social media

Everyone is trying to find uses for Twitter in their marketing. All I can say is “Whoa Nelli!” Slow down there. It’s just another tool! It’s not the coming of the messiah.

I think using a Twitter stream like you’d use press releases, ads or targeted marketing makes for a good use of the medium, but the information you push has to be extremely product-specific. If you’re a celebrity, your every motion is interesting to your consumers, but if you’ve got a more varied audience, you need to segment what you release and consider having multiple Twitter streams.

Every piece of info from Pepsi, for instance, could be interesting, but I doubt there are many people who love the company that much; what they love are various products. “Pepsi Water,” “Pepsi cola,” and “Pepsi Green” (for environmental initiatives) would probably be a better way to target consumers than just having a “Pepsi” channel.

I use Twitter as a human-powered (and hence much smarter) RSS feed. That’s what I try to do with my own Twitter posts: stick mostly to info on finance and not put any personal info on there. With an RSS feed, some static always intrudes on the clarity of the “signal,” but with Twitter it’s the job of the poster to keep the clarity high. Deviate from what interested someone enough to sign on in the first place, and you will probably lose them.

I still follow @cheeky-geeky, because I think he’s wicked smart, but he also clogs up my stream with a lot of stuff I have no interest in, and I kind of wish he split his interests into different streams and had more defined brands. However, Twitter is not yet modeled in this way.

You can’t have a top-level stream and substreams or designate substreams using tags that a reader can then opt into or out of. These would be good additions to the platform. For now, while each stream has its own users and a multi-account approach would segment one’s following (3,000 users on 3 streams versus 9,000 on one stream, for instance), I think it’s an option worth considering. Few people want to read about my personal life, but there are more who will take my recommendations for articles on finance, and I’m trying to respect their screen space by not posting minutiae.

From the point of view of a PR firm, there is typically no natural buyer for a firm’s “product line.” Some firms are very targeted (e.g., nothing but tech) so they could in theory post every press release or update about any one of their clients, but most PR firms have a varied client base.

Some reporters will want news on Firm A or B, but not on all a firm’s clients. So it would make more sense to look at the information “product line” that various clients represent and split that information into separate Twitter accounts.

From an information-gathering perspective, it makes TONS of sense for PR firms to cross reference all their journalist contacts with Twitter and follow those streams (just as they should be getting RSS feeds of articles). It could lead to a lot of annoying updates on personal issues from those reporters, but could also (now and then) alert them to what they’re working on so you can see where a client might fit in.

But despite the obvious practicality of taking these measures, I can’t see where Twitter would move the needle hugely one way or another. It’s just another tool. People get so wound up about these things, but technology is just a way to reach out. Don’t get caught up basing a marketing strategy on any one piece of tech, especially a platform that hasn’t yet figured out what its revenue model is.

Skittles just launched a new un-website that is simply a navigation block in the upper left corner overlaying various social media websites related to Skittles. The landing page is the Wikipedia entry for Skittles. Other links include Products (Wiki pages on specific products); Video (YouTube); Pictures (Flickr); Chatter (Twitter); Friends (Facebook).

The site borrows it's concept from Modernista!, but the Skittles has been lauded for being the first major brand to launch a website that fully embraces the concept that companies don't control their brand image, but rather must be active participants in the conversation that are continually shaping and reshaping their brand in the public consciousness.

The origins of this idea can be found in the Cluetrain Manifesto, which has been promoted for many years on the social web. At first it was a novel, even revolutionary, concept that markets are conversations, which corporate marketing departments have little control over.

However, the introductions of an un-website from a major CPG company like M&M Mars clearly demonstrates that at least one large corporation has understood and accepted its role as a participant and sometimes guide in the online conversation about one of it's products.

Putting marketing theory aside, the Skittles site itself is slightly awkward to view, because the navigation box is large and blocks out the upper left portion of each website visited. The navigation can be minimized, but just expands again as soon as the user go to another page.

The current initial landing page is the Wikipedia entry for Skittles, which was chosen after the Skittles Twitter page got raunchy on launch day. There are still a continuing stream of questionable posts running across the Twitter page. I quickly glanced at the Chatter page and noted a number of posts from a user named FuckCity. This uncontrolled nature of the content streaming across Skittles.com necessitated the addition of an annoying pop-up that requires users to enter their age before entering the site.

In sum, the Skittles site is an interesting and brilliant marketing experiment that has already generated huge acclaim and hundreds of thousands of fans and followers of the Skittles brand across the social web. The online world will probably reward the next few copycats of the un-website concept, but eventually this approach is going to get rather tired. Can you imagine if every website was just a link to the same five social media websites?

While the Skittles experiment does not represent the future of the homepage, there is no doubt that we are going to be seeing a lot more integration of social media elements in the websites of major companies. Skittles.com is surely just the beginning.

Monitoring, tracking, and responding to what others are writing about your company online is a relatively inexpensive and very effective strategy for building your brand's online reputation. It is an excellent way to learn about your customers, respond to issues before they get out of control, and generate customer loyalty that translates into increased sales.

The following free tools will help you stay on top of the conversation surrounding your business.

Google.com/alerts - Simply enter a search term, choose a "comprehensive" alert, choose how often you'd like it delivered, then enter your email address. You will receive updates every time any content with your keywords enters the GoogleSphere. This service will be even more useful when Google adds alert delivery via RSS.

Technorati.com - Technorati is the largest blog search engine. Add your RSS enabled website to Technorati and it will track other sites that link to you yours and add your blog to the Technorati network.

Backtype.com - This service does a scarily good job of tracking comments across the blogosphere. Type your name in to see all those pithy remarks you've made over the years. Type in your company's name to find out what people really think of your products and services.

Boardtracker.com - Indexes and tracks discussion board postings. Discussion boards were the original social media sites long before Facebook or MySpace existed. They often have a large, focused, and passionate user bases. If you want to have conversations with potential customers that care about what you do, then find and join the top discussion boards for your industry or area of interest.

Search.twitter.com - Twitter is of course the incredibly wonderful/annoying service that lets you update the world about every little thing that you do. While you may not use Twitter extensively, you will want to know if someone is twittering about your company, so try a search to see what comes up.

Yahoo Pipes - Yahoo Pipes allows users to get/pipe information from different sources and then set up rules for how that content should be filtered. Try searching for pipes that other users have built like the Social Media Firehose. You can modify existing pipes or create your own unique pipe to get your data just the way you want it.

Over the past few years marketers have focused on content creation as the primary means of "participation" in online communities. We've all been busy writing blogs, sending emails, building online communities, twittering, etc.. However, we would do well to take the time to seriously listen to our customers. Hopefully, these tools help.

Last week I sat in on an interesting panel session at the Mixx Conference. Dave Couture, Benjamin Hill, David Rosenberg, and Barbara Ward Thall discussed how personal publishing and social media tools have altered the way customers learn about, engage with and make decisions about products. The power has shifted from traditional marketing departments towards trusted peer networks and other influencers.

So what is your average marketing department to do? Obviously, everyone wants to engage in the discussion and take advantage of this whole “social media” thing, however, not all companies have the stomach for it. Benjamin Hill mentioned that, “You aren’t going to be successful in the social space unless you come with the intent to listen, read, react, and respond.“ People get tripped up by the half-hearted attempts to “listen” and “participate.”

A particularly egregious example that came up is the Johnson & Johnson blog. Here’s a quick excerpt of their comment policy, “All comments will be reviewed before posting. Since this blog is about Johnson & Johnson, comments that don’t directly relate to the Company or to topics covered on this blog won’t be posted." It continues, "We generally won’t post comments about products that are sold by the Johnson & Johnson operating companies.” So what exactly can I comment about?

Of course it’s fine to have rules about what you post to your site, but the net result of this draconian comments policy is that nobody comments. It would be better if J&J just disabled comments all together.

The basic problem for a corporation is that it is setup to be systematic and to speak with one voice, but participating in online conversations is chaotic and distinctly not systematic. It’s not always going to be pretty when you go online and start participating in conversations about your company. These are real conversations, so people will not always have great things to say about the company. Some will be fans, others will be legitimately ticked off customers, and then you will have your share of hopeless trolls who are just looking to draw you into a fight.

Naturally, you have to be flexible and ready to role with the punches, because sometimes you won’t get the result you want. Sometimes your carefully orchestrated plan won’t work. So how can you explain to brand managers, corporate execs, and the fretting legal department that it might not be pretty, but they have to participate anyway?

You have to help them see how rampant the conversation is around their brand and explain to them that they can either participate or let the conversation happen without them. Sometimes it really is better to just observe a conversation and not sully the waters with an interjection from corporate that could very likely sound stilted an out of place.

Even if a company has no plans to participate, they should at the very least be listening. My suggestion to J&J would be that they kill their blog and put themselves in listening mode and invent more traditional TV, Banner, and search campaigns around the insights.

When starting your typical open-source project, there is little or no monetary incentive for individuals to participate in the project. Participation is largely dependent on the brilliance and usefulness of the idea, the leadership of the project’s originators, and the platform for collaboration that is implemented.

Ideally, the software itself serves as a platform for collaboration and is designed to encourage participation in the project. This is the case with many popular content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, Mambo, etc.. These systems allow users to easily post content and create social networks that encourage a positive feedback loop of creativity and software development. Project participants end up creating a system, which allows them to work more effectively on the system they are creating.

Of all the content management systems I’ve worked with, Drupal does the best job of designing collaboration into the structure of the software itself. The design is simple, but fundamental to Drupal’s success. Drupal is a bare-bones framework that allows modules of code to be plugged into it. The modules provide nearly all functionality in the Drupal system. Each of these modules has its own maintainer who is often the module's creator.

This structure automatically creates a team environment, because each developer has her own piece of the pie so to speak and is committed to managing the development of her module. Further, there is a strong incentive to contribute modules to the project, since contributing a module gives the programmer credibility within the Drupal community, as well as the opportunity to have the community improve the programmer’s code. This simple mutually beneficial system drives Drupal's development.

Drupal also excels at organizing programmers and users in real communities around the world. There is one site and one module that contribute the most to the massive worldwide organization of Drupal communities. The sub domain Groups.drupal.org (GDO) runs off of the Organic Groups module, which allows for the creation of an infinite number of topic and location specific sites. In this case, the subject is Drupal, but the same network of groups could be created around anything. GDO allows users and programmers to organize on a massive scale and drives widespread community involvement in the Drupal project.

The basic principles of Drupal’s success can be applied with technical and non-technical teams in for profit or non-profit organizations. Create a positive feedback loop that automatically rewards individuals for contributing to the project. Break the project into modular components that are owned by an individual or team. Create a platform for collaboration amongst team members.

Drupal is an impressive tool for marketers and community organizers looking to take advantage of the best social media tools. Consider using it on your next project and feel free to contact me with questions about building online communities and collaborative teams.