ImpactWatch Blog

Marshall Kirkpatrick’s “This Machine Eats Tweets” on ReadWriteWeb started an interesting conversation last week by asking if corporate social media engagement is helpful or intrusive.

After a negative experience with Comcast Cable, Marshall wrote a sarcastic tweet about the company’s customer service. He received a message from Comcast on Twitter, asking if Comcast could help.

Seems like a fairly innocent, even positive exchange. But Marshall quickly realizes that Comcast most likely received some sort of automated notification of their company’s twitter mention. He posits that:

• It’s “deeply disturbing” to have a media monitoring or CRM system between customer and company (though he acknowledges that it’s unrealistic for large companies to monitor and respond to social media without technology).
• While an interaction may look like a simple exchange to the customer, the company is collecting and applying information from his/her profile (past interactions with companies,  background, influence, etc).
• Social media monitoring opens the way for marketing/sales attempts through SM platforms.

There are a lot of great comments on the post, many of which address Marshall’s concerns.

• Michael Downs mentions that some companies are using this information as an opportunity to improve customer service.
• Marcel LeBrun points out that the interaction was genuine as (at least in the case cited by Marshall) the company spokesperson has an ongoing presence on Twitter, is available to form a relationship with and personally responded to Marshall’s concern.
• Richard Petersen contributes a great list of ways that companies really can go wrong in social media engagement:

“When the company violates the norms of online social communications – spamming (as you noted); pretexting and/or astro-turfing; outsourcing your identity to others to act on your behalf; selling or upselling instead of offering  help authentically; or violating the network’s terms of service or APIs.”

• Coldbrew suggests that media monitoring tools make it difficult for companies to maintain authenticity.
• Martin Edic gets the gold star for his comment that all of this information is submitted to public forums.  If you don’t want companies to see it, make it private.

Despite the discussion surrounding media monitoring tools, I think Marshall’s main concern in the motivation of companies who engage in social media. They may decide to only respond to influentials’ complaints, or only negative comments, or only to expressions of need/sales opps.

And that’s not engaging in a “real” conversation.

But the probability of a company accidentally stumbling on your Twitter profile and genuinely wanting to have a conversation with you is…well…not very high. That person is getting paid to address your concern, to improve consumer satisfaction, to increase profits. That’s how companies work.

When you call the customer service number of a corporation or send them a help email, you’d better believe that they are looking up how much money you spend with them and how much of a pain in their ass you are, just like service reps on social media are looking at your past tweets and follower count. But maybe Average Joe’s new-found ability to trash a vendor to a few thousand of his closest friends will get him closer to VIP status.

Marshall’s concern about marketing and sales pressure through social media channels is already coming to pass. I see this every day. And sometimes do it myself.

When someone asks how to measure social media, I sent them a link to resources. When someone asks about how to  monitor their media, I answer their question. When someone asks for a recommendation, I introduce our firm.

Everyone will have a different idea of what crosses the line between helpful and intrusive, but I think social media has an advantage in finding its own happy medium – companies are listening.

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of: faeryboots

If you’re looking to capitalize on Oprah’s show last week as well as the publicity generated by Kutcher’s million user showdown with CNN, then you’re probably interested in getting involved with Twitter — a great place to increase your exposure to the social media savvy.

The trick to Twitter is to keep things targeted, and only Tweet with real “value” — snippets or links that people will actually find insightful or useful. Let’s face it, Kutcher and Oprah have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to Twitter — their own celebrity — and making the platform work for your organization is going to take some strategy, patience, and a bit of luck.

While is is nice to achieve a following of epic proportions, Twitter really won’t do anything for you unless the relationships you make on the site add value to your organization. The first step here is to identify influential Twitterers within our target niche (your organization’s target market) and begin conversing with them. Use Twitter’s search features to find content that relates to your niche or industry. While these people will certainly appreciate a ReTweet, adding insight to their postings and pointing them to relevant, undiscovered slices of the web will be the most direct way to get noticed.

How much  should one Tweet? There’s no straightforward way to answer this, and there are multiple correct responses. An account that has dozens of Tweets a day will annoy users and come off as “spammy”, but an inactive account won’t do you much good either. I would let quality be the barometer for what you should or shouldn’t Tweet; quotas might encourage lackluster Tweeting, or conversely curb quality conversation. As a general rule, if a Tweet doesn’t contain original insight, perspective, or content, I tend to pass on posting it.

Twitter is all about conversation. Responding to direct messages, Tweets, and mentions should become a daily occurrence.  Using a Twitter App might streamline your Twitter-related workflow.

Facebook is a completely different game. While they’ve recently been making efforts towards joining the real-time conversation, Facebook is more about a static presence and providing a reference for addicted users rather than the “here and now” of Twitter. Provide real contact details, and make sure your organization’s page looks friendly and professional. If you prefer, you can integrate Facebook to distribute your Twitter announcements — more on this in part 5, when we orchestrate our social media to work together as a well-oiled machine.

At this point, we’ve begun creating our own original social media with an overall strategy in mind, keeping good etiquette practices in mind. The next step will consist of expanding readership and exposure through news sharing services such as Digg and Delicious, and finally we’ll wrap things up in an involved, step-by-step example of integrating all of these web layers into our home URL.

The other day Hannah sent me a blog post titled 10 Things to Do Immediately After a Networking Event. There’s a lot of good information in there, and while I agree with most of it I’m going to have to take issue with number 2.

2) Connect on Facebook. My favorite strategy. I look the people up on Facebook using their business cards and add them to my network. Now, I know their birthdays, their occupation, and their day to day status (literally!). Best Rolodex in the world.

I know people use different networking sites in different ways. And I’ve been in a handful of arguments about the people I’m “friends” with on Facebook. But I can say that 99% of those friends are people I have actually hung out with casually outside of a networking event, conference, or business club. I wouldn’t consider somebody I wanted to form a potential new business relationship with as a Facebook friend candidate. It just seems a little too personal.

Then there’s LinkedIn. They don’t even call them friends, they’re “connections.” I consider that more of a professional network than Facebook and that’s pretty much what it’s intended to be. My LinkedIn connections are all people I’ve worked with in some capacity at one point or another, save for a few close friends that going to be connected to me on any networking site that I’m part of.

Last but not least, there’s the Wild West of social networking, Twitter. If I follow somebody it’s because I’m interested in what they have to tweet about. I’m not going to get my feelings hurt if they don’t follow me back. Part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can be part of the conversation without having to know somebody at all.

Am I alone here? Do you have boundaries for different social network “friends” or is it just a free for all now?

In the process of leafing through my RSS reader seeking inspiration for a blog post, I came across some outstanding links relating to things we do here at ImpactWatch. If you haven’t checked out these articles, they are definitely worth a look.

Some URL’s relevant to your interests:

• Social media expert Mark Evans details his thoughts on the long-term effects of social media.
• A TechCrunch report on internet advertising and how its growth is outpacing television.
• Snippet on determining browser market share.
• Tips for spotting users with fake Twitter followings.

Just a quick look at Monday’s web offerings.

New applications and iterations of Twitter arrive daily, but I think I’ve finally found one that I want to champion:  Present.ly.  Despite my hatred of Web 2.0-y names for products, I feel like there are a lot of positive things to be said about it.

In the company’s own words: “Present.ly gives your employees the ability to instantly communicate their current status, ask and answer questions, share media, and more with the revolutionary communications method pioneered by Twitter.”

Pros

• Text attachments give users the ability to forgo the 140 character limit and attach longer accessible text
• The company offers an Enterprise Edition that provides more behind-the-firewall security than their open cloud-hosted version
• Plenty of interfaces are compatible, including smart phones like iPhones
• The website offers user feedback options as well as video tours
• Users can send video, images, audio, and more through attachments within the tweets
• Group creation helps users to only see the messages that are relevant to them

Present.ly had been around for less than a year, but in that time they’ve made some great progress.  I’m interested to see what else they have in store.

My only query concerns the types of businesses that need this sort of communication.  Assuming most of today’s companies use email for their interoffice communication, I can’t see there being a huge market for Present.ly.  For giant companies it seems like a lot of ‘noise’ would be present on such a platform, and small boutiques could just as easily email or chat with their five-person team.  Twitter is becoming more widespread, however, and this application is an example of just how big the idea has grown.

Can Twitter apps like this one help businesses flourish?  We’ll have to wait and see.

A new service called TweepMe is being released today. The website says the service is an opt-in service where member agree to follow each other.

All you have to do is put in your Twitter username and password and, sometime tonight, everyone who has signed up will start mutually following each other. As new members join, they will follow all other members and in turn be followed by all.

Twitter for the lazy set.

Tweepme is offering the first 5000 to join a free lifetime membership. Everyone else will have to pay $8.95.

The problem with this is that the Twitter community looks down on any illegitimate follower gains. You have your purists who think you should connect with every follow and distain the quid pro quo followback. You have the armageddonists who think that sky-high follow rates will render the site spam-filled and unusable. Then you have the people that worked hard for their Twitter base and think it’s just plain cheating.

There’s plenty of discussion web-side about the security of the accounts that have signed up, whether Twitter will even allow such a thing and what will happen if they do.

The tool’s own Twitter account is currently suspended – probably not a good sign.

I personally signed up with a secondary account…just to see what happens. I’ll let you know.

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Follow me on Twitter the old fashioned way.

Sheep photo by cappellmeister

UPDATE 3/18: I signed up with two test accounts. I then cancelled one of them to see if the request would be honored. Neither account has added any TweepMe followers, despite the site currently having 4,472 registered members. The company has also created a new Twitter account – the original remains suspended.

UPDATE 3/20: I have 15 followers and am following 8. Not sure if it’s supposed to go this slowly, but it’s not a bad plan if it is.

UPDATE 4/1: Things began happening yesterday. I now follow 82 and am following 64. Given that my test profile has a photo, no bio and 1 update, it’s understandable that TweepMe members are unfollowing me after I’m auto-added to their account.

UPDATE 4/14: We really picked up speed over the weekend – or people really love my profile photo. I am following 428, followed by 491 and 1 update. TweepMe seems to have delivered on its promises.

UPDATE 5/6: Remembered to check and now am following 2001, with 1783 following back. I’m surprised at how few un-follows given that it’s not a real account. It’s possible that people tried to organize their follows at first, then gave up when the count got too high. That’s what I would have done :)

If you haven’t logged into Facebook recently, go ahead and take a nice gander. Things have changed quite a bit with their most recent design. Drawing quite a bit off of Twitter, the site is now truly up-to-the-second with updates, wall posts, messages — all of it merging into your homepage in a glob of real time conversation.

There are a lot of non-Twitter users on Facebook — and redesigns of Zuckerberg’s web portal are often met with passive aggressive resistance, such as the formation of anti-Facebook Design Team groups and status updates ridden with complaints against the change. Alas, once the masses use the new format for long enough, they accept that it won’t change back and even the late adopters hop on board.

This set of changes will challenge some users to think outside of their user experience comfort zone, in a way that is more drastic than previous redesigns. It changes the dynamic a lot.

That said, the changes are pretty logical and in the opinion of this daily user, a long time coming. This is the kind of change that will inform millions and millions off people on the ways of socially driven media, forcing them to become part of the real-time conversation.

Facebook's Original Homepage

#followfriday is a phenomenon in the Twitter community. Essentially, people are tweeting about interesting people that they follow on Twitter to promote and share them with their own followers. In doing this they’re helping to promote and grow their own network.

So you’re following all these new and interesting people, and many of them are probably following you back to find out what you’re all about which leads to an email from Twitter telling you about it.

The email is pretty basic. Here’s an example:

Hi, Chuck Fitzpatrick (chuckfitz).

RedCross (American Red Cross) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out RedCross’s profile here:
http://twitter.com/RedCross

The first thing you’re probably going to do is click on the profile link to learn more about who that is. That’s where Twimailer comes in. It’s a middle-man replacement for the basic email that you normally get from Twitter directly. Check out this screen shot of the email I get now.

The Twimailer email has all of the info you were going to go look up anyway right there in front of you.

• Profile picture
• Full name
• Last 10 tweets
• Number of people they are following
• Number of followers
• Their bio information

Plus it still has the link to their page so you can follow them back. Of course, that’s if they don’t have crazy following and follower counts and their last 10 tweets were about the get-rich-quick plan they want to sell you.

Check out Twimailer and let me know what you think in the comments. And if you want to celebrate #followfriday you can always follow ImpactWatch or me!

Yesterday I was walking through Mexico City and I snapped a photo of a tanning salon. I thought that, coupled with a witty comment, it would make a great tweet. Selling sun to tan people in one of the world’s sunniest cities seems like a pretty funny business to be running in a global recession.

But I haven’t posted it.

I haven’t fully embraced the new ability to embed photos in Twitter with Power Twitter. They distract me. I feel like they are encroaching on other tweets’ personal space. And I’m assuming other users are noticing this too – making the addition of a video or photo a new tactic for making your tweet stand out from the rest.

So I have to get used to videos and photos in my Twitterstream and probably lots of them: photos of your cat, your recorded marketing pitch, any even-slightly-humorous video you find on YouTube.

I’ve made my peace with that. But would it be too much to ask for Twitter to add them a little more discreetly? How about a thumbnail with mouse-over to enlarge? Or as @pugofwar suggested on twitter this morning, a Lightbox* image on clicking.

What do you think of the new “Post Photo” feature? Are you using it? Are you loving it? Do you long for the days of links and Twitpic?

Check out Hannah’s photo-free profile on Twitter.

*That’s the script that makes images appear “over” the web page, then you click to close them.

I have a whole media monitoring routine that I go through every day. Media analysis is what we do and I even use our product, ImpactWatch, to do it. I see who has mentioned us on Twitter, who is talking media tracking on blogs, what new articles have been published about our competitors or industry. I try to track and read every single relevant post, tweet or update.

I read all this stuff to learn about advances in technology, to steal ideas (kidding… sort of) and because we have to. We are an internet company and our entire universe is online. Our product is online. Our media coverage is online. Our customers are online.

Media monitoring companies also look pretty incompetent when they miss their own mentions.

But not every company needs this level of media tracking. Some don’t need any at all.

This morning, while reading through industry blogs, I came across a post about a tweet by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. He stopped by The Burger Grill but they didn’t have Swiss cheese for his burger. Understandably peeved, he tweeted it.

Now, the point of the blog post I was reading is that The Burger Grill is in big trouble if they don’t get a handle on this negative online publicity. Who would even go to a burger place that doesn’t have Swiss cheese?*

Well, probably the 99.9% of Americans that don’t use Twitter. The fact is that for a small, offline business the potential damage from a few negative online comments is minimal. The vast majority of their customers are local, many of them not active in social media and none of them likely to happen upon a few random comments about this brand. If The Burger Grill had an issue severe enough to affect business – hideous décor, atrocious food or filthy bathrooms – customers would likely start mentioning it in person.

Do I think The Burger Grill could benefit from an online presence? Certainly they could:

-promote their business, increasing brand awareness.
-engage customers, bringing online contacts into their real-world restaurant.
-research their industry, reading comments about what people want/expect from a restaurant experience.
-develop an online mailing list of customers for promotions.
-provide online info, menu, specials (I personally love an online menu).

I encourage every company to take advantage of the web and social media to expand their business. And part of that is brand monitoring. But I’m also tired of the alarmist social media proponents insisting that this is critical for every company, and that if you’re going to do it, you have to do it all.

Media monitoring, measurement and engagement takes time and that means it costs money. Many small and/or offline businesses would find that the time involved to read coverage, to find someone who understands how to set up monitoring, to buy a computer (?) wouldn’t be worth it to address customer concerns that are few and far between. For them, focusing on a quality product and solid customer service is not only a more critical use of their time, it also serves to reduce or eliminate the very concerns they would be trying to monitor.

And, my dear Chicken Littles, when these companies do perceive a need to join the internet age, they will start with a program that fits their business – presence where their customers are, metrics that track what matters to their business, according to their needs and resources.

Zappos.com vs The Burger Grill perfectly highlights the two ends of the brand monitoring spectrum. Most other companies will fall somewhere between the two and must determine the right media tracking program for their business. I’ll be posting some tutorials that will hopefully help them out with that.

*The general availability of Swiss cheese at The Burger Grill remains unconfirmed. This may have been a temporary shortage.

For more cheesy goodness, follow hannah on twitter.