10 reasons why the Unpanel worked.

Posted on April 1, 2009 by marc meyer

Beth Harte recently asked if I would write a guest post on her blog and this is the post that she’s getting based on yesterdays first Twitter based Unpanel

So Tuesday was the first official Unpanel event on Twitter. A one hour, once a week, no holds barred, fast paced moderated twitchat. Or to quote Jason Breed, one of the founders, “an Unpanel is a purposeful interaction with individuals around their industry or business on Twitter….”

This Unpanel was significant on a few levels and I want to highlight ten reasons why you might want to make a point of blocking off the time each week to participate in a truly engaging and elevated conversation about social media.

1. We had a moderator that absolutely drew out of the 100, yes that’s right, 100 participants, more than just the cursory “social media is all about transparency” comments. Did I mention that Beth Harte was the moderator? We could not have had a better “first” moderator/host.

2. Pre-set questions; but not your normal “what is social media” questions. Below are those questions..

Q1: Where are the deficiencies in business around People, Interactions & Technology? In other words, where does social media make sense in a business setting when addressing those deficiencies?

Q2: Play the “What if” game. Addressing the above deficiencies, remove all barriers and let the imagination roll. (For example, what if CRM systems were filled up by buyers not salespeople) Use the “In a perfect world” scenario when plugging in a social media solution. What does that world look like?

Q3: Combine the identified needs in business with the “imagine if” comments and let’s create a high-level road map

3. Incredible discussion. Powerful give and take. Amazing connection with people on social media issues that we can all relate to that get beyond the echo.
4. A discussion on Twitter with actionable takeaways.
5. Value. I harp all the time on the value of a tweet or the value of a persons tweets, and in the span of one hour, there was more value in what was being said than what might be gleaned from a week of following a so called social media expert..
6. The website Hashtagsocialmedia, provided a forum to follow the tweets right on the site. It also provided Beth’s tweets on the side panel so that we could see Beth’s insights and followup questions. Key and critical to pushing the discussion to a higher level.
7. People worth following AFTER you’ve had conversations with them, Not before and not based on who they are following, I cannot tell you how many times I said during the Unpanel, “Wow what a great point”…
8. As awesome as Beth was, the Unpanel will have a different moderator/host with a different perspective every week and thats an important aspect. They don’t have to be rock stars to bring value to the discussion.
9. A compilation in one place, of potentially the best minds in social media, that SOME people might not know. And we’re able to talk with them. Only through the power social media is this possible. How cool is that?
10. It’s going to get better as more people participate

The Unpanel is a very atypical event and that was a good thing, so maybe it should be that it was “un-typical?”. I dunno. Huge shout out btw, to Beth Harte, Jason Breed and Terry McKyton

Hashtag social media launches

Posted on March 31, 2009 by marc meyer

One of the great things about collaboration, social media, and the power of truly thinking outside the box, is that when you put words into action the finished product can be oh so cool. That is the case with Hashtagsocialmedia.com.

The idea for this came out of roughly 2-3 meetings with Jason Breed of Neighborhood America. It bubbled up over a desire to really try and extend the social media conversation beyond the boundaries it was currently taking place in, and do it in a collaborative and open environment.

6 weeks later, here we are.

The premise is simple. Using the #journchat theme of a hosted discussion we’ve decided to structure 1 hour per week (Tuesdays at 12pm eastern) around hot topics and issues that concern #socialmedia. With a guest host/moderator to keep the discussion moving forward, we hope to create some unique perspectives and POV’s on social media business issues.

So our first guest host is none other than Beth Harte Beth brings a tremendous amount of passion, experience and tell it like it is attitude to everything that she talks about, writes about and does as it pertains to social media and marketing. She is the perfect first choice.

We hope you can join us every Tuesday at 12 noon est. To help us take the business of social media into new directions

Guy Kawasaki-“Ok you got me, so what”?

Posted on March 25, 2009 by marc meyer

So the big stink of late is Guy Kawasaki and his sudden called on the carpet transparency in Dave Fleets blog. Real quickly, Guy Kawasaki admitted that he has a few people that help him Tweet out his Alltop spam Tweets, and he only admitted it after being asked.

On the one hand, Guy is free to do what he wants. He even admits as much. I think the outrage stems as much from a sense that a lot of people thought that Guy was coming down from the castle to be with the common folk.

Well he does and he has. It just turns out, we don’t know when.

Case in point. Guy was in my town, Naples, Florida. Relatively small town by most standards. I sent a few tweets that we should meet up. Then I DM’d him a number of times, to cover my bases. I’m guessing or thought he never got them; give the volume he may receive. Now I have to think perhaps his other “tweeters” got the tweets? I don’t know.

However, it turns out he hosted a little Tweetup (4 people) and I missed it. There were some other issues involved in me missing it, not the least being if he @’s me and doesn’t DM me, I’m not going to get that on my phone.

So He didn’t DM back but I did get an apology 2 days later about missing each other. Fair enough!

I think in essence, more (or is it most?) people are just dissapointed that “Guy” isn’t tweeting as much as they thought. Look, I have a hard enough time managing 800/1500 let alone 101,000/93,000 so expecting an A lister to hit you back might be unrealistic but…

This is not a my friend is better than your friend example, but Rober Scoble whose numbers are 82,000/75,000 regularly tweets me back at the times I have tweeted him. This is both DM and regular @’s. As I’ll tell you if asked, there are good, bad and indifferent ways to use Twitter. It’s up to you to figure it out. So there you go. Run with it

Twitter, the noise to signal imbalance.

Posted on March 25, 2009 by marc meyer

I’ve noticed that the noise to signal ratio is increasing on Twitter, how about you? Note: This is my opinion and how it’s represented below. 🙂

My Twitter Mosaic

Posted on March 11, 2009 by marc meyer

This is pretty cool. Check out my followers, my pal Toby Bloomberg tweeted this. What’s scary is that I can associate a lot of names with avatars. I think in the future- we all should carry around sandwich boards with our Twitter avatars at conferences.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

10 quotable quotes from Twitter

Posted on March 9, 2009 by marc meyer

People inspire us, at least they do for me. The beauty of that statement is that the platform for inspiration is there to be used for FREE. It’s Twitter. You don’t think so? Well, last week I tweeted the following 10 thoughts. They originated from and during conversations or threads of conversations that emanated from Twitter.

Now you might be thinking, “damn, this guy is full of himself.” On the contrary- Actually I see these thoughts on paper, and amazed to a certain degree that came from me! The cool thing is-they came with the help of the brilliant minds of the people I talk with every day in 140 character bursts. Check it out.

Relevance is all about adapting, about reinventing ourselves, the brands and the companies we work with. You know who’s good at that? U2
I’m wondering if social media allows you to cut to the chase, I’m thinking maybe not.
Can the terms value and quality be interlinked? What about value and quantity?
You know there’s a distinct possibility that a) U talk 2 less than 10% of your Twitter network & b) Even less are listening 2 u @ any given time
Tough to consider ROI when no one has any cash. Perhaps weaving the barter system into the mix might work ROB?
I don’t think its about ROI anymore in social media, I think it’s a return on belief, trust and hope..
I think a lot of co.’s would love to utilize a lot of the skills that people possess here, but some are wary, and reticent to ask or admit they need help.
Coined/used a term today, now i just need to define it…Tangible Relevance…
Twitter… there is no right way to use it, but there are plenty of wrong ways to use it…
Twitter is a filter for opinionated relevancy

Some of these I restored for the benefit of this post, whereas they were truncated tweets. I look at these and each would actually make good blog post titles. Hmmm.. not a bad idea which emanated from…

Monologues to Dialogues

Posted on March 4, 2009 by marc meyer

How many people sell first and then try and get to know the customer later? Not many. In the halls of social media, the same holds true. If we look at Twitter and Blogging as 2 very prime and very visible examples-the best way to market yourself or a product is to get to know the people that you might want to sell or market to FIRST.

But there’s one catch, actually two…

First, If you are blogging- sure you could write a great post with a great hook, but unless you are doing some serious social posting of that post-no one is going to read it unless..You make and take the time to visit other blogs and get to know the writer and comment on that writer’s post, and develop a dialogue and a relationship with that blogger. As a blogger- You need to change your monologue to a dialogue.

Second, If you are on Twitter, the following occurs whether you realize it or not. This is how your relationships start. They start with you and your effort.

But it ultimately will end up like this.

You, in the middle of a whole lot of conversations. What you need to decide is how are you going to “manage” that noise. Why? If we have a one on one conversation, you have my undivided attention. Add another person, and now my attention has been divided, add another, divide again, and so on and so forth. Until ultimately you are essentially having conversations with 10%-20% of the people you either follow or that follow you.

Think about that. If I follow 100 and 100 follow me- At any point in time I may have conversations with only 10-15% of those people. Conversations consisting of more than one tweet between us. If that’s the number I have to work with- shouldn’t I try to make the best of those interactions? Shouldn’t you? Quit tweeting about nothing.

Monologues to Dialogues.

Twitter Help: 3 Simple Take Away’s.

Posted on March 2, 2009 by marc meyer

For those of you who are tired of reading “another” blog post about Twitter, move on. For those of us who realize the power of the platform and want to leverage it as another tool, another means or another way to enhance communications and the relationships that may bubble up from them, Keep reading.

Real quickly, understand this:

With Twitter

1) There is no perfect way to use it.

2) There is no absolute “right” way to use it.

3) There are plenty of wrong ways to use it.

Rather than go into a lengthy discourse on each of these points, lets leave it at this. If the way that you are currently using Twitter is working for you, then I applaud you and for the most part I would not suggest you change anything. Keep it going and keep enjoying it. However, if you are seeing nothing from your foray into Twitter, then perhaps you need to “change what you are doing”.

It’s real simple.

If you are NOT having conversations, NOT exchanging opinion, NOT having great discussions, or NOT sharing links, and NOT meeting people and NOT networking and NOT taking 140 characters to the next level-Then you may be using it in the wrong way. What do you think?

So decide right now. Do I want to continue to get nothing out of this? If you want to continue to waste your time and everyone else’s, then keep doing what you are doing. I’m not sure why you would, but hey, we still get SPAM right?

If you want to change the way you are currently using Twitter, there are tons upon tons of solid links on the proper use of it and the benefits associated with it. They are not hard to find, but these should get you going.

Twitter Tips

ProBlogger Twitter tips

I have to add perspective So I include Guy’s post about Twitter

17 ways you can use Twitter

Gaming Social Media

Posted on February 26, 2009 by marc meyer

Lately I’ve been sensing this trend with Twitter, illustrated in the pie chart below. Yes, I’m being somewhat facetious in regards to the actual percentages; but as it is with all good things, even Twitter is not impervious to those who feel that rather than trying to engage in meaningful conversations, and create valued relationships, they would prefer to cut to the chase and try and sell you something. I could give you 5 sites that are gaming twitter but why give them props? Does this sound familiar? Following-880, Followers- 7 Tweets-1