Great uses of Twitter at conferences

I had the pleasure of attending the Monitoring Social Media conference in Boston yesterday.  While I was there to discuss Social CRM, I took the opportunity to listen to a number of other speakers.

All of the speakers were great.  However, Aafia Chaudhry, CEO, JuvoLab & Founding Partner, Noesis, did a really nice job presenting the findings of research she performed at a recent conference.   She analyzed how companies at a recent medical conference were utilizing Twitter as part of their conference communication efforts.  Her findings, summarized on this slide, fall into two main categories:

Driving traffic to your booth and your website.

Aafia noted that one company had a large display setup at their booth where a twitter stream of conference-related tweets displayed.  People gathered at the booth to catch up on key highlights and to see their names scrolling by, it was a success.  One company, however, became so self-promotional in their attempts to drive traffic that the twitter audience became frustrated and negative towards their tweets, having the opposite effect.  Add value and respect your audience, good things will follow.

Educating the community

Adding value, providing education…. These are the  keys to success on twitter and beyond.  Many companies provided updates on treatments, disease-specific facts, and medical trials.  These updates, this information, was not about the company but was valuable information that others at the conference, and those not at the conference, could benefit from.  Become a trusted source of information and people will come to you.

Twitter, Facebook, Email, and other communication methods can supplement your in-person efforts at a conference.  Don’t miss out.

John

Since the future begins with local engagement/involvement….

Image via Wikipedia

 

While large organizations are clearly delivering value to the public and private sector it is important that we do not lose site of the importance of small organizations, local governments, and their ability to drive positive changes.  According to census numbers and numbers published by SBA for the United States alone we know that:  

• There are more than 80,000 local governments in the United States.
• There are more than 27.5 million small businesses in the United States (http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf).

With these numbers in mind I have launched a brand new community, Our Town Talk.  This community will evolve as membership grows, meeting the needs of our members.   

The mission for this community is straightforward and summed up as providing a place for citizens, small business owners, local government employees and politicians to come together and share their thoughts on what is good and what is not so good in their communities.  Over time I would love to see this become a place where citizen 2.0 is standardized and becomes a reality.   

While these goals are worthwhile we will need to be patient and seek to grow this community to the point where a critical mass is achieved.  In the mean-time, note:  

• The community is absolutely FREE.  It is ad-supported and I want to keep it this way to make sure there are no barriers to entry.
• There are three members today.  As I noted, I literally just launched this.
• As new members join I will create areas for the towns they are from.  I expect this to be a very slow growth community and we should be able to keep up.
• If you have  ideas, share them.
• Invite friends and play to see how this can add value to your community.
• I am aggregating job listings  and daily deals from around the web and will continue to add to these to continue to give more value.

If you believe your town needs an easy to use platform stop by and give it a try.  

John  

Innovation at Burlington High School

Patrick Larkin is the Principal of Burlington High School in Burlington, Massachusetts.  He is entering his fourth year and is focused on delivering a great education for his students. He is also passionate about innovation and social media, using Twitter to enhance learning and increase communication. I heard Patrick at the 140conf in Boston and knew I needed to ask him some questions.

View this document on Scribd

Big Marketing Stunts, Small-Business Style

Ahh… The hope of the big bang stunt that makes you an overnight sensation. We’re all looking for a little magic with our marketing efforts, just be careful that the stunt doesn’t blow up in your face.

I wanted to share this post which tells the story of 10 stunts, 5 that worked, 5 that failed. I hope you enjoy and learn something from the post, I know I did.

 Creating buzz around your business is tough, but it’s nothing compared to keeping that momentum going. By Geoff Williams So you want to create some excitement. You want that video you made to go viral. You want the evening news talking you up. You want, in other words, to pull off a successful marketing stunt. That’s all well and good, but if you want a marketing stunt to be a success, you should be looking at the long run. You’re looking for a s … Read More

via My Own Business – Sydney

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Podcast with Michael Wu on Social Anthropology and The Social Ecosystem

Michael is a Principal Research Scientist at Lithium Technologies and spends his time focused on the dynamics of communities, the roles of influencers, and social anthropology.  Michael and I caught up to discuss how this all fits together and his insights can be heard on this 30 minute podcast.

John

If you need help from The Lab give me a call..

The importance of the Twitter Retweet

Microsoft Research came out with some very interesting research looking specifically at the act of retweeting on Twitter. If you’d like to read the full paper it is available for download in PDF format. Note that the following Twitter pros were behind the research:

• Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research, @zephoria
• Scott Golder, Cornell / Microsoft Research, @redlog
• Gilad Lota, Microsoft, @gilgul

The research is particularly interesting to me as the Twitter retweet is one of the most important ways to achieve value on Twitter and is often poorly used.  While there are a number of reasons that people retweet, the ones that are most important:

• While not specifically noted via their research, you should share great information as a way of helping your community while promoting your knowledge and awareness of certain topics.
• Making your presence known to others. These people could be potential customers, business partners, or mentors.
• As an act of friendship. You cannot succeed without the help of “friends”, help others, good Karma does exist in this world.

As part of their analysis they reviewed a random sample of 203,371 retweets from 107,116 unique users. They observed the following (these results quoted directly from their paper):

• 18% of retweets contain a hashtag
• 52% of retweets contain a URL
• 11% of retweets contain an encapsulated retweet (RT @user1 RT @user2 …message..)
• 9% of retweets contain an @reply that refers to the person retweeting the post Compared to the random sample of tweets, hashtag usage and linking areoverrepresented in retweets.

From a practical perspective I favor defining communication standards for your organization in regards to the use of retweets. Following a format like this has worked very well for me:

[Optional Kudos]   RT [USER1] [USER2] … [Content] [Hashtags] | [Your thoughts]

• Remove extraneous words and punctuation as needed, but never change the meaning of the original message.
• Always give credit where credit is due. If the author of the content is  missing from the original tweet try to add it to your retweet.  I use the beginning of the retweet,the [Optional Kudos] piece, to give a shout-out to the author.
• While hashtags are far from perfect use them. They help keep your message alive longer.
• If useful, I try to add my comments to the end of the message, always following a pipe symbol (|).  I insert this symbol to show the end of the original content and help readers understand my take on the content.
• If possible, keep your retweet short so that others can retweet  your message.  

Standards are a great way of ensuring that your content supports your goals and that your community understands why you have chosen to share a piece of content with them. Help your community and help them help you. Everyone will win and that is key to everyone’s success.

John

If you need help from The Lab, drop me a note. If you would like to view more case studies and interviews, or just want to read about The Social Ecosystem, click on the links and let me know your thoughts.

Keep your business real with videos

I recently viewed this video from INgage Networks and wanted to highlight it.  First, the video:

What I like:

• The company focuses first on delivering great information.
• It is delivered in an entertaining fashion.  Kathy Saenz keeps you engaged throughout the video.  Yes, it is a little wacky but it’s done at just the right level.
• Video is a must have for most businesses.   While this video is shot at a great quality level that is less important than the information being delivered and the way the information is delivered.

What I wish was included:

• A call to action to capture potential customers.  When you use videos include added value information that will require the user to sign-up to receive (even if it is to receive notifications about upcoming videos).  Capture this data in your CRM system.
• An additional conversation stream.  Complimentary to the video setup a Twitter hashtag, a Buzz stream, a discussion thread in your Facebook fan page or on your blog.  Make the video more than a one-time event for your company and for your customers.

What else would you add?

John