NET-TECH REPORT: Twitter - For Fun and Profit!

Net-Tech Report with Chris Kauza

According to cnet news and TechCrunch. Twitter has received $250M in capital to fund current operations and growth, from a group of undisclosed investors. Twitter has been in use since 2006, with people from all backgrounds and companies from all verticals joining in the conversation, and thus making Twitter into a more useful tool. If you haven't yet, you need to start paying attention to this social networking tool now.

Last April I wrote an introductory article describing Twitter, how to sign up and how you might use it for general networking purposes. In this article, I am going to assume that you have set up an account, you are following some interesting people, and that you have a few followers of your own – all of which makes for an interesting and more enjoyable Twitter experience. We're going to build on that foundation and talk about some tools that will make your Twitter-life easier and hopefully a bit more productive for your business.

For interactive Marketing, Twitter is an excellent tool. With a user base numbering over 5 Million (and growing), it's a tool you need to pay attention to and learn. Many large organizations are already using Twitter to creatively”humanize” their brands and customers' experiences with their companies. NASA's JPL has created mission-specific accounts such as @marsroverdriver, @SpaceCenterHou, @MarsScienceLab, @MarsRover, @MarsPhoenix and @CassiniSaturn, which are fun to follow if you're interested in what Nasa is doing, several major airlines (i.e. - @virgindotcom (I also follow @richardbranson, but his Tweests are less frequent), @SouthwestAir, @JetBlue), @WholeFoods, @Zappos (a rapidly growing online shoe retailer) to name a few. There are many more great examples to review, but in my opinion, using your real name and picture is the best way to promote networking and relationship building. Non-profit organizations are even getting into the act (shameless plug – check out a non-profit I helped start: @saproject). Bear in mind this tool has only seen two full years of market exposure...

So how can you start to leverage Twitter to your advantage? Here are some tools to help you get started:

Tweetdeck

The Twitter client presents real-time text feeds from your Twitter-universe (or “Twitterverse”, for short). If you start to follow more than a dozen people, your conversations can get a bit confusing. When your Twitterverse starts to climb into the hundreds or thousands...well, it can get pretty noisy and frustrating!

Tweetdeck is a client you install, that can break up these conversation streams into more manageable threads. The default column contains the same information you see on your Twitter page, while you can set up additional columns for direct messages that people send you, replies from others to your Tweets, and just about anything else you'd like. For example, if you wanted to see what I was up to recently while attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, you could set up a column to search on #ces09 and you would see Tweets from anyone attending and tweeting about the trade show (FYI – CES was savvy enough to set up their own Twitter account - @2009CES – which they used to update attendees to great effect). Even though this tool is still in “public beta”, it can definitely make your life easier.

Twhirl

Twhirl is another client that helps make your Twitter life a bit more manageable. It's similar to Tweetdeck, but my colleagues who use it absolutely RAVE about it – stable installation, ability to cross-post your Tweets to multiple platforms, automatically shorten long URLs (important when you want to share a web page and are only limited to 140 characters!), and you can automatically post images to Twitpic (Twitpic is an application that allows you to take pictures from your phone or camera, and share them with your Twitterverse – but more on that later).

Last but not least, here are a couple of “how to” tips to help you get more out of your Twitter experience.

How To Search Twitter

One of the easiest and most interesting aspects to Twitter is the ability to get new perspectives on all different kinds of information – everything from earthquakes, to space missions, to conference session and breaking news events world wide. For example, I saw and read about the Mumbai terrorist attach about 2 hours before I saw anything from a major news outlet. In fact, I was able to link up a senior correspondent from ABC news' online bureau with several people on the ground in Mumbai.

Click in this paragraph's title and you will be taken to the search window page. No account to set up, no need to login – think of it as “Google for Twitter”. In fact, right below the search window there will be several “trending topics” (i.e. - the most currently searched topics on Twitter, at that moment). This is a page to bookmark and keep handy

Twittergrader

It's just what it sounds like – it tells you your “Twitter Grade”. It doesn't really mean anything, but it sure plays into one's ego gratification needs to see where they rank relative to a Twitter population. Supported by Hubspot (an online / Web 2.0 / Search Marketing firm), Twittergrader will even suggest other Twitter users whom you might be interested in following. One way I've used this is to find people who are local to where I work or to where I meet be traveling. Every so often, people will organize a “Tweetup” - an offline meeting where Twitter users will get together to enjoy each other's company and converse face-to-face (what a concept!). I have met some really smart and unique folks this way – people whom I otherwise would most likely never have met. If nothing else, it is an amusing distraction while you are on hold with a customer service representative!

Take this information and use it to make your Twitter experience a more enjoyable one. I'll write another article in a few months profiling organizations that are using Twitter effectively to enhance their brand and thus their relationships with their customers – companies like Southwest and Jet Blue airlines, and NASA. In fact, NASA recently held a Tweetup for their Twitter followers at JPL, where attendees were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at interviews with Mission engineers. I think NASA is really doing a great job of using social media to connect with a wider audience and build support for their organization. You can see more examples at this page), etc. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to “DM me” (i.e. - send me a direct message on Twitter) and I'll be happy to help if I can.

Until next month,

Chris / @ChrisKauza

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NET-TECH REPORT: Twitter - For Fun and Profit!

Will Your Community Survive?

Strategy: What Say You? with Jay Deragon

I participate in dozens of "social communities" and enjoy reading others post and getting feedback on my own post. As these "communities grow" sometimes it seems like "the good old boy politics" begins to creep into the fiber of a community only turn the community into an anti-social place where the politics become more important than the open conversations.

It is this very behavior which bloggers have criticized the big brands for yet some community moderators think they are big and begin to create community rules, practices and behavior they learned from the big. By doing so they are planning the demise of the community they've tried to build.

What Is The "Community" Model?

In the early stages of all this social stuff people from different industries or business practices have created aggregated communities. These aggregated communities enable bloggers to add their own blogs to these communities while maintaining their independence and their own blog identity. The typical aggregated community is supported by corporate sponsors who typically major brands are looking to test the waters of "social media" and to attract a specific audience.

These aggregated communities are supported by advertising and sponsorships. The community moderators seek to recruit the "mega bloggers" whom add related content to the community that keeps the community engaged. They also attempt to create a "soft competitiveness" by listing things like "most read authors, highest rated authors or most comments on a particular post". Additionally they enable a feature to list the highest rated post of the week and occasionally highlight "Bloggers of the Week" or best post of the week. The typical community has between 1,000 to 5,000 registered members.

While initially the model may seem logical it is not sustainable for several reasons. These include:

1. Moderation of post begins to get anti-social due to petty politics or favoritism
2. Unless a community has critical mass and grows exponentially on a regular basis, being replaced by brands is inevitable
3. Members are already distracted by invites and involvement in other larger more dominant communities.
4. Community aggregation by the Big is already underway segmented by topics, industry and geography
5. Participants will migrate to the big looking for increased exposure and brand affinity
6. The big will soon provide economic incentive for bloggers to participate, something the smaller communities can not afford.
7. Aggregation will soon move to industry sites or to existing major branded "news" brand that adopt the social practices and want to truly collaborate with the small. i.e. Look at Business Weeks Business Exchange
8. A few of the big brands will finally get it. In getting it they will adopt a more collaborative philosophy and create community models that truly engage the small and provide significant value to emerging markets driven by conversations.
9. The difference between social networks and social media is becoming blurred and subsequently which network you belong to will no longer be relevant rather which community is the preferred community for your profession or for your personal interest.
10. The "mesh" of the old media with the new will accelerate given the "wake up" call sent to the brands and the comprehension of "if you don't engage you'll loose".

Can Existing Communities Still Win?

If you moderate a large community centric to industry or topical matters and have active participation you do indeed have the chance to survive and thrive. The faster growing more vibrant communities will likely be sot out by the major brands aligning themselves with the opportunities created by all this social stuff.

The attraction will be driven by several factors including:

1. # of active participants
2. The community philosophy and quality of content
3. Growth rate of membership
4. Know experts or high profile bloggers whom are active and endorse the community
5. The quality of thinking and innovative approach to engaging community members
6. The systemic understanding of the emerging market of markets created by conversations

On the other hand if your community does not focus on the above six value attributes and then it isn't likely to survive. Attraction and traction comes from doing the right things and doing them right. Both are centric to being social and adding more value than is expected.

What say you?

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Will Your Community Survive?