Gotta Question? Ask Twitter

Richmond, VA (Commonly refered to as RVA on Twitter) has a pretty darn good Twitter crowd. And they are active. They are all over the place. Aaaaaaand? They are a HUGE resource. Your city is probably the same way. Even if they aren’t, the Twitter community as a whole is a great resource for recommendations, referrals and general information and advice.

As an example, a while back (check my twitter stream @rBrianForrester from around 3/15/2010) I was planning a trip to Charlottesville, VA to hit up some local vineyards. I asked Twitter and ended up with some great recommendations and even learned that there was a “Spring Fling” passport available which gave me free tastings. Good for Brian AND good for business owners of the wineries we visited. Starting to see the point? If you are already on Twitter and part of a community, you already get it.

Next time you need a suggestion or have a question, try tossing it out to your “tweeps” instead of Googling it. You may be pleasantly surprised by the responses you get.

Twitter- an expanded thought

My last post dealt with the importance of Social Media and business in general and dispelled the thought that social media was just a fad that will come and go like the pet rock, Vanilla Ice, and parachute pants.

I wanted to take the time to expand a bit on just one form of Social Media–Twitter.

I read an interesting e-newsletter from a pretty smart internet marketer by the name of John Reese today. (I’ve learned about some pretty cool stuff from this newsletter so if you want to subscribe, you can click here. It’s free and I don’t know him so I’m not pawning you off on some product, although he does occasionally sell stuff)

ANYWAY, he recently shut down his Twitter account which had over 25,000 followers. This counter-intuitive thinking prompted the thoughts I’ll write here.

First, I don’t claim to know the best way to use Twitter. I don’t make claims that Twitter is the new “hotness” or that Twitter will transform your business. Hell, I don’t even claim that I use Twitter that well. (At the time of this posting i have only 441 followers) That said, I know that I use Twitter differently that even many of my friends do.

I use Twitter to watch. I’m a Twitter voyeur if you will. I watch how big companies interact with their clients. I watch how start-ups and local companies spread their message. I watch people tweet mindless babble out into the ether. I watch businesses get on Twitter and screw it up royally. And occasionally I tweet, normally to friends and people around me locally. But that’s just how I use Twitter. Everyone has their own approach.

The larger, expanded question here (and this is something I’ve wrestled back and forth with quite a bit) is the amount of time people spend on Twitter (for business purposes for the sake of this blog) worth it? Largely, I’d have to say no. But there’s a very large caveat here.

The caveat is that it depends on HOW the company is using Twitter and WHO they have using it. Done correctly, I’ve seen big business use Twitter to defuse potentially negative scenarios and win over new customers. I’ve seen small businesses successfully put customers in their stores and stimulate buzz. Done poorly, I’ve seen other businesses use Twitter as social hour (or hours…) and I’ve seen their social use of Twitter hurt their business and turn potential customers away.

The great thing about big companies is that they have the budget to hire a “Social Media Director” or some other person whose primary function is to understand Social Media, the internet, and how best to use it to build customer relations. The downside for many start-ups and small businesses is that they can’t afford to hire a full-time Social Media wiz that they trust with the voice of their company. That usually means the owner becomes the voice.

If you own a small company, and you are on Twitter 4 hours a day, off and on, with TweetDeck running in the background, how is that affecting you? Twitter can become a huge vacuum of time and accomplishment and this is something to carefully watch for. You can become dependent on checking your smart phone for Twitter updates and it can have a negative affect on your focus and accomplishment. As John Reese points on his newsletter, Twitter can also become a high school-esque EGO fest where he/she with the most followers has a superiority complex. Nothing good comes from that nonsense.

So for the reader who uses Twitter, my advice is to monitor your Twitter usage. For one week, take the time to document how often you are on Twitter. You may just be shocked how much time you use. ( I recently clocked my usage of Twitter for just one day and was amazed that I spent nearly 3 hours on Twitter in one form or another). Once you have a number, an average amount of time you spend on Twitter, ask yourself, is it worth it? What is the payoff?

These can be difficult questions to answer because some of the payoff from actively using Twitter is qualitative, not quantitative. New friendships, social invites, discounts to your favorite restaurant that you wouldn’t have know about otherwise, these things are important but hard to measure. Remember, we are focusing on Twitter for business here, so try to think in terms of how you used Twitter to build relationships that resulted in sales, new customers, new business. Again, since there are no “Twit-alytics” that can super accurately measure sales, this will take some close monitoring.

I guess the real answer here is that there is no cut and dry answer. If you have 25,000 followers on Twitter, I certainly would not recommend closing your Twitter account. At the minimum you’ve built a herd of followers who could potentially be customers, blog readers, referral sources or JV partners. But I would suggest monitoring your usage and at least try to be honest with yourself about how successfully or unsuccessfully you are using Twitter for your business. (By the way, even if you “just use Twitter for personal use” it could be cutting into your work time, big time)

Until next time,

-Brian

“Social Media is a Fad”

To that I say, yeah… right. Twitter may wax and wane and facebook may eventually go the way of Friendster and MySpace, but something will always replace it. In fact, I rarely actually use Twitter.com when I post on Twitter. I use third party applications that were built because Twitter is open-source (meaning programmers have access to the code and can write programs around that).

People want a voice. People want to be heard. People want to connect with other people. People want to interact with other people who share the same interests in them, and to argue with people they don’t agree with. Social Media provides this opportunity in a way that was not possible before the internet.

The fact that “Social Media” is a relatively new term applied recently to online communities begs the questions of it’s legitimacy but the truth is that Social Media, albeit in different forms, has been around since the internet’s conception. Forums, AOL chat groups, etc,etc are all forms of Social Media when you strip the term down to its fundamental definition.

A good friend of mine, Lindsay Dicks (@lindsaymdicks) was the first to show me this video from YouTube aptly titled “The Social Media Revolution” which paints a pretty clear picture of the future of Social Media. It’s worth a watch (the music by the way is Fat Boy Slim)

The internet is our digital Wild West and Social Media the proverbial gold rush for many business owners. More importantly though, it’s an opportunity to be part of something new, something powerful, and something that is changing the face of modern business.

You don’t have to look hard to see the impact it’s having on big business. Look at the recent incident with Filmmaker Kevin Smith (@ThatKevinSmith) and Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) that made public headlines. Entire networks are using Social Media to better connect with their audiences. Take a look at HGTV (@HGtvOfficial) who has actually started incorporating tweets from real viewers into their commercials. Ever watch the NBC nightly news. Tom Brokaw now mentions NBC’s twitter page and facebook fan page as part of his sign off every night. The icons even show up in the closing moments of the show.

So is Social Media a fad. Hell no. Not even close. People will always look for new ways to connect, new ways to stay “in the know”, new ways to have a voice, new ways to express themselves and the internet and Social Media are making that easier than ever. If anything, Social use of the internet will grow exponentially and probably reform our current economy to one of Consumer-based Capitalism. I say, ’bout time!

But I Want “It” Now

Let me start by saying this isn’t an article about the iPad. I’ll leave that to the countless tech and/or Apple blogs out there. This is an article about embracing technology and utilizing it for the betterment of your business (and maybe freeing up some time on your social calendar too!)

We live in a world of instant gratification. The days of waiting for anything can often seem obsolete. So today, when computing giant Apple unveiled it’s new iPad, the buzz wasn’t instantaneous across the world. I was able to watch real consumer feedback regarding this new product, as Apple was discussing it for the first time. How? I simply used a twitter application, TweetDeck and searched for the topic #apple and #iPad. Everyone in Twitter using those hashtags was then visible to me. There are some solid, opinionated tweets in that Twitter feed (and some that are just asinine).

Imagine what real time consumer feedback about your service offering could mean for your business. It’s not difficult to do, but how many people are paying attention? You’d be foolish not to.

Many people I speak with today are still skeptical of Twitter, and, believe it or not, of the internet! Listen, I could maybe understand being a little wary of the internet in 1999 during the dot com crash. But the internet is NOT going anywhere. And the billions of dollars being dumped into R&D (research and development) for faster, lighter more compact internet capable devices is proof of that. There is an entire generation who has grown up online, who, when asked, say they “couldn’t live without it.”

There’s a book, The Age of Speed, by Vince Poscente, which is neither prophetic nor profound, but which makes a few entertaining points about the modern age and the speed with which we process and consume massive amounts of information. In the book he makes a good point about confusing this new technology with “more work”. “In the Age of Speed, we have the tools to accomplish more in less time than our counterparts twenty years ago. Consequently we have more time, but not necessarily more time to spend doing more work,” Poscente asserts.

I would agree.

There is initially a learning curve, which generally requires plugging in and poking around. There there is the decision to use certain applications to make life easier. For this, which can seem a daunting task, I’d recommend asking people further ahead on the learning curve–or whom you trust in general. If you are one of the many people who just can’t seem to bring yourself to do any of that, I suggest finding someone for your business who is willing to do it for you, and put them to work. Your presence on the internet, while still only part of the puzzle, is increasingly a more important part of the puzzle.

“We change, whether we like it or not”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Keeping Up With It All (Information Overload)

Info Overload?  Feeling like there is no way to keep up with everything going on around you?  This is the age of speed and the average Joe (and Jane) have been empowered through blogging and social media to deliver news even faster than many mainstream media like radio and T.V.  That means that news and other very valuable information is now available from thousands of sources which update all day, every day.  Keeping track of blogs you read, news, Twitter, Facebook, forums… yeah, it can be difficult.

So what can you do about it?

First, realize that you can’t keep up with all of it.  There is no way to process that much information.  The sooner you come to this conclusion, the better you will sleep.

Second, organize.    I subscribe to 50 or so feeds (which is probably a relatively small number compared to many of my friends) so one day of not checking my RSS Reader and I’ve suddenly got hundreds of possible articles to read.  The cool thing about the Google Reader I use (and there are many others, like Feed Burner) is that you can organize your info so that it comes to you in a form you can digest.   I’ll skim headlines until I see something I like.  If I notice I’m not reading a particular feed ever, I may just cancel the feed.  Get a RSS reader if you don’t already have one, it will change your life.  Basically think of it as a newspaper where you pick the content.  Pretty sweet!

Third, prioritize.  I’ve got a list of at least 30 books I want to read, I’ve got my RSS feeds, Twitter account (@rbrianforrester), Facebook, Foursquare and I’ve got my educational research…all of this is constantly happening.  So prioritization is key.  Make a list of how what you want to get done, and factor in your reading time throughout the day. Find your favorite blogs that deliver the best content, and put those higher on the list. The key is to make sure you absorb the information that is most important to you, without worrying about missing out on something. Just accept that you will inadvertently miss out on something- it’s O.K.

Get a system for organization.  Preferably one that works across platforms and projects.  I’ve been recommended a little service called Evernote which has been working out great for me.  It syncs with my phone, my desktop and online so I can access my lists and ideas from basically anywhere.

Got any tools that you use to stay organized in the ever-clutter digital world?  Feel free to share them with me.

How is Trust Factoring Into Your Business?

I just finished Chris Brogan and Julien Smith‘s book, Trust Agents about a week ago. If you haven’t heard about these guys, you should swing by there blogs and check them out. A lot of business owners (maybe you included?) are wondering how the hell to use Social Media in their business.

It’s a touchy area. It can be extremely powerful if you know how to use it, and it can be very detrimental if you don’t know what you’re doing. These two guys are among many who have it figured out very well.

The largest principle about using social media correctly goes back to trust. That one little word. It’s what all businesses should be built on (along with a good product that people actually want) and it’s what social media is definitely built on.

The most important thing to understand about social media is that it creates trust (if done correctly) which can be used as a lever (a powerful ass lever) for your business. This trust must be protected at all costs, because it takes time and sincerity to pull it off.

I was talking with someone today about their take on social media and they had an interesting (although probably not 100% accurate) analogy: Social Media is like a party. You go to the party to socialize with people you like and trust, and occasionally refer them to someone you trust if it’s appropriate. You don’t walk into the party and start selling your crap. If you do, you won’t be invited back to the party. If you play it cool, you will get introduced to other people who can become valuable resources in the future. But you have to be trusted first.

If you want the real scoop on building trust through social media, read Trust Agents. The important take away is that social media is a powerful part of building trust in business. I see it getting more important, not less important. And this is one party you don’t want to be late to. But take baby steps, when you join a social media platform like Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, sit back and watch the action before you dive in.

If you’re unsure about how to do it correctly, find someone to help. You can always contact us and we’ll put you in touch with the right people. You can get our contact info here