Make of Twitter what you will

Posted on December 11, 2011 at 5:00 pm UK

A few days ago, on December 7, I began my sixth year on Twitter. As with many things on the social web, there’s a free service that told me of the anniversary, and another one that sent me a ‘birthday card’.

Over 47,000 tweets later, what have I learned about this short-form thought-sharing medium? Well, the over-riding feeling I have is a simple one – there is no single way to use Twitter.

You’re a marketer? Then Twitter can be a marketing channel. A student? A chat tool for your friends. A politician? A medium for your sound bites. Selling something? A notification method of good deals. An activist? Quick connections. And so on.

I don’t fit any of those labels, yet I often use Twitter in ways such as those I mentioned along with others like tweet chats and live-tweeting events. Overall, though, I regard Twitter more as an informal communication method – much as the sentiment describing it when it first appeared – that complements other methods such as blogs (and indeed, can serve a valuable purpose of alerting your community to news and events), and I tend to use it as such: connecting with people as the moment presents itself, thinking out loud, note-taking, whatever suits. I write my own tweets and use the service manually, ie, no automated tweeting method nor any pseudo-scientific approach of alarm-clock tweeting.

Luckily, we’re all different and the Twitterverse is enriched – largely – by the myriad different ways people think about Twitter, what it is to them and their communities and how they use it, wherever they are in the world.

A few months ago, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the service has 100 million monthly active users worldwide; out of that group, 50 million people log in every day. And the latest metric a couple of weeks ago – English, Japanese and Portuguese may be the top three languages for tweeting, but the fastest-growing language is Arabic by a factor of over 2,000 percent. Social upheaval in the Arab world this year is undoubtedly a driving force for that.

Twitter’s growth over the past five years has been spectacular. It’s a poster child for the social web and something that captures imaginations to become an icon of popular culture.

Today, Twitter undoubtedly is mainstream in terms of public consciousness if not universal use.

And the latest moves during the past week involve a new look and some new functionality for the Twitter website, updated apps for the desktop and mobile devices, as well as business-focused features like brand pages.

Yes, there are plenty of different ways to to think about and use Twitter no matter how you approach it.

Useful information:

How B2B marketers use social media

Posted on December 2, 2011 at 7:48 am UK

The most effective social media tool for generating business leads is LinkedIn, according to a survey of B2B marketers in the US last month.

Marketing automation company Pardot carried out the survey and say they had input from “dozens of companies” to questions focused on social marketing etiquette, the influence of social media on leads and sales, the most useful social media tools, and the cost to operate social marketing programmes.

That headline metric about LinkedIn is notable, although perhaps not surprising to B2B marketers. According to Pardot’s research, Twitter is the social media tool most used by those marketers but not the one that is the best lead-generator. Indeed, LinkedIn performs over twice as well in that role compared to Twitter as this graphic illustrates.

Equally notable is the second most effective lead-generation tool – blogs. Long-form content and a place for conversational engagement appear to work well for B2B marketers.

Look, too, at how poor Facebook is for lead generation yet is one of the most-used social media tools according to Pardot’s survey.

What the survey doesn’t reveal – Pardot hasn’t published their methodology – is what those B2B marketers might have said about social media use for relationship- and community-building as opposed to the hard activity of lead generation. How would Twitter and LinkedIn have performed against each other, I wonder.

Other interesting metrics from Pardot’s survey report:

B2B marketers are spending millions of dollars annually on social marketing programmes, though nearly 30% are not tracking the impact of social media programmes on lead generation and sales.
Only 11% of marketers said their companies have a formal social media policy.
55% said contacting a social media-generated sales lead by phone or email is appropriate, even if the prospect had not invited the vendor to do so.
48% said it is appropriate to respond to a prospect via social media, if the prospect contacted the vendor via email or phone first.
All respondents said it is acceptable to invite a prospect to join a marketer’s online social networks, though some suggested the invites be limited to networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Plaxo and YouTube, versus more personal sites like Facebook.
31% said it is acceptable to critique a competitor via social media
Over 64% of respondents use “internal, free tools” only to manage social media campaigns.

Pardot has produced a neat infographic from which the image above comes. Note their tweet-quote in that infographic:

There isn’t an ‘across the board’ standard for appropriate action through social channels.

Spot on – you have to determine which are effective for what measurable goal you want to achieve. You can figure that out by a variety of means including reading survey research like Pardot’s, depth analysis from firms like Altimeter, and experimenting yourself.

(Via Mediabistro)

Snake oil marketing

Posted on November 17, 2011 at 8:02 am UK

Finally someone has produced an infographic-style video that flips the promotion of social media on its head to look at metrics such as the opener that says “Over 6.2 billion people on earth don’t use Facebook.”

“Social Media Truth” takes the opposite approach to videos like Erik Qualman’s original “Social Media Revolution” from 2009 – on which the former is clearly modelled including the Fatboy Slim track – but dear oh dear, what a subjective mess it is.

Take a look at Social Media Truth:

(If you don’t see the video embedded, watch it at YouTube.)

And, given that the video was made this year, check the updated Social Media Revolution 2011 for comparison:

(If you don’t see the video embedded, watch it at YouTube.)

With both of these videos, each is promoting something. In Qualman’s case, a book. With the other, a marketing event in Australia next February and March.

Erik Qualman’s original Social Media Revolution attracted nearly 3 million views on YouTube plus undoubtedly countless embeds in blogs and PowerPoint decks. His refresh version in 2010 has nearly 1.8 million views.

Even with some spot-on elements – good points about social media experts and snake oil salesmen – I’m still not sure whether Social Media Truth is tongue-in-cheek or not. After all, the video makes big that social media tools are essentially ignored or even worthless – yet the event organizer promotes a Twitter handle, a LinkedIn profile and a Facebook page for the event.

Talk about snake oil.

Watch them all and make up your own mind. I don’t think Social Media Truth is worth any attention but you may have a different view.

Related posts:

In Defence Of Influence Metrics

Posted on November 16, 2011 at 7:39 am UK

Is Klout getting a bum rap, spitefully pilloried in critical commentary such as my post on November 12 on opting out of Klout? Guest author Tammy Kahn Fennell believes that services like Klout and PeerIndex deserve fairer assessment.

Let me open with this. I am not invested in any influence score company. My company, MarketMeSuite integrates with Klout and Peer Index as one of about 20 other integrations. And we also have the option to turn off influence entirely. I am writing this because from where I’m standing, influence (specifically Klout) is being given a bad name not because of what it measures, but because how the company profits from it. I thought it was time to think long and hard about whether we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Neville was nice enough to give me a chance to post an opposing viewpoint to his “Out of Klout” article. Thanks Neville.

Let’s look at the facts of recent events:

Klout made an announcement they were shifting their algorithm to focus less on how much you post, and more on how engaging you are.

They gave people a week’s notice for this.

A couple of weeks ago a whole lot of people woke up to realize they were a fair bit less influential than they were the day before.

Whenever there’s a big change, it causes people to re-evaluate. And when an algorithm shift “disses” a whole bunch of people and flat out says “you’re less cool than you thought,” people can get a little angry.

Anger Turns To Spite

But what I’ve seen happen goes beyond anger. What I’ve seen happen is that people have turned incredibly spiteful toward influence metrics. Now, if you think it’s a load of BS and that there’s really no way to measure or rank, then fine, I’ll leave you in peace. But what I’m striving to put to rest is the ambiguity around whether people are attacking influence metrics themselves, or just Klout. Neville pointed out in a comment reply to me that he doesn’t feel the same about Peer Index, because he feels the company is run by a nice group of people and that may be true.The folks over at PI are very nice, that’s for sure, but, when my PI score and Klout score are within points of each other, one can’t help but wonder if the metric is actually correct, and that people are condemning influence as a metric because they have it in for one company, Klout.

(As an aside, I have spoken to the folks at Klout and have never found them to be the Ogres they are being painted as, but that’s not the point of this article. We must not judge usefulness on how much we like people in the company, but on whether it is actually useful.)

Continue reading →

All set for the huddle on November 3

Posted on October 31, 2011 at 8:46 pm UK

Planning is complete and things are all set for the Dell B2B Social Media Huddle that takes place in London on November 3.

For this fourth B2B social media networking event that Kerry Bridge and I have organized, we’re expecting a full house at Google’s London headquarters, the venue for our get-together. All 90 free tickets sold out long ago and there’s a waiting list. (If you have a ticket but now can’t make it on the day, please let us know so we can make a wait-lister happy.)

We have a great programme for everyone that includes formal keynote presentations:

Lee Bryant, co-founder and Director, Headshift, on social business
Cairbre Sugrue, Managing Director Technology, Edelman UK, on trust
Azeem Azhar, founder and CEO of PeerIndex, on influence marketing and measurement

And, there is the popular unconference aspect, with sessions run by anyone who would like to talk on a topic they believe will be of distinct interest and value to a B2B audience. So far, we have the following sessions confirmed:

Benjamin Ellis, Redcatco: From off-line to on-line – QR Codes, geo-location and what comes next
Jas Dhaliwal, AVG.com: Tactics and strategies for connecting with communities
Rob Shimmin, Shimmin Brand Protection: Social Media – Letting your corporate guard down?
Andrew Grill, PeopleBrowser: How social is impacting TV and all forms of traditional media, from production to consumption

If you have an idea for an unconference session you’d like to run, let us know. There will be an opportunity to do that on the day.

Everyone who’s got a ticket will have received an email from Kerry today with details of the agenda, venue, timings, etc. So we look forward to seeing you in London on November 3!

If you can’t physically attend but want to participate remotely or follow the event virtually, there are a variety of ways you can connect and join the conversation: