Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

As I prep for a packed house at Friday’s Boulder Chamber-sponsored Social Media 2010:  the Business Edition (seats are still available; I’ll be speaking on “Building A Solid Social Media Strategy”), I’ve been thinking about the power behind social tools.  So often, social networking is dismissed as a frivolity, something that’s just for kids.  In fact, this INC. Magazine article claims that up to 81 percent of small business owners have never applied social tools.

Contrast that news with this mind-boggling story:  last week in Australia, 60,000 trolls RSVPed for a private party a woman named Kate accidentally made public on Facebook.  The ensuing rigamarole (and the endless memes it spouted — we’re talking t-shirts, copycat parties, even pornographic sendups of the fête) has much to teach us about social media.  Namely:  It’s here.  It’s relevant.  And it can move people in a way that traditional tools just can’t.

Am I saying that every business owner should rush out and get the new shiny, even if they have no idea how it works?  No way.  But the sheer numbers and instantaneous quality of social tools should be enough to pique your interest, perk up your ears, and get you thinking.  Whether social media spurs you to clean up your message (complex, hard-to-understand messaging has no place in any kind of brand expression) or enter into actual conversation instead of keeping your head in the sand as to what your customers and clientele have to say, the time to ignore social media has passed.

Like it or not, we live in a landscape where Twitter users can make or break a film the day it comes out (or even before).  Priceless brand impressions and recommendations are just a log-on to Facebook away.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  given social tools, users rove in packs, get vocal and passionate, and can create tidal waves of interest or ignorance.  That, my friends, is power.  So…what are you going to do to harness (or ride) the wave?  – Erin

Um…how is it the end of the week again, let alone the end of the month?  Oh, well.  Time to round up what we’ve noticed in the realm of marketing, social media, and brand strategy the week of January 25:

Hyperlocal:  I finally gave in and joined Foursquare this week, amid a huge buzz around the growing power of hyperlocal social media applications.  This coincided nicely with Twitter’s (Denver-snubbing) rollout of local trending topics,  Yelp’s rollout of sundry cyberstalking technology for its app, and an extremely thought-provoking article by Andrew Hyde on the implications of this technology (and why he’s opting out).

Hyperhyped:  In case you were in a remote cave this week, I’ll break the news…Mac announced its iPad technology on Wednesday  to great hubbub and furor.  Cue the inevitable Mac/PC mockery and bickering between me and Juli (a Mac evangelist who eventually bemoaned the technology’s lack of camera and lame failure to properly use the space of the tablet).  And cue rabid fanboys, drama about its ill-conceived and poorly-tested name, and users delighted (hey, maybe it will improve AT&T’s sucky service!), bummed (wait, it won’t save print media?), and confused about various features and prices (or lack thereof).  Which all begs the question…isn’t the hype kind of the point?  Success or failure, the iPad controversy/expectation/spin machine has people talking, speculating, and refreshing their favorite sites.  Oh, for an audience of millions.

Hyperhelpful:  As websites cut the b.s. and pare down the heavy Flash and SEOverload for more nimble, flexible content management and simpler messaging, we’re encouraged to see more focus (and buzz) about helping others.  More and more, the businesses who catch our limited attention and keep it are ones that have honed in on the ways in which they serve their customer bases.  When you get away from service, you get away from your voice and your value…and even worse, you risk alienating your base.  Here’s a great article on how the helpful effect actually boosts credibility in the social media sphere (via today’s excellent SmartBrief on Social Media, one of the must-reads in my crowded inbox).  Want some ideas on how to leverage social media and Web tools to the advantage of all?  We’ve got your back.

What’s your favorite story of the week?  Let us know!

You’ve heard about the 90/10 rule, right (or the 80/20 rule or the 96/4 rule or one of its many incarnations)?  In Jack Humphrey’s excellent blog post on Twitter networking, he lays out the 90/10 rule so:

90% of what you share on Twitter should be made up of personal insights and thoughts along with a heavy dose of helpful links, while 10% should be made up of messages that more directly benefit you.

By keeping your “buy from/benefit/look at me” Tweets to 10% or less of your total content, you don’t lower your skeeze factor…you create a great opportunity to use your social networks to promote others.  and isn’t community what it’s all about?  Here are 10 easy ways to share the social media love:

Join the conversation:  Social media is no fun when it’s one-sided.  So get active and start conversing with your community!  Just engaging in conversation is a great way to attract attention to the worthy causes and businesses of others.

Retweet:  RTs are a great way to point your network to people you know and love.  So find relevant tweets, and pass them on!

Attribute:  Nobody likes to pass on an insight or link, only to be disregarded when it comes to attribution.  So take the time to link to the blog, Facebook page, or Twitter handle of the person or company you’re citing.

Interview:  Ask your favorite colleagues and connections for a quick interview on your blog, website, or newsletter…and remember to include their contact information.

Guest spot:  Better yet, invite contacts you love to guest blog, sharing their insights and expertise in their own words.  They just might ask you to return the favor (and at the very least will drive traffic and goodwill your way).

Follow Friday:  The #ff tag is de rigueur on Twitter these days, and for good reason:  you can generate tons of goodwill by taking just a few seconds to identify follow-worthy friends to your Twitter tribe.

Recommend:  Take a few moments to give a concise, eloquent LinkedIn recommendation or Yelp review to colleagues and service providers who have impressed you.

Star and save:  Like someone’s blog post?  Take a second and star it on Google Reader or save to your de.licio.us account.  Your recommendation will doubtless drive a bit of traffic their way.

Share plans:  Do you plan to attend a colleague’s new networking meeting or seminar?  Publicize your plans to attend and share links where applicable.  There’s nothing like showing up to an event your friends and connections have helped make successful.

Follow through:  It can be tempting to treat backscratching and cross-promotion as a short-term gig.  But remember…consistency is the enemy of mediocrity.  Follow through on your commitments and consistently promote others.  You’ll get a great feeling in addition to those elusive brownie points.

Spring 2009 is all about social media education, and Twitter is on the tongues of everyone from devoted power-users to confused newbs who can barely use a mouse.

Despite all the hype, news programs and even devotees haven’t quite hit their mark.  I keep running across the same question over and over again…why should I care about Twitter?  Who gives a hoot about whether you had a croissant for breakfast, anyway?

In lieu of writing a thesis on the subject (and if you really want to hear the advanced reasoning behind my use of Twitter, pretty please come to my new Twitter class June 25 and July 9), I’ll give some simple answers.

Why should you care about Twitter?

It’s all about conversation.  If you aren’t having a conversation with your potential clients and colleagues via social media, you’re missing the boat.  Twitter doesn’t just give you an unprecedented chance to engage with your base…it allows you to start, shape, and exert a degree of cotrol over the conversation that just can’t be achieved by a press release, a sound bite, or an advertorial.  And the options are endless:  you can talk directly to your base, ask them questions, gauge their opinions, solicit their feedback, be helpful and offer advice.

It’s happening.  Whether or not you like it, Twitter has taken off in a big way.  Does every business need Twitter?  No way.  But don’t dismiss it because it’s new, trendy, and admittedly overhyped.  The amount of creativity and excitement generated by Twitter is truly energizing and engaging…if you know how to use it properly.

It’s opportunity.  Opportunity to find out what your customers and your colleagues care about.  Opportunity to make mistakes, hone that brand, and get deep into voice and vision.  Opportunity to dip your toe into a huge conversation and watch it morph before your eyes.  Opportunity to be on the cutting edge before it changes into something else (just look at the evolution of hashtags over the past few months). And, yes, opportunity to get business.  I can count twenty or more instances in which Twitter has brought me business or allowed me to refer business to someone else in the last two months alone. Now that’s opportunity.

Sure, you may think you don’t care about whether your client had a donut or a croissant for breakfast…until you use that fact as the launchpad for a personal conversation.  Twitter can seem scary:  it’s immediate, vast, and fast.  It’s also vibrant, thrilling, exciting, maddening, and hilarious.  Go ahead…dip that toe in.

Readers, why do you care about (or shun) Twitter?

Photo courtesy of godsmoon

I’ve been spending lots and lots of time on Twitter lately (@vococreative’s the name if you’d like to follow) and am continually amazed by the creativity and passion being brought to this deceptively inane program by its millions of users.

Unfortunately, all the Twitter hype is made even more confusing by a growing universe of Twittiquette that is very, very easy to violate.  My recent Social Media for Mere Mortals class has prompted me to think about the most blatant violations I’ve seen of late.

Here are the top 3 Twitter mistakes I see on a regular basis:

1.  An all-or nothing mentality.  As with other marketing attempts, people tend to go whole hog or not-at-all.  The result:  schizophrenic tweets.  If all you talk about is yourself and your business, there’s no room for dialogue or relationships.  If all you do is shout out to your friends with endless @ messages, there’s no way to get a good sense of who you are.  If you tweet 92 times in one day and 2 the next, we can’t figure out what the heck you’re doing.

2.  Bad etiquette.  Calling out other users for flame wars?  Tasteless.  Failing to credit others when you retweet a message?  Lame.  Forgetting to use the @ symbol before names on a regular basis?  Thoughtless.  Auto-DMs and spammy repeat postings?  Passe.  Twitter etiquette is still a developing field, but it’s definitely becoming more standardized.  If you can’t bother to take the time to familiarize yourself with the lay of the land, should you really be tweeting at all?

3. Timidity.  In a world where  follow count is king and it’s all about who you know, there’s no point in being bashful.  Go ahead, make some friends and followers!  Sitting back and keeping your Twitterverse to your known friends closes you off from the wacky fun that is Twitter.  And it won’t do your business any favors, either.  Be bold!  Have fun!  See you in Tweet Town!

What Twitter mistakes tick you off?  Sound off in the comments!

Image courtesy of grendelkhan

Thanks for hanging in during the hiatus…I’m feeling much refreshed after a severely needed vacation.  We will return to our regularly scheduled blog postings on Monday.  In the meantime, here’s a drive-by glance at this week’s two biggest stories in marketing and brand strategy:

Twitter is on fire:  You know Twitter’s hitting the bigtime when a Twitter race between two public entities is front page news, the local news starts running fluff pieces on Twitter, and Oprah, ambassadress of all that will be embraced eventually, finally relents and throws a few Tweets to her followers.  (We’re loving Twitter here, but all this coverage is a huge sign to be on the lookout for The Next Thing…)

Crisis management is a whole new ballgame, folks:  The nasty Domino’s YouTube scandal is only the latest in a series of online gaffes and frantic scrambling.  (Remember Tropicana, the Motrin Moms, and the Whole Foods CEO’s lame astroturfing?)  Ironically, the big D apparently plans to use social media and SEO to improve the image spit upon by its own employees.  Though the best offense is always a good defense, it’s fascinating to see crisis management adapt to these let-it-all-hang-0ut times…who will be the next victim?

What was your favorite story this week?

I frequent many Yahoo! groups and bulletin boards frequented by writers and small business owners.  Lately, among the laments about the demise of newspapers and the perils of a shaky economy, I’ve been hearing an interesting war cry:  “Social media is a huge waste of time!!! It will distract you!!! Don’t listen to its siren song…it will destroy your marketing, your career…everything you’ve worked so hard to establish!”

I personally think that you can’t afford not to participate in some form of social media, especially in a world that’s ever more populated by Net-savvy, time-crunched people.  However, it’s a tool like anything else in your marketing arsenal…only worthwhile if you use it wisely.  Here are three ways to know when to rein in your social media use in favor of more traditional marketing means:

You are unable to manage your time.  Some people are able to resist the call of a blinking Tweetdeck and a buzzing iPhone.  Others, sadly, are not.  If you’re unable to manage the amount of time you spend using social media, consider limiting it to a certain amount of time per day (timed, with a timer) and pledging to spend an equal amount of time on the marketing messages you used before you converted to Twitter or Facebook.  Yes, this may involve picking up (gasp!) the phone.

You are undercutting your existing marketing.  If your many profiles are not customized and integrated in with your existing brand, you’re wasting your time.  Sure, you may be able to better interface with long-lost-childhood-friend X, but you’re spinning your wheels in terms of your marketing.  Don’t have time to brand your social media or give thought into how it might integrate with your existing marketing strategy?  Then don’t do it.

You are uninterested or undercommitted to the marketing you did before adopting SM.  Yes, social media is slick, instantaneous, pretty, and even inexpensive.  But if your social media activities have replaced the marketing you did before you logged on, be honest with yourself.  Have they really yielded the return on investment they should?  Have you abandoned sucky marketing in favor of micro-efforts that won’t ever pay off? If the answer is yes, it’s time to reassess.  Social media should be part of a marketing plan…not the entire plan.

Simply put, social media without strategy might just be a waste of time.  Interested in figuring out how to use it to your advantage without losing your mind?  We’re giving a seminar in Denver on April 20 that will help you with jus that.  Click here for more information on Social Media for Mere Mortals.

Photo courtesy of bogenfreund

Um, how’d it get to be the end of February already?

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s what in the world of marketing, media, and brand strategy:

• Death to buzzwords.  Finally!  Someone else is taking up the anti-buzzword buzzkill.
• Crocs CEO resigns, is replaced.  Not news to many who have been following the ups and downs of this early-stage success story.  My prediction:  Crocs will get worse — way worse — before it gets better.  It’s dealing with oversaturation, intense competition and knockoffs, and some sad brand stigma.
• LinkedIn is not Twitter. I repeat, LinkedIn is not Twitter.  [Via Deb Kolaras]
• Wait, what?  Pepsi is starting throwback branding in addition to its lame new branding?  Color me confused.

• My current obsession, Help A Reporter Out, is hosting a conference call on “How to Pitch a Reporter” that is promising to be a goldmine (and for just $50 it’s pretty much a steal).
• Here’s a quite comprehensive article on finding the tweet spot and using Twitter to your advantage.
• SmartBlog asks:  “Are you getting in the way of your customers?“
• Celebrity magazine circulation is down? Say it ain’t so!