What’s the Plan, Stan?
We encourage every business, every campaign and every cause to have some kind of online strategy. That means an online presence with a purpose. What we see time and time again is one of two things: no real online presence at all, or a spray & pray type of online presence where every online tool imaginable is engaged but…poorly.
Some people say you should just dive right in and try social media, which we support. What we don’t support is opening multiple Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, Flickr accounts, and even websites – having them falter and then abandoning them. Abandoning them but not *removing* them. It’s a bit like getting a goldfish, not feeding it, and then never throwing it away.
Something else we see a lot are companies opening a social media account, and then someone else within that same company, opening one as well. And then a repeat of those actions by someone else a few months later – or on another coast – or in another department. Suddenly one company has 3 Facebook Pages and 4 Twitter accounts. The profiles are active – but each has a different fan base with different messaging. Talk about diffusing your online potential and confusing your online audience.
These are signs of diving in without a plan. It smells of “We should be online. Let’s make it so.”. Yes. Do make it so. But do it strategically. Do your homework. We promote the idea of doing an online assessment first to understand what you should do online and how you should do it. Then comes a strategy to get it done right.
Tags: assessment, audience, facebook, strategy, Twitter, website
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
Resuscitate Your Twitter Account
Photo Credit: petesimon
Creating, using and managing your personal or business Twitter account is a lot of work. If you didn’t realize this when you first created your Twitter account, it is likely being left idle and unattended for weeks or even months.
Many accounts have faced this fate and many more will likely join them in the Twitter abyss where fail whales loom and Twitter droppings litter the ground.
Twitter users may have abandoned their accounts for a number of reasons, for example, stating:
- “I don’t have time to tweet anymore”
- “Twitter isn’t that exiting or fun anymore”
- “I don’t think anyone is even reading my tweets”
These are legitimate reasons, but there are ways you can overcome them.
Twitter is an effective tool that can be used in a strategy to reach real goals and objective. Using Twitter effectively, however, takes dedicated time and resources.
Here are some ways to overcome the challenges of using Twitter.
I don’t have time to tweet anymore
Tweeting on a daily basis is a challenge for many people. Finding and creating valuable tweets beyond what you ate for lunch today, takes time. This is where technology comes in.
There are many free tools that can help you tweet on a consistent basis.
Hootsuite allows you to preschedule tweets to publish them at a later date. If you know you’ll be busy the entire day tomorrow, why not schedule a tweet or two in advance.
Mobile apps like Twitter for the BlackBerry or Twitter for the iPhone allows you to tweet on the go.
Twitter isn’t that exiting or fun anymore
It’s true that the dramatic growth of Twitter adoption has plateaued a bit, but what’s special about Twitter is not the tool itself, but what you make of it. If you’re bored with what you’re currently doing on Twitter, why not try something new?
Use a 3rd party app, such as StumbleUpon’s iPad app to discover new content and configure your new stumbles to publish on Twitter. (If you need help on how to set it up, ask me in the post’s comments section).
Or maybe find a new group of Twitter users who share a similar interest as you or your business industry and start conversations with them. You can discover new users through Twitter lists, through Twitter directories like WeFollow.com or through hash tags like #canucks (for Canuck fans) or #worldcup (for World Cup fans).
I don’t think anyone is even reading my tweets
It’s hard to be motivated to tweet on a consistent basis if you think you’re speaking to a void. The best way to increase the number of people who read your tweets is by building solid relationships with other Twitter users. Those who find you interesting will likely read and perhaps even retweet your tweets.
Do you feel good when someone retweets your tweets? Well, you’ll probably make them feel good by retweeting their tweets too.
Happy tweeting,
Victor
eMarketing Strategist
Tags: account, app, fail whale, HootSuite, retweet, Twitter, wefollow
Privacy Online: Possible?
This post was inspired by an article entitled Social Media Privacy is an Oxymoron. It sparked some thoughts for me around how one can achieve at least *some* privacy online; assuming this is important to you because for a surprising number of people, it isn’t.
First off – Facebook. Many informative posts have been written about controlling your privacy or removing yourself from Facebook altogether. Some high-profile Facebook users are taking a stand against recent changes on Facebook affecting privacy. And you may have heard by now that “Quit Facebook Day” is scheduled for May 31, 2010. Before you quit, you may want to first determine what amount of your private info on Facebook is exposed. This application, as well as this one can help you do that.
But while all the attention and heat is on Facebook, what about everything else? Among, what is undoubtedly, a myriad of vulnerabilities on the big old web, here are just a few ideas that may help you stay a little more private.
To prevent the tracking of my every click, I like to use CoolPreviews. This is a tool that allows me to see what’s behind a link without having to click on it. I like to use this a lot when logged into LinkedIn or Twitter, as the tracking of where and what you click can be scrutinized. For example, if you notice a tweet was posted via Hootsuite, and the link provided is an OWLY link, your click will be counted. Not a huge deal perhaps as your click, in this case anyway, is in no way connected to your account. (At least, not that I’m aware of.) On LinkedIn however, if you are logged in and you check out someone’s profile, your “click” as it were, *is* linked to your profile. This enables this cool-but -creepy feature:
There is a long list of ways to add more privacy to your browsing habits. Many browsers like Safari and Firefox now offer ‘Private Browsing‘ ensuring you that no website you open will be kept on record. Anywhere. There are also many types of ‘scramblers’ you can use that mask your IP address. These are called proxy servers. This can help prevent data collection on where you are in this universe, what browser you’re using, what kind of computer you’re using, among other things. Want to know what your IP reveals about you? Go here.
Google Analytics and Quantcast, as two examples, are now offering “opt out” options. Google Analytics, for one, is allowing people to opt out of being monitored for receiving targeted ads.
Quantcast, an American based service that measures audience statistics for websites, is offering something similar.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for ways of preserving privacy online. The questions I have are:
Is it too little too late?
Is it time to redefine what online privacy means?
Should we care this much? Everyone is up in arms over the privacy principle, but is the privacy practice (the way our private info is being used) really that offensive and/or scary?
I’d love to hear what you think.
Tags: advertising, facebook, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, opt out, privacy, proxy servers, Quantcast, Twitter
