Social Media
Information Touch-Points
Last week, I spent a couple minutes watching the Global Morning News before heading to work. What made this particular morning interesting was how many different touch-points I used to gather information.
Photo Credit: roland
That morning, @weslawong was giving the morning traffic report and briefly mentioned the Millennium Line in Vancouver was experience some delays. I quickly jumped onto Twitter to see if my morning commute would be affected.
I searched on Twitter and found the @translink Twitter account posted a message saying, “SkyTrain Service Alert – Millennium Line is experiencing up to 4 minute delays due to technical issues.”
I would have gone on the Translink website, but past experience told me I’d likely find more timely information on Twitter.
If I was on Facebook at the time, I might have checked the Translink Facebook Page, but Translink doesn’t appear to be using Facebook to inform its customers. Missed opportunity maybe?
With the large variety of communication channels and how different people choose to receive information, it’s important to consider all channels and how they can be used and integrated to serve your customers.
Victor
Tags: global tv, information, media, news, Social Media, touch points, translink, Twitter, welsa wong
4 Reasons Why Twitter Should Set the Following limit at 140
How many people do you follow on Twitter? More than 140? Just like your tweets are limited to 140 characters, imagine if the number of people you could follow was also limited to 140 “characters”.
Now 140 is really an arbitrary number. The basic idea is to set the following limit to a small number, anything below 300 or so. This limit however, does not affect the number of people who can follow you. For example, your Twitter stats can be 3000 followers and 140 following. This could greatly improve the Twitterverse. Here’s why.
Reason 1: Reduce Spam Accounts
There are many spam accounts on Twitter. As reported by Twitter, the spam activity has decreased in recent months, but there are still many spammers out there. By restricting the following limit, spam accounts will be restricted to following 140 users at a time.
You might be thinking, this type restriction would not prevent spam accounts from rotating users through their following limit. A spam account could follow a user hoping to attract a follow back. If the spam account receives a follow back, the spammer immediately unfollows the user and follows a new user.
This is a legitimate concern and is related to the second reason. Since all users have a following limit, they are less likely to use up one of their following spots on a spam account. Users are more likely to follow only accounts they find valuable.
Reason 2: Measure of Value and Influence
The number of followers an account has will become a greater and more accurate measure of the account’s value to users and the influence of the account. This is because with the limited following spots, users will only follow the top 140 users they find valuable. If an account has 2000 followers, it means 2000 people find the account valuable enough to “vote” for the account with a follow.
Reason 3: Promote Twitter’s Other Features
With the 140 following limit, users will have to find other ways to discover and promote content on Twitter. For example, Twitter lists will become a greater asset since users will still be able to create Twitter lists to aggregate information from users they can’t follow directly. Twitter’s advertising platform (Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends) will get a boost with legitimate users since it will be more difficult to mass promote messages.
Reason 4: Encourage Real Conversations and Relationships
Lastly, but probably most importantly, the following limit will help bolster real conversations and relationships on Twitter. This is what social media is meant to do. Users who are following more than 300 people are probably not conversing with all of them on a regular basis. Users who are following more than 300 people, are probably not reading all the tweets in their stream. So what is the purpose or value of following all these people?
Businesses and accounts wanting to gain influence through their Twitter account and to gain followers, will have to build real relationships, engage in real conversations and provide real value through the account. Otherwise, it is unlikely they will successfully attract followers.
So do you agree or disagree with a following limit?
Victor Chan
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: conversation, following, influence, limit, promoted trends, promoted tweets, relationships, Social Media, spam, Twitter, value
Facebook Privacy Settings
Consumers’ perceptions of a company include their perception of a company’s executives and employees. Facebook and many other social networks, are built on open sharing and genuine conversations. Although personal profiles are not meant for business purposes, these profiles still influence how a person is perceived online. For those who do not want to mix business with their personal lives, Facebook, in particular, has a series of settings to help you control how open your personal profile is to the world.
Facebook’s privacy policy, user interface and controls have changed a lot in the past year. Here is a quick guide to help you set up your account the way you want it.
- Go to www.facebook.com and log in.
- Click on “Account” (located near the top right corner) and select “Privacy Settings” in the drop down menu. This is the first page of privacy settings you can change.
- Under the “Sharing on Facebook” section, click the “Customize settings” link to customize your settings.
- After customizing your settings, go back to the “Privacy” page.
- Next, under the “Basic Directory Information” section on the “Privacy” page, click on the “View settings” link (located at the end of the paragraph). This page will allow you to customize what information you want to appear on your public directory profile. NOTE: Your name, profile picture, gender and networks are always open to everyone.
- After customizing your settings, go back to the “Privacy” page.
- Next, if you do not want your public profile to appear in search engine listings at all, under the “Applications and Website” section (located near the bottom right of the “Privacy” page), click on the “Edit your settings” link.
- Click the “Edit Settings” button located right of the “Public search” item. Make sure the “Enable public search” item is un-checked.
There you have it. The settings are scattered about on Facebook, but using this guide allows you to control your privacy on Facebook. Well, some of it anyway.
Victor
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: facebook, privacy, settings, Social Media
Free Your Brand
My favourite quote of the day:
“…Old Spice parent company Proctor & Gamble exhibited incredible bravery in allowing his team to write marketing content in real time, with little to no supervision.”
I love this quote because I think that is the future. Companies must start easing up on the tight controls they’ve historically had over their brand. If you need to control every word that is spoken and written about your brand – forcing writers to submit every word they write for scrutiny, you’re doomed. Not to say you should let writers run wild with your brand, but creativity is so quickly quashed when the pen can only write one of 12 “approved” words to describe a product.
Honest exchange, meaningful engagement and worthy interaction in social media comes when speed (aka: real time) is a part of the equation.
Picture this: someone poses a tough question on Twitter to a company (well, hopefully a *person* with a name and a head shot, representing that company). Two days pass and no one has responded. It’s not because the tweet wasn’t noticed. It’s because the person managing Twitter for that company needs to get approval on the response before they can post it. In the meantime, the person who posted the question has grown increasingly frustrated and is now bad-mouthing the company due to the lack of timely response. It even starts to appear that the company is trying to ignore or dodge the tough question.
It may be the most counter-intuitive to let up on brand control.. but the wild success of the Old Spice online campaign proves that if you’re brave enough, and trust enough, it can pay off in ways you never imagined.
If you disagree – let me hear it.
FYI: the quote came from here.
Erin.
Tags: brand management, branding, engagement, interaction, Social Media
Social Media Strategy? Spare Me
A friend of mine quietly sent me a slideshare presentation yesterday. It was created by a long established advertising and interactive agency in town. She sent it to me quietly because it was entitled “Why You Don’t Need a Social Media Strategy”. I guess she thought I should know I might soon be out of work, if word of this got around.
I enjoyed going through the slideshow.. and I didn’t entirely disagree with its point. However, there is an “it all comes down to semantics” argument to be made against it. Let me explain.
The presentation stated you don’t need a social media strategy. Instead, you need an engagement strategy, or an influence strategy. My take on the presentation was that it was capitalizing on the nausea widely experienced when hearing the ubiquitous phrase “social media strategy”. Fair enough. However, in our shop, engagement and influence are key parts of every strategy. Doesn’t that go without saying? Perhaps what the slideshow was trying to get at is the fact that it is vitally important to venture deeper than social media when designing an online plan. Mobile, website content, optimization, online advertising are all important, sometimes more important than social media depending on the business objectives for the strategy.
There is no question “social media” is getting way too much airtime. But for people new to the concept of having an integrated online strategy, this term can really help get them in the right line of thinking, despite its shortcomings.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
Tags: digital strategy, engagement, influence, Social Media, strategy
