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?

The popularity of Twitter @replies

Posted on May 13, 2009 by marc meyer

Here’s my quick take on what’s happening over at Twitter and then a quick link over at ReadWriteWeb-Twitter puts a muzzle on your friends-Goodbye People I Never Knew

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The social value of your relationships

Posted on May 1, 2009 by marc meyer

This has been on my mind lately. It was amplified yesterday by a tweet by David Armano who tweeted the following:

Have you ever bought something from someone you felt you had a relationship? That’s the ROI of social business…

At which point I responded back with:

@Armano Value..think about your offline relationships-the ones that mean the most, are the ones that carry substance.-same with buying habits

So here’s the deal. In your offline every day world, what relationships mean the most to you? They are the ones that are not superficial. Right? The relationships that have substance, meaning, and value.

Less chit and more chat

The ROI of social business. the ROI of your relationships, as hollow as that might be, are both the same- The ROI is the value that you have built up in that relationship. Both from a business and personal standpoint. If you have cultivated a relationship, then you place a high value on it and what it might return. The less that you have put into it, or what you have received, should be consistent with your expectations and effort.

The same applies to any “online” social network or offline. Though it may seem shallow at first to only say that you only put stock in the people that bring value to you and what you do-it’s actually the truth. It has nothing to do with the technology, the platform, the hardware or the software.

Whether we care to admit or not. We all look for value, we may not say it, but it’s true. Online and offline, value in the people that we connect with, drives our relationships.

Thoughts?

The compassion of Twitter

Posted on April 13, 2009 by marc meyer

My Mom was one of the most social people I knew. Having people over for dinner parties, going out, having brunches, dragging us to an event, a social gathering, a parade, an art opening, or concert, you name it, she was the one, she did it. The consummate hostess, tour guide and cruise director all wrapped into one. What’s more, she was big on documenting those events with lots of photos too. Her attention to detail was astounding. She was in essence, a social creature using social tools before social media was so cool.

It’s funny, but looking back, I didn’t always want to “go” and do this or do that or go here or go there, but once I was there I usually ended up having a pretty good time. She was truly back in the day, a key influencer. We talk about how important those “types” of people are today and my Mom was one before it even had a name.

I’d like to think that I have some of those social qualities that my Mom possessed and I think to a large part I do and I utilize them every day in the social media sphere that we all are swimming in right now, and that’s pretty cool.

Granted, she also had her fair share of things that we choose not to talk about or share, our demons if you will, but at the end of the day we all have them and we’re all like that. There is the personal, the really personal and the social and the really social.

This past Friday April 10th, 2009, I chose to share the really personal in a really social setting with my friends on Twitter. I know some might have wondered or questioned why I did, but though the way we communicate has changed, the choice to communicate with friends has not, at least for me.

And thus I told whoever was listening Friday that my Mom had passed away on that day.

It hurt tremendously to say, but for me the response from Twitter helped me in more ways than I have yet to understand. It humanized Twitter even more for me. It validated it for me. Why? Because when I tweeted it, no one was home and I needed to talk and I couldn’t do it on the phone without unraveling.

As of today, the warm wishes and condolences are still coming in and that means a lot. Though these people are not immediate friends and family- the impact on me has not been lost. And I know somewhere Nikki Meyer is smiling at just how social I was on her behalf… even in the end.

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