Data, without insightful interpretation, is worthless.  It’s like staring at the instruments of an airplane, but not knowing how to use them to get you where you want to go.

So you have 200,000 Facebook fans…so what? How many of them engage on a regular basis? What countries are primarily represented, and is it important to your business? What time of day is best for you to post so that you get the most exposure?  These are questions that should be asked, but often are not.

I think that so many people and organizations are in the habit of asking for reports that they just do it automatically, and assume that the process is over.  The way I see it, the process is just beginning at that point, and data can be used to make important business decisions, particular as they related to social media, looking forward.

A few guidelines and suggestions for how to use the data you capture:

• Flash reports are okay, but real strength from data comes by looking at a broad range.  The more time you have to collect data, the more solid your numbers will be and the variance of peaks and valleys shouldn’t affect the bottom line as much
• Sentiment is quite subjective, and I have yet to find a tool that auto-scores and does it well.  For example, if somebody tweets “Good Lord, my [brand] car is giving me a headache”, it’s typically scored as positive or neutral because of the inclusion of “good”.  A human looking at that would usually score it as negative.  I would rather hand-score a small number of data points than let a computer auto-score a massive amount
• Consistency with time and services are important.  If possible, try to pull data from the same source and at regular time intervals. For example, it’s much easier to analyze data from a single source that you pull every Monday, than to compare data from many sources that you pull when you “want to get a good look at things”.  Consistency is key
• I’m sure you are tempted to look at numbers each week as wins and losses, but it’s more important to look at data over a longer period of time.  For example, when we presented numbers to clients after the 4th of July Holiday weekend, tweets, comments and likes were down almost across the board.  It has to be taken into consideration that people were off of their computers and outside enjoying life, otherwise it seems like something went terribly wrong during that period.

I spend a lot of time looking over data that has been scraped from all around the internet, and an equal amount of time interpreting what it means so that we can help our clients make important strategic and tactical decisions.  What I’ve learned from all of this is that, no matter where you are pulling it from, data that stands by itself without good interpretation is at best worthless, at worst dangerous.

To truly be effective in social media with influencers, I think you need to build a relationship, not ship a press package. You also have to recognize and understand the different groups that exist in social media, so you know how to develop and target brand programs and exposure.  In case you fear that I’m starting to sound a little too professional and polished in this approach, I submit for your approval a hand drawn diagram in the picture to the left.  Fancy, isn’t it? I put this beauty up on our office white board this morning while talking through the concept with a client.

Before we discuss what to do with these various groups, let’s start by defining them.

The consumer has the least amount of influence or interest in the product, but they represent the largest purchasing power…these are the folks that we are ultimately trying to sway, to move to purchase. Consumers are you and me and everybody else that has the ability to purchase your product or service, hereafter referred to generically and entirely to business-school like as “Brand X”.  This is the goal of the company: to get these (so far) non-customers to make the decision to give your company money in some capacity.  If they do this, you get to keep your job and keep on making more cool things like Brand X 2.0 and the new and improved iBrand X.

The enthusiasts are the people that still have a (relatively) small audience size (probably fewer than 3k total) but are hard-core lovers of the brand. They like all things Brand X and will talk about it day and night. They are also eager to assist the brand in many ways, including grass roots WOM marketing efforts, forum moderation and even customer support. This group of loyalists are invaluable to your marketing efforts (as we will look at later), but unfortunately are often passed over in an effort to reach somebody with a larger audience.

The influencers have a sizeable audience (from the tens of thousands to millions) but have little interest or knowledge of Brand X. In social media they have a massive audience, and are constantly asked to retweet a message, put up a link to a product or page, or just talk about a brand. Often they will do this, sometimes because they are being paid to, sometimes because they are just kind.  Corporate types and marketers usually get a good rise when an influencer mentions their product, the oh-so-popular Brand X, and think this is a completed cycle of marketing…that they have succeeded.  It is my belief that this isn’t the end-game, this is the starting line. This is the group that we want to convert into the most powerful and final group: the inciters.

The inciters have great interest in the product, use it, like it, and talk about it to their sizeable audience.  When an inciter knows and understands something, and feels passionately about it, they will talk about it…without a press kit to tell them what to say! Better yet, they won’t just talk about it, they’ll talk about it frequently.  This ultimately will drive the consumer (remember them?) to think, “well golly, since this really popular person obviously loves Brand X, I bet I will also!” and then rush down to their local big box store to buy it.

I described the four sectors of the community in a somewhat glib manner, but in all seriousness they exist roughly within the roles described, and all serve a very important part of the product (or service) sales cycle.  In our next post, we’ll look at the strategy and methodology behind the cycle, and how to move a person from one segment to the next.

I’ve created this list of “things you must know” mostly based upon very positive experiences I’ve had, but also from negative ones…things that I’ve either experienced myself or seen others do.  This isn’t a tactical post, I think I write plenty of those.  Instead, this is my advice to those that are going to lend their expertise to others, and hopefully by checking these off you will avoid some common mistakes that often result in unmet expectations, from one side or the other…or both.

Know Other Professionals

It’s important that you don’t get yourself into something that is not a good use of your time.  Know your strengths and weaknesses, and if part of a package deal is to provide a service that you aren’t strong in…hire it out.  I’m not kidding.  Hire it out, no matter how big or small you are.  Believe me, in the corporate agency world this practice isn’t just commonplace, it’s expected.  Think about building a social media program like building a house, and you are the general contractor. It’s your job to make sure the work gets done, and you may even pick up a hammer and hop in to help.  Leave the plumbing to the pros and focus on the big picture.  I know the temptation is to try to do it all yourself so that you’ll get paid more, but in my experience 9 times out of 10 this doesn’t work out quite as expected, and unmet expectations abound on both sides.

I’ve heard it said that the day you get a client is the day you start losing them…this idea is reinforced quickly if you try to do work that is outside of your scope of expertise. If you agree to do everything for a client and then actually try to do it all yourself, chances are great that you are either going to under-perform or miss your time line…or both! A good social media program typically involves strategy, deployment, creative assets, copy writing, analytics and reporting. Given that one of the key components of social media is immediacy and timing, trying to do all of this by yourself probably isn’t going to work.  It’s great to have a new client, but it’s even better to keep those clients and renew contracts quarter after quarter or even year after year. I think one of the best ways to insure that you keep them when it’s time to negotiate is to make sure that you are playing to your strength, and subbing out your weaknesses or those things that aren’t worth your time.

A good example of this usually involves creative assets. If you work with your client for any amount of time, eventually they will ask you for video creation or editing. Is this something you’re really good at? Most people aren’t, and trying to learn something like this on the go is very time consuming, which means you’re going to lose a ton of money trying to figure it out…and then you probably won’t deliver an A+ product anyway.  Take the time to get to know a video person or two (in case the first is busy) so that when it does come time to chop something up and syndicate it to YouTube in a short time frame you can deliver and not let the overall campaign suffer because you don’t know what you are doing.  Beyond video there are many other areas that you may want to look for assistance, particularly in the areas of creative and analytics.

How to develop your network – In terms of expanding your professional relationships, there really aren’t any shortcuts if you want to produce strong and lasting connections; and trust me on this, you want to.  I’ve met most of the people I know online at first, then usually in person later.  I go out of my way to find and follow interesting people on Twitter, and I particularly like to find folks in the cities I frequent: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and New York.  As well as I get to know people this way, I almost always do business with people that I’ve met face to face.  For that, I try to attend a few local tech and marketing events each month.  Be careful with this, if you try to attend everything (especially in the larger markets) then you’ll spend a lot of time and money socializing.  These days, when I attend an event in Los Angeles I usually set up Twitter searches for the hashtag or event name a few weeks ahead of time then pay attention to who is talking about attending.  I’ll usually engage them online with something like, “Hey I see you’re going to be at the such and such event in West Hollywood next week, let’s make time to say hi”, and of course when the event rolls around I make the effort to meet them.  If you start going to these, make sure you give a quick glance over my article “Social Tech Event Survival Guide“…if nothing else you’ll remember to bring breath mints ;)

After meeting people at the event(s), make sure to follow up with them with a quick email, reminding them of who you are and what you do.  I usually reserve phone calls for those that I need to do immediate business with…the debt of the call and voicemail can honestly be too burdening on an alright tight work schedule.  An email shows that you remember them and that you are interested in keeping in touch, but it’s something that they can address in their time and on their terms.  Naturally these days I also put up a friendly tweet thanking them for their time.

Because of my efforts of the years to seek out friendly and awesome people, I have a network of artists, copy writers, attorneys (yes, they come in handy sometimes), video editors and just about every other profession that I would ever need to tap in social media.  When the time comes to subcontract with them I usually try to hire them on terms that will account for about 30% of the allocated money for that particular project, which also allows room for management and overhead.  Not only am I covered professionally, but I have to say…now when I walk into a tech event it’s really nice to see many people that I consider friends.

Knowing other professionals can be critical to the success of a social media program.  Next, in the final installment of this six part series I will talk about something that is even more important…knowing yourself.

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Did you enjoy this post? Consider subscribing to the RSS for future updates delivered straight to a feed reader, or come over to Twitter and say hi…that is where I do most of my one-on-one engagement

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Photos used under Creative Commons License. Seated professionals from thinkpublic and Blogworld photowalking from John Pozadzides

I’ve created this list of “things you must know” mostly based upon very positive experiences I’ve had, but also from negative ones…things that I’ve either experienced myself or seen others do.  This isn’t a tactical post, I think I write plenty of those.  Instead, this is my advice to those that are going to lend their expertise to others, and hopefully by checking these off you will avoid some common mistakes that often result in unmet expectations, from one side or the other…or both.

Know The Channels

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Ustream, blogs, forums and all of the other communities in social media each have a different feel, and as such have different rules and therefore different results should be expected.  I’m going to go on record as saying that, in my opinion, trying to target all areas is a big mistake unless you have an incredibly well resourced team.  For most of the Fortune 500 companies that I work with we target a handful of channels based upon the brand needs and expectations…I don’t think there is such a thing as a cookie cutter social media program.  Why?  Because the need of every client is different (remember that part I wrote about knowing your customer?)  That said, there are a few basics that should be covered, but once you have established those you’ll want to match specific needs with specific communities.  If you try to be all things to all people you’re going to get spread too thin.

When I present to a group that contains companies that haven’t yet jumped into social media, I get one question consistently, “where should I start?”  It’s a pretty difficult question to answer with any brevity because it’s like somebody asking “where should I start with business?” or “where should I start with marketing?” Social Media is such a broad scope of platforms, but when going through a 10 minute Q&A after a presentation and trying to answer as many questions as possible, I usually say “If you do nothing else, start a blog and have a presence on Facebook and Twitter”.  That said, it’s not always the answer for everybody, but it’s a good shotgun approach to start.  Following is a quick overview of the feel of each channel, with some possible pitfalls that you can experience in each.

Twitter – By now most companies have heard of Twitter and are anxious to get involved.  Recently it has been a lot easier for me to discuss Twitter strategy with organizations, a far cry from the days not too long ago that I insisted that Twitter names should be put on business cards (that got me laughed out of meetings in 2008). In the rush to get to this channel however, make sure you know what you are in for.  Twitter is extremely conversational and therefore is immediate and personal.  One of the biggest mistakes I see companies both large and small making on Twitter is trying to get their PR or legal department to approve everything that is published.  Yes, I’m serious…there are plenty of companies that still insist on running every single tweet through multiple PR teams to make sure the messaging is spot on.  The problem with this? Twitter is usually more like a conversation than a presentation.  Most companies that try this find out that their growth, engagement and brand lift are slow if not completely void.  The other extreme (and also a mistake) is to put a well-intentioned intern or recent hire in charge of communicating with your customers.  I don’t think this is a mistake because of age, but because of experience with the company.  Twitter is often the most immediate and intimate touch point with your current and future customers; make sure you put your best and brightest people behind this channel…and pay them well! They can make or break your reputation in just a few key strokes.

Facebook - With 350MM users and growing it’s the largest social network online, so certainly you need to be a part of it.  Facebook has its own feel also, and that is one of sharing and playing.  Facebook doesn’t necessarily have the feel of immediacy that Twitter does, but fans do have their own demands.  They want to share things with their friends and generally have fun, so your business should respond accordingly.  Encourage fans of your brand to upload their own photos and videos to your wall and get them to talk to each other.  Build community! Be careful about sweepstakes and giveaways however, there are some recent changes to Facebook’s terms of service that can get you suspended in a hurry if you are holding contents the wrong way from your brand fan page.

Blogs - Don’t forget about the blogs! They often get left off the list of social networks, but they are one of the original and the best.  I tell my clients that their company blog should be the official word on all things related to them, from press releases to product updates to setting online rumors and leaks straight.  This is the place that you have control to say what you need to say…but the community can still interact! If you want traffic through your blog, make it easy for people to find information (have a search bar prominently displayed near the top of the page), interact with you(don’t make them register or fill out CAPTCHA to comment) and share with their friends (use ShareThis, Tweetmeme buttons, etc.)  Commenting on blogs has slowed down considerably because of conversational channels like Twitter, but people still read them.  Make sure you keep your company blog current and relevant.

Although I’ve highlighted these three channels, there are so many others that can be beneficial to your company.  YouTube is the place to upload original video content, Ustream is incredible for hosting live events or doing video chats with fans and Foursquare is still a great (and mostly untapped) opportunity to geo-target your customers with special offers and incentives.  There are thousands of social networks around, make sure you find the ones that are good for your company then dive in and participate with your community!

In the next post I will talk about what it means to know other professionals.

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Did you enjoy this post? Consider subscribing to the RSS for future updates delivered straight to a feed reader, or come over to Twitter and say hi…that is where I do most of my one-on-one engagement

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Photos used under Creative Commons License. Twitter mashup from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and blogging ticket from Jacob Botter

I’ve created this list of “things you must know” mostly based upon very positive experiences I’ve had, but also from negative ones…things that I’ve either experienced myself or seen others do. This isn’t a tactical post, I think I write plenty of those. Instead, this is my advice to those that are going to lend their expertise to others, and hopefully by checking these off you will avoid some common mistakes that often result in unmet expectations, from one side or the other…or both.

Know The Product

I think this is the single biggest mistake that I see over and over and over again…lack of product knowledge when you are doing work for somebody else.You may be running a campaign for a durable good or a service. Sometimes it’s just brand awareness so there is not one thing you are pointing to, just the brand. No matter what it is, if you don’t know the ins and outs of what you will be marketing you are doing your client, their customers and yourself a huge disservice. I’ve been invited in to too many conversations that go something like this:

Them: Hey, we’re working on social media engagement for Product X, would love your advice on where to start.

Me: Sounds good. What do you know about the product, what is the community going to be talking about when we open up the social media channels?

Them: Well, I know it does blah blah blah, and our initial benchmark report shows that people mostly want to know about blah blah blah.

Me: Super. What is your personal impression of Product X? What do you like and dislike about it? What do you know about it that the general public does not, something that would be helpful that we can discuss with them?

Them: Ummmm….what?

Me: What’s your hands-on experience with it? Who are the competitors? What do the real fanboys of Product X think about it?

Them: I don’t know, I haven’t actually used it.

Get To Know The Product Or Service You Will Be Promoting

Don’t let this be you. If you’re dealing with large agencies and brands you can probably rest on your laurels for a while without being discovered, but once you start the engagement process with the consumers of the product or service, you’re going to be eaten alive. You won’t be able to join conversations, you’ll essentially be an observer, pushing out information but not truly being able to engage. The result? You’ve just turned social media into traditional media, the one way podium of information pushing. Please don’t do this, it’s bad for you, it’s terrible for your client and the customers that you manged to attract during your initial jump into social will either stop engaging your or simply go away.

Before you get into the world of social media, do your homework. What is the market share? Who is the competition? If this is something that you are able to use (service or good) personally? Try to get your hands on it; if it’s too expensive or unattainable for any reason, don’t be afraid to ask the client for access. The most effective campaigns and programs are those that are run by people that understand and are passionate about what they are talking about. This is often misunderstood on the consultant/agency side, and the results are made obvious quickly: when it comes to engagement in the channels (especially Twitter), you will get called out as a phony pretty quickly. You need to have knowledge of what you are talking about. If you need inspiration, go watch some episodes of Mad Men. I’m serious. When Don Draper and his team really try to understand the product, the creativity starts flowing and the campaigns are successful. The big difference? Their audience couldn’t talk back to them in real time…the world of social media isn’t quite as forgiving.

Want to know how to really close a deal with your client? When you’re at your face-to-face meeting, pull out their product or call it up on your computer, then talk to them about what you like about it personally and how you are going to engage their audience based upon YOUR experience. Of course there are other factors that will determine the program and who they chose for the work (like cost, reputation, etc), but I can tell you from personal experience, this never hurts. Your client wants to know that you’re more than a shill…they want to work with somebody that believes in what they are producing as much as they do. Prove to them that you are that person.

In the next post I will talk about what it means to know the audience.

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Did you enjoy this post? Consider subscribing to the RSS for future updates delivered straight to a feed reader, or come over to Twitter and say hi…that is where I do most of my one-on-one engagement

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Photos used under Creative Commons License. Facebook photo from Laughing Squid and Zune from Joe Wilcox

I have recently signed on as the Senior Director of Social Media Strategy with M80, the Los Angeles based leading provider of social media marketing and digital publicity services to Fortune 500 brands.  That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?  Simply put, I work with some of the most amazing companies from around the globe, helping them to reach out, listen to and engage their current and future customers.

I’m humbled and excited to be in this role.  The staff of M80 consists of some of the brightest and most forward-thinking men and women that I have had the privilege to work with, and what we have been able to accomplish together in just the last few weeks in amazing to me.  Although I probably won’t get into granular detail with what we are doing (need to keep some of the wizard behind the curtain stuff behind the curtain still…) I will continue to write about how social media and technology impacts both brands and consumers.  I actually hope to be writing more now, as I’m spending so much time on airplanes.

Me and my Zune HD

I am working with some amazing global brands like Microsoft, LG, Dr Pepper, and Volkswagon.  All of our projects are incredibly interesting and exciting, and if you have been following me for some time you know that I am really passionate about one in particular: Zune.  In the interest of full disclosure, I do advise the truly delightful people at Zune, but my enthusiasm should come as no surprise to anybody that has been reading this blog for any amount of time.  I wrote my first Zune post in July 2006, and did the math about why Zune is superior in this June 2008 article (boy did I get blasted by the fanboys in the comments!) I’ll keep blogging, tweeting and Facebooking about them and our other clients, but now I can do it as a loyal consumer and an industry insider!

As usual, I will continue to use social media to make personal connections with people, both digitally and in the real world.  Twitter is my daily hotbed of activity, but I would also love to connect with you on LinkedIn and Facebook. If you want to subscribe to this blog, the feed is here.

I would love it if you would also start tracking M80 in the usual places like Twitter and our blog.  We’ll be striving to provide value to you, information that you can use (like this article) within your company or just for your own personal satisfaction.

Thank you so much for being a part of this community!

I recall sitting in a meeting just over a decade ago where I was discussing (okay, arguing) the merits of Th Internet and having a presence there.  The topic du jour was whether or not this company should spend “ridiculous” amounts of money to build a website.  ”After all,” said one particular stodgy gentleman, “we could take all of that money and instead spend it on a larger yellow pages ad.  THAT would be a good use of advertising, and bring us more people”.  You know what?  He meant that, sincerely.  He truly thought that a big, full page ad in the Yellow Pages would bring more business in than some silly, new fangled, johnny-come-lately web site.  The Internet, in his mind (and many others around the table) was a silly place for kids to play, not a place for serious business.  ”The Internet” was still a destination, but not one to be taken seriously.

I have spent the last year in many meetings that are similar to that time 10 years ago.  The food is similar, the conference room is situated in roughly the same manner, and many of the leaders of the organization are present. However, we’re not talking about building websites…instead, the argument is whether or not to spend money on consultants, interns or agencies to monitor and produce content in places like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  Of course all of these groups have websites (although I’m sure they were embroiled in similar discussions 10 years ago), and “the internet” doesn’t even come up in conversation, because it is no longer a destination, it is a container.  It now contains the smaller internets, the individual networks like Twitter that ARE a destination.  Invariably somebody around the table will say something like, “Why don’t we just take the money we would be spending on Twitter and Facebook and instead put it into radio ads, or advertise in a magazine or local newspaper, or better yet, let’s revamp our website?”  What they don’t understand is that the world changes, and with the introduction of user generated content, the way an organization can (and should) communicate with their current and future customers has also changed…forever.  I’m happy to report, by the way, that not one person in any of my meetings over the last year has mentioned the Yellow Pages.

No longer do you need to be on “The Internet”, because it’s too nebulous, the internet with the capital “I” simply doesn’t exist to most of the world (although certainly any sys admin reading this will want to disagree), instead we have smaller internets, and companies need to focus on those to attract, engage and retain customers.  It takes some effort and strategy.  You have to change the way you think about marketing and business in general, and you might even need to do a company wide re-org to accomodate the new staff.  Nobody said it would be easy, but then again, you didn’t get into business because you thought it would be easy, did you?

If your current marketing stategy is to focus only on The Internet by offering a website, you have just become the company that is still trying to buy a larger Yellow Pages ad.

If you’re been around these parts for long, at some point or another you’ve heard me talk about my love of the Zune.  I’m usually met with responses like, “oh, so you’re the guy that bought one!” and other cheeky remarks. All in good fun, but my math is still solid and with as much music as I download, I simply could not afford to own an iPod. I’m particularly excited for the release of the Zune HD, it looks incredible even to most Apple Fanboys that I talk to.  You can look at the hardware specs and drool over the 16:9 OLED screen here.

The social aspect of what Zune is doing to promote the new HD device is pretty good for a campaign.  There are three ways to “enter” the sweepstakes, via Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.  In each of these spaces you need to just put up a message about what you think your favorite upcoming feature of the Zune HD will be.  With Twitter, the other stipulation is that you allow Zune to put their color overlay on your Avatar, which they do easily and automatically via OAuth here. This appears to be working, when I logged into my computer this morning “Zune” was the top trend on Twitscoop!

I think this is a great use of social media to get the word out about a product.  Create an action item (an easy one…can’t involve too many step), let the user decide the general content, and give them a great reward! You can find the full list of rules of the sweetstakes here, so go check it out an enter!

One unhappy customer has created a PR disaster for United Airlines

Have you seen the uber-popular YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”?  I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post so you can, it’s well worth 4:36 of your time to see this creative and funny look at poor customer service.  Seems Dave Carroll from the band Sons of Maxwell had his guitar broken while flying on United Airlines, and just a handful of days ago released a music video detailing his complaint. If we take what he says as truth, he spent a year trying to get some resolve and was repeatedly told “no”.  Personally I believe him because I’ve dealt with similar issues while traveling, and the corporate “no” is just too common.

If you run a business, big or small, you need to pay attention to what is happening in the world. The days of burying customer complaints are over, you need to develop a social media strategy to handle social media issues.

United Airlines has a mess on their hands, but they’re finally starting to deal with it. With over 2 million views of the “United Breaks Guitars” video as of this writing, United knows that they need to address this before they have an even bigger revolt on their hands.  Good news travels quickly, but bad news goes viral when creativity and humor are involved.  Armed with nothing more than a $200 HD video camera and a little bit of time and energy, an unhappy customer can share their story with millions of people, and that is not something you want to have to figure out how to respond to publically.

What You Can Do About It

1. Monitor the social media space.  It’s critical that you know if your company or brand is mentioned, and there is no excuse for not having this information delivered to you.  Something as simple as Google Alerts allows you to monitor web spaces for mentions in blogs, tweets and forums and can be delivered to your Feed Reader or email.
2. Respond quickly.  Notice I didn’t just say “respond”.  These days quick is necessary, although you don’t want to rush in and say something foolish.  If you are doing a good job of monitoring, you should be aware of most instances of your company being mentioned, and it takes 15 seconds to craft a response on Twitter…so do it! Dave thinks quick is a key element as well, he just posted a video response to United and mentions that they did respond, “generously but LATE…”
3. Add value. Don’t just reply to inquiries or complaints with “I hear you”, add some value.  Direct the person to a resource that will be helpful to them, or if it’s within your power, tell them that you will check into it personally and then be sure to follow up.
4. Be sincere. Social media is (for better and worse) a place of great transparency, and as such consumers can smell B.S. a mile away.  Don’t give lip service to your customers, treat them like you would like to be treated.

I recently spoke to a group of business owners about the need for a social media presence.  Many of them were struggling with the notion of stepping into the digital space, if for no other reason that they felt they couldn’t find the time to engage customers.  As we look at examples like “United Breaks Guitars” and dozens of other user generated “campaigns” , you need to ask yourself one question…

Can you afford to NOT have a social media presence?

 TweetDeck with Notes (click to enlarge)

At least once a day, sometimes more, somebody tells me that they don’t use Twitter because they can’t keep up with it, that it’s too fast, too “now”.  I understand what the sentiment is, but really it just doesn’t make sense.  Twitter is too good for communicating with groups and individuals, for learning new things from like minded people, and for getting useful information.  So, if you are using Twitter but aren’t sure how to make the most of it, or if you are thinking about diving in, this article is for you.

Did you know that you don’t have to use the main web page for your Twitter communication?  There are some neat applications available to you for free that will help you sort things out.  My favorite desktop application by far is Tweetdeck.  You should go download it right now, install it, sign in and then come back and read this.

Are you finished installing?  Good. Let’s move on.

If you click the picture above you will get a much larger view of the Tweetdeck layout. I’ve made notes on the page in red text so you know what you are looking at. I’m going to bullet point a few of the features that make this product such a must-have for anybody that uses Twitter.

• The ability to easily view replies and direct messages.  The replies (in the picture it is the 2nd column from the left) are from people that use your screen name in  tweets.  It doesn’t matter where in the tweet it is (beginning, middle or end), Tweetdeck does a great job of picking them up.  This is really handy so I don’t miss something that may be said to me or about me.  I like to try to respond to most comments.  Afterall, Twitter is interactive like a cocktail party, not one way like a lecture.
• Creation of custom groups.  This is huge for me.  Although I follow a lot of people, I certainly don’t know them all personally.  I created a group called “Friends” (in this picture, 3rd from the left) that is exclusively for people that I know personally.  I like to keep an eye on this so I can see what is happening in the lives of the people that I know the best.  As far as I know, you can create as many groups as you want.  I also have groups called “Tech SFO” and “Tech LA” so I can keep track of goings-on by geography, and some other groups that are related by the type of person that I am interested in keeping track of.  While the public stream on the far left (All Tweets) is like the entire newspaper, the individual groups are like sections of the newspaper (sports, business, etc.) The newest release of Tweetdeck has a little button (+) that you can click in an individuals tweet that adds them to a group of your choosing.  I love this feature!
• TwitScoop.  I keep this column open because it shows trends that people are discussing on Twitter.  This particular screenshot has an interesting mix of boobies, congress and earthquake.  Mashable is squarely responsible for putting boobies up there for the first time that I’m aware of, with their article about Victoria’s Secret coming to mobile phones. You can click on any word to be taken to a web page that will show you different people that are using the particular word.
• URL Shortening.  Have you seen all those links people put up on Twitter that look odd like http://is.gd/3IZL ? That is a shortened URL.  Since Twitter only allows 140 characters at a time, you don’t want to take up all of your space with some crazy long link to a website.  Using Tweetdeck, simply copy/paste your link and press “shorten” and it will automatically be truncated and added to your message.  Pretty slick!
• Create search groups.  The night of this writing, I am heading out to Mindshare LA.  I was curious who is going, so I easily made a group in Tweetdeck that searches the public timeline for anybody that says “Mindshare”.  Within a few seconds I got a list, and it continues to update as new people mention it. This is a great feature for anybody that wants to keep track of their brand or product, or to find new people to follow that may have common interests as you.

  

  A search group in Tweetdeck.

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