Cut the LinkedIn Small Talk

One of the most annoying LinkedIn marketers I have encountered - those who add you out of nowhere (3rd degree connections, usually). Then they start a small talk with you.

Some advises:

1. Don't add random people and start messaging them in LinkedIn - at least read their profile well to see whether they would be interested in your message. No need to waste both of your time by a boring chat.

2. If you have the urge to do so, do it as a single message, a paragraph. I don't use LinkedIn as a chat client.

If you are doing #LinkedIn #marketing, come to the point in a single bulk first message. Don't start a small talk: "Hi, How r u?" #spam

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) March 17, 2017

The marketer small talk usually goes weird and slow, as if they were asking me out. I help them these days to cut this small talk short. By this way, I help them end this within  a few minutes.

In the above chat, I helped end the chat sooner with the counter-question "How can I help you?" instead of answering "I am fine, thanks, how are you?", then waiting for their follow up answer and further small talk on how bad the weather these days. Second, the short and direct reply "No" helped them stop the chat without further small talk such as "Good bye", "Hope to make business with you again".

Though I come across rude in the above chat and sharing this blog post, you should realize that this is not a single message. We, each of us, receive a ton of such messages in LinkedIn. So this is a collective annoyance.

How not to send a follow up (marketing / sales) email

Today I received another follow up email. Ever since I came to the US, I am getting many of these. This is probably the worst follow up email I received from a big company. I previously had received emails from some other companies. They were better in nature. At one instance, one company was too eager in sales email and sent more email even after I clearly indicated I am no longer evaluating them since I am busy. But this takes everything to new level.

Creepy and lazy follow up email hurts more than helps

So the title says "follow up from download". First no proper title - no correct capitalization.

The email starts with Hi {FirstName}. They are too lazy to check the email formatter. Just like you would spend time on testing the product, please spend time on testing these email sender programs. That will help you a lot.

"Saw you had a chance to download.."

Comes to the point too quick. Somewhat scary, and reads like someone was monitoring/watching/seeing my whole activity.

".. download our Community Edition (M3)"

I swear to the God that I do not remember what product he is referring to. It would be better, if you mention the product name instead of only "Community Edition". M3 can even be omitted.

"A lot of our customers are happy with community support. However, some have come back asking to provide enterprise grade support. We're pleased to announce we now support enterprise grade.."

The fact that "some have come back asking for paid support" does not motivate me to get it. There is no new information provided to arouse my curiosity or interest, except some filler sentence.

"I can fill you in on details if you're interested."

No thanks. I am not going to waste time dealing with automated telephone calls or more emails. In fact, I am not going to reply a "No thanks" either. This blog post should be sufficient.

"Do you have time to connect sometime this week?"

Certainly not. Why would I connect with some emailing bot for no reason?

"Best,
David"

Too common name with no results in Google or LinkedIn search for full name with company. Probably a made up name.

The not-so-improved further follow up emails.

I indeed opened this email (and further follow-up emails from the same sales person) despite its lack of interest in the title just because of the company that sent this. Now they have lost my reply. However, I decided to make a blog post to summarize my learning. If you are going to send a customer a follow up email, use it as an opportunity. Don't send a random email just because you learned somewhere that sending a follow up email would earn you a customer. Better wait for the moment and send the right mail than a random one, like the one I dissected above.

Later Update
As you can see above, I received further follow up emails. In the second email, you may see he just mentions

"I wanted to follow up from my previous email. 

 

Are you available for a quick call this week?

 

This does not add any value to the previous email, and vague at its best. 

The third email goes on to say, 

 

"If anything, I’d love to provide you with resources to help educate you and your team on what’s new in the space. "

 

It is fine that you like to "educate" your customer. But do not say so explicitly. First, I am an individual - rather, a poor student, I am not a team. Moreover, I do not think I need some sales team to "educate" me on this domain. I am pretty good. ;)

Finally, the fourth (and potentially, last) email goes,
 

"Since I haven’t heard back from you, I thought I might be heading down the wrong path.

Is there a better time frame or a different person I should be reaching out to discuss Big Data/Hadoop with?

If so, I’d appreciate you pointing me in the right direction."

So the sudden realization comes that the "potential lead" is possibly uninterested. Only in this last email, I realize that all this time, he just wanted to discuss with me BigData and Hadoop. It might be a good idea to mention this in the first email itself than being so vague. I mean, come on - I am not going to let you spam another person by forwarding you to them. :)

So next time, kids. Don't just keep emailing. I know, you must have learned "persistence is the key", or "potential clients reply 85% at the 5th email" in your sales and marketing training. But don't just send meaningless emails. Put some real effort, and send when you are confident. Hope that helps. Let me know if you need any help in writing an email, of course. ;)

The birth of viral contents over the Internet

Popular Content

For a scientist to become popular, it takes a considerable effort and lots of dedication. But someone who creates some creative content and uploads it over the Internet, might probably get equally famous among a wider audience.

Getting Viral

A content grabs the attention of millions and becomes an Internet meme by becoming viral, shared and spread over multiple online media. The content can be a video, a blog post, an image, or even an audio clip. Some contents become popular due to their controversial nature, and the others become popular just because of the curiosity of the people. The social media interaction makes the popular content more popular. Once a content sparks some interest to a viewer, he might probably visit the content back (say, if that is a video or an audio clip), and also share the content over the social media for the people in his network to view. This leads to an exponential growth to the popularity of the content. If an influential person shares your content to his circles of friends, most probably your content will be viewed and further shared by his circle of friends too.

Creating controversy or inducing curiosity

If we take YouTube, the mostly viewed videos are not necessarily good ones. Most of these video clips have more 'dislikes' than the 'likes', as people get disappointed with what they just saw, because of their curiosity. When the thumbnail image of the video shows some "cute stuff", it is very hard to resist the desire to click and view the clip. A sexy title and an attractive caption will be an added advantage. However, when we realize that there is nothing such interesting material in that clip, than a mere ad, we 'dislike' it. Still the 'view' count increases, and the video remains popular. Some companies work for their clients or customers to make their content viral by creating controversy around them, by posing as multiple users, or simply by sharing that content over multiple media, using multiple accounts.

Sparking the interest

There are a few genuine attempts that become viral by the fans viewing and sharing them multiple times. The most commonly stated example is the YouTube clip, "Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10", where someone shouts and expresses his extreme level of joy, looking at a double rainbow.

The Double Rainbow

It has got 31,595,276 views, 206,997 likes, 4,549 dislikes, and 91,157 comments. This was also made into a song, which also has become equally viral, with almost same number of views and likes. Comics have been written around the "Double Rainbow" and many parodies have been created around. According to an article in knowyourmeme.com, a tweet from Jimmy Kimmel was the major reason behind this video clip becoming popular. However, I am personally not supporting any such claims without a strong evident. Who knows - many others too may have shared the content and enjoyed it parallel.

Why this Kolaveri

Why This Kolaveri Di Full Song Promo Video in HD has got 6,263,365 views, 73,595 likes, 3,058 dislikes, and 30,361 comments within two weeks since it is posted. Like all the other addictions, "Kolaveri" is proven yet another rising addiction. Once watched, everyone keeps watching it multiple times, and then starts sharing. This leads to an exponential popularity growth. If this continues, it will very soon overtake the mostly known viral video - "Double Rainbow" shout. It is a song sung by the Tamil actor Dhanush, a son-in-law of the Tamil super star Rajinikanth. This song is sung in Tanglish, a Chennai slang of Tamil + Broken English, with simple words.

The girl in the green top in this clip is Shruti Hassan the heroine of the movie "3", to which this song belongs to. She is a daughter of Kamalhaasan (an award winning Tamil actor and long time competitor of Rajinikanth). The other girl in this song is Aishwarya Dhanush - Dhanush's wife who directs this movie. The debuting music director, Anirudh, a nephew of Rajinikanth can also be seen in this video. Everyone expected this song to become popular among the Tamil cinema fans due to this stardom. Nevertheless, no one including the producers of this song/movie expected it to become viral globally. The fact that the song is indeed sung in English, but with a south Indian accent and a touch of Tamil, must have helped the song becoming popular among the non-Tamil speakers.

how to ignore someone you love

For a content to become viral, it should reach the common men, and should not target a narrow niche. Among my blog posts, how to ignore someone you love can be stated as somewhat viral. It is the third mostly viewed post in my blog, along with the highest number (46) of facebook likes. I, myself didn't expect that post to become popular, since I wrote it without much effort unlike the technology blog posts, that I wrote with much effort. The attractive blog title, with the interesting common area of discussion - "ignoring facebook invitations", must have attracted more readers in, unlike the posts that are focused on a niche.

Creating a viral content is not that much easy though. No one has properly found a formula to estimate how the human brain functions. We can create some interesting content, but the audience decides its success.

Winning the customers' hearts and more ..

Last year I tweeted once on LOFT's effective and proactive response to the customer feedback over the Internet. Let me summarize the LOFT story for the completeness. LOFT specialize in clothes for women, through their stores and through their online marketing. 

Customer-Oriented Marketing

They had announced a new jeans, and posted photos of a few models wearing their new jeans model over their facebook fan page. But users were not much satisfied, and their comments were mostly negative pointing out the fact that the new models of the jeans will not suit the public, except for the *models*. As a response, LOFT asked its team members to appear in the new model of the jeans, and posted their own team members wearing the jeans as a facebook album. This immediate response grabbed the attention of many customers, and it gave a tremendous amount of customer trust and recognition for the particular jeans model. Feel free to go through their fan page or twitter page if you want to know more about this famous story.

Young and Energetic Teafe

This time, I have a similar customer satisfaction related experience, and fascinatingly it is from a very young mini-cafe (exactly 3 months old when we visited them - 27th of March, 2011). We were on a short trip to India to attend a conference, and had to stay at Indiranagar, Bangalore for a day. So during the morning walk, we noticed a small cafe on the road side of 100 ft road.

Creative and Unique

First thing which grabbed my attention was the name "Chaipatty 'Teafe'".They mention they are dedicated to tea cafe (and hence the name Teafe). The seats were showing the Indian tradition. The cafe -- oops, sorry -- teafe, was also full of fancy items and brands making it possible to have a mini shopping while sipping the tea or a milk shake.

Friendly and Proactive

The teafe members were really friendly. They are interested in getting the customer feedback too. One more interesting thing was their Facebook page. I did notice that they have written down their facebook page address on a white board at teafe, but I didn't expect the page to be such professional, with proper photos those will speak vigorously than any advertising media. Just do a google search 'Teafe', and you will get the Teafe's facebook page as the first hit. One thing they missed was the domain - teafe.com is not theirs.

Win-Win and Customer Loyalty

Pay a visit to the Teafe's facebook page, and you will realize it yourself. I have visited it only once. So please feel free to correct me if I have mistaken any facts here. Earning a loyal customer is a win-win for an organization. I am pretty sure Teafe plays the correct game in this. I hope to visit Teafe once more, if I get a chance to visit Bangalore again. I would also recommend anyone at Bangalore to have a visit too. :)