I’ve seen one-too-many comments from frustrated Facebook friends on the raging Mafia Wars or Farmville or sheep-throwing or other such nonsense to ignore it any longer.
Block Mafia Wars
I consider myself one of the lucky few who have never engaged with anyone on these and so have remained relatively free of requests. I did make it my business to find out how to block unwanted applications when I received a ton of requests to join Mafia Wars from friends that I knew were just not the type – and sure enough, it was a scam.
So, to permanently block one or more unwanted applications from your facebook you have two choices
Next time you receive a request from one of these apps, look for the “block application” link and click on it
Go to the app itself and block it there
To do the 2nd option, follow these steps:
Click on the Facebook Applications link in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen
type “mafia wars” in the search box and hit enter
You’ll get a list of apps with that name; the most popular one is the one you want to block which is usually top of the list. look at the number of active users if you are unsure which to choose
click on the link to the app
right under where it says “Go To Application” it also has the option to Block Application
Click on “Block Application”
You’ll get a pop-up screen asking if you want to block the application, click on the big blue Block Mafia Wars button
Final pop-up will confirm that this app is now blocked for you
How to Block Farmville
If you want to block more apps just repeat the above steps for each of them.
Hope that helps alleviate the frustration with unwanted apps. Let me know how it worked out for you. All comments are welcome!
Instead of spending all of your time and money on looking for new customers to buy from you, have you thought about “mining” your past customers for “gold”?
What I mean by that is, if your customers have purchased from you at least once before and have enjoyed their experience of dealing with you, the chances that they will buy from you again are very good. So, have you contacted them and asked them if they are looking to buy something similar? If they are not, have you asked them if they would recommend you to their family, friends and acquaintances? Their recommendations can be an excellent source of unpaid “advertising” for you.
We all know how referrals work in our own lives – you have a great experience at a restaurant, or see a great movie and you tell all your friends about it. There is a very good chance that they will try that restaurant or movie based only on your recommendation!
Your customer is talking about your business!
Well, that same principle applies to the business of selling. Personal recommendations from your customers to THEIR personal circle will generate some form of business for you. It might not be in the form of immediate sales, but over time, it will result in sales and repeat customers. Remember that what other people say about you, your product or your service is far more powerful than what you say about it yourself.
This is where the power of Social Media can really help this concept. You should be using the power of excellent social media tools (e.g. Twitter, Facebook Fan Page) to communicate with your customers on a level that is NOT about selling. You should be learning about them, from them and giving something back to them. The power of the personal circle and recommendations can be seen daily on Twitter and Facebook and you should make that a part of this mining process.
You also need to communicate with your customers on a regular basis through email and print. If you don’t have an email newsletter, you are losing out on the potential of building really lasting, long-term relationships with your customers. Your communication to them is not a bother, if they don’t unsubscribe. They may not react immediately because they are not ready to buy. But when they are, because you communicate with them regularly, you are at the forefront of their mind when a particular need arises. Some will respond better to print so you should also use direct mail as part of your mining process. Continue to “mine” your list and communicate with them very regularly.
A nice reward
If you offer to reward your past customers for referring folks to you that do end up purchasing with you, you will have a better response. It doesn’t have to be anything major – although most folks would really appreciate a 53” Plasma screen TV! -it could be a discount off their own next purchase with you; it could be a $25 Starbucks card; it could be free pizza for a couple of nights – the possibilities are endless. They are limited only by your imagination!
If your customers ARE going to purchase again, then make them an offer they cannot refuse – while still making a decent profit from the sale. Be creative and make your offer so compelling, that they will WANT to come back and buy from you and are ready to buy now.
So, my advice is to turn to those that you have done business with in the past and “mine” them NOW for some “gold” in your business that is waiting to be found.
I spent a good 45 minutes this morning going through my inbox and making instant decisions on which email lists to stay on and which ones to unsubscribe from. Frankly, my inbox was just getting too crowded with stuff that I either never open or intend to open and read but never do. C’mon, who else doesn’t have this particular problem?!
Well, what started out to be a relatively quick and simple task turned into a bloody customer service nightmare – hence today’s blogpost! Thankfully, not ALL of the companies I was unsubscribing from made me jump through hoops, but many of them did. Being an email and direct marketer myself, I do understand the reasons behind it, but anything more than 2 steps is just downright stupid. One particular company had me take 4 steps and then had the audacity to tell me that they would email me to confirm my changes – for crying out loud people, I just told you I didn’t want any more bloody emails from you – get with the program and service the customer, don’t drive them away forever!!
Something I noticed about the really good ones was that their system put my email address on the screen where I had to click the unsubscribe button, confirming to me that I was unsubscribing that particular email address. It was quick and painless, with no more than 2 clicks to finish the process with a confirm page on my screen before I closed it out. Unfortunately, they were very few and far between. Most companies made me type in the email address I wanted to unsubscribe. As a customer, I much preferred the former.
My least favorite of all, Build A Bear, made me go to their website – which took way too long to load – and then go through no less than 5 choices to find the email unsubscribe function. Once I found it, and entered my email address to unsubscribe I got a pop-up message to tell me that if I unsubscribed from the email newsletter that I would also forfeit my Stuff Fur Stuff membership and any existing points in the account (my daughter’s account). Does anyone else find that completely incomprehensible? What the heck does an email newsletter have to do with a membership where you accumulate points for the things that you have already bought or plan to buy in the store? With blood boiling, I hit the unsubscribe button, only to get yet another page asking me to confirm my changes…. again! Why don’t you just call me stupid, stupid?! I can tell you, this particular Mom will NOT be shopping at that store ever again. I hope whoever designed their unsubscribe process gets a right butt-kicking at some point in their miserable lives.
On another note, while somewhat annoying, I did complete the couple of surveys that the very savvy companies used, trying to find out why exactly I unsubscribed and if there was anything they could do to improve the emails for me. My favorite was from Sur La Table. All of the good ones also gave me the option to immediately opt back in. And the really, really good ones thanked me for being a customer and said they were sorry to see me go. Even though I know it’s an automated process, it still did it’s job – gave me warm and fuzzies about those particular companies. I will in all likelihood continue to patronize those businesses even if I don’t want their email newsletters.
Many of them I will probably also continue to interact with in different ways, such as Twitter or Facebook, because I can control that interaction myself. The big majority of the companies that I unsubscribed from today, had their social media links prominently displayed close to the unsubscribe button. These guys at least recognize that I am not the only one limiting emails and moving my interaction with them to new mediums. Kudos to them and I’m happy to remain a customer of this savvy set – Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Sur La Table, PacSun and Macy’s.
I left Orlando early on November 6th for a drive up to Atlanta for the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle (GKIC) Infosummit. This was my first time to one of these esteemed events and I was well-armed with fresh notebooks and pens, and a mind ready to soak up all kinds of information. Oh yeah, I was also the proud owner of an Acer Netbook so I could tweet and facebook as I learned!
There were quite a few speakers that I wanted to see and learn from – Mari Smith, Christ Cardell, George Foreman, Mike Koenigs, Sonia Simone – to name but a few! I was particularly looking forward to some presentations by Dan Kennedy – his no BS style of delivery and succinct points make it easy for me to understand what he’s talking about… most of the time anyway! He did not disappoint and I wrote a TON of notes. I had been told that Frank Kern was someone to behold and listen to. What I hadn’t been told was that I should have brought my own booze so I could REALLY enjoy Frank Kern at his best!
Jackie Ewing & Dan Kennedy
Leading up to this infosummit and all the way throughout, I heard from different people that I should hunt for the 2 or 3 things that I could learn at this conference that would change me and my business. “All that way and all that time just for 2 or 3 things?” I asked myself, thinking I must have heard wrong. But no, that was the clear message. So, for whatever they are worth to you, here are the 3 main lessons that I learned at this GKIC Information Summit.
Think more about the WHO you are marketing to as opposed to what you are trying to sell. Care about people.
Use social media to supplement what is already working – blog, email, direct mail, etc. – create a loyal following by delivering great content to them.
Your ultimate goal should be profitability. If you remain invisible to your customers, you will not bring in any revenue.
Not major revelations by any stretch, but these 3 messages resonate throughout my notes from various speakers and presentations.
1. Think more about the WHO you are marketing to as opposed to what you are trying to sell. Care about people.
We know that the bulk of our business has been done with the people in our lists – every business should be tracking the people that buy stuff from them. If you’re not doing this, shame on you! You are leaving a ton of money on the table that you should be putting in your pocket.
If you know enough about the folks that have already purchased from you, you are armed to sell them something else – if you do it right. We should no longer be thinking about our database as a wall that we throw a ton of crap at and hope something sticks. We should be educating ourselves about our customers, our herd, our people. We should know what they like, what they don’t like, when their birthday is, what their dog’s name is… and on and on. The more you know, the more you know!
Frank Kern
The overriding theme from this conference was the relationships you should have with your “herd”. Frank Kern himself admitted that he simply did NOT like his customers before. When he changed his attitude about his business, what he wanted from it and how it should provide him with the lifestyle he wanted, he also changed his attitude about his customers. He got rid of the ones he didn’t like and went after more of the ones he DID like – what a concept! Doing business with people he liked became the fun he wanted it to be. Of course, he wants you and I to do the same!
Jackie Ewing & Mari Smith
2. Use Social Media to supplement or augment what is already working for you.
The constant roar about social media – what it is, how to use it, what NOT to do – is downright deafening at times! How on earth is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Well, listening to those who have already drowned out the noise, found what works and emulating them is as as good a place to start as any! Many of the speakers gave actual examples of how Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube, or a combination of some or all of these, helped springboard their businesses from mediocre to money-making in a relatively short space of time. Of course, hearing their stories with all the hindsight available to them sort of condenses it into a great story, but bottom line is – they still managed to do what you and I really want to do!
Instead of getting overwhelmed by everything that’s out there, it was recommended that we pick three or four of the main social media mediums that we feel comfortable with and use them all the time. Communication is what it is all about and social media simply allows you to communicate with a whole lot of different folks in a whole lot of different ways! Learn a few of them and learn them well. When you have mastered those, start adding one or two more to the mix. No one medium will be the immediate answer, so work as many of them as you can make work well.
Thanks to Mari Smith, I have a far better understanding of how to use both Facebook and Twitter to connect with my target audience. And the really good news was that I get to be me while doing it! A little zany is allowed.
3. Your ultimate goal should be profitability.
Jackie Ewing & Chris Cardell
It is still very true to say that it doesn’t matter if you have built a better mousetrap if nobody knows about it. This message was very clear from ALL the speakers. You can’t just wave a magic wand and have your business suddenly be ultra profitable; you actually have to do some work and then tell everybody and anybody that will listen that you have the better mousetrap and it will solve some problem of theirs that has been haunting them forever!
Most of us have information on all kinds of subjects. If we have chosen our niche and can impart information on that niche in various mediums – writing, pictures, video – then we have a product to sell. The goal is to make money from what we know. Part of that is finding the cultivating the people who need to know what you know and will be willing to part with their hard-earned cash to do it.
I didn’t really understand why so many folks GIVE so much of their content away. It just seemed to go against the grain of making money. Well, I now consider myself re-educated and reformed! Chris Cardell spoke a great deal about how he built his online business. He started out giving stuff away and people just loved his content. So, when he was ready to give them even more fabulous content – his people were ready to buy.
George Foreman
To sum up the Infosummit (if that’s even possible, given the HUGE amount of information that was available all day, everyday!) George Foreman put it very simply – in the three things that he instills in his children:
1. Get up early in the morning. Things happen early, be a part of them!
2. Learn from older folks (or in our case, people who have what we want). Listen to their stories and learn from them.
3. Strive to be the nicest human being you can be. Truly, honesty is always the best policy and nothing comes across better than a genuine person.
So, here I go armed with all this new, old stuff. The ultimate key for me now is implementation. The rest of it is only as good as the action that I take.
If you like what you read here, or not, and have comments to make, errors to point out to me, whatever – please feel free to comment below.
In case you haven’t heard about the newest, most fun way to connect with people, here’s an update on Poken – a replacement for your conventional business card. Use a Poken usb to create your unique identity complete with contact details, social media network information and use it to connect with others and exchange your contact details.
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Visit ClubPoken.com for a complete overview of all the new Pokens in the collection and make sure you get your own!
Here’s a quick video introduction to Poken, presented by Stephane Doutriaux – creator of the Poken.
I'm at Lee's Liquor of Hunter's Creek I Orlando (4100 Town Center Boulevard, John Young and Town Center Blvd., Orlando)about 5 hours agofrom foursquare
