In March 2008 I performed some legal research (I am a paralegal) and was amazed that, of the millions of people suffering at the hands of debt collectors, there was no self-help remedy that was working. That set me thinking. Why not develop a web-based solution that was easy to use and low-cost I thought. I believed my background in marketing, technology, sourcing, law and running a business would help. For the next year or so I was "in the weeds" - learning about web-site design, optimization, SEO, viral marketing, the debt collection market, competition, performing a SWAT analysis, creating a Marketing Plan and working on 3 whiteboards to develop a go-to-market concept for testing.
Consumer Protection Institute and DebtResponse were born.
The concept, while simple, is elegant - and is based upon what I call GDIY (Guided Do It Yourself) and priced for entry level with several options. The target universe: 37,000,000 people subjected to consumer debt collection - and this number grows daily. Software was written by me in FileMaker 8.0 (another experience, but I love a challenge). And, of course, I drove the website design company crazy - apparently they never heard of project management or due dates.
I also thought business expansion could occur in the U.K., Canada, Spain and possibly Brazil. (and as I write this, Brazil is slowly catching up to the U.S. consumer debt problem). While this development was happening I decided to also learn Brazilian Portuguese (am now a 7 out of 10).
DebtResponse went live during June 2009 and we started the viral marketing journey including SEO, trackbacks, affiliate ads, PR releases, Blog entries, possible joint-ventures, conversations with news media and then there was Twitter!
Twitter -
I had never heard of Twitter until mid-June and thought I would look into it. While, at first blush, Twitter appears to be simple, it is not! The challenges are: Twitter is new, no sophisticated tools, data problems, targeting your audience in a 24/7 stream, messaging for 140 characters, learning the power of re-Tweets, hash marks, avoiding legal issues, Follow Fridays and more. I love a challenge and thought that Twitter may be a good medium for this new venture. Hence I set out to become a Twitter Guru.
There are over 100 home-grown Alpha & Beta tools out there and I tried them all, in fact I'm now a tester for many of them. I had to learn the dynamics of the Twitter stream, stats, demographics, how not to churn and be suspended, posting etiquette, power re-tweeting, what not to do, legalities, auto-posting mechanics, awareness/brand on Twitter, separating yourself from the spammers, twitter headlines, building a tweet library, building a Twitter-based opt-in list, content management, Twitter surveys, newsletters and polls, mirco-targeting Followers, nurturing Mentions, promoting your product, who's who at different times of day, finding Followers, the importance of following-back, use of RSS feeds, monitoring Tweet effectiveness, Twitter-competition and much more. I can safely say, that after doing this for two months 8-10 hours a day, I am a Twitter Black Belt.
Now people on Twitter ask me for help, and we went from 1 Follower mid-June to 19700 as August 26th. That took hard work because, now, with Mentions and RTs, we have a sustained reach of over 300,000 people and that number grows rapidly given the dynamics of network marketing leverage.
The standard formula of .25/.5 of 1% sales conversion rate kicked in when we reached 10M Followers. We are now gaining 450-500 new Followers per day.
The culture of Twitter is unique and cannot be equated to a large corporation. The difference is that it is not driven by a leader or a philosophy - it is driven by millions of Tweeters who rarely bond or even work in teams (although Twitter groups is a growing trend), are users of technology, come from a variety of backgrounds, have varying interests, have their own Twitter-politics, and do not believe in the word "trust."
As a general rule Twitterers are a distrustful culture due to spam and "who are you" since you can be invisible or not who you say you are such as many people calling themselves Obama or Oprah (hence verified accounts). The key to Twitter Marketing is not a great strategy- it is, a strategy that engenders their culture - or, trust-over-time (same as sourcing folks trust certain vendors) and from that foundation you can begin to market.
In summary, Twitter for fun can be interesting, but, of course, who really wants to hear what you had for breakfast? (source: WSJ 8/09). Twitter for profit or awareness is awesome and can be accomplished with hard work, a strategy, and a good understanding of the tools, audience, and Twitter culture. For even with a brilliant strategy (and that's what I thought I had), I had to alter our strategy 3x to fit the Twitter Culture as in the popular axiom "Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch Everytime."
If you want to know how we went from 1 to 20000 qualified Twitter Followers in 9 weeks + many Re-tweets and Mentions daily, contact me at ssussman@nj.rr.com or ceo@cpinstituteonline.org.
Steve Sussman
Consumer Protection Institute and DebtResponse were born.
The concept, while simple, is elegant - and is based upon what I call GDIY (Guided Do It Yourself) and priced for entry level with several options. The target universe: 37,000,000 people subjected to consumer debt collection - and this number grows daily. Software was written by me in FileMaker 8.0 (another experience, but I love a challenge). And, of course, I drove the website design company crazy - apparently they never heard of project management or due dates.
I also thought business expansion could occur in the U.K., Canada, Spain and possibly Brazil. (and as I write this, Brazil is slowly catching up to the U.S. consumer debt problem). While this development was happening I decided to also learn Brazilian Portuguese (am now a 7 out of 10).
DebtResponse went live during June 2009 and we started the viral marketing journey including SEO, trackbacks, affiliate ads, PR releases, Blog entries, possible joint-ventures, conversations with news media and then there was Twitter!
Twitter -
I had never heard of Twitter until mid-June and thought I would look into it. While, at first blush, Twitter appears to be simple, it is not! The challenges are: Twitter is new, no sophisticated tools, data problems, targeting your audience in a 24/7 stream, messaging for 140 characters, learning the power of re-Tweets, hash marks, avoiding legal issues, Follow Fridays and more. I love a challenge and thought that Twitter may be a good medium for this new venture. Hence I set out to become a Twitter Guru.
There are over 100 home-grown Alpha & Beta tools out there and I tried them all, in fact I'm now a tester for many of them. I had to learn the dynamics of the Twitter stream, stats, demographics, how not to churn and be suspended, posting etiquette, power re-tweeting, what not to do, legalities, auto-posting mechanics, awareness/brand on Twitter, separating yourself from the spammers, twitter headlines, building a tweet library, building a Twitter-based opt-in list, content management, Twitter surveys, newsletters and polls, mirco-targeting Followers, nurturing Mentions, promoting your product, who's who at different times of day, finding Followers, the importance of following-back, use of RSS feeds, monitoring Tweet effectiveness, Twitter-competition and much more. I can safely say, that after doing this for two months 8-10 hours a day, I am a Twitter Black Belt.
Now people on Twitter ask me for help, and we went from 1 Follower mid-June to 19700 as August 26th. That took hard work because, now, with Mentions and RTs, we have a sustained reach of over 300,000 people and that number grows rapidly given the dynamics of network marketing leverage.
The standard formula of .25/.5 of 1% sales conversion rate kicked in when we reached 10M Followers. We are now gaining 450-500 new Followers per day.
The culture of Twitter is unique and cannot be equated to a large corporation. The difference is that it is not driven by a leader or a philosophy - it is driven by millions of Tweeters who rarely bond or even work in teams (although Twitter groups is a growing trend), are users of technology, come from a variety of backgrounds, have varying interests, have their own Twitter-politics, and do not believe in the word "trust."
As a general rule Twitterers are a distrustful culture due to spam and "who are you" since you can be invisible or not who you say you are such as many people calling themselves Obama or Oprah (hence verified accounts). The key to Twitter Marketing is not a great strategy- it is, a strategy that engenders their culture - or, trust-over-time (same as sourcing folks trust certain vendors) and from that foundation you can begin to market.
In summary, Twitter for fun can be interesting, but, of course, who really wants to hear what you had for breakfast? (source: WSJ 8/09). Twitter for profit or awareness is awesome and can be accomplished with hard work, a strategy, and a good understanding of the tools, audience, and Twitter culture. For even with a brilliant strategy (and that's what I thought I had), I had to alter our strategy 3x to fit the Twitter Culture as in the popular axiom "Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch Everytime."
If you want to know how we went from 1 to 20000 qualified Twitter Followers in 9 weeks + many Re-tweets and Mentions daily, contact me at ssussman@nj.rr.com or ceo@cpinstituteonline.org.
Steve Sussman
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