How exciting is this news from cPanel? Their new update (90) has a lot of great features, but the one that caught my eye is the ability to use Slack’s webhooks to get notifications.
Their say:
In cPanel & WHM version 90, you can now send system notifications to one or more Slack WebHooks. You can specify Slack® WebHooks in WHM’s Basic WebHost Manager Setup interface (WHM >> Home >> Server Configuration >> Basic WebHost Manager Setup).
Web developers, system admins, and even marketers feel overwhelmed often about the digital chores and hurdles we cross just to find out what we need to know.
I mean, how many tabs do you have open and how many screens? I’m way over my 8-tab max, typing this while I’m curating Tweets for a Twitter Pro Client.
But y’all, this sounds like a great improvement for any agency or freelancer’s workflow.
Which WordPress Web Hosts Will Include cPanel 90?
The next logical question is which hosting companies will upgrade to cPanel 90. I personally use Pressable and I don’t believe they have cPanel access, according to my designer anyway. Companies love SiteGround for this reason.
What do you think of Slack notifications from cPanel?
Firstly, you can’t analyze data that you don’t measure. Tracking your lead source only happens if you ask your customers how they heard about you.
I Get My Customers from Twitter
As an exercise, I imported clients from FreshBooks into Google Sheets. Almost 42% of my leads come through referrals (usually in my Twitter DMs), 30% come from Twitter, and almost 12% come from friends (most of whom I met on Twitter.) It’s arguable that 70% of my business truly comes from Twitter. Then again, I manage Twitter for brands.
Pie Chart of Lead Source – April 2020
People ask me all the time:
“You mean people pay you to do that?”
To which I generally reply:
“Yes, so far it’s working.”
(Do people pay you to answer their phones? Hello?)
Here are my time-tested tips on how to get customers on Twitter.
1. Be Present in Your Twitter Feed
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you are present in your feed. What does this look like? It means that you sign onto Twitter in the morning, check notifications, reply to everyone, and post something. Scroll through the home feed and reply to at least three people.
Posting once a day on Twitter isn’t for growth, by the way. It’s basic life support. If you want to grow, you need to spend time on Twitter. It’s about volume over time.
In the last 28 days, for example, I tweeted over 1500 times. Now, I also have 18,000 followers. So my volume is appropriate for my account.
I don't share my clients' Twitter stats, but I do share mine.
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you are seen as a source of information. Not only are you a source, but you are an accessible source. This means curbing your use of jargon or, at least, using it and defining it.
People are tweeting all day long about things that interest them as well as their frustrations. Find questions that you can answer and reply to their tweets. This is how you build followers and affinity for your brand. People will like you for being helpful.
Remember to use quotes around your search phrase and choose “latest tweets” instead of “top tweets.” It’s a bit of extra work, but it helps.
3. Share Your Content Regularly
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you publish on your blog and share it on Twitter regularly. You want people to recognize your brand and affiliate it with your field of expertise.
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you reply to everyone. Everyone is relevant. People leave jobs an average of every two years (or less). It’s the relationships that stay around forever. I replied to a tweet and got a $23,000 client. Yep. I did.
Yes, you have the extra 40 seconds it takes to say, “Thank you.” If you don’t, why are you in business?
5. Follow and List Everyone Who Isn’t Spam
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you are — are you ready for this? — social. People always think of the media part of “social media” and conveniently forget the work part. Yes. The work is to interact with others.
To make your experience efficient and effective, add people to your Twitter Lists. This allows you to filter the feed by topic or category of your determination.
6. Be Consistent. It’s a Long Game
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you are patient. It’s not the Field of Dreams. People don’t just come to your profile and buy your $30,000 barbecue pit. There is no such thing as first-click leads.
“Want to make marketing a competitive advantage for your business? You’re gonna need a flywheel. No individual hack, no short-term set of investments, can compete.” Rand Fishkin of Spark Toro
To get customers on Twitter it is important that you differentiate yourself and your brand. What does it do for your customer? What are you providing to your customer?
What values matter to your business? It’s okay to take a stand. Stay with it. Make your stance and stand by it. Plenty of people say all kinds of things online. Most of the time, I’d recommend that you shouldn’t but there are cases where it is core. People will be upset. Your customers won’t.
Patagonia, for example, doesn’t mind being outspoken about environmental issues. They probably don’t have very many customers from the oil and gas industry, but they’re fine with it.
This is an example of aligning your values with your customers.
Pipelines like Keystone XL, Line 3, and Trans Mountain are disastrous for people and the planet. They’re built on Indigenous lands without consent, endanger the safety of Indigenous women, and poison nearby communities.
Your swings only count if you’re at-bat. The very best baseball players only succeed 1/3 of the time but they have to step up to the plate. Where are you?
You can’t get customers on Twitter if you’re not active on Twitter. You need an account. You need a website that is mobile responsive. You may need to outsource, even.
Twitter has been out since 2007. It’s not just a fad. Your competitors are online. Why aren’t you?
One of the best parts of remote work — even as a self-employed person — is the freedom to work anywhere. In this case, it meant moving out of state.
“I’ve been thinking ’bout catching a train
Leave my phone machine by the radar range
Hello it’s me, I’m not at home
If you’d like to reach me, leave me alone” Sheryl Crow et al
Remote Work is About Freedom
There really is no reason why people should have to be forced to work in the same building. Seriously. Especially if all of their work is done in the cloud. It’s about control or the appearance of control. If work is about the actual work, the deliverables, then we should be accountable and compensated as such.
I was fortunate enough to be accountable for my deliverables during my time as Director of Marketing at an advertising firm. I will never go back to selling the time it takes to produce high value work. But that’s another blog post.
As I wrote in an earlier post, “Ultimately, remote work is freedom. It’s freedom from people interrupting your work. It’s freedom from an expensive commute. But there are downsides, too. You need to be around people.”
Freedom to Change
I started freelancing in October 2017 out of necessity. It quickly became my preferred business model. And yet I hadn’t fully taken advantage of my location-independence. I had changed my hours and I had changed my billing rates. I created half-day Fridays and I was able to travel and work at the same time.
What I didn’t change was my home base. My very sentimental, expensive home. Until I moved to Texas last week.
My clients are all over the world — quite literally.
At the time one of them was living in Indonesia and is now in the Philippines after a brief stent in Europe. Another literally lives in an RV with his family so they can drive around the States. These two individuals kept reaching out to me privately.
Why do you stay in California? You’re location-independent.
Why, indeed.
I’ve been watching my friend @YouTooCanBeGuru move from afar on Twitter. I can’t tell you how happy I am for her. Moving is tough. I’ve done it 30+ times in my life all over the US. But she’s moving to get a fresh start. Which is the best and toughest kind of move.
Honestly, as a widow of a well-enough known pastor and person in the community, it left me with very little room for personal growth beyond his legacy. I felt like I was outrunning an avalanche of ghosts. The parade of people who had died. The ghosts of relationships past — family, friends, memories. It was too much.
To thrive, to be at peace, to be in a space that is created for me, I needed to leave. It became apparent on a Texas work-cation this summer. My two very close friends began to urge me to look at neighborhoods and pricing.
I remember thinking, I just need to decide. I was texting Sarah Phillips while walking to my motel room and she said,
“Bridget, you just need to decide.”
I did. Almost immediately I got three business leads, two of whom are monthly clients now just about six weeks later. That was (almost) enough for me. I put out a few more feelers, applied for an apartment, was approved, and like dominoes I moved into a two-bed, two-bath apartment in downtown San Antonio.
It’s nice to have a dedicated office space again both for the tax write off and for my mental health.
Freedom to Self-Examine
High overhead means less disposable income. It means I have to work myself into the ground in order to live. I was living to work. High debt (thanks to dental work) had me grinding. It resulted in a mental health crisis I wrote about elsewhere. I made a sequence of difficult decisions. I had to.
A month later, the COVID pandemic hit. I was financially fine — for a while. In July I lost a client. I lost another in August. That gave me extra time to think but also was below my nut. The stress began to mount to where several friends and clients told me I was burnt out. I had no idea why they were saying it. Until I did.
One day, I sat at my desk, laptop closed with the intent to write; I burst into tears. Big, giant, uncontrollable tears. Sarah knew it. She said, “Come spend time with me; I need help setting up my new home.” Maybe that was the reason, maybe it was a ruse, either way, it opened my eyes.
Change needed to happen, it wasn’t just going to “do me good.” There was no way I was going to relive the stress of 2009-2011.
Seven months after my mental health crisis, I moved into my apartment in Texas — to the day.
Freedom to Experience
During my work-cation with Sarah and since I’ve moved, I have been fishing, walked to a nearby park, spent hours upon hours alone driving on the road thinking and crying and praying, bought original art, and probably a whole lot more I haven’t even thought of.
Things that I will be exploring and experiencing soon include kayaking, tennis, and visiting the botanical gardens, zoo, and the modern art museum.
So @sarahpressler took me fishing! Wow. I caught 2 and she got the rest including the really big one! pic.twitter.com/g5biwP9sK5
Once I decided to leave the burden of California, I was completely empowered — mentally. It’s remote work that made this possible. I didn’t have to move for a job, hate it, and have nowhere to return. I didn’t move for some guy and either fit into his family or not.
The pace is slower, the costs are lower, I have fiber internet, a washer/dryer, and central air. My life is easier. All of my work is done in less than 4 or 5 hours a day. I can allow my body to rest. I can enjoy things around me.
I have agency maybe for the first time in my life. Freedom to really drive my life. It wouldn’t be possible without remote work.
Okay, here’s a P.S. since so many people have been asking.
Why Did You Move to San Antonio?
There are no state income taxes in Texas.
I wanted to live in the Central or Eastern Time Zones to make scheduling easier with my clients. Other cities I considered were Montpelier, VT, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA.
Gas is $1.65/gallon. I bought eggs for 75 cents the other day. Cents.
People from the Gulf Coast are evacuated during hurricanes to San Antonio.
It’s the 7th largest city in the United States.
There are about 1/2 million single men here (big place for military to retire).
The jet stream doesn’t usually travel here so the threat of tornados is low.
I wanted to live downtown so I can walk places. But I still have my car.
The neighborhood I chose is quiet and has the best Mexican food I’ve ever had.
My best friend Sarah lives two hours south and Rhonda lives 30 minutes north.
There is a big enough airport here.
I want a lower overhead so I can travel to Europe (after COVID — if that ever happens).
The people here are super nice. Genuinely nice.
I didn’t fit into the culture in Southern California. It’s pretty hard to date as a solid seven in a land of Barbies (just sayin’).
I only moved to Southern California because of my husband’s family, most of whom I am estranged from — except some awesome nieces and nephews.
There is less visual distraction here. It’s less agitating to drive. It’s cute what they think traffic is. I believe the expression is “Bless their hearts.”
If Facebook isn’t showing you content you want to see, then find content you want to see and comment on the post. The more you do this the happier you’ll be with your home feed.
Commenting (not just liking) retrains the algorithms for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Instagram. It’s to their benefit to show you content you will interact with. You have to participate. That’s the “social” part of “social media.”
[bctt tweet=”The algorithm doesn’t rule us. We rule the algorithm by training it with our behavior.” username=”BridgetMWillard”]
You get out of social media what you put into it.
Fighting The Feed
A friend on Facebook said, that Facebook isn’t showing them the right things anymore.
I also hear the same thing from people using LinkedIn. They say LinkedIn is just junk, just sales people. They say the same thing about Twitter. Twitter is just showing you in politics. Instagram is just beauty products. We’ve all heard it.
Social Media Needs Participation
If you don’t like what you see, change it. This is where the power of commenting comes into play.
The more that you comment, the more that social network learns what you like. It’s to their advantage to show you the things that you will interact with.
If you want to have friends, you need to be a friend. This is base psychology. Friendships are more than pressing the like/heart button. Liking is good. Commenting is better.
[bctt tweet=”If you want to have friends, be a friend. This means commenting on other people’s posts, not just your own. ” username=”BridgetMWillard”]
Double-tapping doesn’t get you noticed; comments do. This is how we maintain relationships — business, personal, romantic. You have to make the effort.
How You Spend Your Time Online Matters
Think about how you behave online. Take extra time to comment and participate. You can do this in as little as five minutes a day. Be intentional. Block out your time.
You haven’t heard from your long-lost friend from high school in a while? Go to their profile, actually put their name in a search bar, and find something on their profile that you can comment on. Ideally, your comment should be something positive and kind.
On Twitter, if you haven’t seen somebody tweet in a while, be proactive. Go to their profile and look for one of their tweets, then reply to it. That’s how you comment on Twitter. You press reply.
If you’re on LinkedIn and you haven’t seen a post from one of your colleagues, go find their profile. Find something they’ve shared. Comment on it.
If you haven’t seen a friend post on “the Gram” in a while, search for their name, find one of their posts, and write more than three words.
The algorithm doesn’t rule us. We rule the algorithm by training it with our behavior.
You can’t build a network, neglect it, and then expect your LinkedIn connections to help you to find a job or get new business. You have to give to get.
In this tutorial, I explain a bit more and give examples of how to share and comment appropriately.
Keep Your Network Warm
LinkedIn is an important tool for networking and connecting with your peers and with recruiters. Don’t forget that your customers are on LinkedIn, your coworkers are on there, and potential jobs are on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is for your professional life.
You know who else is on LinkedIn? The C-Suite: CEO, CFO, CIO, CMO, COOs — professionals who are serious about their careers.
You get attention and engagement by showing your portfolio. You get work by being a human being who is polite and respectful.
Do I Really Need LinkedIn?
If you’re blogging, if you have a service, if you have a product, then you need LinkedIn. You should be spending about five minutes a day on this professional platform. If you want more out of it, spend five minutes in the morning and five minutes after lunch.
I’ve been helping some of my friends and clients with their LinkedIn strategy; guess what? It works.
I have! In fact, the interviews I’ve had lately are because a recruiter found me. I’ve gotten lots of work from it—far more than I have with Twitter.
— Fat Dog Creatives (@FatDogCreatives) June 28, 2020
Build LinkedIn Into Your Daily Routine
So what you want to do is build this into your habit. Sign into LinkedIn in the morning. Check all your notifications. Then find two or three things to comment on in a normal way. Don’t message people telling them you offer solutions. No one cares about your solutions.
Install the app on your phone. Do it while you’re drinking your coffee. Post it in the feed. Be helpful. Comment on other people’s posts. Be social.
Train LinkedIn With Your Behavior
“But Bridget,” you say, “all I see are posts from recruiters.” This may be because you’ve never trained LinkedIn to know what you like. The algorithm has to learn what you like based upon your participation. Contrary to popular belief, social networks can’t read your mind; they can only predict your behavior.
LinkedIn recommends content to you based upon your behavior. Meaning, whatever you click on or comment on, they will show you more of. If you’re not seeing things that you think are relevant, then you need to change your behavior. This is how you train the feed on LinkedIn. (In fact, this is how you train all of the networks.)
Comment on things that are interesting to you. Share that Harvard Business Review article you just read. Share posts from your company’s LinkedIn page. Share a job opening from a friend. Participate.
Cory Miller is looking for an assistant. Sharing this helps his reach and keeps me top-of-mind to him.
What Do You Say on LinkedIn?
People always ask me what they should say on LinkedIn? What would you say in real life? If someone has good advice, thank them. If they bring up a question in your area of expertise, answer it. If your friend got a promotion, congratulate them. It’s really not difficult.
If you want to level up, offer a polite disagreement on a post. My friend Robert Nissenbaum does this all of the time. It’s super helpful.
Don’t spam people. Don’t just write the messages to them asking for work. That’s not how you get work. That’s how you get blocked.
Keeping your network warm means being a polite, human who is interested in other humans. People remember kind people.
You can keep your network warm, stay relevant, and top-of-mind by intentionally spending your time on LinkedIn. You really can do this in five minutes a day.
