Paid Media... Meet Social Media: The New Twitter Model

For three years, many of us skeptics have wondered aloud about the viability of Twitter. Will they sell sponsorships? Can they corporate tools help merit their billion dollar plus valuation? Would power users be wiling to pay for their services? Apparently, the answer is no (or at least not at the core). Instead, Twitter is taking a page out of the paid media book of tricks -- but with a social twist.

Witness, the promoted trend. Some of you who still make your way over to Twitter.com may have noticed that at the top of the trending topics list, their is now a little yellow "promoted" box. According to a trusted source, this slot is purchased for 24 hours and as of right now, is selling for somewhere in the $100,000/slot range. While little data has emerged about the success of these promoted trends (or the accompanying promoted tweets), up to 80% of the advertisers who have tested promoted trends and tweets are repeat buyers.

Twitter also has a third product called recommended accounts which they plan to dial up over the coming months (beta tests with select brands ran in September). These accounts can include people, companies and services. What I like about this last model is that it fulfills on the promise of marrying social media (an annuity) with paid media (ongoing costs). It will also put pressure on companies to get strategic about their bio, picture and quality of their tweet streams.





Coming Soon

While I'm still not 100% sold on the value of the sponsored tweet (apparently they are sold on a cost-per-click basis), I do like the idea of the trends and follower recommendations, especially as things like geo, demographic and day-part targeting come into effect (I'm assuming that Twitter has plans for those in the works). All of a sudden, brands will have an opportunity an amazing opportunity to present relevant content via links based on location, profile, current trends and past behavior. And most important of all, this gets done in a place that's become a regular hang out spot for millions of regulars.

Where things could get really interesting is when tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are fitted for these same types of paid media opportunities. I'm just guessing here but I have a hunch that Tweetdeck's launch of their latest version that includes real time updates is signaling a tighter integration between Tweetdeck and Twitter (otherwise, I can't imagine that Twitter would allow Tweetdeck full access to its API). It's this kind of integration that will prevent Twitter from being disintermediated from itself by the ecosystem of tools and clients that have cropped up over the last three years.

Which brands will be most successful using Twitter's new paid offerings? I guarantee that any kind of travel and entertainment business will benefit from this. Retailers -- particularly around the holidays -- should also benefit from the opportunity. B2B will definitely have a tougher time cracking this nut but then again, many B2B companies are more niche advertisers anyway.

What do you think? Will Twitter truly realize it's billion dollar plus potential this way? I have a feeling that they may just be onto something.

How Important is Your Twitter Bio?

It's funny. I've been on Twitter for almost exactly three years to the day. During that time, my Twitter bio has evolved ever so slightly. I've always included my title and company name. In addition, I've made it clear that I'm married (happily) and have three beautiful children. Recently, I included the fact that I am the co-host of the Quick'n'Dirty podcast show. That's it. I think at certain points in time I included the fact that I'm a huge Redsox and Patriots fan. But while I waiver on whether or not to add that back, I like my bio clean and simple.

Why do I do this? For a few reasons. Over the course of my three years on Twitter, I've had a chance to go through at least 14,730 people's Twitter bios. Yes, I look at every single one before I follow back. I also check and see if they have a picture and will try and get a sense of what they tweet about. I like real people... not robots. In that process, I've found that some people say a whole lot of nothing in their bios. And that's okay. It just likely won't get me to follow back.

To that end, is it okay to mention the fact that you like a particular sport, type of food, wine, sports team or music? Of course. Personal is good. In my case, my family is my "personal" part. And while I'd like to connect with other people that like the Redsox, the Patriots, BBQ, Tool or the Black Keys, I already know who a lot of these folks are. Why? Because they respond to me when I talk about them on Twitter. And if we find mutual value in each other's tweets, we start to follow each other.

So while I'm up on my soapbox, here are a few other tips I'd recommend if you're interested in getting more out of Twitter.

Tip One
Here are twelve thirteen fourteen* people/organizations that I'd recommend following (high signal to noise ratio):

• Ann Handley - Author and chief content officer at MarketingProfs.
• David Armano - SVP at Edelman Digital [*shame on me for leaving him off the first go around]
• Brian Solis - Two time author and principal of FutureWorks
• Marshal Kirkpatrick - Co-Editor of ReadWriteWeb.com
• Robert Scoble Rackspace employee who provides tech news, videos and opinions
• eMarketer - Digital intelligence for marketers and advertisers on social media, mobile, media, advertising, retail, consumer products, and more
• Brian Morrissey - Digital Editor at Adweek
• Simon Mainwaring - Ex-Nike/Wieden creative, former Worldwide Creative Director Motorola/Ogilvy, branding/advertising writer, author/speaker/blogger
• Augie Ray - Sr. Analyst of Social Computing/Marketing @ Forrester, tracking Communities, Twitter, Influence, Facebook and WOM
• Joseph Jaffe - Three time author and chief interruptor at Powered.
• ANA Marketers - Official account for the ANA. Provides info on events, insights, advocacy, training workshops, and news.
• Jeremiah Owyang - Partner, Altimeter Group
  
• Brett Petersel - Business Development, Community and Events at Mashable
• Ad Age - AdAge the magazine's Twitter presence. A great source of news, intelligence and conversation for marketing and media communities.

Tip Two

Don't be afraid to mix fun with business. I try and add value to everyone that has decided to follow me. Sometimes this is through sharing useful news/links.  Sometimes through snark. Sometimes by expressing my feelings -- happy, sad, angry or Zen. While I'm not everyone's cup of tea, I think the people that have stuck with me over the years would agree that I'm more valuable than not. Those that disagree vote with their feet.

Tip Three

Don't be discouraged if someone doesn't follow you back. Some people don't like to follow anyone but people they know well. Some will follow after you've engaged them in dialogue a few times. But the way I go into it is that if I follow someone, I don't expect that they will follow me back. I follow them because I find what they say interesting enough not to care. With that said, I know part of the reason I've been lucky enough to have nearly 15,000 people follow me is because I mostly reciprocate when someone follows me.

Yes, there are hundreds of other good Twitter tips. But hopefully these will help. If you've got one you'd like to add, that's why God invented comments.

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 33: Reunited Edition!

It's been a few weeks since my podcast partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, and I have been able to do a Quick-n-Dirty podcast together. For two weeks in a row, travel prevented me from joining her on our weekly show. Fortunately, we had a couple of more than capable substitutes in Brian Solis (author and principal of FutureWorks) and Greg Matthews, director of innovation at Humana. Write ups from the shows with Brian and Greg can be found here and here on Jennifer's ZDNet blog.

This week, Jennifer and I were back in the saddle again with me broadcasting live from Jackson Hole, WY (yes, I took one for the team). We had an action packed show starting with our featured social network of the week, Hollrr. Neither Jennifer or I had had much of chance to play with Hollrr but saw some decent potential in this site that Mashable likens to "Foursquare for product discovery" (full review here). Both Jennifer and I appreciated Hollrr's off-the-shelf integration with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook and I personally look forward to getting product recommendations from friends and connections. Oh yeah, they have a pretty cool logo too.

Next up was our featured guest (and former "Twitterer of the week,") Simon Mainwaring. If you don't know Simon, you should. Officially, he is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, author and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries. During this week's show, Simon shared some fascinating updates from a recent trip he took to the Middle East as a guest of the Brookings Institute. The focus was on social media and foreign policy, two disciplines that traditionally don't share the same space. I won't pretend to do Simon's interview justice so just this one time, I'm MANDATING that you listen to at least Simon's portion of the show (starts about 7 mins in and runs for aproximately 25 minutes).

Speaking of "Twitterers of the week," this week's choice was principal of The Community Roundtable (and close friend), Jim Storer. As I mentioned during the show, nobody has done a better job at taking community management skills to Twitter than Jim. Regularly mixing helpful tips, humor, love of bacon and Red Sox commentary into his stream, Jim is a "must add" to anyone's Twitter follow list irrespective of what industry they are in.

Last but not least, our point/counterpoint focused on one of Jennifer's recent blog posts, Twitter: Becoming Nothing Special. Jennifer's post theorizes that the recent announcement of Yahoo's partnership with Twitter pushes them from "new shiny object" into the merely "ordinary" category. While Jennifer didn't see this as all bad, she wondered aloud if this might hurt Twitter's future potential. Taking the opposing side of this issue, I argued that this is exactly what Twitter (and social media) need. Making Twitter and other social networks like "electricity" -- something we don't ever even think about in spite of the critical role it plays in our daily lives -- is a good thing. To me, this means that it's so ingrained in our daily lives, personal and professional, that we can't live without it.

Looking forward to next week's show, Jennifer and I will switch places and I will be working with friend and founder of Oneforty, Laura Fitton, as my guest host. Jennifer will be attending the RSA Conference and thus will be out of pocket for this week's Quick-n-Dirty. I'm sure she'll want to listen to the show (as will you). Fortunately for her, our shows are archived here and on iTunes (search on "quickndirty").

Getting Started with Twitter: A Smart Newbie's Perspective

As you know, I'm a big fan of serendipity. This morning, it struck again as I invited folks in the great city of Austin, TX to join me for coffee at one of my favorite spots, the Hideout. I had low expectations given the fact that I gave people less than 18 hours notice AND the fact that it was two days before Christmas. While we didn't get quantity, I got quality in spades with my friend, Michael Pearson and new friend, David Patton.


Why I mentioned "serendipity" is that David happens to be quite an interesting fellow. What intrigued me the most was the fact that he had just started on his Twitter adventure about six weeks ago so this was my opportunity to relive those early moments of "holy shit, this thing is a game changer" of Twitter. Since I didn't have an audio recorder, I went the old fashioned route and sent David six questions via e-mail to answer. Being a good doobie, he turned them around within a few hours.

For anyone that's new to Twitter, I REALLY like the way David is approaching the space. If I were to have a do over, I'd likely take an approach to Twitter that's similar to his.

1) Talk a little bit about your role at Hush and the jobs/paths that led you up to your current position.
My association with Hush began in late '90s as an initial investor, and subsequently, after helping secure several rounds of funding, as a director.

Starting and growing a real estate development company in Austin during the malaise of the savings and loan crisis, and a securities/investment firm in the latter part of the decade, provided much of the experience necessary to help guide Hush through the dot com meltdown.

More importantly, very early on we decided it was important to gain credibility with encryption experts, by publishing our source code, and with our customers, by offering swift, honest and detailed
customer service, often provided by our CTO, Brian Smith. This was completely uncharacteristic of the industry at the time, and it built a high level of trust between the company, our industry peers and our subscribers. And this trust is the foundation of our business, because without it the technology means nothing.

2) When did you get started on Twitter? What was the impetus for joining?
Uncharacteristically, the early phase passed passed me by. But the Twitterstorms which erupted during the Hudson River plane crash, and after the Iranian election voter uprising, got me to take notice that something had changed in the way we communicate as a society. News procurement and provision would never be the same.

3) What has been your greatest “aha” moment on Twitter?
There were two. The first was replacing decade old website habits with my real-time Twitter timeline. It didn't take long to realize Google is a horrible search engine for up to the minute news. And
even once cutting edge sites, updated daily, began to appear stale. If it's happening now, it's streaming on Twitter.

The second was the realization that the Cluetrain had picked up steam and was making speed right down Madison Avenue. This was a game changer. Who buys anything anymore without reading customer reviews? Who went to see Bruno? James Cameron should pay a portion of Avatar's box office receipts to Robert Scoble and [Mike] Arrington.

4) What do you find most annoying about Twitter?

Not much. It's all pretty fascinating to me. Democracy can be messy. Democratization of industries can be downright ugly, and that's what we're seeing. But like the dust, sweat and noise of travel, it's all part of reaching a better place!

5) Talk a little bit about your follow strategy.
This can be tricky.  To get right to the crux of any matter you have to go where the action is, so I right off the bat I followed almost all of the employees at Twitter, listened to the buzz, followed who they followed and who followed them, and gradually got a better feel for the etiquette and protocols of the Titterverse. Scoble followed me then you followed me, so I said, wow, anyone can engage anyone else here, and that was key. I made it a point to follow, and to be followed by, anyone who genuinely wanted to engage in a conversation that was meaningful to both of us.

6) Words of wisdom (this is the freeform section)

• Listen. It takes a lot of patience, but you can learn so much more by paying attention to what's going on around you than by interrupting a conversation.
• Give. Link people who may gain something by knowing each other, without expecting anything in return. It will come back around (The twizzang effect!).
• Say "Yes" to hyper-caffeinated, outgoing marketing types who randomly arrange early morning coffee tweetups ;)

What about you? Do you remember your first few weeks on Twitter? Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

Plurk vs. Twitter: Who You Got?

Cross-posted on Deb Robison's blog

On last week's Quick-n-Dirty podcast show, my co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I spent some time talking about Twitter wannabe, Plurk, and why it never really took off (see Compete's comparative numbers). In fact, in my wrap up post, I went so far as to say that Plurk "sucked." Well, our friend and listener, Deb Robison, hopped on the show's live chat and told us not so fast. In fact, Deb argued that not only was Plurk not dead but rather that there were a number of reasons why she actually liked Plurk more than Twitter.

This conversation of course piqued my curiosity so I threw the idea out to Deb that we do a "point / counterpoint" on Plurk vs. Twitter. We agreed to divide and conquer with me writing the intro, both of us creating a list of "pro's and con's" and then Deb doing the wrap up. Since Deb gets the last word in this discussion, I have to say, she's done a great job getting me to think more about my harsh criticism of Plurk. That's not to say that I will jump back in and start using Plurk again but rather that I might take a "kinder and gentler" approach when I bring it up.

To make this a little more interactive, I did add my comments on Deb's lists in brackets -- I encouraged her to do the same (hers are in gray type):

Deb's Plurk Pro's

1. threaded conversations easy to follow, seems to develop conversation better, more in-depth [AWS - fair point. Although there are a few third party apps that do this for Twitter like Mike Langford's TweetWorks]  Deb: yes, but is TweetWorks widely known? Oddly, one of the best apps for following threaded Twitter conversations is the app-formerly-known-as TwiterFon, now called echofon, but is only available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, so it too languishes in obscurity.
2. consistency of group builds relationships greeting, familiarity, connections- asking about personal/work issues
3. timeline and response mechanism prevent missing a conversation you were participating in [Aaron: Twitter could benefit from this although hashtags make an attempt to replicate] Deb: but you still have to do a search for a hashtag potentially taking you away from your Twitter stream- obviously not the case if you use Tweetdeck, or Tweetgrid, but both have limitations- there is often a lag time.
4. easier to decide who to friend-can see them participate in other conversations and how they are connected to the people you already know
5. groups formed around communities within plurk- plurkshops, plurk weightloss, recipe exchange
6. constantly adding new features (where does the money come from?)
7. can post from other services such as ping.fm and posterous
8. private conversations take place among a group of people [Aaron: in my mind, this is Plurk's biggest advantage over Twitter. I've heard that this functionality is underway on Twitter but right now, it's frustratingly absent]
9. **Has anyone noticed my high level of restraint here? I never mention that- Plurk rarely goes down. A lot of folks migrated to Plurk during the season of the FAIL Whale last year, but moved back once things stabilized. [Aaron: great point]

**Deb: I have added #9 as an afterthought here, can't believe I forgot it for the original list **

Deb's Plurk Con's

1. no community evangelism [Aaron - where's Robert Scoble when you need him?]
2. karma- it's only a novelty, not sure why people focus on it so much [Aaron - as I mentioned in the podcast, this is the thing I hate most about Plurk]
3. hard to use on a PC- mouse trackball makes it easier to scroll side to side
4. no SMS (IM though)
5. only a couple of mobile apps

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Aaron's Twitter Pro's

1. Sheer numbers: Whether it's 20 million or 40 million (yes, there is a question as to how many of these folks are actually active), many of my friends are here en masse.  Deb: yes, but the numbers are overwhelming, some days I see people in my stream and think "who the hell is that and why am I following them? Or a friend doesn't show up in my stream for days. They were active, but for some reason only some Tweeps show up in the stream. I am sure volume is the issue.
2. Simplicity: yes, it took a little while to figure out Twitter but it was a whole lot easier to navigate than the land of weird looking animals with bones sticking out of their necks. Deb: again, see my argument about karma- who cares? Are you subject to nightmares after seeing Plurk critters? It's about the conversation.
3. Third party apps: due to Twitter's open architecture, I've loved the apps that have been developed around Twitter. Deb: yep, the Plurk people missed the boat on this one. Although, I don't understand why the Twitter folks couldn't seem to innovate, Plurk constantly adds new features which seem to play the role of a third party app.
4. Low barrier to following/un-following: unlike Facebook, I like the fact that following or un-following someone on Twitter has very little stigma. I can "try" someone's stream if I like and then just as easily un-follow them if I don't find value. Deb: never had any problem unfollowing people on Plurk or Twitter, but I notice some people really get upset when unfollowed. What's the big deal? You have a thousand followers and you are going to miss me??
5. Straightforward stream: while one might argue that this is the biggest strength and weakness of Twitter, I like the fact that I can dip in and out of the stream as I choose. If I want to update and walk away for a day, there's nobody waiting on the other side for me to finish my threaded conversation. Deb: yeah, but I have having to come in mid-stream when a conversation is going on and sort through the tweets to get to the origination of the convo. That is when I reach for TwitterFon (echofon).

Aaron's Twitter Con's

1. Spam: with mass adoption comes opportunity. With opportunity comes scam artists. Unfortunately, this has become a huge pain in the ass when it comes to determining who to follow back.  Deb: I did not have to deal with a spammer until a couple of weeks ago. It was sending me through the roof. I experienced "SpamRage."
2. Threaded conversations: while there are third party apps that do this, it would be nice to have this "in-line" on Twitter.
3. No group DMs: as I commented above, there are many a time when I would love to be able to send a group DM. For instance, I group blog with a number of friends over at Big Papelbon and it would be nice to be able to send a comment to all the contributors via DM all at one time.
4. Hard to follow lots of users: yes, I do use Tweetdeck which makes following discrete groups easier but it would be nice if Twitter had Friendfeed like capabilities to pre-segment people into groups. Based on Deb's "Plurk pro's" above, it sounds like you can do this on Plurk. Deb: you can create groups and/or private conversations sent to individuals of your choice on Plurk, but I rarely do it. Tweetdeck crashes constantly, so I don't use it anymore.

Gee, I feel like David Brooks and Gail Collins of the New York Times' The Conversation blog where the opposing parties exchange niceties about summer vacation, then give their POVs. The Conversation ends nicely and we politely agree to disagree. That having been said, while I wouldn't use the word "sucks" about Twitter, I don't like it as much as Plurk, but feel I have to use it for my work- held hostage by a little bird and a whale. Thanks for the lovely discourse Aaron and I hope your summer on the Cape didn't leave you with too bad of a sunburn. [Aaron: Deb, this has been a blast. And as you know, I love doing the point / counterpoint thing. Normally I spar weekly with Jennifer on the Quick-n-Dirty but I always welcome engaging with other smart folks like yourself.]

Un-Retired: The Start of Something New

Last Thursday, I took a bold step and announced my retirement from Twitter. My announcement coincided with my 20,000 update or tweet which is a pretty big deal when you think about how much time and effort it takes to do anything 20,000 times. While I knew it was unlikely that I would stay retired -- thus my comparison of my retirement to two of the greatest "un-retiring" athletes in the world -- I did enjoy my time away from microblogging.

So what did I do with my 120 hours of Twitter-free time? Well, in fairness, I wasn't completely Twitter free. In fact, a few of you caught me inadvertently sending DM's publicly (I did get a chuckle out of your mock outrage). But even though I did keep an eye on Twitter, I felt no pressure to respond, re-tweet or come up with clever little facts or quips. It was quite cathartic actually.

But you know what? I missed it. A lot. However, the time away did afford me the ability to think about what my future "social" strategy looked like. To that end, I've decided on makin

g a few changes as I move forward:

1. I've talked a lot about signal to noise the last couple years but I haven't always done as good a job at delivering enough "signal." Now that my tweets are appearing on our company's home page, I'm more aware than ever of my conversations. That does NOT mean that I don't plan to swear, complain or throw out the occasional snarky tweet but instead, that I will think a little bit harder about lower value conversations (more on that in the next bullet).
2. During my five day hiatus from Twitter, I did learn that I really do like conversing on Facebook. And you know what, Facebook is a great place for those "lower value" conversations that actually aren't really lower in value, but rather "de-valued" when they take place in front of tons of people that don't know you. What I mean by this is that out of the 9,500+ people that follow me on Twitter, I probably only know about 1,000 of them. On Facebook, I know closer to 750 of the 1,100 people that I've friended, and many are family members or friends from high school, college and live events.
3. I need to spend more time blogging -- and not just fluff pieces. What I mean by this is that I felt really proud about posting the Age Wave piece that I co-penned with my friend, John Cass last week. We really thought that post through, did research and delivered a point of view. I want to do more of those thought pieces, both here and on my company blog. I also need to do a better job holding up my end of the bargain on the weekly podcast show I do with my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio.

So there you have it. I'm officially un-retired. Yes, most of you knew this would come but hopefully I can keep up my resolution to refine my presence on Twitter and deliver more value than I have in the past. For those of you that don't like the new me, just come find me over on Facebook. In fact, you'll notice that I have a new, more serious avatar on Twitter while my old "grumpy-faced" avatar from SXSW has migrated to Facebook.

While I'm at it, I'm planning on getting healthy again. Yup, I've taken too much time off from running and eating well (7 months of commuting between MA and TX will do that to you). Make sure you ask me about my progress on this front regularly as I've found that guilt works wonders with me in terms of keeping me honest.

My 20,000 Tweet...

Hmmm, trying to figure out what my 20,000 tweet should be. I have a few thoughts but figured folks may be willing to give me some suggestions here. If you missed my 10,000 update, it was a doozy. I know I won't be able to trump that so I'm thinking about the following ideas:

• My favorite 20 tweets of all time (mine or others)
• A charity message
• My favorite 20 tweeters (fraught with social danger)
• 20 tips for maximizing social (feeling like this might be a cop out)

So tell me oh wise ones, what should I do? I've only got about 20 tweets left before I hit the milestone.

Weekly Social Marketing Links: August 11, 2009

Cross-posted from blog.powered.com.

Each week, the members of Powered's marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. I've been a little behind in my updates recently so you're getting a few weeks worth in one fell swoop.

Links are below:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)
I enjoyed reading the article, Desperately Seeking Personal Brand, which talks about how you can tell if a social marketing “expert” is really a true guru or pretender.

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Marketers Like Twitter More Than Consumers Do
Interesting stats between the different views of marketers and consumers re: Twitter. While marketers see Twitter as a platform that is here to stay, consumers either don't have an opinion or think it's somewhat useful or dead. Both marketers and consumers feel it's not a good platform for advertising or promoting products, which is interesting considering we get a lot of questions about using Twitter for just this purpose.

I do agree with the article that Twitter can be useful for awareness efforts, but I don't think that by promoting your business you will generate leads or new business from Twitter. Twitter is about relationships. It's about connecting with people that you find interesting. It's about people…not about businesses. And if consumers don't know or don't care about Twitter, then it begs the question - Are marketers wasting time and energy in trying to figure out how to use it to propel their business?

DP Rabalais (Marketing)
In doing competitive intelligence this week I cam across an interesting story about Passenger and how they’re helping Mercedes Benz tap into 20-somethings (some current, but mostly future customers) help shape their future product offerings. Definitely worth the read if you get a chance.

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Fortune 100 CEOs & Companies: Social Media Use & Statistics

Good article on how CEO’s at top companies use social media, and also how companies are using tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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I liked this post by blogger, Mack Collier titled Why Many Marketers Struggle with Social Media because it does a good job of succinctly calling out where traditional marketing and advertising is relevant vs. where SM is beneficial to companies. My favorite quote:

If you’re Burger King and you’re looking to influence whether I go there or not, use plain old marketing. It’s just fine. It’s the right tool for the job. So is advertising. You don’t HAVE to use social media for that.

But, if you’re Burger King and you want to understand me, to get what’s really going on inside my head, and know what we have in common, then THAT is where social media can be useful. Talk to me. Get to know me. Ask me about me and the things that aren’t about you.

Doug Wick (BizDev)
The danger of being an innovative start-up that is a little resource-challenged is that your innovations can be easily imitated. Facebook has been slowly learning from Twitter and incorporating their features while Twitter struggles with problems like infrastructure that Facebook solved long ago. This article does a nice job of showing where the endgame for Twitter might be, now that Facebook has acquired another sophisticated Twitter-imitator, Friendfeed.

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My article this week is Virtual Worlds are Getting a Second Life. Some interesting stats about the rebounding explosive growth of virtual worlds (especially among youngsters), and how they have been faster to develop revenue models than their 2-dimensional social counterparts like Facebook and Twitter. I would guess that is related to the fact that Facebook and Twitter ultimately deliver stickiness through the exchange of content (an activity that is complementary to our real lives), where 3D simulations can expand the possibilities for other social behaviors – such as commerce – more naturally since they do not complement, but instead emulate, our own reality.

Jay MacIntosh (BizDev)
Women are more relational and nurturing while men are more transactional…at least that’s the theory from a study by RapLeaf. http://digg.com/u3AQJa I’ve always been fascinated by how women and men think and behave differently. To see it in action, pay attention to the dynamics the next time you’re in a group setting (children or adults). You’ll likely see female energy more focused on understanding others and connecting with them by validating their experiences and feelings. On the other hand, male energy is usually more focused on being understood by others especially in terms of what we know and our past success. How do these differences show up in social media environments? Though I don’t have the data to support this…yet, I’ll bet women use “friending” features more than men, while men participate more in things like reputation management. Anyhow, something to consider when talking strategy with clients.

Bill Fanning (BizDev)

Bill's been out doing some major sales stuff but time to get him back on the "article" wagon. ;)

Don Sedota (Product)
This is a good list from Jay Baer on 11 Timely Social Media Takeaways. It’s basically a short-list of 11 recent social initiatives or planned initiatives by companies/brands and a key takeaway from each. My favorite is the one on Lane Bryant and their recent announcement of a “Plus-Sized Community” for women. It’s a great example of striking an emotional chord with the customer for a brand that on the surface may not seem to be a great social candidate. Lane Bryant is also hoping to leverage member questions/comments for the purposes of product innovation which seems to be an increasing trend.

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In the spirit of interesting stats and prospective customers potentially finding Facebook Connect as an attractive demand generator, here’s a post from Brian Solis on up to date Facebook stats . Unfortunately, he doesn’t mention the source of his information but he says that the statistics will be used in his next book so take that for what it’s worth. Anyways, some highlights that could be used to sell prospective clients on the attractiveness of Facebook/FBC as a demand generation source include:

• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)


• The average social graph equates to 120 friends


• 120 million users log onto Facebook at least once a day


• 15,000 and counting websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its launch in December 2008

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I found this article pretty interesting, Please Don’t Follow or Friend Me, posted by Steven Hodson on the Shooting at Bubbles blog. It talks about how the concept of “friends” is different across different social networks and whether being someone’s “friend” on one social network is an obligation to accept that person as a “friend” on all social networks. A good quote from the article that sums it up (and I tend to agree) is “The richness and value of the Friending Economy comes from the quality and closeness of your ‘friends’, not the number of them. By blindly reciprocating we dilute the value of our ‘Friending’ not just for ourselves but also for those people who do decide to follow or friend us.”

There’s also an excerpt to another thoughtful post in the article’s sidebar (near the end) called “What Have You Done for Me Lately – Keeping Score in Social Media” which is similar in spirit but speaks to the viewpoint that just because you’ve followed someone, re-tweeted their comment, linked to their blog post, etc. doesn’t mean you should hold them in debt until they return the favor. The payback will be eventual and long-term, and in the end everything evens out.

Engagement vs. Serendipity

Earlier this morning, my Twitter friend, Michael Calienes who is also the co-founder of The Conversation Factory, tweeted out a clip he did on video social network, 12 Seconds. You can watch for yourself but for those of you that prefer the written word, Michael's question was "What if over the next couple of weeks you un-followed everyone who's never engaged with you on Twitter?"

What I liked about Michael's question was that it wasn't an "eff you" kind of statement but rather a thoughtful one. His follow up question was, "Do you think it would improve the relationships you have with the people who do engage with you?"

unfollowing the unengaged on 12seconds.tv

What I liked most about this quick video was that it got me thinking about engagement vs. serendipity, two things that are possible more now than ever via social media. The first concept, engagement, is obviously something that is high on any marketer's priority list. The second, serendipity, is something that we love when it comes our way but rarely do we feel like we have much control over the phenomenon. To me, that is really the beauty of Twitter because it allows both to happen simultaneously.

But that's not what Michael asked in his clip this morning. He wanted to know would paring down on followers that are essentially "dead weight" allow us to spend more time with the people that matter. In essence, this is something that I think we all grapple with in life in general.

So here's my answer... as tempted as I am to pare down my 8,000+ followers, I never will. You know why? Because every day someone new who was in the list of "haven't previously engaged with" crops up and adds value to my life. There are a few personal examples of how this has helped here and here It's also been invaluable in my professional life helping me helping me drive leads, create partnerships, find podcast/blog interviewees, or even land speaking engagements.

What do you think? If you had your druthers, would you slim down the number of people you engaged with based on reciprocity? Or are you like me -- willing to roll the dice based on the possibility of what might be?

Twitter as the GPS: Video from @JeffPulver's 140 Character Conference

Last week, I was lucky enough to be asked by my friend, Peter Fasano, of Coke to moderate a panel called "Twitter as the GPS for the Greater Social Media Mesh" at the 140 Character Conference in NYC. The idea was to talk about how Twitter is helping businesses navigate in a "2.0" world. Given the backgrounds of our panelists, we decided to focus on four different vertical industries: financial services, entertainment, advertising and CPG.

My fellow panelists were:

• Brian Morrissey (@bmorrissey) - Digital Editor at Adweek
• David Berkowitz (@dberkowitz) - Emerging Media Director, 360i
• Hadley Stern (@hadleystern) - Vice-President, Fidelity Labs
• Peter Fasano (@pfasano) - Principal/Lead Catalyst, Mass+Logic and Social Media Marketer at The Coca Cola Company

This is only a twenty minute video so I highly encourage you to spend a few minutes listening in. If you have thoughts, comments or feedback that you'd like to share, feel free to do so in the comments below. I have my fellow panelists e-mails so I'm happy to ping them to try and get an answer.

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 3 Recap

The third episode of Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast (#qnd) was a little smoother than episodes one and two. For starters, I remembered to set the length of the show for 45 minutes vs. 15 so all the listeners could follow along for the duration. I was also able to play our new bumper music, Bring Back the Bass, at least at the tail end of the show (thanks to Brett Petersel for providing). Next week, I promised co-host, Jennifer Leggio, that our show would go off without a hitch... we'll just have to see!

If you missed this week's show, here’s what we discussed:

1. Featured Social Network: Glue. They are doing some very cool things with social browsing. They also just released a press release that said that they are exposing some of their APIs so that developers can use Glue's functionality in their sites. Jen and I both like what Glue is doing a lot and will continue to keep my eye on them.
2. Case Study: This week's focus was all about the small business. Ever see one of those mobile food carts floating around the city? Yeah, the ones that sell bagels or tacos or sausages? Well guess what. They are starting to use Twitter and the results are paying off. In regard to Korean BBQ purveyor, Kogi, Kate Krader, restaurant editor for Food & Wine magazine says in the background article "That [Kogi's recognizable brand name is] 90 percent thanks to Twitter."
3. Special Guest: Mike Murray, CSIO of Foreground Security was kind enough to join us to discuss true social engineering in social networking / social media. Pretty powerful stuff. If you weren't a little wary about who you "friend" in the socialsphere before, you might be after listening to Mike speak.
4. Executive on Twitter: Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak. I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffrey and hearing him speak at this week's 140 Character Conference. I was pleased to see that he was as funny and genuine in real life as he was on Twitter. Definitely worth the follow.
5. Point / Counterpoint: This week was a little less of a "square off" and more of a recap of Jeff Pulver's recent 140 Character Conference. If you weren't lucky enough to attend, the videos from the event are up. I loved the conference and while Jen didn't exactly disagree with me, she decided that conference producers need to be careful to focus less on the tools and more on the goals of we business folk (think "lead gen" vs. "e-mail marketing" for instance). I agreed but my take was that we needed to ratchet it up a notch and apply that thinking to all social media events, not just those focused on Twitter.
6. Special Bonus: one of our listeners encouraged us to talk a little about Twitter and it's role in the latest Iranian elections. We didn't have much time to cover such an important topic but did manage to spend a couple of minutes opining on the subject.

Jennifer and I are in the process of working on next week's show but we promise it won't dissapoint. At a minimum, Jennifer has a special announcement that should get folks excited. If I say more than that, Jen may disown me as a co-host.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Live Blogging the 140 Character Conference

Photo credit: Jill Hanner

Sorry, I never gave context for this post. I'm at Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference in New York City and am trying to provide some running notes from this action

packed event. Today I'm keeping up. Tomorrow might be tricky (speaking at 9:20 AM and then in meetings on and off after that).

Link to conference agenda is here.

Link to the #140conf hashtag is here.

Tim O'Reilly CEO/founder, O'Reilly Media

• realized that at times he was tweeting too much so started capturing/formatting his tweets in a text document. Later he would decide whether or not to tweet those updates.

Fred Wilson (venture capitalist/blogger)

• Links are the currency of the internet.
• Talking about how to make money from Twitter.
• Links to blog coming from Facebook and Twitter are starting to eat into Google referrals.
• One business model for Twitter would mimic the way Overture introduced "paid search"
• Google currently spends a lot of time on environmental remediation i.e. addressing spam, phishing, etc. Twitter is going need to do the same.
• Passed links on FB and Twitter are more "trusted" because they come from someone you know - as a result, they have a higher likihood to convert
• http://tcrn.ch/3y0 (recap by E Schoenfeld)

John Borthwick - Founder of Twitter Search

bit.ly/140/ecosystem

General thoughts from Liz Strauss and panel with Brian Solis, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6 and Brook Lundy of Some eCards

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=aaronstrout+%23140conf

Maegan Carburry - Political Blogger for Huffington Post

• Recommends reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• Asks, "are we contributing original thoughts to socialsphere?"

[cont'd]

UBER Panel on Twitter as News Gathering Tool

Moderator: Robert Scoble

Panelists:

Ann Curry - anchor of NBC

Rick Sanchez - Host of 3PM Newsroom on CNN

Ryan Osborn - Producer NBC's Today Show

• Scoble is hammering Rick Sanchez, CNN and press in general for not giving more Iran coverage this weekend.
• Scoble also asks if we are evolving the coverage mainstream news gives foreign topics because we now "know" some of the people in these countries and they are more human/touchable to us.
• Rick Sanchez says that social media is pushing CNN to validate whether or not elections were real or not
• Ann Curry (beautiful voice in real life btw, very melodic and soothing) talks VERY passionately about covering Iran. Said that people there were talking to reporters and people were 1) risking their lives to talk to them and 2) were asking if all Americans thought that they were terrorists. Ann also stressed the importances of reporters now treating people in countries like Darfur, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. like they are your mother, sister, brother.
• Rick Sanchez/Ryan Osborn said it is tricky because trad'l news is held to standard of "it's got to be right." They are required to do more fact checking.
• Ann Curry - was doing some real time reporting on Twitter recently because main stream news was covering. Had to be VERY careful to make sure she wasn't passing along any information that was wrong.
• Audience questions - frustration around mainstream media covering "fluff" pieces vs. hard hitting stuff. [NOTE: in theory, this is great but it's not what most people want to watch]
• Rick Sanchez says that it's imperative to use Twitter to have conversations with watchers - not to use it as a gimmick.

[cont'd]

• Rick Sanchez notes that if CNN or other news disappears, it takes away a lot of the content that social content creators can talk about.
• Scoble retorts to Rick, "you DID disappear on Saturday and we got along just fine."

[Side note: had a fantastic conversation with Scoble, Jim Stone (camera man for

NBC) and Ryan Osborn after the panel. They agreed that this is a seminal moment in the history of social media and traditional media.]

Moeed Ahmad - Head of New Media Technology and Future Media Department Technology Division, Al Jazeera Network

• First off, Moeed notes that he traveled 16 hours to get here. WOW! I will never complain
• "If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space"
• "If it doesn't fit in 140 characters, it's not worth saying" - @riy
• Now talking about Twitter's roll in War 2.0 - cites hashtag use of "#gaza"
• Interesting because Al Jazeera team was skeptical about use of Twitter at first. Then @Ev tweeted a link to their site and traffic went through the roof. Now they get it. ;)
• Able to run a page with live tweets with a column next to it that tells whether the news has been verified or not [brilliant idea]
• Challenges: covering a party that is not popular on Twitter who wins an election (when party that lost IS popular on Twitter)
• "Telling the truth is hard. Not telling it is even harder." (see poster below)

Jeremy Epstein - Marketing Navigator, Never Stop Marketing

• Interesting approach to Twitter. Only follows 140 people. Looks for:
  - Experts
  - High signal to noise ratio
  - Constantly looking to earn right to spend more time with people he wants to network with

Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak

• Twitter is changing Kodak (not your father's Kodak anymore)
• 60% of people at company are new
• Looking for new ways to make connections with people
• Worst thing you could say about Kodak is absolutely nothing.
• Said people come on their blog and say "your product is f*cking, f*cking, f*cking, f*cking, f*cking not good" is okay because it's feedback.
• They are listening to their customers - want to make ink cartridges much more interchangeable.
• Jeff is showing his humorous side - he is currently trying to figure out term for someone that is malicious on Twitter. Crowd consensus is "twanker."
• Right now, he's calling out a particular competitor that was anonomously posting and taking shots at Kodak. Also expressing desire for Financial Times to be at 140 Character Conference
• Jeff answers/triages tweets that people send when problems or questions arise. Said that this wasn't possible even a year ago.
• Big moment for Kodak/Jeff - one of Barack Obama's daughters used a Kodak camera. People started tweeting Jeff like crazy. It trended and made the NY Times.
• Interesting thought, what is the "cost of ignoring."

For more live tweets from people beyond me during Jeff's session, go here:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23140conf+jeffreyhayzlett

[cont'd]

Getting Started with Social

In a few weeks, I'm giving a presentation to a large company about ways they can be thinking about social media. I haven't fleshed out the PPT yet but thought it might be helpful for other folks that are trying to find a "toe hold" in their companies (big OR small) to get started.

1. What social isn’t:
   - One way conversation
   - Just another PR tool
   - Technology
   - A fad
2. What social is:
   - Vehicle for Many-to-many conversations
   - Way to deepen customer relationships and create referrals
   - Great feedback mechanism
   - The phenomenon that happens when you bring content AND conversation together
3. Uses for social within a brand:
   - Customer service (reduce phone/e-mail costs)
   - Marketing/sales (generate leads, deepen loyalty, lengthen customer tenure, increase referrals)
   - Market research (ongoing vs. episodic)
   - Product innovation (co-create w/ your customers)
   - An early warning mechanism (canary in the coal mine)
4. Brands that are doing social well:
   - Zappos (Twitter, blog)
   - H&R Block (Twitter, Facebook)
   - Dell Inc. (Ideastorm, blogs, Twitter)
   - USAA (Facebook, Twitter)
   - Best Buy (Blog, Twitter)
   - American Express (Open Forum community)
   - Allstate (Twitter, blog, Youtube, Facebook)
5. Key considerations:
   - Create a strategy (make sure it ties in with existing business goals)
   - Pick an audience/customer segment
   - Start listening (Google alerts, Twitter Search, Get Satisfaction, Radian6, Cymphony, BuzzGain)
   - Identify executive sponsors (an individual or small committee)
   - Plan to “give before you get”
   - Measure, measure, measure
6. Twitter
   - What is it?
   - How is it different than LinkedIn or Facebook?
   - Why is it gaining momentum?
   - How are companies using it?
   - List of top companies/brands using
   - Best practices (from Tim Walker of Hoovers)
   - Pitfalls
   - Who "mans" the account? Who needs to be involved? 
   

As always, additions/subtractions/corrections are welcome.

Photo Credit: Robert Scoble

Does No. of Followers Change Your Twitter Usage?

@NatanyaP and @Palpatim were talking about this topic this morning. I thought it would be easier to respond with an Utter. ;)

Mobile post sent by astrout using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

April 29: Weekly Content/Social Marketing Links

As I mentioned in our first Weekly Content/Social Marketing Links post, I've asked the Powered marketing, business development and product teams to pick one news article, blog post or research report a week that "speaks" to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful.

My goal is to share this content on a weekly basis. Here's what our fourth week netted:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

Paying homage to Twitter this week since I am making a concerted effort to tweet more and become more educated on best ways to utilize it both professionally and personally…couple of interesting articles:

7 tips for the Perfect Twitter Profile
Love these tips as most on twitter don't follow them (I've found)….
1. Use your real name (hard to find you if I don't know your 'handle')
2. Use a real picture (see the avatars all the time)
3. Think SEO when writing your bio
4. Include a URL
5. Consider a custom background
6. Don't protect your updates
7. Take it slow

Twitter Confesses: Most Users Don't Return
This is a very short article, but thought it very compelling. I can see why folks would not go back after using Twitter for the first time, but there is a lot of debate out there on these numbers and why people defect after the first time, so take it FWIW.
Twitter continues to grow at a rapid pace, and yet new research from Nielsen Online indicates the microblogging phenomenon faces an uphill battle in maintaining consistent use by millions of its users.

The research firm found that more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month. During the past year, Twitter has only maintained a 30 percent retention rate. In other words, the mass of new users isn't large enough to make up for the large group that is defecting or losing interest.

For good measure, Nielsen compared Twitter's early days to that of MySpace and Facebook. Even when those two social networking sites were just emerging, their retention rates were twice as high as Twitter's, according to Nielsen data. Both Facebook and MySpace now enjoy a retention rate of 70 percent today.

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

My article of the week is not mind-blowing, but definitely relevant to our Targeted Sales Strategy. Short article on how the Big 3 US Automakers are embracing Social Media.

Doug Wick (Business Development)
This is a good article from Greg Verdino where he discusses the developing language among marketers that are referring to social media as “earned media” vs. the more traditional “paid media.” He illustrates how we aren’t really going far enough in just talking about different types of media – because media as a word still has the connotation that the message is controlled by the marketer. Greg talks about how we should be seeking “earned attention” – and that focusing on anything else as a marketer within the social web is taking your eye off of the ball.

Bill Fanning (Business Development)

This week’s article is titled, How to Breathe Life into your Loyalty Program, written by Robert Manning (VP of client services for Schematic).

As I was reading this article, I was pleased to hear him basically repeating Powered's philosophy of “give before you get”. His premise is that an effective loyalty program is good at building real relationships with people by giving them value. Not just following up with folks 9 months after purchase to try to sell them something else, but really listening to the customer, understanding the individual and providing a means for them to share their experience with your brand.

While the idea of hard rewards are nice, that will not build a strong relationship by itself…often times that builds a desire to get more points, not necessarily brand affinity. Case and point, I do everything I can to get AA miles so I can save money on personal travel (by the way, that’s getting harder and harder these days) while the fact of the matter is, I'm not a huge fan of the brand!

Don Sedota (Product Management)

There was a lot of press yesterday (and some internal conversations on Yammer) about the new Facebook Open Stream API which will allow developers to pull in Facebook’s activity streams for use within their own 3rd party applications. This article on Mashable does a good job of summarizing the announcement.

While Facebook Connect essentially allows 3rd party apps to push out their site content to the Facebook news feeds, thus enabling communities to extend its site content reach and facilitate word-of-mouth marketing (i.e., demand generation), the Open Stream API allows the consumption of Facebook content within a 3rd party site.

As a result, we could strategically leverage the Open Stream API (in concert with Facebook Connect) within our client communities.

Specifically, the OS API allows the 3rd party site to filter out comments, "likes" and stories on a per application basis. If I'm not mistaken, this means that we could track "likes" and comments that are generated from the content stories posted from the Facebook Connect facilities on our sites and could also track comments, "likes" and stories generated from the brand application on the Facebook side. In the context of our current offerings, this would allow us to keep track of Facebook conversations that occur around community content that was pushed out via Facebook story feeds.

Experts in the Industry: Ken Burbary (69 of 45)

Here are just a few words I would use to describemy friend, Ken Burbary, VP of digital at Big Communications... smart, thoughtful, sports enthusiast, late. Doh! [Sorry Ken, I couldn't resist that last one]. Seriously though, Ken is one of those people that I've enjoyed following and chatting with on Twitter over the last couple of years. I was also fortunate enough to meet Ken when he came to Boston last fall when we held a tweetup in his honor.

Before I make Ken's answers to the Experts in the Industry series questions any later, let's see what he had to say:

In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I help companies navigate an incredibly complex online world to improve their online marketing, advertising and communication efforts. I focus on helping them develop the strategies and capabilities needed to do so. I'm a natural teacher, and get satisfaction from showing others "how to fish", and then watching them move forward successfully.

How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
I've been involved long before we referred to it by those names. Basically, I'm a Digital native. I have my dad to thank for being an early adopter, and bringing some of the earliest personal computers into our house. I was an avid user of bulletin board systems in the 1980s, Compuserve, Prodigy, and then eventually AOL. All of that time online, interacting with others, eventually led me to the online marketing and advertising industry in the early 1990s. I'm hooked on it, and can't imagine doing anything else. Since then I've done corporate web marketing, some consulting and spent most of my time at agencies big and small.

If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
Easy answer. Zappos. Any company that is as focused on serving the customer as Zappos is will succeed in the marketplace, regardless of what they are selling. People remember how you made them feel. Zappos customers feel good about their interaction with the company, and that builds a strong relationship (aka loyal customer).

Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
Bill Gates. Refrain from rolling your eyes and hear me out first. He is an incredibly successful business leader (currently the wealthiest individual on the plant to be exact), and yet he also possesses a sense of social responsibility that we see in so few people in similar positions. What he and his wife are doing with the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is a shining example of philanthropic work. He places a strong emphasis on the notion that everyone has equal value. He has given back a large part of his success (money and time) for the benefit of others. I respect his accomplishments and would like to see these qualities in more of our business, political or public leaders.

Would you join a toothpaste community? Why?
Yes, I absolutely would. If only to learn what actually happens in a toothpaste community so I could finally answer the question you've been asking for almost a year now. ;-)

In all seriousness, I don't have any personal interest in joining one but could probably learn more about online communities if I did join, even if it comes from one focused on toothpaste. I'm a optimist and try to see the positive in things.

Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
I debated coming up with something nifty to say here but instead want to thank the people that I have had the benefit of learning from, collaborating with, and allowed me to develop friendships that I cherish. This is hardly a comprehensive list (too many people to thank) but the people I frequently look to for guidance and/or inspiration when navigating the social space are Adam Cohen, Blagica Bottigliero, Damian Rintelmann, Amber Naslund, David Armano, Scott Monty, and YOU Mr. Strout. Thanks a million everyone!!

Thoughts on Brands Engaging on Twitter

Today I was putting together some thoughts for one of our customers who is thinking about getting started on Twitter. As you know, I'm a big fan of not trapping information in an e-mail so I've posted a cleaned up version of my recommendations below. Obviously there are probably 100 other things to think about but I didn't want to overwhelm. If you want to add in the other 94, I won't stop you (that's why God invented comments).

For starters, I'm bullish on Tim Walker of Hoover's online "Twitter primer" deck since it's so chock full of great recommendations. Tim's deck is more of a "how to get started/what you should think about" for individuals but there are tons of valuable lessons any business could learn as well.

Also, I thought it might not hurt to provide a list of 40 well-known brands on Twitter that friend, Jennifer Van Grove, put together for Mashable. Considering the fact that it got 200 comments, I'd say it did its job.

Without further ado, here are some Twitter best practices for that I’ve amassed from my nearly two years (and 15,000+ updates):

• Be human. That doesn’t mean that you have to tell jokes or swear but it does mean that you should talk to people on Twitter like your customer service reps or store reps would talk to customers. Try to avoid using this as a corporate broadcast system.
• Follow all real people back. Yes, it will be hard to keep up with everyone over time (there are tools that can help you manage this process, like Tweetdeck). For one, this shows that you care about having a conversation with your constituents and two, if people want to direct message you (many will to ask customer service related questions), this is the only way they can reach out to you privately.
• Make sure you LISTEN. Twitter search is a great way to see who is saying what about your brand (and your competitor's brands). You might consider following back anyone that mentions you. DO NOT lash out at folks that are talking negatively about you. Reach out to them privately if possible (via direct message). If they aren’t following you, let them know that you’re available to discuss the matter if they’d like to take the conversation offline.
• Engage in the conversation. Ideally, the conversation involves topics that are germane to your company. However, don’t be afraid to support social causes or pat other companies or people on the back that are doing the right thing.
• Measure, measure, measure. There are a couple of ways to do this. For one, track all of the URLs that you publish using a service like Budurl. Second, keep track of your follow growth rate (look for spikes around big announcements, offers, etc.). Third, watch for inbound traffic that you drive to your site. You might also want to keep an eye on the "velocity" of conversation around your brand i.e. keep an eye on the rate of daily mentions of your brand on Twitter search.
• Keep up your momentum. One of the worst things you can do on Twitter is set up an account, tweet a couple of times and then let your account sit fallow. Try to commit to updating at least a couple of times a day (and don’t just point back to your site). This should be easy if you look at the URL next to “Listen” as there are already conversations going on about you that are begging for you to engage in.

Is your brand using Twitter? If so, what types of results are you seeing? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Image courtesy of SoloSEO

Experts in the Industry: Laura Fitton (18 of 45)

Laura Fitton, principal of Pistachio Consulting, is not only a close friend but she's also one of the original "stars" of Twitter. One of the things I like most about Laura was that she came from a background -- not of social media -- but helping executives make their presentation "suck less." Since then, she and I have hung out at SXSW, been on panels together with friend Scott Monty and even teamed up in Jim Storer's annual all day scavenger hunt along with friends Shannon DiGregorio and Dmitri Gunn.

But enough about us, onto the questions from the Experts in the Industry: 45 Interviews in 45 Days series.

In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you're good at it. 

I see things. I connect things. And I try to explain it all in useful ways. I only work with things I really believe in and I'm not afraid to let my passion and enthusiasm show. My overwhelming focus is helping people make full use of the business, personal and even cultural value of Twitter and things like it, what I call microsharing. These tools will become more powerful than we've already experienced, in more ways than many have imagined.

How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing? 

Honestly? It got into me. It's been life in a (wonderful) tractor beam ever since I got started. It's been a pretty wild ride and I'm just so grateful for and humbled by the journey and the transformative effect it's had on my life. I want to see as many people as humanly possible benefit from the kinds of opportunities social media can create. This cuts WAY deeper than "marketing" -- it's about fundamentally new ways to organize, coordinate and collaborate efforts and lives.

If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of "social," which company would it be and why?

This one is SO obviously "Twitter" for me I feel like I should come up with a #2 instead. I'm going to say Cisco. My gut tells me they will be among the first to really tap into the value of microsharing for presence, collaboration and improving real business results. They have great leadership and innovative technology. I love how their CTO Padmasree Warrior (@padmasree) uses Twitter and the smart questions she asks about it as a collaboration tool. I just hope they can synthesize it all together, remain open to "new ways" of doing things and turn around and demonstrate to the world "what now becomes possible." 

Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

I'm really curious about what makes Richard Branson (@richardbranson) tick. That mashup of bravado, brains and yet a fanatical devotion to customer experience and businesses that bring fun, lively things into the world. The willingness to go to extremes both in business and in seizing the possibilities of life. 

Would you join a toothpaste community? Why? 

Oddly enough I would. When I see Tom's of Maine in someone's bathroom right away there's a bunch we might have in common simply because we have those values and made that choice. But I'd want the community integrated into the everyday flow of my life, just the way real life communities are. It's a real estate fundamental - build where the people already are, put it conveniently in their flow and make it easy to integrate. I'm a big skeptic about community as "destination."

Freeform – here's where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.

I don't think microsharing can change the world because just because I happen to have a lot of readers on Twitter. I think microsharing can change the world because it can. People don't have to be alone anymore. Barriers to opportunity don't have to be so high and people don't have to work in conflict and isolation. This isn't something I started saying because I want sell people something or because of the weird increased visibility thing that's happened to me on Twitter, it's something I started saying after just a few weeks using it. That ability to gather your social network around you wherever you go, and reach out to them easily and inobtrusively in order to give into, take out of or share ideas and social currency with a social network on-the-go, that's amazing. That changes lives.

Thanks kindly for inviting me Aaron. [My pleasure Laura!]