fm profile.Tweekly.fm is a service that takes your weekly played artist data from last.fm and sends it as a tweet. Fantastic. Now I am giving my Last.fm profile more exposure and letting my twitter followers know what music I am listening to. I am also fond of the fact that Tweekly.fm doesn't go overboard and send out one tweet every nanosecond.Very nice. Head over to Tweekly.fm now and sign up.

My Twitter followes are:

Social, Media, Entrepreneurs, Web, Marketing, Online and many many many other things. How do I know this? Easy. Twittersheep.Enter your twitter name and twittersheep will generate a list much like this one:

Blogging is dead, move to twitter because Wired said so

I have just read an article over at Wired Magazine that blogging is oh so 2004 and we all need to jump ship if we aren't part of a professional blogging network that dominates Google search results.What Wired says in the article is that bloggers are being taken out of the equation by professionals who blog and put out 30 or so posts a day. They are being taken out of the equation by online magazines that were once, maybe, blogs and are now business ventures. Bloggers are being taken out of the Google rankings by professional media organisations such as NYT, Time, LA Times and others with similar stature. Bloggers are becoming invisible according to Wired Magazine.Wired goes on to explain that bloggers of the personal, one man band nature, are becoming tired of comment trolls, masses of spam, irrelevant audiences and other frustrations. The solution? Move to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and similar services. I wonder if these services paid Wired Magazine to write this article. Basically I should stop being a self-publisher and move completely to a service that someone else will make money off of? I don't agree at all. I think a merger, hybrid or cross pollination is in order. Not abandoning of the ship at all.I quickly used twitter to feel out some opinions on the topic. (I completely recognise that I am invariably endorsing wired magazine's opinion by using Twitter to get my information for this blog post!)My tweat:nicharry is blogging dead? Is twitter taking over? Should we all jump ship?!?!Some of the responses:markmedia @nicharry no yes nowoganmay @nicharry If everyone jumps ship, who will we be leaving to captain that ship?obox @nicharry I don't think so. There is still space for both, with lifestreams entering the world you can have all the cakes on one page.fromtheold @nicharry Blogging will last long after twitter :)Jonin60seconds @nicharry Slow down there profit of doom!RichMulholland @nicharry No we should simply re-prioritize our weighting on both.It's incredible actually, how many people felt they could respond to something I had said so quickly and easily. This definitely beats responses on blogs hands down.I firmly agree with RichMulholland's comments that we should not be throwing in the towel for either service. We should simply re-evaluate our goals and re-prioritize our focus on the services that are available to us.Blogging isn't dead, blogging is just becoming a force that we need to seriously consider as a profession. Just as reporting back in the day was done by a random one or two people within a town or village and is now down by conglomerates. Things change, let's change with them not fight against the change.I did enjoy the closing line of the Wired article though: "@WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 over. Google won't find you. Too much cruft from HuffPo, NYT. Commenters are tards. C u on Facebook?"

Bloggers like to be restricted, twitter is proof

I'm beginning to believe that I like to be restricted. And in fact I am begining to think that it's not just me but a lot of people online, tweeting, blogging, evangelising, guru-ing and the rest also like a bit of a restrictive challenge.I have a newfound theory that I actually like to get told what to do and how to do it within certain perameters. Yes you could say that I am actually searching for guidance to lead me to my expressive peak. But I could also argue that I like to be restricted.Bloggers like limits, like challenges and inherently might like to be restricted. It's a challenge and it's a limitation that we think we can try to exploit. Let's be honest, every twitterer loves the feeling of writing a full and comprehensive tweet in exactly 140 characters. I know I do. But what does that actually mean?The explosion of Twitter (What is twitter?) has really made me think about what I do, what I like to do and how I like to do it. I used to write very expansive posts, in depth analysis on a wide variety of topics. With the advent of Twitter and its subsequent success I've realised that keeping it short works. This, whether coincidental or directly relative, is restricting my post lengths, my thoughts and the angle of my approach.Maybe this movement towards tweets and restricted 140 character posts is a step back, a calm before the storm, the time where we all gain a little bit of restrictive perspective and realise that our verbose and pedantic ramblings aren't always what we think they are - effective.Maybe I need to go back to the basics and realise that most people in our country have never used the internet, let alone know what twitter is, 140 characters mean in the "bigger picture", what a blog is or who's poking who on which social network.What I am getting at (cause I am now rambling) is that maybe restrictions are good because they allow us to expirement within the constraints of a predermined rule. One that we are then able to work within and break out of.At some point we have all followed the Godins, Scobles, crunches, readwrites and the like. But they have no clue what our market is looking for. We are not restricting ourselves enough to one specific focus. This is just a fleeting thought, not a steadfast opinion that I have. But surely if we began to tailor-make our products, blog posts, startups, ideas, ideals and innovations to 140 characters (don't be literal) then maybe we would see more success.

Twam - The new spam from twitter

Spam is everywhere, it's mass, it's personal, it's viral and now it's on Twitter. Twam is really baffling me and consuming a fair amount of my strategic thought.I am trying to understand a few things:1. How do these twammers choose who they are going to follow to make up the 20 000th follower.2. What value does it offer them? If I don't follow them I can't see what they tweet.3. Are they real people who have actually clicked "Follow" 20 000 times?4. Why would you follow and receive updates from twammers?Let me explain; a twammer by my definition is someone who insists on following thousands of people and in return hopefully get a percentage of those people following them.Example:This personAnd this personAnother form of Twam is the constant links that are posted from people promoting their blogs. Mass twammers who follow thousands of people are the worst sort of link-twam posters. It's frustrating.I am all for posting links to your blogs if they relate to the current discussion or if you genuinely feel that people will find it of interest, but don't twam me with every post. I have been trying out twitlink-something-or-other (there are too many apps nowaday to rememeber all their names). I don't like it and will be removing it soon as I can remember where it is!Basically I just don't know how it is that I am lucky enough to be chosen by people like the two above as someone worth twamming. Is it when you reach a certain number of followers? Is it location driven, can they possibly be following your content and think you have a common ground? Surely not. Whichever it is, leave me alone.

BrandsEye Online Reputation Management for Big Business ONLY

Twitter is a terrible thing. I was about to leave work when I entered in to a debate with Zoopedup, ChristopherM, Unodewaal, adii and SimoneBiz. And that was me. Writing another blog post.BrandsEye (thanks for the sneak peak Rafiq) was launched a few days ago. Online Reputation Management is the name of their game. Sounds great and I was interested immediately.However after going through the site I found nowhere for me to register. Duh. Obviously, Quirk doesn't chase cents and rands. This is what I was told on Twitter. Now that's all well and good and makes sense to me but at the end of the day, as adii noted, Technorati can manage your online rep. This is very basic, but it can be done. Then throw in basic Google searches and Google notifications for your brand or name and you are pretty good. And guess what? The services I've just mentioned are free.I do understand that Quirk is targeting larger business. Let's be honest no-one else online is going to pay US$750 for the service. So they are targeting a specific market and i grasp and respect that.But let's compare this service to other major services online.News: Many newspapers used to charge for their services (the content). That faded quickly because people can get the service elsewhere either cheaper or for free.E-mail: Gmail is free. Hotmail, free. Yahoo mail, free. All major and important services to businesses. I know of many, many larger business who use Gmail as their primary e-mail service. I also know many who forward on their paid-for e-mail to their Gmail account for simplicity reasons. Again, not a paid service.Service is currently being rendered as public property. Facebook, YouTube, Flickr (pro account costs +-US$25) are all major online sites offering great services that are free or extremely cheap for a pro account.Why hasn't BrandsEye opened with various entry level? Big Business packages all the way through to small-time bloggers looking for some brand awareness?This might be in the pipeline, but as SimoneBiz stated with such ease, don't worry they will roll out a "Lite" version for individuals in the future. Why? Why would they have to make it a "Lite" version? Why can't it be fully locked and loaded with all the bells and whistles that high-paying customers would receive?Because that's not capitalism. And if they do that then their high-paying customers would get pissed off. So basically if Quirk is planning to expand BrandsEye in to lower-end markets they will never make it a free service and if you aren't willing to pay top-dollar (yes, dollar) then you wont really be able to get the most of their services ever.Instead I am going to sit with my Google Alerts, Technorati searches, Twitter alerts and word of mouth (or sight of finger/typed word) to keep abreast of my brand online.

Has twitter increased your one-on-one IM?

It has for me.Strange to think but it's true. Through twitter and my followers I've noticed whose interested in what I have to say (my twitter "followers"). For whatever reason the people following me are interested in my movements and my thoughts. The reasons are up to them and for them to know I suppose.But what I have noticed coming out of twitter and tweets is that topics of interest spark a lot more, people are more open and receptive to reading what you have to say. Even if it is only 140 characters. On many occasions recently I have been approached in private IM (instant message) chats to continue a discussion or debate that I posted or commented on via twitter.This is extremely interesting and I think might lend towards some people's thoughts about twitter being the next big thing. Let's all be honest for a second, and it's been said before, Facebook is great, MySpace did well but are people really still looking for mass communication all the time? I think not. I think something deeper is sought after. People are inherently looking for people. People to engage with, to talk to and debate with. This can take place one-on-one and that's why we have blogs, forums and social networks. But at the end of the day nothing beats one-on-one conversation, even if it is over IM.For me first prize involves a debate that launches on my blog and carries over to the "offline world". I enjoy it when i meet people in person and they comment on and discuss something that I've blogged about or tweeted.Simply put, personal recognition outweighs mass "Digg effect" sort of recognition, at least in my world. I like to know that SA Rocks has affected one person's perception of things. I like it when one person can discuss something I blogged or commented on. I like to know that my opinion matters for longer than one day and 60+ comments.Twitter has enhanced my integration with people on a personal level not a mass level. What do you think?

I'm back on Twitter

I am not sure why but lost night I decided to try my hand at Twitter, again.Things might not have changed much since I lambasted the use of Twitter as an ignorant abuse of time and technology available to one. I still feel the same but think that there might, maybe, be some advantages to using the services via IM.I am still not sure what they are but hopefully will find out. As I was told last night via Twitter, "Twitter has become a new sort of IRC".Or something.

Pownce and the SA market

Pownce seems to me like much of a twitter-ish sort of site. I don't know much about this sort of stuff cause I think it's rubbish and life-sapping technology.Anyways, back to the point and the title of this post. I understand that what makes Pownce cool is that you can download a desktop client for the software and use the service on your pc. Kiff. So what? I think it's just another mechanism to get and keep people addicted to intel 100% of the time.Now I thought I would shut up and get down to it so I toddled off to the Pownce page where you can download the software. To my surprise you need to download two pieces of software for this all to work. The first is some Adobe thing or another AIR or something like that. It's an 8Mb file. Unfortunately for me that is just too much for me to handle. I know that NO ONE caters for the SA market and thus 8Mb files are regarded as normal downloads in under a minute in most first world countries. But here, that is too many minutes for me to wait to have to download the first pack then download another one, install both and then get things working. Please. Do me a favour and let it all go. Just let is slide.No one needs to know that I am sitting at my pc doing this, that and the next thing. If I am using the desktop software, it means I am sitting at my pc. Simple, finished, kla.