Archive for the 'Twitter' Category
I’ve been in a blogging slumber for months, but some recent experiences with Klout and Twitalyzer, combined with Veronica Heringer’s own good post about Klout, caused me to put my fingers to the keyboard.
Veronica expanded on her thoughts regarding, well, how much clout one should give to Klout’s numbers as a measure of our individual influence on Twitter.
Here’s my take on it: services like Klout and Twitalyzer can be a good accessory in helping marketers to identify potential influencers in a specific realm, but at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for common sense and actually reading an account’s Twitter stream to detect if that person’s (or company’s) updates are valuable.
Why do I say this? Because, yesterday I noticed that a specific Twitter user who, in my books is a spammer (with the best of intentions), ranked very well on Klout. Other than this individual’s malpractices on Twitter, I don’t have anything against this person. What makes it even more difficult to swallow it is that we have met before. I enjoyed our interactions in more than one occasion, and would have sincerely thought that he/she would think twice before sending me a Direct Message that was clearly promotional, about a topic that I have no interest in. More than once. That same direct message was also sent to other people in my circle.
That Twitter stream – once personal and engaging – is now littered with links upon links that regurgitate headlines, in a fashion that is only employed by less-than-reputable accounts.
I’m not giving out any names because everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves.
As I was saying… as a marketer, I might think that this account is a key influencer in my geographical area were I to solely rely on Twitalyzer and Klout. But, as my parents used to tell me as a kid, “Diga-me com quem andas, que eu te direi quem és”. Meaning, “Tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are”. Regardless of their score, I’d sure as hell not want to associate myself, nor my clients, with that Twitter user.
Thoughts?
There’s much debate about the impact of social media on companies’ revenue. However, no case study or research report hits the message home as much as “real life”, empirical examples. Today, I’ll tell you the story of how Bluehost got itself a new customer (and more revenue) through the power of social media, backed by excellent customer service:
My client, In Order To Succeed, has been having a less-than-stellar time with their current host (HostMDS). During the better part of the last week, it has been a saga where their email service doesn’t work and the site has been down. Their current host is based on the East Coast, and their phone technical support has forgotten that clients in the PST zone may need their help from time to time. That’s why I’m not linking to their site – because it is “out of order”. But I digress.
As their advisor on these matters, I had no choice but to decide to move their site (and email service) to a new host. The question was: which host should we choose? Enter social media.
Read more
Illustration by jolieodell, through Flickr
Local Internet celebrity John Chow has been in the news quite a bit in the last few days, thanks to his introduction of ads to his Twitter updates (Here are the original articles in The New York Times and in The Gawker).
I have posted a couple of comments on other sites about this, which pretty much express my thoughts on this one – at least up until this point in time. I’d be a fool to think that my opinion might not evolve as I hear more on both sides of the equation.
The first comment I wrote was in response to Philip Novak’s link to The New York Times, posted in his Facebook page: It reads…
” I have mixed feelings on that one. On one hand, the original tweet about M&Ms did have “(Ad)” in its text. In addition, if people dislike John’s commercial tweets, they have a simple choice, which is to unfollow him.
As a marketer, I’d be very skeptic about recommending this ad platform to advertisers. It’d be interesting to see what kinds of conversions those ads receive, and how they affect not only the advertiser’s reputation, but also the reputation of the Twitter user who originally posts it.
As a Twitter user, I wouldn’t dare sending a Twitter ad to my followers. It decreases the intrinsic level of trust that brought Twitter to where it is now. And if someone I trust and follow began to post those ads, their reputation would take a quick plunge, leading me to unfollow them.”
Then, a little earlier today, I posted this second comment, on Patti Schom-Moffatt’s blog post:
“Hello,
As you probably know, John Chow made the news because he started incorporating ads in his Twitter stream.
I personally wouldn’t integrate ads in my Twitter updates, largely because I feel that it betrays the trust between myself and my followers.
Maybe John Chow’s followers may not have been surprised that he’d adopt this practice. In that case, whether or not he runs Twitter ads might not necessarily hurt his number of followers.
But what if an ad runs through a Twitter account where followers did not see it coming? In that case, it would be interesting to see the long-term effects on the reputations of both the advertiser and the Twitter account that published the ad.
I could see this ad model working for Twitter accounts that already include information about commercial offers, like coupons, discounts, local offers, etc, but not for others that have built their reputation based on the personal tone in their conversations.
Last but not least, if anyone is insulted by the ads, they always have a choice: unfollow whoever published them.”
So this sums up my thoughts on this… for now.
Would love to hear your opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?
I read a few minutes ago that Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, announced in London on Thursday that, at the end of the year, Twitter will offer premium accounts with features to help businesses capitalize even more on that social network.
These features will include access to analytics data, and according to MarketingVox, “the ability to geo-tag individual tweets” as well as “tools to recognize which users have higher reputations than others”.
So… that’s got me thinking. As we all know, recent events, such as Michael Jackson’s death, and several developments during the last elections in Iran (e.g. Neda’s death), were first reported on Twitter before being confirmed by many major news outlets, including CNN. Discussions abounded with respect to the fact that the Twitter population was largely accepting as truth what some Twitter users reported, before facts could be validated through standard journalism practices.
Here’s where I see a hypothetical opportunity for reputable news outlets to vindicate themselves on Twitter: take the soon-to-come geo-tagging feature, mix it with the ability to identify users that have higher reputation (partially through the number of followers), and just for hypothesis sake, add a touch of PageRank. What do you get? The ability to pinpoint Twitter accounts that are the most reputable at a specific location. (Post-edit: I know, I know. PageRank is a Google technology, but wouldn’t it be nice?)
Let me illustrate: the New York Times Twitter profile has a PageRank 7. For those unfamiliar with the concept, PageRank is a metric that Google uses to indicate the importance and reliability of a web page (not a web site). The higher that number, the more importance Google has assigned to that page. Not only that – NY Times’ Twitter account also had, at the time of this writing, 2,107,499 followers, which is a stratospheric number reflecting the importance that Twitter users have given to updates from that account.
Then, poor New York Post has, by comparison, a measly 19,983 followers, and a PageRank 6. What if you were looking on Twitter for an authoritative news source to read about what’s happening in New York, using the geo-tagging component?
Let’s imagine a map tool on Twitter, similar to Google’s own. You would then zoom into New York City, and the service would return a list showing accounts in that area, ordered from the most reputable to the least. It’s safe to assume that The New York Times would be, if not at the top, very close to it – while the New York Post would be ranked considerably lower.
In the event of a major news event, Twitter users would refer to that map to see which accounts could be trusted in that locality. What would they see? Surprise, surprise – NY Times’ account close to the top of the list, with others ranked lower.
When Michael Jackson passed away, this would have translated as LA Times deemed as a much more trustworthy Twitter account to follow than, for example, TMZ.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Twitter users would decide to follow what the LA Times has to say instead of TMZ – but at the very least, it would be a boost to “traditional” news sources’ visibility on Twitter.
Can’t wait to see what concoctions will be coming from the Twitter kitchen at the end of the year. What about you?
Just got back from the Vancouver launch of “Twitterville”, authored by Shel Israel. For those who are not familiar with Shel, he has also written “Naked Conversations”, that one co-authored with Robert Scoble (@scobleizer).
Shel Israel & Ferg Devins
A good chunk of the Vancouver Twitter community turned out for the launch at Canvas Lounge. Some of the people I came across were @jaypiddy, @hummingbird604, @CathyBrowne (who’s actually mentioned in the book!), @raincoaster, @cognoscento, @johnbiehler, @tinybites and @bluelimemedia, among many others.
Shel graced us with an entertaining and informative presentation about the book. Here are some of the points, along with a few pictures for good measure:
- People, communications and conversations are changing. Whereas prior to social media conversations took place from the “top down” (i.e. – from the upper ladders of corporations down to end consumers), the advent and adoption of social media have reversed that.
- Shel’s perspective is that Twitter has a small-town feeling, where conversations start out similarly to two neighbours chatting across one fence. At first, the chat may be superficial, but then a deeper rapport is created. Conversations are one-on-one. Twitterville tells stories that were relayed to Shel through Twitter.
- Wondering how to stand out in the social media crowd? “Outgenerous” your competition. By giving more (advice, that is), people get to know that you’re the person to go for insight in your field… which increases your reputation.
- Social media gives companies a chance to humanize their brands (as told by @MolsonFerg – Ferg Devins – head of public affairs in Canada for Molson Coors and one of the case studies in Twitterville)
- Wondering if anyone can make money off Twitter? Just look at the example of @CrowdSPRING. According to Shel, CrowdSpring’s business model is basically to tweet RFPs. The company makes a 15% revenue based on the value of each proposal that is approved.
Cathy Browne. One of the stories in Twitterville.
- Yes, Twitter can be used in more “traditional” fields. Just look at how doctors at Henry Ford Hospital “tweetcasted” a live, robotic surgery – one tweet at a time. time. Results from tweets kept on arriving even after the surgery was over: because the type of surgery performed is elective, the increased exposure created more inquiries from private clients. More students were interested in practicing at Henry Ford. More innovative doctors were keen to bringing their skills to the hospital.
- Shel Israel explained that his attraction to Twitter is that it is one tool which allows people to act more like in real-life. Hence why it’s probably so popular.
Other observations, these from the question & answer period:
- Instead of monitoring what everyone is saying about its brand, Dell only looks at conversations coming from those with slightly positive or slightly negative perceptions. They ignore what comes from consumers who have pretty much made up their minds that Dell sucks. Instead, they focus on consumers who they have a chance to transform into advocates. To do so, they use a mix of measurement tools that include Radian6 as well as… Google (who would’ve thought?)!
- Another member of the audience (I’m so sorry I didn’t catch his name. All I know is that he sounded slightly British) brought up a couple of very valid points: to measure your influence on Twitter, don’t look at you number of followers. Instead, examine how relevant your followers are to your message. Number of RTs is also a great index to measure the value of what you’re communicating.
Ok. It’s late at night, so this post is going out as is. Hope you get some good value from it!
