Of the social media platforms, changes in Twitter have dominated the year 2010. First we had Twitter connections showing up in search engines and on Monday, Twitter announced a new functionality called @anywhere.
Twitter anywhere allows web visitors to tweet the link to the page they’re on without having to leave the site. It will be easy to add the new framework to any site just by pasting in some lines of javascript.
When we’re ready to launch, initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.
What this means for business is it just became a whole lot easier to talk about your product or service directly from your website. Word of mouth marketing expert Andy Sernovitz preaches companies have to make it easy for their customers to talk about them.
It really doesn’t get much easier than this.
I keep talking to people about Twitter and they make statements like, “Isn’t Twitter a place celebrities tell you when they’re taking a dump?” I kid you not.
The simple action plan for anyone interested in Twitter is to go create an account. If you’re a business, you’ll want to use your business name or selected keywords people find you by. Unlike Facebook fan pages, Twitter only allows one user name. That means limited real estate.
Once you’ve set up the account, search for your keywords and start following people who are talking about your industry. You will learn. Once you have a feel for it, you can implement tools like HootSuite and TwitJump to help manage and automate your tweets.
Twitter is changing the social media game and at a very fast pace. Pay attention!
Add Nestle to the growing list of big companies that have been embroiled in social media scandals.
In this situation, Nestle is taking heat for two things. One involves environmental protestors and deforestation for the palm oil the chocolate maker uses to make its candy bars. Not too big of a deal. All businesses get complaints from time to time.
The other regards their policy of using their logo online. In a heavy handed statement last week, the company announced on Facebook -
Again, not so bad. Even though the future of the web is “open source” old school brands like Nestle like to think they still have control of their logos and intellectual property. One of the things I love about Facebook and Twitter is they let people create with their logos. Is it any wonder they’re growing as fast as they are? Google is also creative with their logo by having their home page image changed for holidays and events.
The true sin Nestle is guilty of is how they actually responded to criticism. Besides deleting comments they didn’t like, they were snippy in responses. Again this article captured the mistake -
One company that stands out to me for handling criticism is Sears. Last year a franchise store driver accidently ran over a dog during a delivery. Though the franchise owner did nothing, once Sears corporate heard about the problem, they took care of it.
As a business, you can’t bend over backwards to every extreme demand, but you can recognize thatyou listened. That was the lesson from Sears and the squished pup. Nestle’s social media people are listening and fighting back. You can’t win fighting people online. Don’t try.
The Nestle battle is still going on. This Australian article claims 4,000 Australians have fanned Nestle’s page…to post negative comments. It will be really interesting to see how this gets resolved, if at all.
The social media challenge has been going for 30 days now and I want to provide an update and a few lessons I’ve learned so far.
I consider a social media campaign to be more like a marathon than a sprint. Social media is about changing the way businesses do marketing and it can take some time to sink in.
I spoke with a prospective client yesterday who asked me about measuring ROI and I told him that’s not what it’s about. It’s more about measuring influence and leveraging trust.
Regardless, I have placed some metrics on this experiment and am happy to share.
Facebook visits – 59
Facebook fans – 4
Twitter visits – 30
Twitter followers – 24
YouTube visits – 18
Not great, but it has generated a conversation about the credit card processing business. Lisa Wise wrote
Thank you for the lead for A*** P****. We talked this morning and he will be following up with me before Friday to let me know what he’d like to do.
This lead was generated in real life by me, but I referred him to Facebook to make contact with Lisa. It was easy to share this method of contact.
Concerning search engine optimization efforts, the term “social media challenge” is ranking well for the press releases, but I’ll put out some more this week that are optimized for “credit card processing.” Lisa’s videos are all well ranked for the term “credit card processing Utah.”
I did learn a few lessons so far.
1. Bit.ly didn’t work for the PR Log press release. That means the numbers I reported earlier are probably a little higher. That press release has been read 161 times.
2. Using the autofollow feature for Twitter doesn’t work as well for new accounts. That’s the first thing I do now for new clients that don’t have a Twitter account. It takes about 30 days for a Twitter account to “season” properly and establish authority.
3. When I initially posted the videos on YouTube, I didn’t have them titled properly. After four days, I fixed that.
4. I added a visual call to action on the videos on day five.
For the next thirty days I’m going to focus on following quality people on Twitter, updating the social profiles a little more and getting more help from Lisa. Her “voice” definitely needs to be heard. I also need her to extend invitations to her sphere of influence.
I’ve found just inviting your friends to fan pages on Facebook is highly effective. Both my radio show page and my company page have grown exponentially just by asking! Plus, getting 25 fans will allow for a custom URL.
If you want to see more about how the social media challenge develops, come fan the page or follow us on Twitter.
For those of you who have businesses that are not on Twitter, here’s a clue; the White House is using Twitter as a communication tool.
That’s right, press secretary Robert Gibbs is on Twitter as @PressSec. He just started this month and CNNreports:
Gibbs says he became fascinated with Twitter when he followed a live stream of reporters tweeting President Obama’s press conference in the briefing room on February 2.
The purpose of the account is to provide additional information the press secretary receives on a daily basis. Gibbs explains,
“There’s a tremendous amount of information that we all get and have to read and go through each day,” Gibbs said. “This is certainly one way to get, on a rolling basis, to see a lot of that information in front of you.”
He follows journalists and pundits, i.e. his target audience. That’s a pretty good tip! Social media sites were blocked by the last administration and dealing with the Presidential Records Act when it comes to social media has been difficult, but it appears a policy has been created.
Government is rarely the early adopter of new technology, but when they do, you know that technology is important. Press secretary Gibbs has done three things every business owner should do when it comes to social media -
1. He figured out how to use it and then decided to employ it.
2. He’s following his target audience to figure out what they want from him.
3. He consulted with the proper technical and legal people to come up with a use policy.
Last night I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by Al Waddill, VP of Business Development at Groen Brothers Aviation.
Some of you may recall I’ve written about Mr. Waddill before regarding persuasion techniques.
What he spoke about last night closely follows what I believe is happening with the economy and even touched on points Seth Godin made last Friday.
In a nutshell, Mr. Waddill proposed our new economy is about information and those businesses who will succeed will master providing current, accurate information.
Further, he believes social media is the conduit we’ll get this information and judge its validity. The rate of change in technology is advancing so quickly, as humans we can’t possibly keep up with it all. Specialization is necessary to be successful.
The long view of what he said proposes networking, or knowing the people who specialize in the information you need for your business is one of the best moves to make.
All of these arguments are certainly valid and important. I shared two ways I manage information and get the answers I need.
1. Twitter is the first way. I create lists of people I believe provide good information. Some of them are cutting edge in their industries. Some are just full of good information. By segmenting who I follow into lists, I’m able to get the information I need.
For instance a new Google product, Buzz, has hit this week. I wouldn’t have known about it without Twitter. This morning, a quick Twitter search reveals some privacy issues. I don’t need to know all the answers in my head. I just need to know where to get them. Seth Godin said Friday we need to teach our children which questions to ask. All the answers are on the Internet.
More than anything else, Twitter is a real-time search engine. Twitter is to social media as Google is to the Internet. It’s a social search engine and that’s why businesses need to be on it. Google thinks so too as it’s including Twitter connections as search results.
2. Find a maven – In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, he described a certain type of business behavior as being a maven. Wikipedia defines the characteristics of this behavior as
those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends.
Like Mr. Waddill said, technology is changing so fast, it’s hard to keep up. It’s also hard to know which technology to adapt. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it will get traction and acceptance. The simple answer is to find a maven who specializes in what you need to know. Fortunately, mavens are easy to find. They are eager to tell everyone they know what they know. They blog, they tweet, they speak in public. That person you hear or read that sounds like they know what they’re talking about; that’s a maven.
My technology maven is Pat Kitano, author of Media Transparent. He told me to use Facebook three years ago. He said to use Twitter. He said to use Posterous. He’s saying to use Foursquare. Because I trust him, I did it. Twitter took me a little while to get, but he was the first person I followed.
Every industry has a maven. It may not be someone in the industry, it may be a passionate fan. Consider the fortune of Rotten Tomatoes. Founder Senh Duong created the site because he was a fan of Jackie Chan movies and collected reviews of the films. The site was an immediate hit and has been sold several times in the last decade. By trade, Duong was in the web design business, not the movie business.
Thanks again to Mr. Waddill for another excellent presentation. It’s refreshing to see experienced business people embrace new technology. I suppose it’s that experience that gives them the wisdom to do so.
For those of you that don’t know, there are three ways to communicate on Twitter -
1. the broadcast tweet everyone can see
2. the @ tweet everyone can see, but is directed at a particular person
3. the direct message or DM.
The honest truth is there are a lot of spammers on Twitter, but they’re pretty easy to manage by creating lists or unfollowing. Direct messages on the other hand are a real dilemma. I’m using a service to autofollow people based on targeted keywords. That means I’m building a list of people to follow in hopes they will follow me back. If they don’t within a certain period of time, my software automatically unfollows.
The dilemma is during the follow, I get sent a direct message and it pops up in my email. Every single autofollow that has sent a direct message has been automatically generated or spammy. People who use Twitter ignore direct messages. I send them straight to the trash.
How can a marketer use direct messaging effectively if nobody reads them? I don’t think they can. So should we ignore this useful piece of technology? Perhaps.
I know I don’t have a direct message set up. I have seen a few interesting ones. My favorite was the one that admitted it was a bot, but invited me to connect on Facebook. I didn’t, but I still thought it was a good idea.
Matt Singley has a suggestion for Twitter, allow a separate controller for direct messages so a user can turn it off without unfollowing.
Please give your users the ability to turn direct messages on and off globally, and when on, give us the ability to select who can and cannot send us direct messages. I want to be able to follow people without them having the ability to send direct messages to me.
What do you think about direct messaging on Twitter. Have you found an effective way to use it? Do you know about it? Do you read them? Let me know in the comments.
Social Media is by far the largest and probably the most misunderstood concept of this generation. I grew up in an age where, you either walked over to someone, wrote them a letter, or called them on the phone. Personal touches were important to me. If you took the time to write, or stop by, it showed a little pride in yourself. Phone calls were kept short, and the use of please and thank you were in great abundance. Then comes Social Media, the biggest change since e-mail and IM. Just like we have seen some losses in the personal touches of the tools of the past; it is important to remember what it teaches us as a reminder for our futures. Hopefully, all of us have learned some etiquette. I have seen some mistakes from time to time and you can use this small list to clear up any confusion you might have left: Social Media is to develop relationships of trust. Social Media is supposed to be social, not a forum for pure advertising, Spam, and other annoying practices. Social Media is personal. This means you shape who you are on-line and off-line. Keep your dirty laundry to yourself, and business and family separate. Social Media is about catering to interest. Watching TV as a status makes me snore, there is no big deal about that. Social Media is collaboration. If you only post things about yourself, you are probably the only person looking at it. Social Media is open. People from all walks of life will see, and may not understand what is being portrayed. For example, sarcasm never bodes well. Social Media is about friendships. People like to hear from you about others too. Gratitude goes far. Social Media is about quality experiences. People always have a wide variety of things to do make sure their time is well spent. Social Media is about progress. It should be used to promote more than just awareness but to lead into action. Social Media is interactive. Please treat as a two-way form of communication. Social Media is about sincerity. Know words like: puffery, flattery, embellishments, and tales, yarns, and countless others and please refrain. Social Media is about creating. You create an attitude, a reputation, a look, a message, a genre, a purpose, mission, etc. (People call this branding.) Social Media is about targeting who you care about. By trying to say your audience is everyone, where in reality you are unable to touch anyone. Social Media is about truth. You can’t spin, doctor, patch or change what really happened. It is always better to say, what you will do to fix it. Social Media is a reference. What people say back to you, or whether you pay attention to them means a lot. Social Media is the future. This is an integrating function to social skills, in being able to perform in the circles that one travels. There will always be basics to remember, and the simple politeness of getting back to people. People is what makes life more enjoyable, and a little less lonely. You want to spend your time with someone who is genuine and real, not just an avatar. Put the Social back in Social Media. Take care of your followers, and they in turn will care for you.
Justin Hale loves to spend time with his wife, and three children. He is currently doing research for the Utah Shakespearean Festival. He works for EmergingPR a public relations firm for small business. To learn more about him see his profile.
Of the social media platforms, changes in Twitter have dominated the year 2010. First we had Twitter connections showing up in search engines and on Monday, Twitter announced a new functionality called @anywhere.
