Today Twitter broke again.. too much traffic.

3 Hollywood celebrities die and the consciousness of the internet can't handle the traffic. (by the way, I am saddened by their deaths, I don't mean to trivialize that)

I know I dedicate too much time to Twitter in this blog. There are so many aspects of it to comment on. From the spammers who are trying to exploit it, to the people building their "personal brand" by creating thousands of followers, to the companies making real efforts to add transparency to their customer communications.

At the end of the day, nobody likes the Twitter application itself.  It's the public stream of consciousness we want to read and write to. People tweet form their cell phones, third party apps or by clicking a "share this" link in an article. So if it's all just the data, why aren't the bigger players stepping up?

The transition would be easy.. register your Twitter account.. some giant database run by a giant internet power suck all your information out, and we all move on.  RIP Twitter. 

Amazon, with your "elastic cloud services" you provide, you must be set up with a LOT of hardware and availability? How about setting up a web service for people to post status updates into one giant database, and track their friends? See my past post on some enhancements you might want to think about.

Google? How about you? I'm happy with the speed my search results come back. I've never seen a "FAIL WHALE" pop up during that request. It would set you up great for rolling out Google Wave.

All we want is some borg-like company to manage the info for us. Then all the twitter application developers would happily point to that stream to save their information. We'd also happily cross post to Twitter before it died completely. So let's all agree, Twitter was a great idea that was poorly implemented. Now get out of the way and someone build it right.
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As many of you have read, I've had some great conversations with my friends at Cisco Webex.  We use Webex to present to hundreds of people.  Over the last year I have met folks from their eLearning, and eMarketing groups and since then I have begun to think deeper about how we can use both synchronous and asynchronous communication to foster a community. 

Let me explain.  "Synchronous" simply means you are communicating back and forth and for the most part you are reponding to what was just spoken.  "Asynchronous" refers to how online communities work.You can go back in time and comment on something someone said 5 days ago.  You read the conversation in any order you want.    When chatting about this with my friend Dana Bowler at Webex we spoke for quite a while on how the synchronous events could draw the community together and re-engage them in the community after the event.  The result of that chat is a Webinar we will both Co-host. 

Click here to register.  Details are below.  Looking forward to the discussion!

Webinar: The Facilitated Discussion
with Dana Bowler and David Carter - June 18, 2009 2:00 PM EST

What better way to add relevance to your online community and build relationships with its members than through real-time discussions?

Join Dana Bowler, Global Collaboration Consultant at Cisco Webex, and David Carter Founder and CTO of Awareness Inc. on June 18 at 2PM ET as they discuss the marriage of Synchronous and Asynchronous communication within online communities.

In this session, Dana will share best practices around facilitating a topic based discussion. You will learn how to engage the audience in conversation and the best ways to weave the experience back into your community. David will take us through "Points of Enthusiasm" and how to leverage the excitement of your audience to build participation and conversation within your community. In addition, he will discuss the value of archived content as a way to drive ongoing participation with your community.

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Call me crazy and maybe I have been focusing too much on Facebook Connect.  Frankly very few people ask, but I did get a question about OpenSocial today. I Googled "LinkedIn Open Social" and the first hit was October 31, 2007.  Hmmm, not the beehive of activity I was hoping for.  Most of the hits were the press announcements from .. ah.. October 31, 2007.

I finally found a link on the OpenSocial.org  .  It wasn't easy but I found a page on LinkedIn for API access.  I filled out the API request, and here was my response.





So, how does one portray themselves as a compelling LinkedIn partner without being able to develop an integration?  There is no doubt that LinkedIn is a force in social media, but it took a long time to get here and in that time other social media home runs have waltzed in and claimed a big piece.  These might not be competitors.. or are they?

What about an enterprise that wants to write something for staff to use to access their LinkedIn data?

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube all have community aspects to their offering and all are exponentially easier to work with as a developer. Only Facebook even comes close to being a place for me to connect with collegues on (but thats still a big "Yikes") .  So wake up LinkedIn, time to embrace third party developers.


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With Twitter being the hottest online space at the moment, marketers are trying to crack the code on getting to twitter users.  Lets face it, Twitter is broke, and in the exact same state email was at in the early days.  Why not  try to exploit it.  We tolerate a flow of junk because its new and cool.  We can easily point to a relevant tweet to justify our obsession.  Spammers see an opportunity too and are mirroring genuine behavior. I see a number of tactics in use.  Don't be offended if you personally use these tactics for your own personal tweeting. Spammers want to look like you.  However, ask yourself if you use these tactics because you are trying to get the most out of the conversation, or are you personally trying to attract followers?  You may be a spammer. 

Follow lots of people.

Sure, you aren't really reading their content, but if you follow them, they might follow you back.  Its easy to find your targets. http://search.twitter.com will return a list.  What makes your brand look better than a gazillion followers?  Some spammers even un-follow if people don't reciprocate the follow (the nerve).  They don't want their follow/following ratio to get out of hand.. they might look like spammers.

Get lots of followers. 

If you are a spammer you need eyeballs reading your stuff and following your links. Do people read everyone they follow? The followed profiles certainly get more attention than the general twitter stream of content , but even the mavens I follow in social media put so much content that is not relevant   to me that I barely notice their good stuff.  If you watch there are gems, but these same people are also offering political  opinion, sports shout-outs, responses to other tweets.  The noise in twitter is numbing.  If they follow you though.. you can send them direct messages. 

Send Direct Messages

Your first chance to send a direct message is the auto-follow message.  "Thanks for following me, I look forward to reading your tweets.. click here to buy my book", or insert your favorite spammy message.

Hi-jack popular Hash Tags

Argh... (you caught me.. I was "grugging" there for a sec)  I hate this one. For good reason, people tag their conversations which allows you to search a "topic", not just a person.  You will see things like #awarenessinc used by our company in our tweets so people can group information about our company or during our webinars.  Actually combine the two  (hash tags and webinars) and you have a Twebinar.  Say it "twebinar, its fun.  Here's what spammers do.  Spammers create an account, watch for trending topics in Twitter, then join the conversation. People will say "hey, who is this guy?",  and read the profile, or even follow blindly like Lemmings running off a cliff .  Sadly it's what you should do if you really want to be part of a conversation, spammers know that.  I click a lot of profiles and see if people are actually writing about the content I want to read on a regular basis, then I follow. 

Post often. 

If people are getting a flooded with tweets, make sure you are in the stream of content.. often.  Its tough, because you have to think of stuff to tweet about. Those doing it manually have learned to just speak random thoughts out loud.  "Wow this hamburger is good", tweeted the social media expert.  Try it in real life.  Walk down the street just blurting out things that pop into your head.  Pretty soon you will realize your side of the street is relatively free of people and the general public are walking on the other side.  For some reason its perfectly acceptable on Twitter.   Yes, I have started to do it on Twitter.  I can argue for or against it, BUT spammers know that.  See the next point.

And lastly my new favorite...

ReTweet posts.

If new content is hard to write, retweet others.  If the this bubble we live in wasn't already the ultimate echo chamber before.. it is now.  The Retweet (see the "RT and @address in front of the tweeted message) has become an Twitter endorsement of your content. I am always flattered when someone thinks my content is so worthwhile they retweet it.  Especially if the content is retweeted by someone in the business.  I do it.  It beats the heck out of a "poke" or "nudge" or whatever you do to get somone's attention.  If I retweet you, assume I am saying "well done".  This morning, my post was retweeted by a Candy manufacturer.  Ummmm, not sure how that could be anything but an "auto-retweet" based on that fact that I used the word "candy" in the content. The content was clearly in the category of me posting random stuff.  No thought leadership there.  I commented that I was eating candy for breakfast, thanks to a package a client sent.   I could be wrong, maybe that company was endorsing that behaviour and thought of me as some dietary thought leader, but watch for it as a tactic.

If the fact that I have called out these tactics as spam tactics offends you.. don't be. I use them, and I like to feel when I do its genuine. Plus, the ultimate test of a spammer... If you are offended.. you are not a spammer ;)



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Sometimes I worry we think too far ahead.  Our new Hyper-Micro-Blogging platform gets it bang on.  Called "grugging" it lets people communicate in a way that is

• Cost/Time sensitive


• Easy to understand


• Authentic and Transparent

Find our more on our site www.awarenessnetworks.com or reading the press release here

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I was catching up on my reading after a vacation.  Generally I just move on to new content, however an article caught my eye in eWeek from way back on March 2nd, 2009.  It was an article called priority list.  They take a senior exec and get them to talk about their priorities for 2009.  Michael Hickey the President of Pitney Bowes Business Insight listed the following as his top 5 priorities.  You can read the full text here. 

1. Embrace Web 2.0
   
2. Target Customer Communications
3. Ensure Customer Data Quality
4. Increase SAAS Adoption
5. Think Globally

I think the first 4 relate directly to social media marketing. Let me explain.
Embracing Web 2.0 is the most obvious one. No matter how you define Web 2.0, transparency and openess are a big part.  Social Media done right puts the technology and kicks off the culture to make that happen.
Target Customer Communications - With a community in place you are in a better position to have smarter, more relevant conversations with customers. Where and how your customer participate in the community will identify the watering holes that they hang out in.  In the real world when you enter a customer meeting, you let the customer speak first, you listen, then you position your offering.  Social Media is the online equivalent.  Listen, then respond.  You do not need to do deep analysis to figure this out.
Ensure customer data quality - Customer are sharing more andmore information about themselves when they participate. They do this 2 ways.  Explicitly, by the information they add to their profile, and Implicitely by their behavioir.   For example, I may tell you that politics does not interst me, but the places I comment and participate may tell a different story. Good social media give you both sides of that.  Its worth mentioning that customer don't give you this information so you can target them.  They share it with the company , AND the other members of the community so everyone has more context when conversing. Big brands should not be creating social media communities just for the pure feel good.  The assett is the customer relationship, the data the customer shares, and how they participate.  Its hugely valuable.
Increase SAAS adoption - Here's where I am a little biased.  Social media is happening now.  If you aren't building a relationship with your customer, someone else is.  Web 2.0 is fluid.  New watering holes are popping up, and it evolves constantly.  If you plan to build and manange in house, you need tomake sure you have the bandwidth to manage change, and brod participation.  In most cases IT has their hands full with CRM, and other mission critical apps.  Community is the best place to implment a SAAS vendor.  Its solves the cost, immediacy, evolution, and support and does not need to ompact your infranstructure.  That being said, its also a good time to investigate Federated identity, so these systems appear seemless to the end customer.

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As much as we like to think Social Media is this "leading edge"  technology, there is still much to do in our industry.  That's probably why I get infuriated when people refer to Social Media platforms as a "commodity".  This is no time to rest on our heals.  Instead we need to look at mature industries to see how they have evolved. 

I was lucky enough to get some time with Faith Legendre, who is the Sr. Global Consultant in
Customer Advocacy at Webex.  Prior to Webex, Faith was Vice President of Training at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. Ask Faith about Call Centers, and Training, then get comfortable because you can't exhaust her on the subject.  Faith and I are definitely of like minds on measurement.

One of the things that impressed me the most in our conversation is how call centers have evolved in the number of metrics they track.  It makes perfect sense. Call centers are a barometer of customer satisfaction, product quality, and a whole list of other things.  Faith talked to me about the volume of information they tracked at 1-800-FLOWERS.com and it reminded me of my days as an analyst at the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Here's what I took away from our call.  While Social Media has improved dramatically in measurement, the breadth of social media dictates that we provide an even broader option of metrics.  Dashboards, dashboards, dashboards.  Its not enough for us to create dashboards for each of our best practices, we need them by industry and customer type.  Dashboards summarize metrics in a way clients can read the "health" of their business.

Watch for more on this, there is still much for me to digest on the topic.



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While not exactly scientific, this was an interesting exercise.  For those that asked we are only talking about 36 responses, so consider it 'anecdotal') Also, I am not sure of the dynamic-ness of Googles charts.  They don't seem to update once you make them images. 

Here are the questions asked and the responses.  Thanks all who answered and I will keep the questionnaire up for a while. 

Do you think its OK to show an ad for Company X by purchasing Company Y's name as a keyword (lets assume the ad copy itself is NOT misleading)?

In your opinion do you believe it is LEGAL to mention another companies trademarked name in your ad for comparison purposes?

Is it OK to try to get higher "organic" ranking on your competitors keywords.

Is it OK to buy domain names similar to your competitors name, or typo's of that competitors name e.g. what if  www.windowss.com link to apple.com

Do you think its OK to use misleading  ad copy to get people on to your site?

Is it OK to set up a company persona in Twitter/Facebook? E.g. @JetBlue,  @Coke?

Is it OK for the brand personas above to proactively friend/follow people in order to get a reciprocal follow/friending.

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I will post the quantitative parts publicly in a subsequent blog post
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Is there too much "me" in "social media"?

One of the fears big companies have with Social Media is that they will set expectations too high.  Give an immediate response, and the customer will begin to expect it.  I'm all for giving crappy customer service a kick in the pants, but this recent social media high-five that's being broadcast across Twitter that is a little disturbing to me.

JetBlue Twitterer Gets Customer a Wheelchair

In case you don't want to click the link, here is a synopsis.

a woman writes...

"@jetblue, I need a wheelchair!". 

the JetBlue person immediately texts back...

"Are you in an airport? shoot me a DM and let me see if I can help"

OK, first.  Excellent for JetBlue for getting on it.  Great customer service should be applauded.  But is this sustainable?  Someone had to read and respond, and other than avoiding being on hold, will this be staffed any better than their customer service on the phone?  A great outcome would have been if another citizen had chipped in to help too.  If thats the case than Iwould like to say ...

@starbucks "Latte's are too expensive"
@ImmigrationCanada whats with the freaking long lines for a passport
@IBM @Microsoft @Apple @anysoftwareonmycomputer.. stop freezing up
@haircut lady - I SAID NO GEL!

Right now, although those of us who work in social media think its a big audience, Twitter is somewhere between 1-2 million users (correct me if I am way off).  Unfortunately there are 1.5 billion internet users in the world, and well over 2 billion people with mobile phones. Lets say this catches on. If each and every person starts to believe they can simply shout something and get an answer from the company, I think we are heading for a fall.

I love this video "Everything is amazing, nobody is happy". 

What am I saying?

• Brands/Companies -  you can do a better job and leverage social media to get closer to your customers, respond quicker, AND help customer help each other.  "Better" will depend on the company, the price of the product, the quality, the loyalty of their customers... etc
  


• Brands/Companies -  bad news - crappy customer service will be broadcasted to the public in realtime


• Brands/Companies -  good new - great customer service will be broadcasted to the public in realtime


• People of the Planet Earth - Expect better, but reward good customer service.  Don't be a hater the second it doesn't go your way.
  


• People of the Planet Earth - Help when you can.  Thats why its called "social" media. There is not nor will their ever be a customer service person dedicated for your use only. 

Yes indivuals weild more power than we did.  Lets not abuse it.


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