Venn Diagrams

2011-09-07T15:46:00.002-04:00

Social Productivity: Don’t Just Twitter Your Time Away

You and your business have made the commitment to the social web. You’ve created Twitter accounts, you’ve got a LinkedIn profile, you’re blogging and commenting on other relevant blogs, you’ve created a Facebook Page for your business, you're testing the geo-location waters with Foursquare and Gowalla.

Feeling overwhelmed yet? You’re not the only one. Between keeping up with social media sites and running an actual business, many people feel there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Either you never find time to get to your social media accounts (and your last Tweet was three months ago) or you get lured in and spend way too much time online (“Google drifting” from one cool site to another.)

So, how do you strike a balance, giving your online presence the time it needs and deserves, but not getting so “addicted” that it becomes more important than the work you’re using it to promote? The most important step in creating a working – and workable – plan is knowing what’s important to you and to your business. Here are some ideas to help keep you on track:

Positioning:
Know who you are, what your unique offering is, and what value you bring to the market.
Clearly defining who you are is the first step in focusing in on what social media platforms are important to you, what you should be bringing to the table when you participate, and how frequently you should be posting. If you’re positioned as a top source of breaking hedge fund trend news, for instance, you will want to be updating while the market is open and much more frequently than if you are positioned as a retirement management resource. If your business is positioned as a premier local entertainment venue, you might discover that evening is the best time for your posts to reach the audience you want to connect with.

Purpose:
Identify your goals and the strategies you’ve chosen to help you achieve them. If your goal is to connect with potential customers by providing content that positions you as a trusted resource about vineyards, you may not need to spend a lot of time participating in a Twitter thread about the New York Jets (unless, of course, you’re a Long Island vineyard, in which case you might!)

Priorities:
Know which social media platforms are the most tactically important for your business and prioritize participation. If you’ve positioned yourself as a luxury brand, niche communities and sites like A Small World, Generation Benz or ArtSlant, may be more valuable uses of your time than MySpace, for instance. If YouTube content is driving more people to your video production website than Facebook, prioritizing frequent YouTube updates is a smart move. If FourSquare isn’t adding much value to your local business (and you are consistently your own Mayor) sit geo-location out for a while and concentrate on the platforms that are creating a local community for you. You can’t be everywhere at once, so don’t waste time with platforms that aren’t working for you.

Planning
Make time in your calendar for social media updates and treat it like a meeting: arrive on time, give it your full attention, and wrap it up before it drags on too long. Creating a routine can go a long way to keeping you focused. If your business benefits from updating LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups twice a week, put it on your calendar. Combine checking in with Facebook, Twitter, and key blogs with checking your email first thing in the morning (more time for that bagel!) Once you find a schedule that works for you, stick with it. That way you are less likely to feel the pressure to check your social media accounts when you should be doing other work.

Rely on Tools:
Take some time to experiment with social media tools and find the ones that work for you. Oneforty.com, which calls itself a “social business software hub,” is a great site for discovering new tools and shortcuts.

Create a “listening suite,” with tools like Twitter Search, Google Alerts, Social Mention, and Blogpulse, schedule a time to monitor mentions, and stick to that schedule.
Use browser “favorites” and “bookmark” functions to create an easy-to access list of the blogs and Twitter accounts you are monitoring.
Use a posting tool, like Tweetdeck or HootSuite, that makes it possible to update and monitor Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn from one location.
Create a “measuring suite,” with tools like Google Analytics, Bit.ly, TweetStats, Technorati, PostRank, and Facebook Ad analytics, to let you know how you’re doing.

Once you’ve clearly defined your positioning, goals, and strategy, you can prioritize your social media tools, create a schedule, and stick to it. When you’ve clearly identified what you are trying to achieve, you can trim what’s not working and spend quality time on what’s truly important for you and your business.

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2011-06-26T08:57:00.002-04:00

No Textbook Required: Use Social Sites to Gain Social Media Skills

We’re halfway through 2011 and social media has not yet gone away. It’s thriving, evolving, and changing the way we interact. So if you’ve been putting off learning the new social media tools that will help you connect and engage with customers and clients (as well as potential customers, clients, and contacts) there’s still time to resolve to make 2011 the year you start leveraging its tremendous potential.
While nothing beats hiring an experienced social media practitioner to help you or your business identify goals, strategize, and implement, there are many free resources and tutorials available online to help you learn and familiarize yourself with both basic and advanced platforms, tools, and techniques you need to create or upgrade a social media presence.
Social media enthusiasts are, first and foremost, social, and most of the best practitioners enjoy sharing their knowledge online. There are great videos, great slideshows and great blogs you can access that provide you with an expert – and free – social media education.
Here are some social sites with great resources and tutorials:

Slideshare
Why you should go there: Slideshare.com, which describes itself as “a business media site for sharing presentations, documents and pdfs,” offers a wealth of easily searchable presentations as well as features such as “Top Presentations of the Day,” “Hot on Facebook” and “Hot on Twitter,” and “Spotlight.”
How you should use it: Use keyword searches for access to presentations, how-to slide shows, and cutting edge thinking by top practitioners. A search for “social media getting started,” for instance, turns up 1645 hits. Many speakers at social media conferences upload their presentations so search for conferences by name. And use the “people search” function to find content generously shared by experts such as Chris Heuer, Chris Brogan, David Armano, and Beth Kantor.

YouTube
Why you should go there: The second largest search engine in the world is full of great content, great talks, and great how-to videos. A search for “social media” produces 6,700 results.
How you should use it: Search for “how-to” videos, such as “How to Customize Your Facebook Page” (690 results,) video blogs by social media experts, and videos of speakers at conferences such as Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summits or Toby Daniels’ Social Media Week to hear talks about new trends.

Twitter
Why you should go there: If the web is Social Media U., Twitter is the course catalogue. Social media thought leaders, strategists and practitioners are constantly uploading links to great resources.
How you should use it: Identify a good Twitter List of smart social media thinkers, follow it, and click on the links they tweet. Or create your own list of resources. By following Tweeters like @Mashable, @SocialNetDaily, @SocialMediaComm, @SocialMedia411, @SocialMedia2Day, @SocialMediaWeek, and @TweetSmarter you are guaranteed a daily diet of links to great content, great how-to articles, and great blogs by top social media thinkers (you can find their content and others’ by following my Social Media News list: http://twitter.com/#!/CatherinVentura/social-media-news.)

Mashable
Why you should go there: Mashable.com which was founded in 2005 and now claims over 30 million monthly page views is one of the single best aggregators of news about social media and digital trends. Updated constantly, it is a one-stop (if a bit overwhelming) treasure trove of the state of the web now.
How you should use it: Take advantage of Mashable’s lists, how-to, and guidebook sections to find lists of social media resources and trends, guides that range from to How to Build Apps, How to Use Facebook Insights, to using Social Media to solve the Global Water Crisis, and e-guides to Twitter and Facebook.

Google
Why you should go there: A search for “Social Media Getting Started” yields 10,800,000 results.
How you should use it: Search for “How to,” “Tutorial,” or “Guide” and the specific topic you’re looking for (e.g. “Tutorial Add Twitter WordPress blog.”)

Not understanding how social media works is no longer an option. When you help yourself to the great resources on the social sites above, you’ll be “learning while doing” as you familiarize yourself with the exciting new ways businesses are connecting in 2011.

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2011-06-07T00:32:00.000-04:00

Building a Better, not Bigger, Social Media Network

When it comes to social media networks, a bigger network clearly is better, but only if bigger also means a bigger selection of relevant, targeted, high-quality contacts.

Amassing thousands of random followers with automatic “follow back” gimmicks on Twitter may give you bragging rights at the water cooler, but it will do little or nothing to help you grow your business. And adding 500 friends or fans on Facebook overnight may feel like progress, but if you haven’t mastered the Facebook algorithm of update quality and engagement, your content may not even appear on their feeds.

So what are the best ways to grow quality social media networks, so that the contacts and relationships you create truly benefit you and your business and deliver real value?

There are no shortcuts to creating real engagement and real relationships; as in the “real world,” they need to be nourished to grow and produce results. There are tools, however, that can streamline the process of finding the right people for you or your business to connect with. Here are several steps you can take to help you grow your social media contacts efficiently and organically, through targeted research and engagement:

STEP ONE: Be Brave
Your most valuable contacts are the ones you already have, so leverage them. “Find Friends” on Facebook and Twitter and “See Who You Already Know” on LinkedIn are functions that allow the sites to access your Gmail, Aol, Yahoo!, or Hotmail email address books and identify which of your contacts already have profiles. To get started, each of the services asks you to enter your email address and your password. Be brave and let them access your email. It’s not a “bulk follow.” You can pick and choose, and it’s a great way to jump-start your community.

Don’t have an email account with one of those popular providers? Create one, import your contacts from your business accounts, and let LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook access it.

STEP TWO: Be Clear
Know why you are networking. Identify your goals, whether they are personal or for your business, and prioritize them. If you identify your top priority as building brand awareness, for instance, you will start creating a different community than you would to enhance “customer retention.” Prioritizing your marketing goals will help you prioritize whom to reach out to as you build your social media base.

STEP THREE: Be Curious
Social media platforms are great opportunities for making connections in a highly targeted way. The best way to start is with Twitter, where it is fine to follow and reach out to “strangers.” Once you’ve made a good contact on Twitter, it’s an easy next step to move the connection to LinkedIn or Facebook, and then, hopefully, into a solid face-to-face connection as well.

Here are some great tools to help you discover interesting people and communities:

1) Twitter Lists: Twitter users have already done a lot of research for you by creating lists of the people they enjoy following. Find a thought leader in your field and check out the Twitter Lists they’ve created or the lists that include them to find interesting new people to follow and connect with. Listorious.com is a great site that aggregates Twitter lists and makes it easy to search for topics – and users – that interest you. Also, Mashable.com’s Twitter Lists organize recommended users into lists based on field or interests (such as marketing, economics, wine, etc.)

2) Twitter Search: Search.twitter.com (advanced Twitter Search) is still one of the best tools around for identifying targeted users to follow with keyword and location searches. Because of the location function (you can even search by zip code) it’s a great tool for local businesses to build relationships. Tweepsearch.com, Twellow.com, localtweeps.com, govtwit.com, and wefollow.com are also great tools that help you drill down and identify interesting new users.

3) Twitter Recommendations: Twitter now recommends users that you may be interested in following. “Who to Follow,” which appears on your own Twitter page, gives recommendations based on who you are already following (so, the more specific your niche, the better the suggestions.) “Similar to…” which appears on Twitter users’ profile pages finds users that Twitter considers similar. Click through for interesting new discoveries. And when you do follow new contacts, don’t expect them to follow back automatically: reach out by responding to one of their Tweets, by Retweeting a Tweet or a link to their blog, or by engaging in the comments section of their blog.

4) Facebook and LinkedIn Threads: Join interesting, relevant conversations in LinkedIn Groups or Facebook Pages or Groups and engage with other contributors. Once a connection has been made, “friend” them on Facebook, or “link to” them on LinkedIn. And, of course, follow them on Twitter.

5) Blog Threads: Read blogs that are relevant to your business and post responses with your thoughts, including a URL to your Twitter account. See who else is making interesting comments, engage with them, then make a connection on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

STEP FOUR: Be Generous
The key to social media success is bringing value to the conversation. Engage by sharing information and ideas that are valuable to your target community and positioning yourself as a resource. Use Twitter Search to find questions you can answer, problems you can solve, and relevant content you can share. And retweet and share other users’ content that is relevant to your community.

So work on growing your networks, but work efficiently by focusing on targeted connections that truly matter. Use tools to grow your networks with new contacts, new connections, and new friends who can help grow your business as well.

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2011-05-26T23:14:00.000-04:00

Is Your Social Media Voice Oscar-Worthy?

As businesses flock to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and FourSquare, it’s more important than ever to create a distinctive social media voice that stands out from the crowd and reflects your own unique offering.

While most businesses are vigilant about keeping branding and messaging consistent across their websites, business cards, and e-blasts, many still don’t focus on how they speak to their customers via Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re an authoritative financial brand whose target audience is high net worth C-suite investors, for instance, you may not want to use Twitter to urge them to “check out this awesome mashup.” Or, if you’re an edgy fashion retailer whose target market is 20-something fashionistas, you may not want to post: “please connect with us on LinkedIn to see our new SlideShare presentation.” And, as tempting as it may be to turn your Facebook page or Twitter Feed over to an intern, most interns sound like, well… interns… and not necessarily like your brand.

Carefully crafting a social media voice that reflects and expresses who you are (or who you aspire to be) helps ensure that your social media strategy dovetails – instead of clashes — with your overall marketing strategy.

So what is the best way to create a “brand voice” that works across social media platforms to engage your audience or customers in a dialogue about your brand?

Why not take a cue from the masters of great dialogue – screenwriters.

Screenwriters (whether they’re based in Hollywood, Bollywood, or Pinewood) all share a common craft: they create distinctive characters, they place those characters in a context, they give those characters a goal, then they show us how that character pursues that goal.

Creating a great social media voice for you or your company is a similar process: just substitute “character” with “brand.” Businesses that use social media effectively start by creating a distinctive brand identity across social media platforms, they give the brand a context with a clear, consistent positioning, they prioritize their marketing goals, and then they get to work telling their brand’s story as they pursue that goal.

And, just as a good screenwriter would not send a small French mouse to battle the Matrix or send a trench-coated hacker into a restaurant kitchen to create souffle, your brand’s character needs to fit your brand story and marketing goals.

The first step is to identify your goals clearly, both short and long-term, so you can align your social media tactics with those targets in mind. (How to set your goals is a whole other discussion, of course, but it always helps to start with the basics: Are you trying to gain greater brand awareness? Sell products online? Drive foot traffic to a physical store?)

Once you’ve defined your goals, it’s time to analyze your two most important characters: you and your audience. Is your brand young or mature, witty or authoritative, informative or entertaining, provocative or helpful, all business or mixing business with pleasure? Is your audience millennial or boomers, fun-loving or demanding, passionate or critical, skeptical or looking for a reason to believe? The answers will help you choose the language, the tone, even the adjectives your brand should be using to communicate effectively with your target audience.

Now take a look at your brand identity and positioning and create a list of keywords and topics that reflect what makes you distinctive, valuable and unique. Are these keywords appearing frequently in your social media updates? Using a tool like Tweetcloud (which creates a “tag cloud” of your recent tweets) is great way to take a “snapshot” of your overall messaging on Twitter.

Also, make sure you are engaging your audience and giving them something of value. A great rule of thumb in social media is that approximately 60% of your content should create value for your audience, 30% should be engagement and interaction, and 10% should be things that make you “human,” interesting, and unique. That 10% can be a great way to reinforce your brand’s relationship with its target audience as well. If you’re brand is young and hip, feel free to share your passion for extreme sports. If your brand is sophisticated and international, sharing new wines or resorts you’ve discovered could be a great way to share extra value and create personal relationships.

Just like many screenwriters say their best characters often take on lives of their own and tell the screenwriter what should happen next, an expertly-crafted social media personality can reward you by creating unexpected and valuable new relationships for your business or brand.

Craft your social media voice well by creating a distinctive “character” your audience will value interacting with, give your voice context by aligning it with your business’ positioning, give that voice clear goals to achieve, then get ready for its starring role telling your brand story. The award for best social media voice goes to…

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2011-05-12T10:33:00.000-04:00

Why LinkedIn Should Be Your First Social Stop

Facebook and Twitter are without question the biggest stars in the social media universe. But while those two platforms attract more media attention, there are many reasons why you may want to make LinkedIn the first social media stop for your business each Monday morning.

If you haven’t taken a look at LinkedIn in a while, it’s time to get acquainted with all of the robust new features that have taken it from its original status as your “online Rolodex” and place to look for career contacts — to a content-rich social site with many real-time features. The new functionality is quickly making it the single best way to “brand” yourself and your company in the social arena.

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn now has over 100 million members world-wide, including over 1.5 million C-level executives. As Twitter and Facebook continue to add more analytics and promotional tools, LinkedIn is quietly keeping pace in a more targeted, “business-like” way. In fact, updating your LinkedIn status on Monday morning and Friday afternoon is an increasingly valuable way to keep yourself and your business top of mind with the people you know, as well as to make valuable new connections with people you would like to know.

New LinkedIn features include the Facebook-style ability to add rich links to your updates, including links to images, videos, articles, and blog posts. You can now “like,” “comment,” or “share” other users’ posts and links as well. And one particularly targeted new feature is the ability to control which connections or groups you’d like to “share” your updates with. Think of LinkedIn as your own “Business Wire,” where you share news about your business successes (new clients, new offerings, blog posts, conferences, speaking engagements, etc.) as well as links to content that will interest potential clients, customers, partners, or employers.

While short LinkedIn posts can be cross-posted to Twitter by clicking the link in the update window, think carefully before choosing to automatically update LinkedIn with your Tweets. The kind of friendly, conversational Tweets that are so important to networking on Twitter are out of place on LinkedIn and can be annoying to your network. Think carefully, too, about cross-posted with Facebook. As easy as it may be to post to all three sites with tools like Tweetdeck, take a few moments to craft the content you are posting so that it speaks most effectively to each of your networks.

As LinkedIn enhances its real-time sociability, it is also continually adding features that can enhance your branding and create a rich sense of who you – and your business – are. Take advantage of the “Reading List by Amazon” feature, for instance, to show that you are keeping up-to-date on important thinking in your sector. Add your blog content with Blog Link, your visual work with Creative Portfolio Display, monitor what others are saying about your company with Company Buzz, or share your best thinking with Slide Share (you can find these features by clicking “add sections” or “add an application” on your “edit profile” window.)

Group functions are also becoming more robust (and open) and there are many compelling reasons for you to monitor and join the conversation in groups that are relevant to your business. Showing the group icons on your profile is great way to enhance your branding by creating a visual snapshot of what your interests are. Group Updates now appear on member homepages, which means your contributions are now more visible. And LinkedIn Answers is a great forum for demonstrating your expertise on a platform that is indexed by Google.

So why not make time to review your presence on LinkedIn? To start off, be sure that your profiles are up-to-date; that your expertise is on full display, and that your networks are current. Then you can begin to explore LinkedIn’s many new features to see which ones can help put your own business front and center in the social media universe.

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2011-05-06T15:56:00.003-04:00

One Size Doesn't Fit All

You’ve seen those awkward updates on Facebook – short fragments via Tweetdeck with a string of Twitter “#hashtags.” You’ve seen them on Twitter – long ones that are cut off mid-sentence and followed by a Facebook URL. You’ve seen the off-topic tweets in your LinkedIn feed about the latest MBA trade or the latest political scandal. You’ve seen the endless and ubiquitous Foursquare check-ins to cafes and bars and conferences. And you’ve seen the tone-deaf pre-scheduled tweets about marketing that keep automatically popping up while the entire Twitter world is reacting to something timely and important, like an earthquake or an election.

While it may seem like a clever way to save time and make your content do double (and sometimes quadruple) duty, using tools that automatically cross-post the same content to different social media channels is not a smart business move.

What’s wrong with cross posting? Why not take advantage of applications like Tweetdeck that let you post from multiple accounts with a single keystroke? Why not link your Twitter account to your Facebook and LinkedIn feeds? Why not send new blog activity directly to Twitter? Or create editorial calendars and use a tool like CoTweet to schedule all your updates one to two months in advance?

Inappropriate cross posting undermines the purpose — and the value — of using social media in the first place, which is to create communities for your business and engage authentically with your customers, potential customers, colleagues, partners, and peers.

Each social media platform has its own character and its own community etiquette and protocols. Your blog is a forum where you can express what’s on your mind and what you think your community will find valuable or debatable. Facebook is a great way to engage a community that already likes and supports you and provide that community with visually rich content. LinkedIn is your “business news wire,” a great tool for letting your business networks know about your company’s — and your own — successes. And Twitter is a virtual networking party: a place to engage with new contacts as well as established ones.

When you send telegraphic tweets to Facebook, instead of taking the time to communicate directly with your Facebook community, you are saying that that community is not something you value enough to truly engage with. When you cross-post from Facebook to Twitter, you are telling the Twitter community you haven’t bothered to show up and log on. When you automatically send an endless stream of off-topic tweets to LinkedIn, you are telling important business contacts that you don’t respect their time. When you schedule updates in advance, you are missing valuable opportunities to demonstrate your business’ value in real-time and respond to real-time events. And the fact that you just became the mayor of Starbucks is – face it! – a private matter between you and your barista and not something your business network wants to see cluttering up its feeds.

When you automate and cross-post, you are demonstrating “poor citizenship” in the various social communities you’ve joined. And you are revealing to your communities that you are on automatic pilot, that you are not really there engaging with them but, instead, just flooding their inboxes with one-way communication. Treating social media like another direct mail channel is — to put it simply — a waste of each platform’s potential.

Of course there are some exceptions: content that is appropriate to post on all your social media platforms – short updates announcing a speaking engagement or a new blog post, for instance. But even if you are using a tool like Tweetdeck or CoTweet to post to multiple social media sites, taking a few minutes to customize each update – brief and punchy for Twitter, more inclusive and engaging for Facebook, “Business Casual” for LinkedIn — makes a world of difference. It tells each of those communities that you “get it,” that you understand the etiquette, that you value their eyes and their time and their feedback, that you are an active, transparent, and authentic participant.

Just like “bespoke” clothes have much more value than “off the rack” ones do, “bespoke” social media updates will create much more value for you and your community than “one size fits all” updates. If you take the extra time to put your best foot forward and use social media tools well, engaging appropriately to each platform in real time, you will earn your communities’ trust and respect and create tremendous value for your business. Make sure that each of your updates is appropriate to the platform and has value for that particular community and your community will return the favor with value for you.

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2011-02-12T11:06:00.003-05:00

Groupon and Kenneth Cole: Trafficking in Human Misery

On Sunday night, the otherwise beloved social buying site, Groupon.com, caused gasps in living rooms across America -- as well as virtual gasps on computer screens across America -- with their Super Bowl ad. The ad copy proposes that, while the Tibetan people are in danger of extinction, Tibetan refugees do make excellent fish curry for Groupon customers to enjoy.

The fact that Groupon is also promoting online contributions to The Tibet Fund and promising matching donations of up to $100,000 was not mentioned in the surprisingly graceless and unfunny ad, prompting the question: were there any grownups in charge when their agency pitched the ad? (In advertising there actually are some times -- although granted not many -- when a focus group really is a good idea.)

To his credit, Groupon Founder and Chief Executive Andrew Mason wrote a blog post in which he underscores that Groupon takes social responsibility very seriously. He graciously defended their ad agency, saying it "strives to draw attention to the cultural tensions created by brands" and claimed that Groupon was making fun of itself, much the way Hulu did last year in an ad by the same agency. Mason also noted that the ads that he personally finds offensive are "the scores of Super Bowl ads that are built around the crass objectification of women," adding, in a bit of wishful thinking, "unlike those ads, no one walks away from our commercials taking the causes we highlighted less seriously."

Perhaps no one in the Groupon office will take them less seriously, but undoubtedly the very same viewers who enjoy light beer and the objectification of women will do just that, having been subtly prompted to do so by Groupon. And while the Hulu ad made fun of Hulu's service, saying that it rotted your brain, the Groupon ads aren't just making fun of Groupon's service, they are making fun of a people who are having their brains blown out by an oppressor.

Groupon's lapse in taste was even more inexplicable coming on the heels of last week's social media gaffe by designer Kenneth Cole, who tweeted: "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo - KC." That Tweet was particularly offensive because of the use of the "#", which inserted it into the stream of political Tweets that activists and sympathizers were following (and we wonder why the world hates America!)

Cole was quick to apologize, as well, and to remove the offending Tweet, but it wasn't the first time he had appropriated death and suffering to sell blazers and hobo bags. In his "Today is Not a Dress Rehearsal," campaign, launched only five months after September 11th, 2001, he created a particularly upsetting ad featuring a sexy model stretched out on a dining room table eating strawberries in her skimpy Kenneth Cole clothes, with the tagline "On September 12th, families returned to the dining room table."

While most of Cole's provocative ads suggest positive change (if you agree with him politically, of course), his "it's all about me" appropriations of real loss and tragedy, like the Groupon ad, minimize and trivialize the very real suffering of the Egyptian and Tibetan countries, communities, and cultures.

People in Egypt and Tibet are struggling and dying for the same fundamental freedoms that allow Cole and the good folks at Groupon to make their own political and social views heard. While it is often said that all publicity is good publicity, let's hope that Kenneth Cole (the brand), Groupon, and all companies for that matter stop capitalizing on and trivializing human misery and suffering for commercial gain and to drive traffic to businesses and websites. That kind of "trafficking" and commoditization of pain, death, and passionately held political beliefs has no place in truly responsible advertising or social media outreach.

2011-01-23T00:11:00.004-05:00

Eight Steps to a Great Social Strategy

Social media networks and platforms are highly strategic, highly targeted, and highly effective tools that can help your company achieve short and long-term marketing goals, as well as enhance branding and positioning. But trying to launch a social media strategy without setting the stage is like trying to get high yields from a shiny new combine harvester without first preparing and planting the fields. Too many companies expect social media strategies to yield instant results, when they haven’t yet done the ground work to create a presence and a portfolio of tools. Here are eight first steps companies can take to set the stage for social media strategies.

1. Create Social Media Accounts – Not ready to tweet yet? Still developing a Facebook strategy? That shouldn’t stop you from going ahead and creating a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and a YouTube channel (and reserving your company’s name before someone else does!) Most importantly, no company should be without a LinkedIn Company Profile. It puts your company on the LinkedIn “map,” links to employees’ profiles, and allows other users to follow your company news.

2. Start Listening – Use some of the tools available to monitor what people are saying about your company, your industry, the sectors you serve, and your competition. Free tools such as Google Alerts, search.twitter.com (is this supposed to be search (dot) twitter?), Social Mention, Blogpulse. Bit.ly, and Boardreader or paid tools such as Scoutlabs, Heartbeat, and Radian6 help you monitor search terms, sentiment and relevant news.

3. Create Branded Social Media Icons - Social platforms can be customized to reflect your company’s branding but you may need to adapt your logo and imaging. Make sure you have a small square version of your logo or photo for Twitter, a long rectangular version for your Facebook icon, a simple, high contrast version for LinkedIn, etc.

4. Create Social Media Buttons and Links – Google loves links so wherever possible, increase your company’s searchability with social media links. List all your social media URLs on your Facebook info page, on your LinkedIn profile, and on your YouTube channel. Add social media buttons to your Website and to your email templates. Comment on articles and blogs with a link back to your company’s website or Twitter account.

5. Train Your Staff – Empower your staff by letting them know your company’s social media guidelines, expectations, and policies. If you don’t have guidelines yet, create them! Bring in a consultant who can train staff in best practices and social media “culture.”

6. Set Up A Web Browser Folder with Social Media Links – Use your web browser’s “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” function to collect social sites, blogs, listening tools, etc., in one handy folder. That way, all your social media sites and tools are quickly and easily accessible, creating efficiencies and saving you time.

7. Gather and Create Content – Chances are your company already has shareable content, such as slide presentations, videos, photos, and white papers. Start collecting what you’ve got so that you can share it via social media platforms. Prepare a calendar of upcoming news and events that could be shared via social media. And make sure your staff has the tools to create and post new shareable images, such as flipcams and smartphones.

8. Use Analytics - Make sure you are using web analytics tools (such as Google Analytics or HubSpot) in order to track which social media sites or posts are successfully driving traffic to your website.

By taking these first steps, your company will be on solid ground when it’s time to start developing and implementing a social strategy!

This post was commissioned by British Airways. The opinions are my
own.

2010-03-17T03:43:00.005-04:00

Is Twitter a Human Right? One Chinese Activist Thinks So

"Twitter is the people's tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources," Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei said at the Paley Center for Media in New York Monday night, after challenging Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to make Twitter's web interface available in Chinese.

Speaking on a panel he referred to as a "blind date" with Dorsey, Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb, and Emily Parker of the Asia Society -- Ai Weiwei pressed Dorsey for a commitment to open Twitter to Chinese language translators, saying: "I need a clear answer, yes or no."

Dorsey, who was participating via screen from San Francisco, clearly felt the pressure, but cautioned that, while Twitter's goal was "end to end translation in every language," it would take time.

"The Chinese people think you are some kind of god," Ai Weiwei told Dorsey. "You created a possibility for people in this very dark room to see a ray of light... to freely give their opinion." If Twitter were to create a Chinese language interface, he suggested, Dorsey would become "one of the most important heroes in Chinese political development."

Saying he spent a minimum of 8 hours a day on Twitter, Ai Weiwei said that Twitter was well suited to a language where each character is an entire word. "With 140 characters in Chinese you really can write a novel," he quipped.

Ai Weiwei, who sustained a serious head injury after he was beaten by police while attempting to testify at a colleague's trial, made it clear that Twitter was a lifeline for Chinese activists eager to get their message out to the world. Access is limited to approximately 50,000 people currently, however, due to both a strong firewall and to the need to register in English.

On a day when the American Twitter stream was full of Foursquare check-ins from BBQ parties at the SxSW Conference and the news that Kate Winslet was separating from her husband, it was important to be reminded that, in many countries, Twitter - like IRC before it - plays a serious role in facilitating freedom of speech.

Ai Weiwei described the disappointment Chinese activists felt during Barack Obama's recent trip to China, not only about his avoidance of Human Rights issues, but also because he made a point of saying that he had never used Twitter. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, drew praise however, for her strong stance on Internet Freedom.

Though Ai Weiwei did not walk away from the panel with a clear commitment or timeline from Dorsey about when the Twitter interface would be available in Chinese, the discussion did end on a positive note. Dorsey said he was now following Ai Weiwei on Twitter and that he'd be Direct Messaging him soon.

One fifth of the world will be waiting to hear exactly what that DM says.

2010-01-23T00:34:00.001-05:00

10 Great Content Strategy Blogs

I was very pleased to be invited by blogs.com to contribute a guest post, 10 Great Content-Filled Content Strategy Blogs," showcasing 10 of my favorite blogs about content strategy. It wasn't easy to narrow it down to 10; as interest in content strategy grows, so does the number of really interesting thinkers. Click here to see the 10 blogs I check in with most frequently and here to see my list of content strategists on Twitter.

2009-12-02T18:04:00.013-05:00

Tweeting Behind Your Back: What You Can't See Might Hurt You

Every speaker's nightmare is an audience full of hecklers who feel free to shout out comments the way sports fans shout at their TVs ("You call that a triple axel?!?") and bloodthirsty ancient Romans shouted at gladiators ("You call yourself a Thracian?!?) Unfortunately, that's exactly what's happening, all too frequently, when cutting edge conferences include a Twitter "backchannel" -- a real-time electronic screen behind the speaker that displays a rolling stream of the audience's tweeted comments.

That particular interactive feature is designed to create an impromptu online "community" around the event and to encourage conversation and interaction. But it can also backfire with results that range from mildly distracting to downright disastrous.

Even the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is not immune to being heckled via his own invention. When he shared the stage, recently, with a Jungian analyst at New York's Rubin Museum, someone mistakenly tweeted that Dorsey "will answer questions in real-time" instead of "will answer questions about Carl Jung that an analyst is tweeting in real-time." While Dorsey was having an interesting conversation about one of Jung's "mandala paintings" (which reminded him of a street grid with a public commons,) giant tweets were rolling past on the screen behind him with questions like "What do you think about the tweeter who got arrested?" and "You better do something about spam!" The real-time tweets effectively "spammed" the more interesting conversation about what real-time communication reveals about the collective unconscious.

But while that Twitterstream was off-topic and distracting -- the way a television is during dinner -- those pesky tweets were nothing compared to the damage that can be done when Twitter backchannel heckling turns personal.

That's what happened at Web 2.0 Expo, a recent three day conference in New York that brought together some of the best minds in digital media. One of the more interesting speakers, Danah Boyd, was being "tweet-slapped" so mercilessly during her talk, "Streams of Content," that the conference organizers, wisely -- and ironically - decided to pull the plug on the "stream of content" that was being projected behind her as she spoke.

Boyd is a brilliant and complex theoretician - a Microsoft researcher and a Harvard fellow for starters -- and miscalculated by trying to deliver too dense a talk in too short a time without a laptop "teleprompter." As a result, she read quickly from her stack of written notes while audience members who were "live tweeting" about her talk struggled to understand and to keep up.

The first salvo from the Twittersphere was fairly mild: a tweet that admonished her to "take a breath." But when that tweet rolled down the giant screen behind her, a portion of the audience laughed. Boyd - who couldn't see the tweet or the audience -- got rattled by the laughter and started reading even faster. Increasingly snarky tweets followed, then tweets protesting the snark, and soon the audience was paying more attention to the "tweet-off" on the screen than to the stream of Boyd's ideas.

Reflecting on that public pillorying in her own blog, Boyd wrote that, generally, if an audience "doesn't want to be challenged, they tune out or walk out. Yet, with a Twitter stream, they have a third option: they can take over." And that is exactly what some members of the audience did: criticizing her, joking about her, on the big screen behind her back while she soldiered on, unaware that she was being dissed.

While public "conversation" and the creation of online community around a presentation can add value (particularly in a less formal setting where a speaker can take questions from the stream), many people feel that projecting a Twitterstream behind a speaker is distracting and just downright rude.

To their credit, as soon as it was clear that the tone had deteriorated, the Web 2.0 Expo organizers came to Ms. Boyd's defense and turned off the stream (and were heckled, both verbally and via Twitter, for having done so), later replacing the unfiltered stream with a moderated one.

The problem isn't a new one. The old user-group flame wars have simply evolved with the internet into real-time streaming flame wars (and geo-located flame wars could be coming soon). But the digital community evolves organically as well in response to new formats and challenges and a great deal of constructive conversation has centered around what happened to Boyd. Her own no-holds-barred blog post about the incident has attracted 180 comments to date, which nearly unanimously sympathize with what happened to her (at an otherwise excellent conference) and applaud her courage in writing about it so frankly.

So what's the solution?

Moderating the backchannel clearly helps, but the fundamental question is: should any speaker have to share the stage with an audience's tweets, particularly when those tweets turn insulting, trivial or attention-grabbing?

While many digital events don't display the Twitterstream, some recent events have taken an even more radical approach by declaring themselves "Twitter-free zones," asking attendees not to tweet at all, instead to simply listen. Those are the exception, however, and most Twitter users expect - and enjoy - being able to interact freely on the social web, and most of the content tweeted from conferences is informative, interesting and respectful.

One intriguing possibility could be to moderate the backchannel by using Twitter Lists -- a new function that allows users to create a list of Twitter accounts that can be followed as a group. Conference attendees could be automatically included in a list that anyone interested in news from the conference is free to follow. That would prevent spammers from joining the stream, but would prevent virtual participation and would still require moderation to remove hecklers.

Gentry Underwood, who also spoke at Web 2.0 Expo, took another interesting approach: he added his own prerecorded tweets to the tweetstream, so that they functioned as bullet-points for his talkand kept the audience focused on him and his key ideas.

And comedian Baratunde Thurston took the bull by the horns at the beginning of his Web 2.0 Expo keynote, joking, "if there are ugly nasty offensive tweets about me going on behind that I can't see, I will find you with my hashtag army, we will hunt you down and we will destroy you."

"Twitiquette" is an evolving set of conventions, too new to be fully worked out yet, taking shape as a result of events in the real-time stream. Perhaps the simplest solution of all, as we're working out technical ways to handle some of the questions posed by real-time interaction, would be the adoption of Good Manners 2.0 (a free upgrade from Manners 1.0).

Perhaps all conferences should begin with a talk on that.

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2009-11-18T01:03:00.007-05:00

When Ideas Flow Faster than Tweets...

Danah Boyd spoke at Web 2.0 Expo today and her talk -- and the audience’s reaction -- was what my little boy’s teachers refer to as a “Teachable Moment.”

Danah Boyd is a brilliant and complex theoretician in a world where speakers often limit themselves to expressing simple, easily digestible, ideas like “join the conversation,” “be authentic,” and “first listen.” But while simple, all three of those ideas are very good advice. Particularly “first listen.”

If Boyd made any mistakes, it was trying to deliver too much content in not enough time. As a result, she spoke quickly. And her ideas were nuanced and intricate. Not the first time that’s ever happened but with this audience there was an interesting difference. Many of us were planning to "live tweet" about her presentation as she gave it but we found that couldn’t tweet as fast as she spoke.

There is a whole new class of reporters -- live tweeters -- who resemble the court reporters of yore. At times, today, there were literally hundreds of tweets per minute flowing from the conference. I was one of them. I type very quickly.

But Boyd speaks very quickly, and not in slice-able sound bites. So we tweeters were left in the dust.

So what does a tweeter do when a tweeter is frustrated? A tweeter tweets. The first frustrated tweet --which was relatively mild and humorous – admonished Boyd to “take a breath.” And that tweet appeared in the Twitter stream on the giant screen behind her. The audience laughed, and Boyd didn’t know why. And once that tweet fired the first salvo, more snarky tweets started flowing and the audience started paying more attention to the Twitter stream on the screen behind her than to the stream of Boyd’s ideas (which were, ironically about flow and the stream).

So the tweeters were tweeting comments instead of listening to her, and the rest of the audience was smiling and laughing at the comments instead of listening to her.

And yet every one of we tweeters no doubt believes the Social Media mantra: “before you engage in social media, first listen, then engage.”

If there is an interesting conference going on in San Francisco or Chicago, I like to watch the stream because I can’t be there. And when I am at a conference I enjoy tweeting to share the interesting content and add my own thoughts. But the primary value to be had from any conference keynote is in listening to the speaker.

If a speaker speaks to quickly for us to transcribe her thoughts, perhaps we don’t have to do it. Tweeting doesn’t have to be a competitive sport. Perhaps we can let our tweeting fingers rest for a few minutes. Perhaps we all can take a breath and first listen… then engage.

2009-11-05T03:37:00.004-05:00

New Twitter Lists: Open House or Velvet Rope?

Twitter has been rolling out its new "lists" feature over the past couple of weeks and the buzz of excitement in the Twittersphere has been palpable. The Internets have resounded with cries of "Game changer!" and "We're all curators now!"

Initially, the idea of Twitter Lists seemed like total a win-win. Active tweeters in the Twitter Open House could instantly become 140-character versions of Arianna Huffington, wielding curatorial power, creating and publishing Twitter Lists called "Fave Fives in Wasilla," and "100 Most Influential Silicon Valley Gardeners," and "500 Most Awesome List Makers." It was a heady feeling.

But then a funny thing happened. Some of that excitement was replaced by a quiet but insistent buzz of anxiety as previously self-confident tweeters suddenly turned into "unlisted" wallflowers, startled and a bit bewildered by the enormity of the unexpected change.

In case you're not already familiar with the feature: you may now create up to 20 lists, each containing up to 500 tweeters. Those lists may be kept private (like "Avatars I Have Secret Crushes On") or, more significantly, made public. Your public Twitter Lists are visible to everyone, whether or not they follow you, and so are other users lists that include you. So now, instead of just following one master list of Twitter accounts that you've (presumably) carefully researched and created, you can now create sub-lists (something that was already possible with third-party programs like Tweetdeck but not with Twitter itself.) You can also - and this is the real news -- dip into Twitterstreams that other users have created and "bookmark" them by following the entire Twitter List or pick and choose tweeters from them to add to your own lists.

It's a whole new party and that party looks a bit like high school or a private club -- with tweeters already "requesting" to get on lists. (It also bears a slightly unnerving resemblance to Old Media. What is Vanity Fair if not Graydon Carter's list?)

Twitter Lists are clearly a convenient way to organize tweet streams by affinity groups, like location, topic, or expertise. As Twitter founder Jack Dorsey explained at a recent event

But at the same time, Twitter Lists have allowed an element of exclusivity and in-crowd mentality to suddenly flourish among users who seem only too happy to deploy their velvet ropes. Many of the lists being created are named things like "The Top Thought Leaders in Tech," and "The 100 Most Awesome Tech Tweeters" and "Coolest Tech Twitterers" or most simply, "My Fave Tech Tweeters." And so, where previously the only public choice was "Do I or don't I choose to follow you?" now list makers are very publicly judging the value of other tweeters by which lists they include them in, and which lists they don't.

There is also somewhat of a gold rush effect. Industrious list-makers who got the feature in its beta roll out have already flooded the field with lists of their favorites and uploaded them to a new list-aggregating site called Listorious, creating an instant list-gap. Though anyone can upload their lists to Listorious, whose mission, according to CEO Greg Galant, is "to make it easy for people to find the good stuff on Twitter," clearly not everyone will. And some tweeters have friends who create more lists than others, while other tweeters have friends who, for whatever reasons (jobs, perhaps?), haven't had the time or inclination to create any lists of their own.

Because "being listed" is being touted as the new economy of influence, all the hard work users have poured into attracting a Twitter following may suddenly have been in vain if those followers don't get cracking and make lists.

So while some dance cards filled up immediately -- 10000+ lists have sprung up to date listing Ashton Kutcher as a "celeb," 11,000 listing @Mashable, 15,000 listing @BarackObama, and multiple tech lists covering Silicon Valley royalty -- some dance cards remain painfully empty, leading such respected Social Media thought leaders as Chris Brogan to question whether it's a good idea to create something that excludes a significant part of your following.

Thanks to Twitter Lists, there are also several new public metrics that appear on each user's Twitter home page. Before, you only had to worry about how many people you followed and how many followed you back. Now, the stats are much more specific and complex. The new world includes: the number of people who have listed you, the number of people who are following the lists that include you, the lists you yourself have created, the number of lists you are following, and the number of people who are following your lists. It is not only confusing, but also potentially humbling and dispiriting if no one has listed you and no one is following the "awesome" lists you created.

While Twitter Lists will certainly provide useful short cuts, allowing users to benefit from the fruits of other users research and expertise, lists change what was a fundamentally democratic system, creating a "listing class."

The new Twitter economy may very well be the dominance of the list makers with negotiations for quid pro quo, the creation of new Twitter accounts in order to create new lists, or, worse, payment for inclusion in lists.

And perhaps most ominously, you have no control over either what Twitter Lists you are on, or the names of the lists on which you appear. You may consider yourself a serious scholar, for instance, but turn up on a list called "Good for a Laugh." You may be looking for work and turn up on a list called "Slacker Frat Bros." You may end up feeling thoroughly misunderstood. And it's all taking place in public.

Twitter's creators have said that they believe "lists will be a new discovery mechanism" and there is certainly the promise that lists will make the ever-more-crowded Twitter more manageable and bring back some of its serendipity, allowing users to find interesting and valuable new people through recommendations by trusted sources (Trust me -- Ashton Kutcher is a celebrity!) Lists will particularly benefit new users who don't have to spend months digging for gold, looking for other like-minded tweeters, they can simply follow who another user suggests they follow.

Let's hope Twitter Lists don't turn Twitter into a more stratified environment that is dominated by cool kid list-makers, leaving other frustrated and disappointed users standing behind the velvet ropes, on the outside looking in. exploring Twitter and the collective unconscious, he's always been fascinated by maps, grids, and commons. For Dorsey, the new lists transform Twitter into something a little more systematized, something easier to navigate.

2009-08-07T02:48:00.010-04:00

The Day My Twitter Boutique Turned into a Spam Bazaar

A few weeks ago I made a one-click mistake that transformed my idyllic Twitterverse from a wonderful gourmet boutique to a deafening street bazaar, replete with shilling merchants, junk that fell apart, and seedy grifters inviting me to "follow them to another site" for some special deals and special "peeks" at their hot pictures. Very special indeed!

My troubles started innocently enough: I was browsing through my followers looking for interesting new people to follow back, using a great little tool called Twitter Karma that allows you to do just that.

I was already following 700 tweeters, each of whom I considered a winner - interesting people, worthy causes, and sources of thought-provoking info. But there were 800 tweeters following me that I wasn't following back so I was sifting through them, seeing who they were.

And then it happened: with one fatal click of the mouse, I accidentally chose "bulk follow," and started following all 800, more than doubling my already well-populated stream.

In they all poured, flooding my feed, jamming my inbox, offering me "irresistible" messages like "**ATTENTION** New to Twitter and want to grow your followers??" and "Market your products and make money with Twitter!!" and "Click here 2 see more of me..." The only thing missing was "Want 2 make your teeth 10 shades whiter overnight?" With that one click, my controlled Twitter ecosystem was suddenly buffeted by a blinding swath of incoming locusts, dust devils, and hail.

I'm not an expert enough Twitter Historian yet (is Stanford hiring?) to know how long the spammers, charlatans, and frauds have been hanging out on the periphery. At first, Twitter was a bit like an all-day concert where the real tickets, the real CDs, and the FDA-approved sirloin burgers were being sold inside the fairgrounds. Alas, it was only a matter of time until scalpers, bootleggers, and mystery-meat stands started massing at the gates, waiting for the fences to give way. And give way they did.

Should we blame it on Ashton Kutcher? Some observers do. Before he challenged CNN to a popularity contest to see who could get the most followers, 800 was considered respectable and 5,000 an incredibly impressive number of followers on Twitter. And that was good, because why would a spammer target 5,000 people when it was so much more lucrative hacking into email accounts? Kutcher, or AplusK as he's known on Twitter to his astounding 3.1 million followers, raised the threshold, garnering not only inflated numbers but incessant media attention, big name converts, and millions of people signing up to see what the fuss was about. But while Mr. AplusK seems like a likable, tech-savvy, do-gooder, not all the folks that he -- and the subsequent media storm -- attracted to Twitter are as benevolent as he. And too many are playing a kind of Twitter quid pro quo: "I'll follow you if you'll follow me back, and if you don't I'll un-follow you and follow someone else who will."

I have "Twitter Friends" who follow and are followed by anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 people. Most of them are respected professionals who have earned those large followings by being helpful, friendly, and informative ("adding value" in Social Media parlance). Social media giant Chris Brogan, for instance, used to follow back everyone who followed him, both out of courtesy and because he's genuinely interested in discovering new people with valuable points of view. But even Chris is rethinking his position now, overwhelmed by spammers and automated direct message bots.

And so I've spent the last few weeks undoing the damage my one keystroke wrought. First I unfollowed all the people who promised "thousands of new followers," then the people who promised "guaranteed ways to make money," then people only tweeting links to their products and services, then people whose tweetstreams were widely divergent from my interests (I'm not into "rad snowboarding," for instance), and of course the stock photos of hot women whose hilarious English-challenged tweets ("I'm kind of girl who like 2 lay back and relax") all end with "want 2 see my pics?"

Things are almost back to normal now. My Twitter stream is tidy, the quality is high again, and, in the end, I discovered at least 300 very interesting new people I am happy to be following. And if I inadvertently unfollowed some interesting new folks, I'm confident I'll find them again. Because, while Twitter is being invaded by the Barbarians at the Gates, it is still a wonderland of fascinating people to discover.

There are lots of ways to use Twitter, almost all of them right, and everyone finds the way that works best for them. I've discovered that I am most comfortable being a Boutique Tweeter and not a supermarket, content with a group of people whose tweets I really enjoy, not aiming to have the most stock or the widest range, but enjoying a play-list of handpicked Tweeters, each of whose tweets adds value and quality to my day whenever I power up Tweetdeck. I still use Twitter Karma, it's still a great tool, but I steer clear now of that little Pandora's Box known as "bulk follow."

2009-07-28T21:09:00.032-04:00

Two Simple Twitter Friend Search Tools You Shouldn't Overlook

I have been looking for an effective tool that lets me search quickly through Twitter friends and followers but have not yet seen anything that really fits the bill.

True, you can create groups on Tweetdeck and other apps to create smaller, more manageable feeds. But that still doesn't give you the option of a quick search for "that guy from Austin" or a one-click quick way to go straight to a particular Tweeter. And when you're following hundreds or thousands of Tweeters, things can get a little overwhelming.

To tide me over, I've rediscovered the elegant simplicity of two humble web-interface tools that take me right to the people whose tweets I read most frequently, the Twitter equivalent of my "Fave 5."

The first is the often-ignored star, the "Favorites" tool. Most people use it to save favorite tweets but I use it to save the Tweeters I find myself checking in with most frequently. That way I can open my list, scan through the approximately 30 Tweeters I've saved, and go right to the person whose feed I want to read. And updating it is a breeze.

The second simple tool is the bookmark function on my browser. That's right, the bookmark! I've created a Twitter folder on my tool bar, added pages to it, then sorted those pages by name to alphabetize them. That creates a pull-down list that gets me to "Dean", or "the other Dean" or "David" in lightning quick time. And because it's alphabetized, which works for me, I find I can use it to quickly scan through over 50 Tweeters. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but speedy and effective.

Two simple tools, two quick ways to click through the clutter and get quick access to your favorite streams.

2009-05-20T14:07:00.021-04:00

AT&T Operators Should Answer More Social Media Calls

"Is anyone from AT&T on Twitter?" I tweeted several weeks ago, "I have a horror story."

The silence was deafening, despite the fact that there are at least six Twitter accounts that feature AT&T's blue-striped sphere as their avatar. Granted, with a foreboding Tweet like that, I might not have wanted to respond either, but I'm a customer, so AT&T should have been paying attention.

I have to admit I was perplexed that that the AT&T sphere is not participating more actively in the Twittersphere. They are active on Facebook, for instance, where they forged a strategic alliance with rapper Lil Wayne (who currently has 93,800 followers on one Twitter account).

So why the lack of response on arguably the fastest growing Social Media phenomenon (and real time search engine)? AT&T is a phone company, for heaven's sake, and should be listening when customers reach out, whether it's from an iPhone, Facebook, or two tomato cans and a very sensitive string!

And yet their Twitter line was buzzing and none of their accounts were answering.

My motives for reaching out to them on Twitter were simple: I am an active Twitter user and I saw that AT&T had Twitter accounts too. I didn't need more customer service, which is what often prompts tweeters reach out to @comcastcares, for instance, run by Comcast's engaging and effective Director of Digital Care, Frank Eliason, who handles questions ranging from outages, to hard rebooting, to missing closed captions. My specific problems, which included a startling policy, a mind-boggling procedure, and systemic errors, had already been solved.

I simply wanted to connect with AT&T on a corporate level to give them feedback about what they got right and what went appallingly wrong.

Here's what they did right: three remarkably dedicated phone reps -- all of whom I will call Wendy because one actually was named Wendy -- spent a combined total of six hours of company time, making sure I got exactly what I needed.

On Friday, Wendy #1 spent one hour porting my number from T-Mobile, creating a Family Plan, talking her supervisor into preserving my thousands of rollover minutes, and giving me a free refurbished Blackberry Bold. She was so delightful to work with, I let her talk me into a gel cover I didn't need. When none of the emails she had promised me with the contract and tracking numbers had arrived by Monday morning, however, I called back to discover AT&T had absolutely no record of my order. In spite of the reference number I had gotten from Wendy #1, the transaction had vanished into thin air.

Enter Wendy #2 who spent 3 hours trying to track my order down, actually calling me back with frequent updates. Finally, she discovered that my Harlem zip code had raised a red flag (I'm not kidding..,) because there are "fraud issues associated with it" and that my order had not even been entered into the system yet because AT&T (get ready...) had certain procedures they needed to follow first to verify my address.

I was stunned, not only because I had been "profiled," so to speak because I live in Harlem, but because of what it told me about AT&T's efficiency. AT&T was already my phone company: so if they don't know where I live, who does? And because I was already a customer, all they had to do was 1) call me back, 2) email me, or 3) look me up in the phone book to find out, but apparently AT&T has a "procedure" they have to follow to verify addresses that takes several days.

Wendy #2 truly cared, though, and worked hard to get me what I needed, which I appreciated. She facilitated a little magic and the phone arrived late Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately it arrived with the wrong number written on the Sim card. Not only did my phone company not know where I live, they didn't know my phone number either!

Enter Wendy #3, as gracious and dedicated as the others, and two hours later my phone was up and running with the correct number.

Dedicated customer service reps like the ones who helped me can do a lot to build brand loyalty, but only if the company they are representing cares enough to give excellent service as a company. And so, frustrated by how many hours of my (and their) life this had required, I reached out on Twitter, where I knew AT&T had several corporate accounts, to compliment their customer service reps while pointing out the places where their systems had broken down. But no one tweeted back.

Smart companies monitor the conversation. Craig Newmark, who astonishingly still does customer service for Craigslist, regularly uses Twitter Search to see what people are saying and to volunteer to help solve their problems. More and more government agencies are listening to and connecting with citizens through social media, like the HHS Center for New Media, whose excellent Andrew Wilson has been an important and reassuring source of information about the swine flu outbreak.

As Digital Marketer Matt Snodgrass said at a recent round table I attended: "Customer service is often facilitated with a simple 'I hear you' and that's where Twitter can shine."

But AT&T, whose employees had been such good listeners on the phone, either wasn't listening or wasn't responding on Twitter, so my attempt to give them feedback fell on deaf ears. Given that AT&T has already established a presence on Twitter, it makes a lot of sense to integrate it with other customer service functions; it makes sense to join the conversation and let customers know that the company itself is as caring as they ask their employees to be.

Come on, AT&T, it's time to reach out and touch someone again. And this time you need to do it online.

2009-04-18T09:48:00.020-04:00

What Susan Boyle & Patrick Doyle of Domino's Have in Common

The Susan Boyle performance that took the world by storm this week has an important lesson to teach us about Social Media Fundamentals, a lesson Domino's also learned this week, the hard way.

It's easy to call Susan Boyle an ugly duckling who blossomed into a swan, but that's where a lot of commentators are getting it wrong. Susan Boyle did not "transform" on stage; it was we -- her audience -- who transformed and, most importantly, engaged.

We all felt we knew something in advance about how talented she would turn out to be. The judges rolled their eyes; the studio audience snickered; and I watched the youtube link, I admit, with trepidation. But Susan Boyle stood there confidently, "cheekily", and held her ground. She represented herself truthfully and had presence.

She engaged us and showed us her strengths. We dabbed our eyes and tipped our hat (or our computer mouse) to her. We let go of preconceptions based on her lack of polish and gave her the credit she deserved. We met her halfway and changed, hopefully for the better.

Expectation>Surprise> Engagement

The two other most talked about videos of the week were the "Disgusting Domino's People" video and the response by the CEO of Domino's, Patrick Doyle.

Our reactions to the "disgusting" video by two malicious employees was based, in part, on a confirmation of our fears about fast food -- that uncaring employees make our food unsafe. The "Ewww... I knew it!" factor.

But our reaction to CEO Patrick Doyle's well-crafted message was surprisingly similar to our reaction to Susan Boyle and followed a similar pattern:

We were initially distrustful about what we were about to see: "This is going to be painful."
We were wary: "If you're good, why did you wait this long to come forward?"
We were begrudgingly tolerant: "Okay, let's see what you've got."
Then, surprisingly, we were engaged because Doyle, like Boyle, held his ground unflinchingly, told us what he stood for, defied our expectations, and had presence.

He took charge of the conversation with his audience -- like Susan Boyle did with her unwavering voice -- and transformed the conversation.

Presence > Voice

When judge Simon Cowell asked why she hadn't achieved success yet, Susan Boyle said, "I've never been given the chance before but here's hoping it will change." The internet, Social Media, and reality shows have given us all a chance to have a "voice." We can waste that chance like the Dominos Duo did and end up with arrest warrants (and poor career options!), or we can craft that voice and engage with our audiences.

Now clearly,someone knew Susan Boyle could sing; she had auditioned with the show's producers, who were savvy enough to leave the schmaltzy music swelling. But the audience didn't know and the audience was moved, uplifted, and transformed. And clearly Patrick Doyle has a crack team that helped him word his statement carefully, but he delivered it with heartfelt resolve and class (note to crack team: add CEO to your youtube tags). And while Domino's is using the clunky @dpzinfo on Twitter, at least they now have a presence on Twitter which is an important next step (2nd note to crack team: @P_Doyle is available!) The next step now, for Domino's, is to craft an engaging voice,

Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden got it right when she told Susan Boyle, "I honestly think we were all being very cynical and I think that's the biggest wake-up call ever." Perhaps it's not the biggest wake-up call ever (the stock market crash, anyone?), but it is an important one.

We all have expectations based on preconceptions. Sometimes all it takes to help us evolve as audiences and consumers, though, is someone coming out, center stage, to let us hear their voice.

Presence and voice: brava Susan Boyle and bravo Patrick Doyle.