While I don’t agree entirely with the analysis by Jeremiah Owyang, former Forrester analyst, now Altimeter Group partner, I couldn’t agree with him more when he says Twitter is ‘being treated like a chat room’ by most marketers, ‘not a marketing platform.’ I do think the SWOT portion in particular is less than comprehensive, and I’d like to quibble about the line re ‘Usage by tech savvy, media, and celebs.’

Why quibble about that? (At this point something I’d written got lost between drafts; I’ve tried to reconstruct it in the rest of this paragraph. Just, you know, to make sense!) It’s not that I disagree that – I’m going to call them geeks, not the ‘tech savvy’ because if you own a computer for personal use you’re tech savvy, media and celebs have the largest number of followers, tweet the most and make the greatest use of Twitter. It’s just that I don’t necessarily think they make the best use of Twitter. Most media outlets still automate their tweets, don’t interact with their followers, and don’t get that it’s an interactive medium. Ditto many celebrities. And the geeks – well – again – there’s a lot of navel gazing and infighting amongst Twitter’s earliest adopters and most vehement proponents. And Twitter’s growth isn’t coming from these people; it’s coming from the non-geeks who are beginning to realize social media presents an opportunity. (That’s not quite what I said the first time but it’s what I was trying to say – and where did it go to anyway – between-draft limbo?)

Twitter’s greatest strength is actually the power it gives the user to customize her/his own experience with the medium. Trending topics notwithstanding (you don’t have to even glance at them), what makes it a brilliant platform is the fact that it allows you to listen to and connect with only the interesting people at the party and pay no attention whatsoever to the egregious bores, the time wasters, the hysterics, the gawkers and the ambulance-chasers (no, I don’t mean personal injury lawyers, I mean the people who thrive on fomenting controversy/scandal/gossip).

Your Twitter experience will undoubtedly be entirely different from mine, and that’s the beauty of it. I follow a diverse and fascinating group of: global media outlets and journalists; scientists; quilters; authors; Vancouverites; local folk; PR, marketing and social media types; publishers; museums; people I know in real life; people I don’t know in real life; people I’d like to know in real life, and people I probably wouldn’t care to meet. At one point I was following people on Twitter so I could keep my eye on them for competitive intelligence reasons. I’m not doing that any more. Life is too short.

I should also point out that I’m an extremely fast reader (although I retain little), and that I assimilate information well via print and text. My aural comprehension is almost nil. But I actually got through an average of 2500 pages of reading a week in third year university as an English major. I know there are other people like me.

One of the best points in the analysis cited is the boilerplate: ‘Everyone has a morning ritual…I invest two hours reading, thinking and blogging each morning. I hope this helps you cut through the noise – if it was helpful, please pass it on, email to colleagues, tweet it, and blog about it.’

This may well not be your idea of a morning ritual (it wouldn’t be most people’s – long hot showers and gallons of coffee would probably be more like it; getting yourself, your children, and your pets cleaned, dressed, fed and dispatched is usually part of the equation too).

Social media is probably not your area of expertise. If it isn’t – and if you haven’t got the time or the will to adequately research it – it can be bewildering, pointless, ineffective and exhausting. This great post by Mhairi Petrovic of Outsmarts lists some of the pitfalls of social media and provides some great suggestions on how to avoid them.

Of these tips, I’d have to say ‘develop a strategy’ is the most important. I’d also add: hire a consultant to help you develop your strategy. Unless you don’t value your own time at all, getting caught up in the never-ending party on your computer is going to leave you short on sleep, frustrated, lacking in perspective, and probably no closer to achieving your agreed-upon goals. No consultant worth his/her salt is going to pretend they can help you achieve an impossible goal – or fail to tell you when your expectations are unreasonable.

This week on Twitter I’ve watched a major UK cell phone provider make a horrific mess of customer service by over-reliance on Twitter as a way to deliver customer service. I’ve also seen two major media outlets deal ineffectively with a spammer and watched friends who did something good get their feelings hurt and become embroiled in a small but pointless controversy that’s undoubtedly interfered with their productivity today.

Time is time and money is money. I’ve always contended that since time is the one truly non-sustainable and non-renewable resource we’ve got, my time is as valuable to me as yours is to you, regardless of our respective incomes or hourly rates. While Mrs. McCooeye, Grade 8, was right when she wrote on my report card, ‘Ruth would get more out of Reading Club if she put more into it,’ there was a presumption on her part that I wanted to get something out of it. I didn’t. I just wanted to read. But if you’re investing your personal or your corporate time (and your organization’s resources) in social media, you’d better want to get something out of it, i.e. have a goal. At the very least you should make sure you’re not doing harm to yourself or your organization via social media.

How can you find the right consultant? Ask people you know who’ve used one. Check their blogs, their Twitter feeds, and their LinkedIn profiles. See if you like what they have to say about their areas of expertise and if you like the way they conduct themselves in the public mediums in which they engage. Ask a consultant you’re considering using if you can talk to or email some of her/his clients. Try to get some idea of how the consultant works best – and if your organization/project fits in with the consultant’s interests and expertise. Compatibility matters almost as much as expertise. Put in the front end time to find the right consultant so you can work smarter rather than harder.

I know that last sentence may seem not only counter-intuitive (consultants are supposed to be vying for your business, not the other way around, right?) but wrong-headed. If your budget is big enough, the detailed RFP route may still be the way to go. It’s a process I no longer participate in, because I’m not willing to spend a week’s time researching and writing a proposal, and I’m neither interested in nor equipped to work with large companies on megaprojects. But that’s just me.

I’d had the occasional email from them and ignored it. But I was extremely startled the first week in June to suddenly start getting replies to emails I hadn’t sent, from people I’ve never formally added as contacts to my Gmail account (and people I certainly never added to my Spacelocker account as contacts; I don’t think I added anyone there), asking me where they’d met me or politely declining my invitation to join me on Spacelocker. Ahem. An invitation I hadn’t sent.

My first response was to conclude that my Gmail account had been hacked, but that seemed unlikely. I had an appointment, so I quickly dashed off an email via the contact form (the only way you can contact Spacelocker other than by snail mail in London, England), saying I wanted to close my account but that I was quite sure it had been hacked, because everybody and his uncle and their cat and dog had received an ‘invitation’ from me.

Here’s the response I got:

Hi Ruth,

First let me assure you that your Spacelocker account has not been “hacked”. We have a high degree of security equivalent to any of the currently popular social networks out there.

Spacelocker is a social networking website. We encourage users to interact with their friends and to make new friends. Therefore we have developed our website settings to make it as easy as possible for this interaction to happen.

We make it clear to everyone upon sign-up to Spacelocker that “* By clicking the Sign Up button, you are confirming you have read and agreed to Spacelocker’s terms of service and privacy policy and that you are 13 years of age or older.” Accepting terms on sign-up is required by virtually every website you join.

Our privacy policy specifically provides “We use email addresses of users, and the email addresses in the user’s spacelocker address book, to send an invitation to their friends and encourage them to sign up on Spacelocker.”

Invitations were sent to your friends in your Spacelocker address book so that you will hopefully be able to interact with them in the newly added Meet Me At My Locker function in your Locker. It has been an overwhelming success and users are enjoying interacting with friends; as well the ease which their friends list can grow in Spacelocker.

We encourage you to stay and enjoy Spacelocker. However if still want to leave Spacelocker we will delete your membership.

Cheers,

BekeeB
Spacelocker Ltd.
www.spacelocker.com

This explanation is totally specious. Here’s the real story: if you signed up for Spacelocker and stupidly used the same password for it as you did for your Gmail account (which I must have done), Spacelocker automatically grabbed every blessed email address with which you’ve ever corresponded and sent them invites that look like they come from your Gmail account. This is unprecedented in my experience of social networking. It certainly doesn’t happen on flickr. It doesn’t happen on Facebook. Or on Twitter. Or Xing. Or LinkedIn. In fact, one of the reasons those sites have built and retained loyal followings is because they provide various options for their members relating to privacy. While you have the option of importing contacts from various email addresses, this doesn’t happen automatically. And even if you’ve allowed a reputable social networking site to pull your contacts list, you’re usually given an opportunity to review it and select who to invite or not to invite to ‘join’ you.

So far Spacelocker’s sent invites, purportedly from me, to ex-clients, former lovers, people with whom I no longer wish to have contact (and ditto, I know, I know!) and to suppliers (like my printer, who must be just mystified). Regardless of whether you’re an ‘open’ or a ‘closed’ networker, any social networking site that defiantly claims you agreed to let them email everyone who’s ever emailed you is doomed to failure. With a grand total of eight fans on its Facebook page, we probably don’t need to worry about the company being around too much longer. In this case, I’m looking forward to it. For another take on the spam mess, see the Outsmarts blog post. As for the press release in the first paragraph – live and learn, huh? If I’d read that piece of nonsense before joining, I wouldn’t have.

Worse, a couple of people who trust me and have signed up for Spacelocker after receiving the invite from ‘me’ are now going through the same thing.

And then there’s the ‘about us’ section – which names no names and only a couple of countries. ‘Spacelocker.com is operated by Spacelocker Ltd, a European-based company headquartered on the Smart Island country of Malta, with a communications office in London, United Kingdom. Messages for Spacelocker Ltd may be sent through the Spacelocker website contact form or by snail mail to Spacelocker Ltd, 26 York Street, London W1U 6PZ, UK.’ I’ve already used their contact form. I think I may have to snail mail them a copy of this post as well.

Lesson learned: being an early adopter isn’t always the way to go. Next time I’ll indulge my curious nature by reading the ‘about us’ section and researching a site a little more thoroughly before signing up for it. That way I’ll be on a different train, on a different track, and in no danger of being derailed.

June 9 Update: Since writing this post I was given yet another compelling reason why Spacelocker’s arbitrary policy of commandeering contacts to build its customer base is self-defeating: one of my cousins emailed me to let me know she’d received four different invites to join Spacelocker – one at work, one at home, and two at her Hotmail accounts. The automation of the invite process is something only a computer would do – the human touch would have selected one email to which the invite would have been sent. Most of us have more than one email address – but almost no one would email any kind of contact at each one of their addresses.

Spacelocker’s policy of allowing only members to comment on its blog is further proof that this is a social networking site doomed to failure. As far as I’m concerned, it can’t come soon enough.

June 21, 2009 update: Very interesting article on the rise of these ‘phishing’ scams – and two companies’ very-different-from-Spacelocker’s-response in this New York Times article.

Some nice thinking and writing going on here. Kudos to Leigh Duncan-Durst and Live Path.

I would have loved to attend, but Chicago’s a long way to go for an afternoon, and given the uncertainties of winter travel from YVR, I decided to live vicariously and hope the presentations were filmed for future consumption

I really like the goal-oriented approach outlined by Stan Joosten, Director of Holistic Consumer Communications for Proctor & Gamble. It’s a classic example of strategy-in-action, as opposed to a tactics-based approach to communications.  

His presentation focused on three key points: 

• know your brand
• empower your brand fans
• replace or augment market research.

Organizations that have been around as long as P&G have been on the branding treadmill for decades now. They’ve devoted incredible human and monetary resources to creating and promoting their brands. In fact, P&G became the US’s largest advertiser in 2005. Imagine having revenues of $4.61 billion, let alone that kind of money to spend on advertising – it’s rather mind-boggling.

Regardless of where you land on the PR versus advertising spectrum though, it’s important to recognize that traditional advertising accomplishes none of the goals Joosten has outlined. I will contend that all market research is skewed, in one way or another – and I don’t think you need to be a statistical expert to know that instinctively. I’ve done market research myself on a couple of occasions, on the phone and in person. After less than 10 hours you start to realize there’s a particular type of person who consents to participate – with or without inducements – in focus groups and surveys. (They tend to be the same sort of people who hold doors open and who still say ‘excuse me’ before pushing past people at the grocery store.) But all the folks who refuse to answer surveys and are unwilling to be part of focus groups still use soap, wash their clothes, clean their bathtubs – and make purchasing decisions each and every day.

So in order to know your brand, you have to listen not only to the branding experts who’ve created the brand and listed what they hope its attributes will be, you have to listen – and be willing to hear – what your brand really is.

That can sometimes be a painful experience when you’re in a highly competitive market. The former market leader in radios probably doesn’t want to hear the cellphones it’s poured millions into creating and marketing are considered clunky, ugly, expensive, and totally unhip – but when it ends up a distant third in the cellphone manufacturing market, not listening to the message would be a big mistake – as would failing to do some course correction so it can compete on at least one front.

But of the three goals Joosten outlined, perhaps the most revolutionary – and the most necessary –  is the middle one: empower your brand fans. People listen to other people. They listen especially hard to other people they trust. Whether those people are mainstream media (who can at least be trusted to be familiar with the competition), media 2.0 (the bloggers who rarely have anything to gain by waxing enthusiastic about the products they like), or Mrs. McGillicuddy down the block who has three boys all in soccer and has a deeply vested interest in getting grass stains out of clothing, doesn’t matter. And by empowering your brand champions, you can exponentially increase the audience you reach.

How do you empower them? Connect with them. Ask for feedback. Make it easy for them to get in touch with you. Use social media as well as more traditional forms of communication. Think of Twitter, Facebook, and your corporate blog as other versions of the toll-free phone line, and be every bit as human and as genuine in your interactions via social media as your customer service reps are trained to be. And then reap the corporate rewards (including the savings in market research and advertising spend!).

Came across this incredible treasure trove of social media marketing info I think every entrepreneur should see, for the matter-of-fact, analytical approach to what works and what doesn’t in the social media and marketing worlds.

Within minutes of our arrival at the Waazubee Cafe it was also apparent that our mutual passion for strategic marketing communications and our love for the kind of technology that makes your life easier can only lead to good things.

I tried to order the butternut squash tortellini and was dismayed to hear that it hadn’t actually been on the menu for six years. That seemed odd to me, since I’d only checked the web site Saturday and it was on the downloadable food and drink menu then. I’m not actually a picky eater, but the online reviews I’d found were confusing – at one point I saw a reference to the cafe as a Japanese eatery and then saw another comment that asked why the cafe was listed as a Japanese restaurant, since it’s not. (Disclosure: I don’t eat uncooked fish, meat, or poultry and I have a few food allergies.)

When I mentioned the web site and the reviews to our server, she rolled her eyes and said, oh yes, that’s because we can’t access our own web site or find our web designer to change anything on it. Mhairi and I immediately began to think of solutions to this problem: switch your hosting provider, said Mhairi. Educate and inform clients that when they contract with a web designer, all files created are their property, not the web designer’s, I said. And don’t pay the final web design bill till you’ve received the files via email!

It was a nice example of how well we work together and of the kind of rich and deep knowledge and skills we can offer clients. Marketing communications, one of the many areas of public relations specialization, cannot possibly succeed or benefit clients who don’t actually have both a business strategy and a marketing strategy in place. Since marketing in general and internet marketing in particular are Mhairi’s specialities, No Spin PR clients who don’t have marketing plans can benefit from her knowledge, expertise, and results-oriented approach to create cost-effective strategic marketing plans. And Out-Smarts clients will be able to broaden their reach and ensure they’re not failing to reach all their target markets. There isn’t a company in existence that can’t benefit from public relations, whether it’s a traditional media relations campaign that results in print, radio and television coverage, a comprehensive, integrated social media strategy, or managing internal communications to help attract and retain employees or position you as a thought leader in your industry.

Public relations supports both business and marketing strategies. Make sure you’ve got yours in place. Get in touch and we’ll start to make it happen for your company: mhairi[at]out-smarts.com; ruth[at]nospinpr.com.

P.S. The Out-Smarts blog is rich source of info and tips on social media, and internet marketing. Sign up for the feed. I’ve learned a lot from reading it, and chances are you will too.

I love the little graphic Kelley created when I was slow to get her a photo – sorry about that.

I’m looking forward to meeting this group – they seem like an imaginative and interesting lot, with a nice mixture of home-based, retail, and professional services businesses.

You don’t actually have to be a Luddite to attend. Or even a technophobe. The seminar is designed for those who’ve been hearing a lot about social media, but are having trouble figuring out what it has to do with – and what it can do for – their businesses.

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