20 Twitter brands behaving badly

Posted on June 8, 2009 by marc meyer

I was doing some research for a Twitter webcast that I have coming up, and something caught me by surprise. I came across a post featuring the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter. While the list is interesting, what I thought was more interesting and what prompted this post were the number of brands that were mentioned(talked about) a significant amount of times and the ones that I could think of, who did NOT have a twitter presence. Some might not think much about it. But to me, given what is happening with Twitter, I think it is somewhat significant. Why? What a golden opportunity to talk with people about your brand that already talking about YOUR brand!

Below is a list of large brands that are currently doing a really poor job of managing the Twittersphere. This easily could have been a much larger list.

As a marketer you are challenged every day for marketshare, eyeballs, mentions and anything else that can get people talking about and engaging your brand. For big brands, people already are talking about you. Good or bad They want to talk about you. Twitter allows you to do both. You can listen to what they are saying and you can create communities of brand champions. Yet these 20 are a) slow on the draw b) don’t care and or c) are too arrogant to “bother” with Twitter. We’ll see how long that lasts, but know this, There are many many more.

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Do Twitter users have an obligation to provide value?

Posted on June 3, 2009 by marc meyer

The short answer is No. But I suppose it all depends on why you joined Twitter in the first place. Some of us joined because over 2 years ago, it was the new shiny social media “thing”. We had no idea at the time, nor did Biz and Ev for that matter, it would be what it is now. I almost don’t recognize it.

Beth Harte a few months back, talked about social media purists in a blog posts about the 4 faces of social media. For the purists out there, I think Twitter is just another extension or another channel to communicate, share and learn. That’s CO-mmunicate. As in 2 way. or as Beth mentions, The purist “truly embraces social media as the conversation that the tools allow people to engage in from day-to-day”.

The purist on Twitter doesn’t feel “obligated” to share information or provide value, they just do.

For those that are not into Twitter for the value that they can give and get from conversations, chances are they are misguided in to what they think Twitter can do for them. The operative phrase there being “what Twitter can DO for them.” Or rather, at some point along the way, for these “takers”, it ceased to be about the conversation, and more about them. Chances are, it was never really about the conversation in the first place. Essentially Twitter became a vehicle for narcissism.

This user will take value but won’t re-purpose or share value. Nor will they provide value. Unfortunately this person seems to be appearing more and more often in the space and for that reason, one is now forced to create niche like silos for information that hasn’t been tainted so to speak. I have maintained that that concept (silos) seems to make the most sense to really get and give the most value from those you follow and those that follow you, but by creating your own walled garden, you do miss out on some morsels of good content from time to time. But, to some degree, we now have no choice.

I’m going to semi-quote a song by a really famous band that was pictured above and rehash the words.

In the end, the value that you take, should be equal to the value that you make.

So what’s the answer?

You think about it.

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Why people are leaving Twitter

Posted on June 1, 2009 by marc meyer

According to Nielsen last month, a full 60% of users who sign up to use Twitter fail to return the following month. And in the 12 months before the “Oprah effect,” retention rates were even lower: only 30% returned the next month.

I have a theory as to why that might be and it’s pretty simple.

Example #1

It’s probably a given that most new users have heard about Twitter and want to try it out. But this homepage doesn’t do much to explain it. Does it? By the way, the home page? That’s pretty much the same one they have used from the get-go. Of course you may click on the watch a video link for a how-to, but me thinks most will just go ahead and sign up and jump right in. In which case you get the following screen after you have registered.

Is this intuitive? Don’t you think it’s time to at least re-do the UI/Homepage?

ROI-Return On Influence

Posted on May 28, 2009 by marc meyer

Earlier this week on Twitter I got into a back and forth discussion on whether Influence could be measured with Niall Cook. Niall essentially says that:

I am reaching the conclusion that influence cannot be measured, and thus is a futile metric for exploration.

Though this may end up being a chicken versus the egg type of discussion, I decided to throw up some visual representations of my thoughts on the matter and have some fun with it. Here are Niall’s thoughts on the topic: Social Media influence cannot be measured. One issue- there is a bit of a difference between social media influence and influence… Or is there? What are your thoughts?

A lesson in reputation managment

Posted on May 27, 2009 by marc meyer

Fly

Social media has allowed us all to be comedians. Some of us are not that funny. Context is the fly that you cannot quite pin down nor kill sometimes. But when something is printed on hard copy, the ramifications are just as significant as if it had occurred online.

The good thing, if there is such a thing, in being slandered online is you can “do” something about it. There are ways to combat it. But what do you do if it happens in print? and what do you do if it was your 11 year old daughter who did it? Ask her to print a retraction?

Let me set the scene and you decide.

Her teacher had a class project in which everyone wrote 2 recipes. A “how to” if you will, but geared more towards life lessons or something offbeat. Tinged with a hint of sarcasm and frivolity, all of the “recipes” were pretty cute. Nicely bound, it was a collectors item for parents to cherish when they were old and gray. Unless you are my wife and I.

The title of her one recipe was “How to amass a huge gum collection”. The other, “How to get away with not cleaning your room”. Both pretty good topics until you start reading them. I will boil it down to a couple of choice sentences: “Be sure to make the lie good for your gullible parents”..and the other “your unsuspecting parents will think you listened to them..”

There were a couple of other choice nuggest in both stories that I can’t recall but there it was. Now her class consists of 30 kids, and if their parents did what we did, they read each students recipes as well. Woohoo!!! Great.. Now the other parents will think my wife and are gullible idiots..Classic!

I know, I know, they won’t. Some might, but most won’t. Even though perception is not reality, we now have that cute bound book to partly remind us of her 5th grade year. I’m over it, but do you see how important reputation management is both online and offline? And this a simple relatively harmless situation.

Obviously we’re in an offline world situation here but there it is. The big elephant will be in the room every time we go to a school function.”Oh look, here come those 2 idiot buffoon parents..”

SO.. I had to give my 11 year old daughter an abject lesson in reputation management last night. Essentially explaining how she better be sure that what she is writing won’t piss someone off. It doesn’t matter if she were trying to be funny or not. Once it’s printed hard or soft copy, its out there for someone to see or find, the digital footprint.

Engagement, Influence and User Experience

Posted on May 27, 2009 by marc meyer

I was sitting this morning with a client having a breakfast meeting when I started to use what was on the table for props. I was explaining the different marketing channels like this…

Each of the above “tools” has a certain marketing function within your organization. You use them everyday for engaging your users and customers and even your prospects. Good, bad, or indifferent, you use them. It’s what we all have been programmed to use.

They can, however, be influenced by what you bring to the table.

But at the end of the day, you are still going to use the same tools pretty much the same way.

You might enhance them. Or influence them.

But the tools are still the same. Regardless of look and feel, they still function the same way.

But what if we could add something to the dynamic? That enhanced the whole experience? That wasn’t there before? That perhaps no one else was doing?

Or…

Now the experience has been changed for the user. You’ve upgraded the experience by adding 2 elements that were not there before. If you don’t add them, nothing really changes. If you do add them, aren’t you better off now than you were before?

Once they are in place, you see how much the user enjoys them, and how they told their friends and what it did for your business and your organization… the feedback has been tremendous versus no feedback before. Customers are talking about you and to you.

Now, would you ever consider removing the OJ or the table cloth? Is this better or worse than prior to your 2 new additions?

Lastly, your new customer, user, client comes up to you and says, ” We love what you have done with your OJ and your table cloths and it’s why we come here now, but you know what would be nice…?”

You listen and you now have enhanced the customer experience. You listened! and they appreciate it and tell others.

Now, would you ever consider removing the flowers?

Say hello to the most basic elements of social media.

Crowdsourcing-Social Media Listening Grids

Posted on May 24, 2009 by marc meyer

Over the last 8 weeks @jasonbreed and I have had some tremendous #socialmedia Unpanels at Hashtagsocialmedia.com. Last Tuesday, David Alston of Radian 6, hosted a session titled Developing Corporate Listening Grids. the comments and the discussion was at such a high level, that developing a deck from it was a no-brainer. But obviously it doesn’t happen without the participation of the attendees and their voices.

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What should the definition of social media be for the layperson?

Posted on May 12, 2009 by marc meyer

Last week, I was at another baseball game, I go to a lot of them, and someone asked me what I did. In this situation a couple of things have to happen very quickly. The first of which is that I have to size up the person I am talking with. Can I give them the high level deep answer or do I give them the “lite” version?

For example, my 75 year aunt gets the, “I’m in computers” answer… which she then yells to my 82 year old uncle, “He’s in computers”…That’s the “lite” version.

If I have someone who I think might understand what I do, I then have to decide how “deep” do I go then? Do I go the route of the, “I work with the internet, internet marketing, online marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, social media consulting, branding?”

If I do go that route.

What will best describe what I do to the layperson, who may actually “get it”, so that I don’t get the following question: So you’re a webmaster?

I digress. So last week I’m talking to this person in the stands and I decide to go for it. She’s a lawyer, she’s smart, knows her stuff. Who knows? Right? I tell her about my company and how we are all about search and social media and marketing, and how awesome social media is and continues to be etc. etc. and I decide to try and give her a suitable yet understandable definition of social media. I stumble a bit but think I’ve done a pretty good job and she looks at me and says…

So you’re a webmaster?

What is YOUR lay-person definition of what social media is? Help me out.