Susan Barnes is the president and founder of Susby Internet Solutions. Susan enjoys teaching and strives to have her clients understand how they can use newer technologies to promote their businesses. Susan has been project manager, designer, developer and lead online marketing consultant for various small to medium sized businesses for over eleven years.
I’m working on a proposal for San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority and in reviewing their website, I noticed this inspiring little video about the world’s most environmentally friendly ferry that I hadn’t seen before. Yes, I get most of my news and information online, but I also listen to NPR and my ears are particularly interested in local green technology. I’m sorry I missed this video when it aired on CNN, because it is a great accomplishment for San Francisco and our beautiful bay.
Have you taken the ferry lately? What do you like about it? Did you know we have the most environmentally friendly ferry in the world?
I just learned through Twitter than Jeremiah Owyang is leaving Forrester research. I have admired his tweets and posts over the past several months so I am very interested to learn what he will be up to next. More importantly though, Mr. Owyang is an valuable role model for building your own personal brand even while working at a very well known company in a high profile position.
“My use of social media and my career advancement are intrinsically tied,” Owyang told us by phone today. “I started my blog as a practitioner at Hitachi. I budget time every morning to read and blog. I do that before I check my personal email or work email. I believe you have to pay yourself first. When you open your email you pay someone else, because it’s usually people reaching out to ask you for something. Taking the time to read blogs, synthesize and add value, that builds your community. That’s paying yourself first.”
Clearly, Jeremiah was making a conscious effort to build his own brand on Twitter and through his Web Strategist blog and Forrester is losing a superstar. He says he is excited to be practicing more about what he knows than analyzing it, so I’m particularly curious to see where he’s going.
The only constant (especially on the web,) is change. This one should be particularly interesting.
“Burson-Marsteller, in a July 2009 study of Fortune 100 companies, found that more companies had a presence on Twitter (54%) than on Facebook (29%). “
Furthermore when resources are limited in terms of time to spend on various social media channels, 21% of Fortune 100 companies use only one channel and 76% of those companies were likely to use Twitter, with only 14% choosing Facebook and 10 choosing blogging.
Why?
Twitter means business, where Facebook is entertainment.
Twitter is a place to connect around specific topics, where Facebook is a place to connect with friends and family.
Twitter is about following people you respect and being followed by people who respect you. Facebook is about having friends, sharing photos, events and having fun.
The twitter platform enables sharing of good links more freely and with a bigger reach than Facebook. Repeating on (and retweeting) on Twitter is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged, where repeating on Facebook makes your brand across as annoying.
Twitter is faster than blogging
Tweets are more easily digestible than blog posts. Think “byte” sized chunks of valuable information.
Tweeting a link to a blogpost is the norm
Twitter combines the fun of Facebook with the information and knowledge value distributed in blogs.
Twitter is more mobile and easier to do quickly than Facebook and blogging.
Twitter requires more listening than Facebook and blogging and that means the people that embrace the medium are better conversationalists, because dialog means listening and responding.
Twitter is real-time, blogging is as soon as I can get to it and Facebook is whenever. Time means money and money means business.
If you don’t know what retweeting is, it is simply repeating a tweet or post made through a Twitter account. Retweeting has many benefits including:
Sharing content of value with your followers, i.e. friends, colleagues, student, clients and potential clients
Saying thanks (aka giving kudos) to the author of the original post/tweet.
Sharing links which is beneficial from a search engine optimization standpoint
Since people are not on Twitter all day, they may have missed an important post. Retweeting helps spread the word, because the information is repeated and shared over a number of hours or days versus just appearing once in the Twitter timeline.
The presentation by Dan Zarella below details some key research findings.
If you haven’t spent much time in virtual realities like Second Life, playing roler player games or sending virtual gifts on Facebook you may not be aware what these virtual goods are. They are things like virtual flowers, virtual cupcakes or even virtual hugs. Remember when you used to send someone a birthday card or present in the mail when you couldn’t see them in person? Well in the digital age this process is being completed via emails, SMS messages and even more – virtual cards and even virtual gifts.
It’s the thought that counts, right? Well if it really is, then whether the gift is virtual or physical it shouldn’t matter. Could that be why virtual goods are a growing industry? Is everyone just being budget conscious or cheap by sending virtual gifts? I don’t think so. I think it’s all about connections.
Let’s face it, the world we live in today is much smaller than it was even twenty years ago, because there are many more opportunities to remain connected with people all over the world despite any physical distances. Virtual gifting is a way to let your friends and family know you care about them. My friend Helen sends her friends virtual flowers and gifts for birthdays. Because of that she is top of mind to me and likely most of her other friends when we think about a friend who knows how to play the piano or do administrative work at a law firm.
Showing you care is a way of building connections with people and virtual goods offer a way for you to do that. That’s one reason.
The other reason is that your virtual presence is just as important as your physical presence. Think about it. How many people can you talk to or be in front of physically in one day unless you are at a conference or giving a presentation? In the virtual world there are endless opportunities to be on various networks connecting, sharing, listening and talking with people. Sometime you may not even be aware of the people who are following you.
Virtual goods enable people to improve their virtual presence (avatars) and profiles and since trends in the digital space change so rapidly, there is always an opportunity to purchase something more up-to-date. The good news here, except for the expense is that virtual goods are a zero waste product. That’s the joy of virtual – nothing to throw away, recycle or feel guilty about buying because you’re ultimately adding to the physical landfill. Virtual waste is far more easily erased.
I think we are just at the tip of the virtual ice berg, ha ha, but it’s something to be aware of at least for the near and virtual future.
I just went to tr.im my favorite URL shortening tool to find the following message. This is very sad news. If you’re looking for a tr.im alternative, try http://bit.ly or http://ow.ly.
“tr.im is now in the process of discontinuing service, effective immediately.
Statistics can no longer be considered reliable, or reliably available going forward.
However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009. Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected.
We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed.
No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount.
There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening — users won’t pay for it — and we just can’t justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner.
There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep.
We apologize for the disruption and inconvenience this may cause you.”
For the past few years I have been a member of Kezar Road Runners, a fabulous group of runners who meet every Wednesday at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. We do a speed workout under the direction of Coach Joe and that is a story for another post, but just know that he is one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet and the best friend you could ever have. He’s also a great coach, an accomplished runner and just an overall good guy.
After Joe’s workouts, the tradition is to head over to Kezar pub for a pint or two of Guinness or your beverage of choice. It’s the best part of the evening, not only because you deserve it after the track workout, but also because you get to spend some quality time with interesting people with a variety of backgrounds and careers, but with one important thing in common: an appreciation for running.
So that’s why I’m at the pub on Wednesday evenings (well as much as I can anyway.) My reason for this post however, is that I was recently invited to become a fan of Kezar Pub on Facebook. Of course I accepted the invitation because Kezar Pub rocks and it’s definitely the Cheers of San Francisco. I know the names of the bar tenders and the very appropriately Irish and as appropriately hilarious Sinead is even a Facebook friend.
Thinking about this, I’m not sure if Kezar Pub understands the value of their presence on Facebook, but it makes me smile anyway. They can now
build a fan base BEFORE they need it so that when they do need it, they can notify their fans of events – the jello wrestling fund raisers are always fun!
understand who their fans are and make them feel important by providing special offers – nudge nudge, wink wink, can we get a Facebook Freebie please Bridgett?
be available for public comment online (for free) even though they don’t have a website – what no website yet? Scandelous! (but actually do they even need one? Could their Facebook presence be enough?)
offer information about hours, payment methods and updates
let their fans promote the pub through the social network effect with comments and photos (again for free)
Kezar Pub should have a website, but I’m sure they don’t feel like they need one. They are a San Francisco staple for both locals and sports fans. Most importantly, they are real and a cold one always goes down well after a good workout. Welcome to Facebook, Kezar Pub!
I’m reading “Naked Conversations” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel as a result of reading “Putting the Public Back into Public Relations” by Brian Solis and Deidre Brekenridge. What is it with dual authors? I guess the “two minds are better than a guru” adage applies with book writing too.
Anyway, “Naked Conversations” is an older book about blogging and while it is old in terms of the fact that blogging has been around for years now, I am enjoying the corollaries that I am finding between blogging and microblogging (and more specifically in my case Twitter, since that’s my microblogging platform of choice.)
On page 28, Naked Conversations talks about Blogging’s Six Pillars (from 2006) and I chuckle as I think about the similarities that Twitter has in 2009:
1. Publishable – “Anyone can publish a blog.” Anyone can tweet.
2. Findable – “Blog posts are search engine friendly.” Twitter posts (tweets) show up on search engines all the time.
3. Social – “The blogosphere is one big conversation.” Twitter is a great conversation starter. Many people think of twitter as a cocktail party where you chat with people who share similar interests. Conversations are short and fun. You converse more with those who you have more in common with.
4. Viral – “Information often spreads faster though blogs than via a news service.” Anyone heard of “Twitter-time?” Some say they get their news from Twitter now instead of any other news service.
5. Syndicatable – “RSS…” Um… RT is the ultimate in syndication and there are all kinds of tools that allow you to syndicate other people’s tweets.
6. Linkable – “Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to millions of other bloggers.” Twitter is all about sharing links and repeating (RT’ing or Retweeting) the links that other people have tweeted. It’s a love fest of links and information on your favorite topic.
Forenski says “Whenever there is criticism of Apple in the mediasphere I rarely see an Apple response. By mediasphere I mean the entire media landscape from traditional media through to social media, Twitter, etc,” implying that since Apple is a very successful company, perhaps other companies should mimic Apple’s behavior and stop monitoring, thus negating the need for social media marketing consultants such as myself and/or companies employing community managers.
I wonder if this isn’t the same as the “tree falls down in the woods and no-one was there to hear it” scenario. Did the tree make a sound? Using that as the analogy, was your complaint heard?
The benefit companies are receiving by listening and responding is in the brand equity that is earned a result of good customer service. Apple may be succeeding without social media, and maybe it’s only those companies that are struggling that really need to dive deep into it, but I think you’re right in saying that since Apple has done such a good job building it’s community of followers already. Apple knows that the community will respond where necessary. Perhaps Apple doesn’t need to participate in social media spaces as much as other companies, because their fan base is already doing it for them.
Create a good product and your customers will market it for you, right? What then is the critical mass where you can then turn off the volume on negative feedback and/or complaints? It seems you may need to be as successful as Apple to be able to do that.
