Twitter « VLG Dialog Marketing

Stop. You’re killing me

March 5 2010

There are a few marketing buzz words that make you cringe when you hear them. Here we are in March of 2010 and my gag reflex kicks in when I hear:

Social media expert: These are usually self-anointed and woefully under qualified. In fact, I have a blog, a facebook account, a linkedIn account, and twitter accounts (yes, multiple). When you add up all VLG’s followers, group members, friends and fans and mine, well heck, we’re social media experts.

Viral marketing: Can you compare a waterskiing squirrel to the more recent Old Spice “I’m a man, man” campaign. Viral marketing might be the pinnacle of web impressions and tough to measure. Isn’t WOM so much better? That’s what we used to call it in the days before YouTube.

Twitter: Actually anything that starts with “Tw-” triggers tinnitus. I applaud Twitter apps that come up with original names like HootSuite, Su.pr and Birdhouse. Tweety Bird tweeting on Twitter would probably send me over the edge, but if I were Warner Bros. I’d be all over that.

I’m putting this post up on a Friday, because it’s a little risky and I need a slow news day to say things like “Tweety Bird tweeting” without wrecking my good name. Negativity is such a buzz kill. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Twitter relevance

February 18 2010

For those of you struggling to find ways to extract value from Twitter consider these tools.

Twiangulate can be a useful networking tool for those of you whose actually “know” your follows or followers in real life. Use this to triangulate your follows with those of two close friends or colleagues. You’ll find out who you have in common, who they have in common and the app gives you a convenient way to follow others with one sure thing in common. Twiangulate calls them your tweeps, but don’t let the cheesy moniker get in the way of using this tool.

TweetStats gives you, well, stats based on your volume, keywords, and followers. TweetStats keywords are presented in a cloud so it’s easy to spot your most frequently used. It looks like I tweet about VLG, people, marketing and Texas. It also gives you your #hashtags in a cloud. #Marketing is a clear front runner. Twitter volume could help you adjust and schedule your tweets so you aren’t slamming your followers. If you want to stay top-of-mind throughout the day this will help you adjust accordingly. BTW- Su.pr is a handy tool for scheduling tweets and I’ve found more time and attention goes into what you tweet when you schedule for the future.

Give these a try and give us some feedback. Do you have a favorite Twitter app?

25 in 5 Challenge

February 9 2010

Inspired by Colin Alsheimer’s Social Media Challenge (follow @levelten_colin, #smschallenge) that encouraged all of us to stray from mainstream content and share a little more variety in our tweets, I have a somewhat related challenge to lay before you.

My wife uses Facebook and I’d guess spends at least and hour on the site spread throughout the course of a day. I don’t. Rarely do I use facebook to communicate with others. In fact I go days without even logging in. Despite having 302 Facebook friends, 261 LinkedIn connections and 177 followers on Twitter I probably communicate with no more than 10 people across all three media in a given week—so, not very social.

For the next five days I’ve decided to challenge myself and I encourage you to do the same. Whether you are a heavy user or passive participant in social media let’s put social media to the test.

The Challenge:

I challenge you to contact twenty-five people over the next five days that you’ve friended, connected or followed.

The Rules:

Only contact those you friended, connected or followed, but have not communicated with since that day.
Use only social media to make contact (e.g. post to a wall, send a LinkedIn message, direct message when you can).

Share:

We want feedback. Whether awkward or awesome please post comments here, on our Facebook page, or LinkedIn group. Tweet about it using #25in5 and suggest others you think we should follow. I’ll aggregate comments/thoughts on the blog next week and you can follow live action here:

http://twitter.com/mosimmons/twentyfiveinfive

If you’re a passive user of social media like me this will take you out of your social media comfort zone. Otherwise it’s just an excuse to check in with old friends, acquaintances or random people you friended on the Internet.

Ready, Go!

Oh no, Twitter makes money

October 23 2009

The folks at Microsoft must be absolutely giddy with Bing’s first place finish in the race for Twitter feed access. That and good press on the launch of Windows 7 put a smile on Bill’s face.

I’m warming to the fact that we have another way to measure social media’s impact? The announcement should generate a revival of sorts for Twitter users that abandoned the medium and spark a wave of net-new users of the online app.

Twitter comes out a winner in this deal. Hello, revenue! This is the best thing to hit Twitter since Ashton Kutcher.

Google and Bing! fare well. Facebook probably feels like it just got punched in the mouth.

Microsoft clearly is euphoric about beating Google to the punch with plans to integrate real-time tweets and Facebook posts into its Bing generated searches. Google, which has more than 65 percent of the search market, will soon follow with a similar service that could provide new ways to generate social network revenue.

Facebook users have the ability to block access to their posts, but few on Twitter use the invite-only feature. This is the definition of a game changer, and just when the digital marketing world is just starting to heat up.

Don’t jump, yet.

August 17 2009

Consider becoming a Twitter quitter. You wouldn’t be alone, but don’t pull the trigger until you’ve read this blog post. The true value of Twitter might be hidden from plain view. Luckily you have us to keep you in the loop.

Before you jump off the bandwagon, consider tinkering with a few Twitter-based applications. These tools help leverage the functionality of Twitter in a variety of ways. We found five must-have Twitter apps that deserve your attention. If you’re still not convinced, become a Twitter quitter. Maybe no one will notice.

Twtpoll
Twtpoll is a feedback tool that helps you to create and distribute polls/surveys on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or on any other social media site. More…

CoTweet
CoTweet is how “business” does Twitter. Their words, not ours. CoTweet allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so, which is nice. No dropped balls, no stepping on each other’s toes. Think of it as social CRM — with an emphasis on the “social”. More…

TweetStats
Graph your Twitter Stats including, Tweets per hour, Tweets per month, Tweet timeline, Reply statistics. The app is in use by over 100,000 Twitter-folk, so they are doing something right. We graph ours and find visual trends easier to swallow. More…

Twendz
Twendz uses the power of Twitter search for data mining, highlighting conversation themes and sentiment of the tweets that talk about topics you are interested in. As the conversation changes, so does twendz by evaluating up to 70 tweets at a time. When new tweets are posted, the app is updated. We wouldn’t get too married to this “must-have” app that could be best used to jump into a conversation mid-stream. More…

Twitterfeed
Feed your blog to Twitter. It’s that easy. More…

Good luck in your quest to join the twitterati.

Follow us on Twitter. We’re not leaving…yet.

Boris is listening

August 7 2009

During the Cold War the Armed Forces Television Network ran these great propaganda ads in Europe that highlighted the need to keep military activity in the region on the down low. One in particular was very memorable. The military spouse on the phone with another military spouse catches herself before revealing the location of a military training exercise. She says, “Hello, Boris.” The commercial ends with the all important message, “Remember, Boris is always listening.”

It stands to reason that with Facebook and Twitter adoption on the rise keeping military secrets might be a little harder than it was in 1989.

Earlier this week the U.S. Marine Corps announced a ban on social media tools on all government owned computers. The feeling in Washington is that government hardware should not be exposed to “malicious actors” that lurk on sites dependent on user generated content. I assume MySpace is also subject to the ban, but after the beating Newscorp took in Q4 I don’t think anyone cares.

In stark contrast the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) decided this week to allow its troops to use Facebook and Twitter without consent from the chain of command, as was the previous edict. Heck, the MoD even offers to sponsor blogs for willing volunteers.

When we civilians use Facebook to post pictures of our kids, there is little risk of injury to ourselves or others. I’ll promote this blog post on Twitter in a couple minutes and Bin Laden won’t bat an eye. I really don’t think Boris is listening to much these days.

We don’t have an opinion on this blog one way or the other when it comes to military freedom of tweet. There should be some interesting debate on this topic as the newly enlisted become increasingly tech savvy.

It does make you stop and think about how much and how personal the information is that we throw around today. Remember, Boris is listening.

Pass this to 10 friends, or else

July 28 2009

The chain email you just received from your Grandmother will not go away anytime soon, unless she gets on Facebook.

Since the dawn of email came the dawn of chain emails. Helpful chain emails debunk myths, share myths, pictures, stories, jokes, political rants, nasty gossip and more. However, the dawn of Facebook changes all that.

Instead of long emails forwarded so many times you have scroll to page 5 for the actual content, we have quick-hitting, truncated bursts of information. “Become a fan” takes care of just about anything fit for chain email.

Do you want to protest the amount of special sauce on a Big Mac? No problem. Start a group of People Against Big Mac Sauce, start sharing and build a fan base.

Mashable’s Adam Ostrow shared the results of an AddToAny analysis of its own data. Disclosure: The company presumably has some interest in shared content via social media. They’ve made it their business. Still the results are easy to believe when taken at face value. AddToAny’s database should be the topic of another email. Owning that data, seeing those trends sounds like a gold mine to me.

Facebook leads all comers with 24% of the “shared” content on the web. Harnessing that word-of-mouth opportunity could obviously be a coup for mainstream and guerilla marketers alike.

Email and Twitter finish ten points down, but the three account for just under half of all shared content on the web. The long-tail includes Yahoo that beats MySpace that beats MSN that beats Delicious that beats Digg that surprisingly beats Google. Well, it surprised me.

Lolly’s Blog Till You Drop! blog claims work-related emails account for 99% of her inbox. Though I still see a fair number of FW: FW: RE: FW: RE: FW: Funny Pictures From Redneck Picnic-type chain emails, I will admit a decline.

A while back our client needed a little design work for a new web app called Start-a-Fire. Check it out here. The chain email found a new home in this app and it’s easy to see a demographic easily engaged by this online social media tool.

In the end, email itself appears to be losing ground. Reply to social media via SMS. Tweets post to facebook. Tasks set by me or co-workers arrive as text messages. Sharing skips right past inboxes to phones. If there was/is value in chain email, it’s lost on me.

Is email on the way out the door? It’s not hard to imagine.

Opt-in, Failure & Success

July 6 2009

Two great Internet topics surfaced in recent days with regard to behavioral tracking and new business models. Will privacy policies undercut online business models before they ever get to their feet?

Part One: Privacy
The impact of opt-in and opt-out privacy rules need to be revisited. Behavioral content delivery of ads or media content serve up relevant content and supposedly shield consumers from a barrage of “noise” found on the Internet. Privacy policies are generally buried in the footer or within pop-up legal agreements that are seldom read. We tend to find these policies boring and easily dismissed.

So as the groundswell of debate related to Internet privacy reached Capitol Hill, maybe those of us in the online advertising industry should pay special attention. The House of Representatives’ subcommittees on communication and consumer protection held a joint hearing last week to more closely examine advertisers’ rights to track your behavior online and consumers’ rights to guard that information.

Central to the hearing were rules regarding consumers’ current need to opt-out of behavioral tracking by advertisers. Yahoo! and Google are front-and-center, because advertisements on those two platforms rely heavily on behavioral and content tracking to serve up ads. Details of the hearing and the debate were brought to light by Canadian Greg in a shared-news story. Greg suspiciously omitted from his blog profile, perhaps fearing retribution or an invasion of privacy.

This is not a new debate, but one that enjoys renewed fervor among concerned special internet groups on both sides of this debate.

Part Two: Revenue Models
If anything was learned from the bursting of the Internet bubble, it was that revenue is just as hard to generate online as it is offline. The margins might be higher, which is the lure for “.com” solution and service providers today. In 1998 we could rid ourselves of pricey store-fronts in exchange for central distribution points, thereby reducing overhead and allowing consumers to place orders in the comfort of their own underwear. That was then.

Advertising revenue is manna from heaven today. Revenue models for many Web 2.0 companies since 2000 lean heavily on advertising revenue to pay the bills. Behavior tracking provides a service unmatched by newspapers. You can’t one-off a newspaper and serve Bob one ad and Sally another in the same household, or several, or thousands of households. The Internet can do that, but needs a little help from cookies and behavior tracking.

Michael Nielsen, though long-winded, presents a cogent argument as to why good companies run by smart people are failing today. (Disclaimer: Nielsen’s article shifts to scientific publishing about halfway through and he lost me.) You’ll find the part about the online news killing newspapers interesting. Behavioral tracking plays a hand in content delivery and not just ads. Knowing your target audience makes it especially easy to serve up content that might actually get read.

The social and anthropological impact of limited content (a.k.a. filtering content) has an Orwellian feel to it, but newspaper editors have been deciding what makes it into the paper and what doesn’t. The fact that online news filtering is determined not by and editor, but by user behavior poses an interesting question. It’s a question I can’t answer, but one that should be discussed.

Part Three: Opt-in Handcuffs
Whether the debate centers on relevant content delivery, or consumer privacy, it should be clear to advertisers and new media (social or otherwise) that behavior tracking is like air in the web space. If we force a user to opt-in each time we track behavior, consumer fatigue will set in and we’ll have to revert to a failing newspaper business model.

The Gray Lady gasping for air?

Subscriptions become powerful tools in this potentially brave new world, but why wait. Building a community of the willing gives you the ability to measure, track and deliver content that’s relevant. Social media opens the door to opt-in content delivery in a way that becomes difficult to regulate without imposing an unnecessarily layer of FCC regs on advertisers and consumers.

Businesses fail or succeed online with or without such changes, because the industry seems to be in a constant state of evolution. How should business respond to this debate? Be agile and creative.

Our Goal: 100 Fans

June 30 2009

Scratching your head to figure out how to measure social media’s revenue impact? You’re not alone. High-level stats may look like this:

Twitter: Following 46/Followers 153
Facebook Group: Fans 80**
LinkedIn Group: Members 68
SMS Subscribers: 24
Newsletter Subscribers: 623

What do they really mean? Our numbers (above) compare favorable to others our size, I think. Actually, I don’t really know what the competition is doing, or if that’s the right measuring stick for our efforts. We don’t approach this in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses way. Our measure so far is on quality. People that follow us, are fans, are members or subscribers appear to be really, really smart.

As a small organization we can follow a prospect through our social media pipeline through to sale, but we have a harder time quantifying the sunk costs of getting them there. We can only imagine the complexity of a larger organization’s social media efforts. It seems obvious to us that social media is about small, highly interactive groups. So maybe corporate marketing shouldn’t only the social media face of the company. Maybe it’s the local franchisee, the product manager, or the field marketer. I don’t think anyone has all the answers yet. If you come across someone that does, be suspicious, very suspicious.

We’ve taken a goal-based approach that walks the line between strategy and necessity. Much of our social media experience/experiment seeks to prove out different strategies before we suggest solutions to our clients. We practice what we preach. We also need to be in the space out of necessity. Each day social media encroaches on marketing budgets and spend, taking time and attention away from quantifiable marketing efforts.

You can do both and should. Pull together a strategy that closes the loop from direct outbound to social media inbound to quantifiable results. Pull together small teams and micro-campaigns to leverage social media, because the life-cycle of a advertising campaign is shrinking.

(We’ll take a closer look at the public’s attention span next week after the holiday, because people have shorter attention spans going into a three-day holiday.)

**Finally, we need 20 more fans to reach a 100 in Facebook. Why is this important? It takes one hundred fans to earn your way into a vanity URL for your group. Vanity URLs, custom tabs and fb applications are another reason we should be excitedly cautious about the evolved Internet today. Thanks for that little bit of advice @alexrudloff.

MySpace Life Cycle

June 18 2009

Does news that MySpace plans to layoff 30% of its workforce signal the beginning of the end for the once-popular social media platform? The layoffs come on the heels of lost ad revenue and market share to Facebook. Some say MySpace has become the new booty call online–not a great tagline when trying to attract big brands. Lost ad revenue sounds a lot like old media, not new.

MySpace was up and running in August 2003, enjoyed strong growth and became the bellwether social media platform. It’s not a stretch to say that Friendster and the more effective MySpace platform really kicked off the social media movement.

In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation legitimized MySpace and spurred the growth of countless imitators. Facebook, an imitator, may very well be the dagger that kills MySpace, or best case forces it into obscurity. Who knows, it might become an attractive acquisition target for Ted Turner.

MySpace celebrates its 6th birthday in August. It feels like an eternity in Internet years. LinkedIn is 6. Facebook is just over 5 years old. Twitter is 3. Marketers are spending loads of time trying to figure out how to monetize, utilize, and justify social media in the marketing mix. Old media, t.v., radio, newspapers, etc., have been around for years. Can we expect the same from social media?

Consider your ability to measure the impact of your social media spend before you go hog wild. If you aren’t tying your work into a platform that captures metrics, you might be flushing money down the drain. Something to think about.

VLG Dialog Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’