Finally. Now you can wow your prospects and clients with conversations about you, your peers, your product, your company, your industry, and your competition right at the beginning of your pitch. Finally, people will not be spooked by the ambiguity of the “old” Twitter home page. The barrier to kick the tires has just been lowered.
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I was reading a post titled, Marketers Like Twitter More Than Consumers Do
This excerpt caught my eye:
The firm says that about 45% of marketers polled felt Twitter will grow exponentially, while two thirds of consumers said they didn’t have an opinion, and only 12% of the latter said it is something young people and the media will use. Eight percent of consumers said Twitter is already a digital has-been.
Consumers can’t dismiss something before they have even learned about it right? And yet it strikes me that perhaps we as marketers and thinkers have not done enough in explaining what Twitter is. Or perhaps Twitter has done a poor job in articulating what Twitter is and can do?
A step in the right direction was the recent release of Twitter 101 for business, but before we can prime a business on the benefits of what social media and or Twitter can do for them, perhaps we should take even less time and just ask what they want. In other words, instead of starting by explaining what social media is..we take the business challenge at hand, and see if we can mold a social media solution to that business challenge. If there is not a fit, and in some instances, that just might be the case…we move on.
But beyond that, the last statement in the above mentioned post struck a nerve with me and it was a comment by Harris Interactive and it was this:
“It is the advertisers and marketers who should play the lead role in promoting consumer education if they truly want to move Twitter beyond infancy and into its tween years.”
So I ask you this. Are we giving consumers what they want? Do they know what they want? Or are we giving them what we think they want?
What do you, what can you do? You click on a compelling tweet with a link and it brings you to a lame blog post or just bad content. You took the link bait. What do you do? You read it and you say to yourself this is bullshit. It has a lot to do with credibility going forward doesn’t it? You feel like a sucker.
Trust? Your trust of who sent the link is diminished. Your skepticism for any subsequent posts is raised and the likelihood of ever going back to that blog and or to even follow that Tweeter is in jeopardy. So is this you? Are you the offender? If it is, here is one piece of advice. We’re not that stupid.
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As I sat with a client yesterday explaining Twitter, something significant happened. I was broadsided by my complete and utter sense of hypocrisy-I told the client, who is the largest manufacturer of a certain niche based consumer product, to use Twitter strictly as a broadcast based one way communication tool. Huh?
On the surface, for some of you, that might not seem like such a big deal. However, for the better part of the last 12+ months, I have been waxing philosophically here, and telling people and clients and whoever would listen, that “Twitter is a two way communications tool to create, share, and nurture ideas, conversations and resources.”
You see, for this client, it makes more sense to just Tweet deals and sales for those that are, or might be, looking for the keywords that surround their products, instead of trying to engage in conversations. The reality is that for them, conversations on a day to day basis, both internally and externally revolve around…sales. They have products that don’t require a whole lot of pitch. Short to zero sales cycle. You either want it or you don’t. Why do they need to get to know a customer that knows what they are looking for? For these people, Twitter would be more of a sales tool, a recommendation engine and a conduit to a product that once they find, they buy. So why not just tweet deals and sales?
That’s what I thought.
Simply put, it dawned on me that the usage of Twitter for certain clients will not necessarily adhere to a standard set of rules for engagement. The only thing that is etched in stone is the ambiguity on how to use Twitter. And maybe, just maybe, that is the beauty of Twitter.
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I was recently talking with Chris Abraham about the types of people that use Twitter; and yes I know that there have been lots of blog posts on the subject. But I’m a simple person who likes things to not be too complicated so I decided to take our conversation and dumb it down into three distinct types of users. There could be more but that’s for you to decide.
I look at Twitter Leaders to be those that: Engage others, that ask questions, that announce and alert others about upcoming events. They forward information that can help people. They Retweet info and tweets that are worth sharing. They share links and otherwise do the best they can about engaging worthwhile tweets, but they also have conversations, they bring value. In other words they are leaders.
Repeaters are just going to be forwarding and Retweeting machines. They are not so much into conversing as they are into giving off the semblance of having conversations. They will just read something and supply a link, read and retweet. They may give credit as to the source, they may not. They are using Twitter but they don’t know why. or they think they are using it properly but in actuality, they are not. They might be earnest, but they just don’t get it. They need to understand how to utilize it’s true potential.
The Feeders, might be better associated with bottom feeders. They are just taking whatever they “think” they can get from Twitter. They could care less about conversations. A sample bio from this type might be a cute name, or a company name associated with about 5 or 6 titles, one of which might be the word expert or ninja, and the Follower/Following/Tweets ratio will look something like this 200/5000/53. When looking at the tweets, you’ll see nothing of value and lots of messages that resemble some type of Google Adwords campaign. Zero value, zero relevance and ultiimately zero return on their time and effort.
What others could we add to this list?
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As more and more companies continue to swarm to Twitter, all trying to see what the buzz is about, there are plenty that are using it now that are just not utilizing it correctly. So here’s a quick primer. These are 10 sure-fire ways to change the monologue to dialogue real quick.
Instead of telling us how great your company is, Respond/Reply to someone else’s tweet to keep the conversation going.
Rather than push your standard one-way message, Retweet something that could have value for others.
Retell some information that perhaps someone missed that can save them time or possibly money-they’ll appreciate it!
If someone shared some information for your benefit, maybe others could benefit from it too. Why no Reshare it?
You see a person asking a question, you know the answer, Reach out to them and answer it!
Don’t always take, try being a Resource to your network or your existing customers sometime.
You get more out of Twitter if you realize that it’s as much about Reciprocity as it is anything else.
You could stay behind your walled garden but why not Rebuild the relationship with your customers?
Revitalize and Reinvigorate brand perception by being accessible and approachable.
But most of all…Be Real
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As you are all aware of by now, assuming that you are somewhat wired, there was a presidential election in Iran. When the news surfaced globally that current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election with 65% of the vote, it set in motion the wheels that power social media. While the outrage over a seemingly rigged election simmered to a boil, demonstrators numbered in the hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Iran in massive protests…Something else happened as well.
Those same elements however, took to the power of social media to document in real time the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s violent reaction to the people’s protests of a seemingly rigged election. That’s right, the power of social media was literally the first to let the world know about the displeasure that Iranian citizens had over the election results and the fallout from that election.
Much of this activity was covered by Iranian citizens on social networking sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr, Facebook and personal blogs; and though the Iranian government did their best to try and stop the rising flood of information flowing out of the country via social media, ultimately theres not a thing the Iranian government can do to suppress the massive amount of citizen journalism taking place before our eyes.
Consider the following:
According to BNET Media, as of last night, there were almost 12,000 videos available on YouTube under the search term, “Iranian election.”
Consider that the top trending topics on Twitter are #Iranelection, #Tehran, #Mousavi, and #Iranians. That’s right. People are not only talking here in the U.S. about what is going on in Iran, the people of Iran are letting the WORLD know about what is happening via social media.
If you go to Flickr and type in any type of search term that is related to the Iranian election you get a stunning amount of results and images that we can all assume that the current Iranian regime would prefer that the world did not see.
Other social media sources that are doing their best to keep the feeds coming are the following:
Others:
A slew of Twitter Accounts:
@alirezasha
@Change_for_Iran
@cnnsaeed
@Gita
@iran09
@iranbaan
@IranNewsNow
@IranRiggedElect
@laraabcnews
@mohamadreza
@mousavi1388
@octavianasrCNN
@Shahrzadmo
@StopAhmadi
@tehranbureau
@tehranelection
@TwitPersia
This list will continue to grow over the next few days and weeks, feel free to share it and add to it. But know this. We all constantly talk about some of the best case uses of social media every day, and in this situation we are seeing the power of social media being utilized to not only enlighten the world, but also empower its citizens in ways that I’m sure were never envisioned by its progenitors.
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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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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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