Anthony G Adams - Blog

Below is the only documented example of a sale occurring directly because of Twitter in the history of the internet.  

Susie was kind enough to write a blog about my product:

http://susiedrinksdallas.com/post/269731576/the-hangover-cure

A few days later, the following Twitter conversation occurred:

To break it down frame by frame for non Tweeters:


1.  Susie (@drinkdallas) laments about not having any THC with her in Vegas.  Just a random, unpaid shout out from a real person.  Great. We love real testimonials.

2.  Kylepeco, who follows Susie on Twitter, sees her tweet and inquires further about our product.

3.  We shoot Kyle the above link to Susie's flattering blog about THC's effectiveness.

4.  SALE HAPPENS.  And yes, we hand delivered his order the very next day.

Point being: None of this would have happened without a product worth blogging about to begin with.  No matter how many Twitter followers you have. It's not that easy.

Everybody likes pizza.  So everybody sells pizza. It's very hard to be the best, even locally.

You CAN, however, make the best organic spinach, garlic and goat cheese pizza your town has ever seen. And sell it at a premium price, which attracts a better customer base.


Food Network might come calling to share your unique recipe on air. It happens all the time IF you market something unique. It doesn't happen if you franchise a Domino's.

You cannot give out T-shirts and stickers and key chains and expect anyone to care about you.


It's not that easy.

Malcolm is a very smart and respected guy.  He is also a best-selling author.

His book, Outliers, read something like this:

It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert.  In anything.  Makes sense to me.  Case studies include the Beatles playing 6 hour concerts in Liverpool every night, and Bill Gates living in his high school's computer lab.  While this isn't a profound observation, it's hard to argue.


Peyton Manning is an expert at the quarterback position.  Maybe the best ever.  Call it a hunch, but he didn't show up at Tennessee as a freshman and decided he wanted to play football on a whim.  He had been doing it all his life.  He father even played in the NFL.


Being an expert takes a lot of time.  Even online.  No matter what anyone says.

If you are a 23 year old 'social media guru' you might want to change 'guru' to 'fan'.  


For a few reasons.  

1)  You probably haven't been a 'social media guru' very long because....

2)  Social media hasn't been around very long.  You weren't 'tweeting' in 2007.

3)  Ease of entry.  Anyone can get a Twitter account and slap up a custom background full of vague business credentials.  Anyone can be a consultant. It's black hat personal branding at its finest.

Einstein's doesn't get it:

Bribing someone with free food to click a button doesn't make them a fan.  It just means they are hungry and will take your hand out.  This is not social media.


Solution:  Figure out a way to randomly offer a free bagel to existing fans.  Then maybe they tell their friends about how cool it is being a fan of Einstein's because they just got a free bagel.  Then maybe their friends join out of genuine interest in the brand.  

(This is written for the 99% of corporate America who hate/don't absolutely love their job)


I hope you get fired.  Today.  After lunch.  

Imagine how good it would feel cleaning out your desk, taking the rest of the day off, decompressing with Pringles and that weird daytime TV you forgot existed.

Literally, they let you go.   You are free.  Go get that severance package and get out.

You aren't going to starve to death in the streets.  Your real friends won't think you are a failure if you have to sell the big screen TV you bought to escape  from you job every night.  If you lose touch with people because you can no longer afford to keep up appearances at the bar on weekends, you are probably better off.  

These are not your friends, no matter what your Facebook account says.

Sure, it might be unpleasant at first.  But dying a slow death over 40+ years of feigned interest is your alternative.  You even get to replace halogen lights with real sunlight.  Get happy.

Try something different before jumping on Monster to look for another job.  It's the best way to turn unemployment into funemployment.  


I might trademark that.

Guest blog post I wrote for Trey a while back:  


http://treyschaefer.com/?p=78

Take your Facebook and Twitter badges off your sales site.  Now.

*20-something social media guru jumps head-first out of building.  Or Mom's basement.*

I'm serious.  If the point of your site is to, you know, sell stuff, make that the objective.


Directing people to an external site (Twitter, Facebook) might result in a new fan or follower.  It also might result in them never coming back to your actual site.  Especially in our ADD world where suddenly you are on Facebook and oh snap you have a new friend request from that girl from the coffee shop and now Brad just got engaged and you were tagged in a photo from New Years with Amanda who just said 'FML' in a status update and wait what was that sales site I was on again? Ah, who cares, I want to play Farmville.

Followers or dollars?

You also lose Google juice and give it to sites that already have plenty.  PageRank is infinitely more important than anything going on @ Twitter. If you don't understand PageRank, cool it with the tweeting and get your learn on.

At the very least, put your Twitter and Facebook badges below the fold.  If someone really likes your business, they will seek them out.  And put a rel="nofollow" tag on those link. Twitter doesn't need any more link love.

Most web designers, especially those that fall into a start-up's budget, are not sales people.

They are artists.  And techies.  Hire yours with care.

I went through several incarnations of The Hangover Cure's sales site before doing it myself.  I still keep in touch with the three different designers I hired to build a site for me. This post is not meant to throw them under the bus at all.

"Your site is going to have your live Twitter feed, a Flash intro page, and I'm even going to make you a PacMan-style drinking game you can play!" one told me with great enthusiasm.  


The problem is, none of these latest and greatest amenities bring any visitor closer to your site's intended purpose:  revenue generation.  They don't talk about this at design school.

Would this fly in the real world? Imagine a sales associate at Target bombarding you with her Twitter conversation, then showing you a cookie cutter Youtube video about her company, and then asking you if you want to sit down and play PacMan for a while.  

It's insanity.

If you want to read our Twitter feed, you will find us on Twitter on your own time.  Google hates Flash.  And playing PacMan?  Go dust off your Atari.


Idea for web designers:  Treat your next project like a retail shopping experience.

Clearly point me in the direction of what I am looking for ('What size do you wear?'). 

Verify the quality with credible testimonials from satisfied customers. Make me feel comfortable with my purchase.

Make it easy for me to purchase.  The online equivalent of standing in a short or non-existent line.


And above all else, don't make me think.

Great post from Mashable regarding social media experts:  

http://mashable.com/2009/12/27/social-media-experts-twitter/

My generation is painfully responsible for this nonsense.  And I apologize for that.


Solution:  Show prospective clients what you have done.  In plain English.  If you take this job title seriously, if you actually pay the bills with Twitter, it should be very easy to rise above the crap.  

What makes you a 'social media expert'? If you instinctively point out the number of people following you, stop.  Unless it has like, 2 commas in it, that's pretty cool.

Produce a case study on how social media has DIRECTLY helped your career as a social media expert.  With dollar signs.  If you cannot produce dollar signs, stop.

If the only thing you have done to call yourself a social media expert is tweet about being a social media expert and abuse programs like Twollow, say it with me, stop.  

If your 20,000+ followers have contributed exactly $0 to your bank account, you get the idea.

So please, stop it.  Besides, you are making the other 15,739 of us look bad ;)