Twitter...Again

Whether Twitter is a flash in the pan or not - it’s worthy of recognition. Over the course of the last year, Twitter was the fastest growing “member community” - that means more new members than Facebook. If you are still trying to figure out the space, here are fifty points that might come in handy. The following will give you some insight on where to start on Twitter, ideas about what to tweet and also provides some insight on how to use the platform.

We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. I’m not going to address the naysayers much with this. Instead, I’m going to offer 50 thoughts for people looking to use Twitter for business. And by “business,” I mean anything from a solo act to a huge enterprise customer.

Your mileage may vary, and that’s okay. Further, you might have some really great ideas to add. That’s why we have lively conversations here at [chrisbrogan.com] in the comments section. Jump right in!

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

    Some Sanity For You

21. You don’t have to read every tweet.
22. You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
23. Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).
24. Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
25. 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
26. If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.
27. If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.
28. Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
29. If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
30. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

31. Twitter takes up time.
32. Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
33. Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
34. There are other ways to do this.
35. As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)
36. Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.
37. Twitter is just for technonerds.
38. Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
39. Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
40. Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

    Some Positives to Throw Back

41. Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
42. Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
43. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
44. Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
45. Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
46. Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
47. Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
48. Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
49. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).
50. Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

Source - ChrisBrogan

Post Recession: Sustainability

A recent study states that 73% of Canadians believe that their government should only adopt economic stimulus measures that are environmentally sustainable. Although the green craze has taken a back seat in light of the economic environment you can be sure that consumers are going to be demanding sustainable practices from government and business alike in the post recessionary period. The following is a beautiful example of a sustainable model. While watching the video, think to yourself: in addition to working towards sustainable business practices, how can your brand facilitate sustainability?

To watch the video click HERE.

Ten Reasons To Be Good

With all the economic doom and gloom out there it seems that business sponsored social impact programs have fallen off the radar. Aligning business strategy with a social initiative is looked at as a “nice to have” but not a “need to have”. This article is written to challenge that thought by outlining ten reasons it’s good business to align your organization with a social impact program.

As I've been talking with people about Fruitful's mission to advance "conscious capitalism," it's become clear that social impact is often perceived as a nice-to-have rather than a critical component to business strategy. Here are 10 reasons why you may want to help your company rethink that notion.

1. You're looking for profitable growth. According to Ethisphere, the world's most ethical companies have seen a growth rate twice that of the S&P 500. And A.T. Kearney recently reported that sustainable companies are outperforming their rivals during the downturn.
2. You need to reduce operating costs. For example, Sun Microsystem's new datacenter in Broomfield CO saves over $1,000,000 in electrical costs and reduces Sun's corporate carbon footprint by 6%. Wal-Mart set a goal to reduce packaging in the supply chain by 5 percent by 2013. Reaching that goal would prevent 660,000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and save the company more than $3.4 billion.
3. Your industry is contributing to social problems. Tobacco and lung cancer, fast food and obesity, oil and war, autos and global warming... it's tough when your entire category carries negative associations. Forward-thinking players in these categories should be thinking about how to disrupt their own businesses before someone else does. Examples include BP's investments in alternative energy, McDonald's healthy menu and the Toyota Prius. There's definitely still room for improvement, but hey, progress is progress.
4. Your brand or business is capable of being part of a social solution. GE was already in the business of solving energy and water issues, so it wasn't a stretch to create the Ecomagination commitment to become a leader in sustainable energy. Nike's brand is all about unleashing potential through sport, which is an umbrella that easily covers social issues like childhood inactivity.
5. You're lagging behind committed competitors. In today's transparent world, you don't want to show up at the bottom of an industry review on CSR practices. To be on enlightened consumers' consideration sets, you really need to be in the top 2 or 3. Case in point: ClimateCounts pocket guide shows consumers how to "vote with their wallet" by presenting the best and worst companies across a range of industries in supporting climate change.
6. You''re in danger of (or in the middle of) a PR nightmare. Nike got on the CSR bandwagon after being accused of child labor violations. Unilever and Starbucks were more proactive, identifying social and environmental challenges in coffee and tea plantations and transforming potential liabilities into triple bottom-line advantage. Lately the financial industry has taken a big trust hit; look for more alignment with and promotion of ethical business practices here.
7. You're looking for differentiation in a highly competitive industry. Whole Foods disrupted the grocery market. Clorox' GreenWorks is a visibly different option in an overwhelming mass of cleaning products. UK retailer Marks & Spencer's Behind the Label initiative strengthened their brand and boosted profits by 28% in one year. One article notes that "by challenging consumers to 'Look behind the label' M&S has increased pressure on its competitors to demonstrate their own efforts."
8. You want a unified, passionate workforce. GE found that its Ecomagination initiative had a positive and unintended side effect; employees became more energized and broke down silo barriers to help contribute to the cause. According to Kellie McElhaney in Just Good Business, "GE's CSR program turned out to be one of the highest-impact internal unification strategies that the company has ever implemented."
9. You need to boost customer loyalty. It costs more to gain a new customer than keep an existing customer, so loyalty is one of the easier ways to grow revenue. Loyal customers also serve as a volunteer army of word-of-mouth advocates. Goldman Sachs referenced studies that show consumers identify "being socially responsible" as the most likely factor influencing brand loyalty at 35%, compared with lower price (20%), easily available products (20%), product prestige (3%), company shares your values (14%) and quality (6%).
10. It's the right thing to do. You spend most of your life sitting behind a desk; why not make that time worthwhile?

Source: Fruitful Strategy

Brand Built Barriers

Among the number of hot topics on a marketer’s agenda is the idea of brand humanization through the development and maintenance of consumer relationships. The belief is that consumers will resonate more strongly with a brand that behaves as “real” humans do. That’s a lot easier said then done. The following explores how brands, despite their efforts to humanize, inadvertently build walls between themselves and their customers.


Today as I watched a video of Peter Arnell describe the rationale behind Tropicana's rejected package design, I had a bit of an epiphany. Many companies, brands and organizations are inadvertently building walls between themselves and their customers. It's unintentional, happened over time—but ultimately in this age of empowerment, customers feel more connected to each other than they do to your business or brand. Maybe it's always been this way—but it seems to me that it's getting worse, not better. How else can you explain things like this? Somehow, some (not all) brands seem to be increasingly "out of touch" with their own customers. Here's some food for thought around what I think might be some of the walls that are separating customers from your business.

Legal Mumbo Jumbo
Most large organizations have dealt with lawsuits and ugly legal situations, so understandably they've put large legal teams in place for their own safety. This is a smart business practice. But it also has a side effect. When legal restrictions prevent you from talking openly and honestly with your customers, there is bound to be a disconnect somewhere. In a recent conversation with Ford's Scott Monty, he said "somewhere along the way, we forgot how to talk to each other". So while companies have to protect themselves, I'm wondering if there are opportunities to take a second look at this barrier. Can it be better?

Profit At All Cost
As cliche as it sounds, if selling "stuff" to "consumers" is all your business cares about—I have to conclude that it will eventually become a barrier. I believe that this economy is pushing us toward a "post consumer era" (more on that later). Which means that if your business is only in the business of making money and everything else comes second, you'll be in trouble with consumers who are examining what they really need to be happy. Profit at all cost can become a barrier especially in this down economy because as people look deeper into themselves, it'll seem odd that all you want to do is sell to them.

Brand Sorcery
I believe in the power of brands. I also believe in "brand sorcerers". These are the folks who invent emotion and meaning around your brand that is completely out of touch with how your customers feel about it. Brand sorcery creates hype and applies purpose to every nuance it touches around your brand or the "re-branding" of it. It's not based on any good research or instinct. Often times it's based in personal preference and self preservation. That said, good brand efforts can do the exact opposite and remove barriers. Pick your brand partners carefully—enough missteps here can alienate customers.

ROI Infatuation
In this economy, ROI is king and it's understandable. I can't stress that enough. But infatuation with it also kills risk taking which means that you could be in a perpetual cycle of risk aversion to the point of losing the spark that started your business in the first place. Your customers may be passionate—they could be willing to support you. But barriers can rise up if you never take chances with them and only focus on the desire to see a monetary "return" on all of your initiatives.

Ivory Tower Syndrome
This one is a biggie. If your business has become so inward looking as to forget about where your customers spend their time, then you may never be able to relate to them again. Ivory Tower Syndrome means you've forgotten how your customers live, what they do with their friends and families and what they value, Or worse, you've created artificial representations and don't send your employees out to experience it first hand. This can become the ultimate barrier often formed as a result of others.

Tone Deafness
If you've lost the ability to connect and empathize with your customers, then you've become tone deaf. This means you can look at the data, the demographics and the numbers but never really understand, relate or "get" them in any meaningful way. So it's natural that your preference of communication will be one way vs. a dialogue. It's easier to maintain. Tone deafness becomes a barrier when you can see your customers, but can't figure out how to touch them anymore.

Corporate Disconnect
Your customers have a culture, your company has a corporate culture. Sometimes they are aligned like in the case of Harley-Davidson who understands that people who park cars at there HQ need to do so in the back lot. The front is reserved for bikers—as it should be. Corporate disconnect means that the culture if your company has become incompatible with the culture of your customers. Once this happens, yet another barrier is formed.

So off the top of my head—at a gut level I'm thinking some of these things could be challenges. What are your thoughts? How can we do better? How can the "walls of separation" (if the indeed exist) be torn down?

Source - Logic + Emotion

The Abundant Economy

Web 2.0 is creating fundamental shifts in economic paradigms as the proliferation of social technology is challenging the principles of a “scarce economy”. Brands like Google are not concerned with extracting value from scarce resources but rather they profit through “abundant economic” principles. At the root of this “abundant economy” is the principle of crowdsourcing. We encourage you to spend three minute on this introductory Crowdsourcing 101 video to familiarize yourself with this entrenching movement. If you are already familiar with crowdsourcing and you’re interested in learning more we’d recommend you check out the book What Would Google Do. Here’s a summary deck of learnings from the book.



Crowdsourcing Video: HERE

Book Summary: HERE

Hard To Believe

Two recent consumer behaviour studies suggest that commercial interruptions might in fact heighten one’s enjoyment of a television program. Although it might be difficult to find somebody to agree with this finding, evidence suggests our subconscious favours interruptions during activities of enjoyment. As the article highlights, the reason has to do with the law of diminishing returns.

People eat chocolate bars in pieces, waiting and savoring. They space their cigarettes through the day, their gossip sessions, their calls to friends. They like their sports with timeouts, and practice their religion with fasts and periods of self-denial, like Lent.

So why is it that commercial interruptions always ruin TV programs?

Maybe they don’t. In two new studies, researchers who study consumer behavior argue that interrupting an experience, whether dreary or pleasant, can make it significantly more intense.

“The punch line is that commercials make TV programs more enjoyable to watch. Even bad commercials,” said Leif Nelson, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the new research. “When I tell people this, they just kind of stare at me, in disbelief. The findings are simultaneously implausible and empirically coherent.”

Over the years, psychological research has found that people are not always so clear on what makes them happy. When reporting on their own well-being, they exhibit a kind of equilibrium: After a loss (divorce, say) or a gain (a promotion), they typically return in time to about the same happiness level as before. Humans habituate quickly, to hardship and prosperity, to war and peace.

Yet even modest pleasures — a cup of coffee in the morning, an afternoon walk, a Scotch before bed — seem to follow a law of diminishing returns. “Alcohol is like love,” says a roué in Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye.” “The first kiss is magic. The second is intimate. The third is routine.”

To Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of the book “The How of Happiness,” this raises a provocative question: “If you adapt so quickly to pleasurable activities, and the pleasure decreases, how do you sustain a level of happiness or ever move up on the scale?”

One way people do this, research suggests, is to favor novel experiences over material goodies. The smell of a new car may go to a person’s head for months. But the memory of a mind-bending trek through the Australian outback — or the Amsterdam museums — seems to provide longer-lasting psychological sustenance, some researchers argue. In some studies, couples report greater satisfaction in their relationship after trying new things together.

The new consumer research analyzed similar dynamics at a moment-to-moment level. In one experiment, Dr. Nelson, along with Tom Meyvis and Jeff Galak of New York University, had 87 undergraduates watch an episode of the sitcom “Taxi.” Half watched it as it was originally broadcast, with commercials for the Jewelry Factory Store and the law office of Michael Brownstein, among other ads. The other half watched the show straight through, without commercials.

After the show was over, the students rated how much they enjoyed it, using an 11-point scale and comparing it with the sitcom “Happy Days,” which they were all familiar with.. Those who saw “Taxi” without commercials preferred “Happy Days”, but those who saw the original show, Jewelry Factory Store and all, preferred “Taxi” by a significant margin.

In similar experiments, using other video clips and a variety of interruptions, the results were the same: people rated their experiences as more enjoyable with commercials , no matter their content, or other disruptions.. The effect wasn’t limited to watching TV; interrupting a massage also heightened people’s enjoyment, one experiment found.

The opposite was true for irritating experiences, like listening to vacuum cleaner noise: a break only made it seem worse, they found.

“The reason this happens, we argue, is that we tend to adapt to a variety of experiences, as they’re happening,” Dr. Nelson said. “Listening to a song, watching a TV program, having a massage: these all start out very enjoyable, and within a few minutes we get used to it. Interruptions break that up.”

In one of their papers, the authors even propose that commercial television evolved culturally to maximize enjoyment. The millions of Americans who record their favorite shows on TV may scoff; but they, too, often stop the shows to get a drink, make a call or talk. This kind of controlled interruption may represent a kind of ideal, Dr. Nelson said.

Gal Zauberman, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said the findings were solid, and added: “To me, the most interesting part is that almost everyone says, ‘I just wish I never had to watch a commercial.’

“It’s all a part of this phenomenon that we have found in other work,” he continued, “that people are not fully aware of what makes them happy, especially when there’s a temporal component, when one experience affects another in time.”

Interruption hardly improves all pleasurable activities. Dr. Nelson and his colleagues have found that people often do not habituate to shows or stories that are particularly demanding — with unexpected plot twists — and that interruptions can snap the thread, souring the experience. When artists, tradesmen, musicians and others lose themselves in their work, the selfless pleasure some psychologists call flow, the lunchtime whistle can be a hazard.

But life’s more common pleasures may have more in common with spending a morning in the hotel hot tub. Pretty wonderful; all the more so if you can slip out and dip in the pool every few minutes.

Source - The New York Times

How To Infect

Viral marketing has proven to be incredibly successful at breaking through the clutter when done right. Unfortunately, 99.9% of viral campaigns never get the results they had hoped to achieve. Although it is true that the success drivers of a viral campaign are quite random there are strategies you can adopt to increase the likelihood of your viral piece taking off.

When most people think about viral videos, they think of a crazy idea (often funny) that is irrelevant to the brand and put it out there to see what happens. The field has gotten much more crowded in the past 12 months but the behavior of sharing video is more common and bloggers help create more space for that. iPhone is another factor.

How to create and measure a good vital campaign? Here's an example of how to look at it. We;ve built a very sophisticated model and actually adjust and weight each interactions so it can be comparable to 'impressions'.

- 2,000,000+ views on YouTube
- 35,000+ informed on Facebook or Linkedin
- 10,000+ ratings
- 6,000+ favorites
- 4,000+ comments
- 2,500+ mention in community and forums
- 500+ blog post mention
- 250+ blog posts linking back to the videos
- 10+ newspaper/magazine mention

What is the best strategic framework for viral marketing strategy? OK I'll share some of our company best kept secrets here (Pls don't share with our competitors).

Creating the brand connection. This is very important; a concept should not be forced because it fits a brand. Rather, a brand should be fit into a great concept. This is where the art comes in. How do you align the positive attributes of the viral videos to the desirable brand attributes to further strengthen them.

Size does and doesn’t matter. People often think that a viral video needs to be short 15-30 seconds, that’s really not the case. It doesn’t matter, as long as it is not 30 mins. So whether it is 30 seconds or 90 seconds, I don’t think it makes a difference. It is the content.

The shock factor myth. Well sure it attracts attention, but the best viral doesn’t need to resort to using this. Having said that, it is always important that a viral video will allow and attract viewers to investigate further. Lots of folks think the shock factor is the key viral component, may be for very small teenage segments. Most people don’t care.

Don't create a mini TV commercial. That’s guaranteed to fail and not getting viral. Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, it reduces the likelihood that viewers would share it unless it’s really amazing in production value.

Truly authentic user stories. People are interested in regular people; the cool factor lies in those little things with those everyday folks. Even those they are professionally produced, keep everything as authentic as possible. If you idea involves real life stories, it is even better.

Allow voting. Let the public vote for what they like or whatever makes sense. This will get the bloggers buzzing to their readers. This is the most powerful participation driver. Everyone loves competition.

Be 'good'. People who believe in a cause tend to be more proactive in spreading the word. They can be fiercely vocal about what they believe it. Leverage that behavior and dig deep to find the ‘good’ in your brand.

Encourage ‘remix’. There are lots of creative people out there, and I’m sure many of them would be delighted to add or remix their ideas. Make that easy for them.

Source - Innovation Playground