Getting the gist of Twitter lists

The additional functionality of Twitter lists now means the rules and currency of the Twitter platform have changed. To be a follower or be followed is no longer enough.

Sentiment

Ranking systems such as Twitter Grader will no doubt be adjusting their algorithm to accommodate the lists feature. It stands to reason that the more lists you are in the higher ranking you will achieve. Of course this will not account for sentiment. You could be Nick Griffin, and undoubtedly find yourself in many lists, but how many of those masses of lists Nick Griffin might find himself in be positive in nature? Exactly.

Clawing the traffic back

Let us explore why the functionality of lists has been added to Twitter.com. For me, the killer factor and fuel to the social media haters fiery bellies was the revelation back in May that Twitter.com traffic had dropped rapidly. Sure people were registering but 60% weren’t coming back for more. What the survey didn’t bank on was the open API and the fact that once registered on Twitter.com there isn’t much need to go back should you choose to run your Twitter activity from an additional application such as Tweetdeck or Brizzly etc. With increased functionality accessible through your Twitter profile, the traffic comes back to the target of Twitter.com who want to claw back some of the share which sees Tweetdeck a close second to Twitter itself for publishing tweets.

So are lists a practical, necessary piece of functionality?

Is it the golden egg that will monetise Twitter? No. What it is indicative of is Twitter’s desire to bolt on the functionality already offered by the likes of Tweetdeck et al. If you have customised groups in Tweetdeck already it is hard to make a case for Twitter lists adding much more value.

Always last picked…

For many or the more casual user, lists will be to highlight, organise and maintain a following. I fully expect lists to be predominantly used to cream off the followers you wish to actively follow and monitor and I also anticipate, by extension, the new functionality to manifest itself as a further online popularity contest. Breaching an inner circle online is harder than it is in the school playground and certain online communities are hamstrung by cliques. Time will tell with Twitter lists…If your name isn’t down you’re not coming in.

Personal

As a blogger (by no means a Pro with ideas above the station) and someone with a Twitter profile with an intended purpose of sharing and creating great engaging stuff, it is nice to see which categories my followers group me in and confirms I am on track with where I want to be, the online circles in which I wish to move.

What do Twitter lists mean to you?

Like Minds – why bother?

The first Like Minds social media conference took place just over a week ago. Many people got something out of it and some people left empty-handed questioning whether or not the event did exactly what it said on the tin. It was certainly a tall order to have the intention of answering the big ol’ ROI question when applied to Social Media and to do it in one afternoon. Olivier Blanchard got the closest to bringing some insight and cold hard examples as to why businesses should be using social media. His presentation was engaging and also available for further viewing online.

The big question for the conference is where does it go from here? There has been a backlash, there has been a whole wave of in-jokes and hashtag hijacking during and after the event and this is something that needs to be carefully addressed if the future event in February is to be as open and inclusive as the original event set out to be.

One aspect that struck me as shooting oneself in the foot (but with good honest intentions and using all the social media tools available) was the coverage of the event online. Of course, I was there and bringing live-blog coverage. The extent of this coverage was to bring the key sound-bites and to feed in questions from those who could not be there. It did not offer full coverage.

The foot shooting came in the form of the real-time stream of the entire conference online. Filming the event and broadcasting it live to 500 people (Organisers’ figures) is all well and good but if you had paid your ticket price first time round, you’re sat there as the announcement is being made that  there is to be another conference in February, why would you pay to go to that one? Ticket price, travel, accommodation etc will not need to be found when you know it is likely to be streamed in its entirety for all to see and for free.

For me, the live video feed should have covered the keynotes but then when it came to the panel discussion where the real ideas and discussions came about, the cameras should have been switched off. This would have offered more added value for money to those who paid to be there and would have led to more buzz being created for the follow-up event.

Of course this may sound overly critical of an altogether fantastic and cleverly organised event (All tickets sold through social media), one that I am certainly keen to attend again and to take on a more active role ( A panel discussion about small business use of social media, anyone?)

So what was the ROI for me attending the event over those who saw it all on a screen from anywhere in the world? The connections made in the networking before and after the event, the traffic that blogging about the event has brought and the ideas of how to apply social media practices in a more meaningful way than I had previously done so.

Bring on February and Like Minds II but bring it all online? Perhaps not.

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I’m a celebrity get me endorsing

Celebrity endorsements are nothing new, if anything, in this uber celebrity 15 minutes of fame driven society they are on the increase but what do they actually do for brands and where are the endorsements of the future going?

There are recent notable examples of brands dropping their celebrity face in the wake of revelations and tabloid conjecture. Notably, Kerry Katona, the bastion of motherhood, being ditched by Iceland on the back of Sunday tabloid revelations relating to substance abuse beyond a £1 Iceland ready-meal.

When pairing up a celebrity with a brand and things go well, it is easy to kick back and relax. That massive chunk of funding you have given this public eye entity was money well spent. Gary Lineker never got booked in his career and has carved a niche as ‘Mr Nice Guy’ so no sweat over him doing something bad like popping a cheeky Pringle.

But a brand can not control the one they pay to endorse. You can have as water-tight a contract as you like that says as a beacon of the brand you can not do this or dabble in that, but celebrities are human, they are suckers for temptation when they are offered the world and they do stray.

To the future, I envision a slight change in the role of celebrity endorsements and this is with a view to the use of Twitter and Facebook. This theory is based on observations of how things are starting to unfold on these platforms.

Agencies can now create the celebrity and thus control their brand endorsing face more carefully. For example, Compare the Market and their ingenious and ubiquitous Compare the Meerkat campaign has seen sales increase and thanks to a combined social media assault through Facebook and Twitter, Sergei – the little furry face of cheaper car insurance has single paw-dly hit the big time. Through an interactive and engaging Twitter and Facebook account, not to mention the Compare the Meerkat website itself, our little Russian friend has driven traffic and sales to the desired Compare the Market website without a single mention of the target site in its Facebook or Twitter activity. No tweets with links to the best deal or target site homepage, just pure character based tweets and a killer catchphrase that has reverberated around playgrounds, offices and everyday conversation. Simples.

Facebook and Twitter celebrity accounts with mass followings (and comparatively minuscule follow backs themselves) provide a ready made platform to endorse anything for a fee to their impressionable and idolising following. The rules have changed and results are there for the taking.

If you take the example of Stephen Fry and his Twitter account, not through paid for endorsement but out of his passion to share great Tech tips, on several occasions, Mr Fry has brought small time websites to their knees by Tweeting a recommendation to his vast following to go and check out site X. Site X not being prepared for such a volume of traffic crashes-the hat tip from Mr Fry a blessing and curse in equal measure.

So of the future, celebrity accounts will be created and maintained by agencies and not the Celebs themselves. (I am still hugely sceptical that Andy Murray updates his Twitter given the nature of the Tweets-all smiles and positivity-it appears awkward, forced and just not personable.) As soon as the following is built up, then the link to product or website X is casually dropped into Twitter conversation and the loyal following navigates to the intended source and laps up what their idol has recommended.

Sure the same pitfalls apply in that you cannot control the celebrity’s behaviour in real life, that is of course unless you create  a fictional Meerkat, but you can cultivate the following and control the brand message with a yield of higher results for a fraction of the cost of a television advert.

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Labour Conference 2009 – A Wordle of the key speeches

As a point of interest and using Wordle, a favourite tool of mine, I took it upon myself to run the transcripts of the two key speeches of this year’s event through the program to create a visual representation of the speeches.

Firstly, Lord Mandleson’s effort-which to watch looked clumsy, choreographed and almost beyond Carry On parody-we can see the key phrases used were ‘Change,’ ‘Party,’ ‘Back,’ and ‘Growth.’ For me this indicates the theme of looking back and looking forward. If New Labour is dead then New New Labour is now being offered as a choice and the party is on the cusp of a rebirth or a landslide. Time and the democratic process of an election will tell if Mandy’s speech was the healer or the false hope of the Labour party.

Gordon Brown’s speech ran along a similar theme of ‘Choice,’ ‘Change’ and ‘New,’ with policy revisions tantamount to backtracks (ID Cards) and whoppers of vast financial implications such as a National Care Service. No doubt the NCS will be talked up as revolutionary as the NHS when such a system was first pitched but will it ever see the light of day?

Oh and just a final thought on the theme of ‘Choice,’ which of the speeches was to the public and which was to the party? Mandy addresses his audience as “Conference” on numerous times but Gordon was more engaging with the camera and less erratic in his movements. So, PM for PM or stick with GB…?

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Can social media command and conker?

Consider this–social media–all bells and whistles and caught up in a storm of hype and false industry. Been knocking around for a while finding its feet and having many people shout about what it is but where is it going?

There is a lot of talk and trumpet blowing by those who use social media about just how great it is. This is dull, I’m guilty of it myself. If we are to take this highly polished conker and to make it last, it is imperative to talk about the ‘how’ and not the ‘what’ in order to defend its role and to gather a pool of wisdom on how best to utilise it.

You can varnish and buff up a Conker to make it look good and if your the kid in the playground you can talk it up as you take it into the challenge ahead in a Conker fight. You can blow the trumpet of social media all you want and talk it up as a great thing but that won’t keep it up there or concrete it as a true marketing practice of value and return. Just because it looks good and on the surface does not mean it has a soft and vulnerable core when the challenges come in.

I invited Brrism member Nigel Legg to offer his insight into the matter of how social media can offer value for businesses looking to get in on the act and where it fits in the marketing mix. Based on his expertise as a social media practitioner who researches its nuances and practical applications, Nigel said:

“The only way you are going to be able to measure ROI is with numbers – so it is vital that you decide what numbers you want and how you are going to measure them before you start. And the appropriate metrics for a biscuit company may well not be appropriate for a construction firm – the metrics will depend on who you are, where you are, and what you do.”

In October there is an exciting conference on the horizon that has set it’s stall out from the start in saying it will focus on the ‘How’ and less so on the ‘What’. Of particular and crucial focus is the look at return of investment to be had from social media.

I shall be in attendance at the ‘Like Minds‘ event in Exeter on Friday 16th October and will report back on the ‘How’ and we will see if we can get this sweet social media nut flourishing into a long term practice with true value and purpose.

I think it is very true that as social media users, the honeymoon period is over and the ‘What’ is a known entity. The real way to achieve longevity is to suss the ‘How’ and to use it to supplement marketing practices, not replace them.

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The blog is mightier than the sword

In the old days a quibble over a product or service not being up to scratch would be resolved through an exchange of letters with a customer service department. A swift resolution ensuing, the customer would be happy and the business might have gone beyond just saving face and reinforced its brand values, too. Today, this model is not quite so strong.

According to Webuser.co.uk, a holidaymaker has secured £600 in compensation for a disastrous holiday as a result of the prominent Google search ranking he achieved for the angry blog he fired off when a complaint letter to the holiday firm yielded no result.

The holidaymaker had originally penned a letter of complaint (ten pages of letter, in fact) detailing a depressing series of problems he encountered during a less than satisfactory Tunisian holiday. After six weeks, having only received an acknowledgement for his rant, the increasingly angry traveller went public and recorded his troubles on his personal blog.

In no time, he was getting lots of traffic – much of it from people who had simply typed search terms relating to holidays in Tunisia. In fact, the critical blog entry’s Google ranking was creeping ever closer to the summit on all the key search terms the travel company would rather see taking you to the holiday package they were trying to flog.

Once the holiday company became aware of the growing popularity of the blog post, blogs about the blog post and probably even blogs blogging about the impact of blog posts about the original blog post – such is the way the Internet feeds off itself – it became apparent that an “elevated” level of response was required. Compensation was paid to the blogger and an apology posted on his blog, to boot.

However, it may be too late for damage limitation – the rant, of course, has been widely seen and still exists in the public domain. The digital footprint of a blog post that would never have seen the light of day had the travel company responded sooner is now leaving the most indelible – and embarrassing – of stains on its reputation

Originally published by Marketing Donut in my guise as a blogger for small businesses looking to get the most from their marketing.

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Come on you Twits! Get on your Facebook and let’s blog our way out of the recession

Originally published by Marketing Donut in my guise as a blogger for small businesses looking to get the most from their marketing.

In a downturn, it isn’t just small businesses that look to make their pennies stretch further or spend more time investing time resources into ‘free’ marketing opportunities but they certainly have a greater opportunity to do such things. If trade is down and money is tight, things might look bleak and the marketing resources cupboard somewhat bare.

One way that you may choose to keep on top of your marketing activities, even if the budget has run out, is to try out something that requires little or no money (beyond buying a computer and internet connection). Social Networking or online media resources are a great way to make use of your time in an inexpensive manner in order to drum up trade and to make sure your business is ‘out there.’

If you are unfortunate enough to have less footfall than you are accustomed to in headier times, you may be in a position to spend more time on Twitter, Facebook and any of the hundreds of online social networking sites where you can promote, network, converse or establish your brand and make real connections. If you do this well you may see that trade picks up again and so you have less time to commit to online activities as you are dealing with fantastic customers making purchases. When trade does pick up once again, does online marketing through social networking have to give?

I believe in the cliché that tough times make us stronger but beyond that I anticipate that this recession has rewritten the rules of small business marketing and the online marketing model of the future will see social networking as a standard practice in advertising for small firms. When the tills are ringing again and the ‘R’ word is but a distant memory, try and set aside short and frequent bursts of online marketing activity, be it Twitter, Blogging or Facebook, for great results long-term.

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BBC Jonathan Creek budget cuts leaked same day as Alan Davies book release-coincidence?

It doesn’t take Jonathan Creek to work out that the clumsy sleight of hand at work here was not that of Houdini, no the Harry who done it is in fact PR.

On the day that Alan Davies released his book ‘My Favourite People and Me 1978-1988,’ a collective of musings published by Michael Joseph, a prominently placed article about our tousled locks hero appeared on the BBC news homepage.

The story in question relates to the subtle slip of the tweet made by @alandavies1 that in order to pursue his role as JC he would be stomaching a 25% pay cut. Timing is everything, national press picks up on the story and voilà…coverage, a raised profile, book sales and much more…

It came to my attention yesterday that Alan Davies would be in Bristol come October as part of the fantastic Autumn programme put on by the Bristol Festival of Ideas. Perhaps I could discuss the PR strategy with the man himself or maybe his publishers could supply me with a copy of his book in advance of the event so I can ask him something, well, something Quite Interesting.

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Is online shopping feeding a culture of waste and laziness?

And there we have it. In a single tweet one person has summed up just one reason why online retailers are thriving, even during a recession. Tapping into the human condition of wastefulness, laziness and materialism has been a prosperous model for many for some time, the internet has just magnified and optimised the model.

You see that must have item online, you’re not quite sure if it will fit or be suitable but ‘Hey it is reasonably priced’ and you can always return it and with one click it is in your basket and winging its way to your door.

The fact that the cost of returning an item that isn’t fit for purpose or in the case of clothing and shoes, is ill-fitting means we are left with the economic quandary which usually spits out the answer of ‘waste.’

If item ‘A’ cost x amount and needs y more funds for postage, when it arrives and doesn’t fit, does the higher cost of return postage offer (z) any benefit to the consumer or is the lesser physical effort of returning an item a more tempting prospect, after all you did originally say: ‘Hey it is reasonably priced.’

Of course ill-fitting items can be given as presents (What else are siblings for?) or indeed could be donated to a charity shop (Yes, new clothes can be given to charity!) but ultimately, the online company gets the money and you get the product that is of little or no use to you and are out of pocket, sure it may only be the £15 of the shoes and the £3.95 for p+p but let’s face it, this is and will be a repeat behaviour.

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Berlino bear and the success of the Berlin World Athletics Championships

Never has a man or woman (not the only gender query at this year’s competition) dressed as a big fuzzy bear done so much to raise the profile and atmosphere of one sporting event.

This year’s World Athletics Championships have not only been fascinating to watch for the fleeting moments of British Athletics glory and the blink of an eye Usain Bolt feats, the event has been cheerily ticking along with the pursuits of Berlino the bear. This mascot has been lifted by a medal-winning discus thrower, done the arrow firing pose with Usain Bolt and dropped Jamaican hurdle champ Melaine Walker. Never has one giant bear reduced so many to tears of laughter and induced so much happiness.

As far as mascots go, they offer additional branding and merchandising possibilities for events and great PR moments too. Which other mascots-sporting or otherwise can you think of that have had a similar positive effect on the event they are part of and which have been the most disastrous mascots of all time?

Originally appeared as a forum entry on www.marketingdonut.co.uk

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