However, everytime I find something I personally believe is worth sharing I pass it on to everyone I know. Viral is not forced, viral is voluntary.

You want people to join your Facebook group? Give them a reason. Don’t buy them.
You want people to tell their friends about you? Give them a reason. Don’t buy them.

It’s very simple. My nephew (7yo) has few friends. He gets the neighbouring kids to play with him by giving them lollies. Sure they come, but they leave when the lollies are gone.

I think there is one important point, touched on only briefly (by David Martin), that is worth raising: the effect of your recruitment strategy on how people feel about your brand.

Being too pushy can be dangerous. “Recruit X people to win” has a worryingly pyramidal feel to it. Even if the prize is an iPhone or a trip to Hawaii, there’s nothing more annoying than being bombarded with invitations from ‘friends’ (which on facebook might include associates, distant relatives, and people I went to school with or met at a party once) who are CLEARLY just trying to win a prize for themselves! As a result, I never enter any competition that requires me to recruit a bunch of other entrants, because I value my friendships more than any competition prize.

It goes beyond the automatic ‘ignore’ that David talks about. I imagine it has the potential, if you get it really wrong*, to do serious damage to your brand.

* I’m certainly not saying that you got it really wrong, James!! In fact, you might have had a higher take-up with a more aggressive recruitment strategy–but at what cost?

a) Wrong “social media” channel. The fact that Anthill ‘pushed’ through a Social Media channel rather than allowed peeps to promote through their chosen social medium is perhaps a folly in itself. I got your email, but as it was a Facebook driven promotion ignored it. Others might have jumped on – but apparently not.

b) I think you dismiss your choice in prize too easily. DVD are so ’90s. Ask a 19 y/o how they consume movies these days… If people are likely to subscribe to a magazine, online, using a credit card: 2+2+2 = Amazon.com. If you had offered an Amazon voucher, I would have jumped onboard and pumped it.

c) With the right prize, your requested recruits could have easily been 3-5, exponentially increasing the scale of virality.

I’m available for weddings, parties and high ROI internet marketing strategies in the Melbourne area.

peace. aa

The technique I use is then to give them the opportunity to tangibilise the relationship.

I want more access to James!

More INTERACTIVITY with this community in Real Time!

I would take tickets to a networking event over DVD’s any day because I want to do business with a better class of SME, and I am attracted to the COMMUNITY aspect of what is offered not only on Anthill but other online forums such as Facebook and Twitter.

It seems to me what is most attractive about online business communities is the chance to foster organic OFFLINE communities for business development.

Love you guys – and JT – what are you up to Saturday we want to buy you breakfast!

I am a fan of Anthill but I choose to forward only some content to my online networks when I think it can be appealing to them, not to me.

Yes business dvds are no fun, having more recruits just for the sake of recruiting is no fun.

Your extended market (new recruits) need to know what Anthill is worth. Maybe a section about Anthill TV (which is entertaining), or some links to popular topics on your website would have been more appealing and you might have made more conversions.

In social media marketing, Content is King!

However, i agree that this does seem tricky and probably requires a lot of trial and error to get it right. Better luck next time.

This is even more the case when using these tools for business purposes. That is, if I’m interested in promoting my own business, I’m generally not interested in others doing the same, especially my competitors.

Also, it’s not enough just to have a large following. Few of your followers may be taking an interest in what you say.

The attribute that seems to enable a business or individual to have an influence on these forums is to have already achieved notoriety in the mainstream media. That is, success breeds success.

The answer for me, then, is to focus on building a following in the physical world. Then being an influencer in virtual world will almost be a fait accompli.

That’s too much work, annoyance to friends and colleagues for something relatively small – maybe a proper business development course or business strategy meeting with a business guru would be more appealing but I hate competitions that I have to invite other people to enter unless it’s something REALLY cool. Too much work for too little gain.

Plus by quickly glancing over the ‘ad’ for the campaign it didn’t really make sense to me – all I can see is ANTHILL and some DVDs – I didn’t see the ‘business pack’ and didn’t realize that these are business DVD’s that I could be winning.

Please find my 5 cents below!

For me Facebook is where I am connected to friends and family, it is not where I have my business contacts, who I mainly have through Linkedin.

I have deliberatly split the two groups of people, (where I can), because I am protective of my reputation and do not want my peers/staff/contacts to see written on my wall “such and such had a great weekend dressing up in fancy dress and getting pissed at blah blah blah”.

I would also note most facebook application/invitations have the whole ‘invite 10 friends’ aspect to them and I find that this has programed me to automatically ignore such requests because a lot of the time it is clear I have no interest in the program, or my friends simply wish to use the application.

Regards,

David