Bad marketing advice abounds. One of my Google alerts picked up an article on using Twitter to tap customer sentiment, which said things like the following:

One key way to get value out of Twitter in terms of a customer service tool is by listening. If
you’re able to track conversations related not only to your specific business, but also among potential clients discussing their needs, you will gain invaluable insight into what your clients really want from you.
This can play a huge role in your marketing and sales efforts because you can tailor your offerings to meet the individual needs you’ve witnessed discussion about on Twitter, and take time to focus on what current clients are saying outside of your own interactions.

Why is that such bad advice?  Because, almost without exception, social media CANNOT give you a systematic picture of what your customers want, think, or need, or when they’re satisfied.

How can I make such a bald statement?  Particularly since I’m a social media consultant and I’ve studied social networks for more than 20 years?

Because I HAVE studied social networks and because I’ve looked at the research.

That research shows clearly that you’re probably hearing from 1-5% of your customers on a site like Twitter.

To hear the whole story–and to find out how you can avoid this “social media trap” AND turn it into profits–check out the video we made for you:

http://www.siteproweb.com/launch-video-three

Think free templates are a good idea? Think again:

One mistake I see MANY marketers–even TOP “gurus”–making is that they rely almost exclusively on open-ended questions in their surveys.

I’m going to show you why this is a mistake and how to avoid it.

In business surveys, I recommend that about 85-90% of your questions be closed-ended (meaning you write choices to give the respondent), rather than open-ended.

Why?

Two reasons:

1. From your point of view, open-ended questions just give you too much information.  Imagine getting thousands of responses with long, open-ended answers.  Wading through it all and trying to come up with a real analysis of what’s there requires not just a lot of time but also a lot of skill.
2. In most cases, your customers HATE open-ended questions.  They take far more time and thought to answer than closed-ended questions do.  That means you’re less likely to hear from a broad base of your customers AND you’re more likely to irritate them–something you NEVER want to do with a survey.

But open-ended questions DO have their place.

You can include them in a survey after open-ended questions, to ask things such as “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about ______?

• That way, you can pick up information and ideas you might not have thought to ask.
• You’ll also start to pick up some of the language of your customers, language you can use in your marketing.

Open-ended questions are also really useful to get information you feed INTO closed-ended questions in surveys.

• So, if you ask questions such as, “What’s your most important question about _____?” or “What problem or issue about ______ keeps you awake at night?” can give you impressions that you can then test, in a survey, with closed-endd questions.

Follow these suggestions and you’ll see your response rates–and your profits–grow.

To learn a quick, easy, foolproof system for writing closed-ended questions, check out our survey system.

A new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that 19%, or nearly 1 in 5, of Americans who use the Internet also use Twitter or some other type of social networking “status update” service.

Although these results are being widely touted as showing how widespread Twitter use is, that’s not necessarily true. Because the question included not only Twitter but also other status update services–such as Facebook–it’s impossible to tell how much of this activity is really on Twitter, as opposed to other social media sites.

The survey also reinforces just how important mobile phones have become for social networking. Only 10% of people who have only one Internet-connected device (such as a computer) report using status updating services, but nearly 40% of people who have 4 or more Internet-connected devices use these social media services.

The survey also shows that more than half (55%) of those who use status update services are under age 50.

Putting a quiz on your website or blog can increase your conversions by as much as 80%.

In this video, we show you a KILLER strategy for driving traffic with video, then converting that traffic with quizzes.