Highway to Hale

As more and more students around me begin seeing the Twitter light and joining one of the most useful tools on the Web, I see a need to shine some rays on the idea of hastagging. Hashtagging is a great example of community-driven usability on Twitter that allows users to search and follow a term easily. It’s easy to do: simply add a number sign (#) in front of a key term in your post. Twitter will do the rest, making the term a link to a search feed for the word following the hashtag. Groups have taken hashtagging to the next level by creating a tag related to their subject and adding it at the beginning or end of tweets to signify involvement in a conversation (#journchat, #blogchat, #mnclassics…etc.). During the hotel crisis in India this past summer, users created a hashtag to efficiently share information from the site about family and friends in the area.

There are even applications that allow specific users to hashtag a username (often a company or brand account) and that post is automatically posted to the joint account*. I don’t see this type of app being used very often yet, but look to @hughweber for a good example.

While hashtagging is easy, there are some nuances and helpful hints to consider. First, anything can be hashtagged, but not every term is worth following. One of the most widely used hashtags is #followfriday. On Friday, begin a tweet with the tag #followfriday and then let the Twitterverse know who you enjoy following**. On Friday, you can watch the posts pour in via search.twitter.com (soon to be on the Twitter homepage) and choose which users you need to be following. Or, you can check in with the apps that aggregate the most popular #followfriday-ed users.

You can find the trending topics on Twitter nearly anywhere you choose (TweetDeck allows the option of make a column dedicated to such), so pay attention to those topics. Popular hashtags often show up during impotant conversations. For example, #blogchat on Sunday night is possibly the single most valuable hastag I know of and #journchat is not far behind on Monday nights. Join these types of conversations. The ability to tap into the thoughts of some of the most intelligent people in PR, marketing, journalism, and advertising allows you to learn faster than any other method I can imagine. And better yet, they are willing to answer your questions and discuss your opinions.

As you can see, hastags are pretty great, so use them. Create them, participate in them, and track them. While using hasthags, remember that they are case-sensitive (I just learned that). Also, there are multiple hastags used for the same conversation/event (some people use #ff instead of #followfriday). These various hashtags do not lead to the same feed even though they are basically synonyms. When hashtagging, make sure you do not use spaces. A space indicates that the term has ended (“#follow friday” is actually a hashtag for #follow).

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so use your creativity with hashtags. For the veterans, what hastags do you follow? Other than those mentioned, in what ways do you use hashtags?

*There are a couple of these apps and they could actually be very useful, let me know if you would like more info.

**@ScotMcKay just posted a video about Follow Friday that was pretty well done in his Unchained Office. My note of advice is to add a description or justification about why somebody else should follow the people you mention. Give a little hint about the nature of their tweets as a courtesy.

“I couldn’t imagine which customers would decide to follow Welch’s tweets about its grape juice and other associated products.”

“Do serious marketers spend a lot of time and energy on Twitter campaigns? I doubt it. Sure, go ahead and play around with it — it doesn’t cost much. But I defy you to do serious brand management in 140-character messages.”

“Let’s face it — Twitter is a fad. It has all the attributes of a fad, including the one that people like me don’t get its appeal.”

These are direct quotes from this article by Tom Davenport. Apparently he is “the next big thing” (self proclaimed?) and Twitter is not. The first comment is the requisite ‘nobody wants to hear what a brand is doing concerning a specific product’ quote indicating that Mr. Davenport doesn’t really understand how to use Twitter, so I will leave that alone this time. I believe “serious marketers” have already jumped that hurdle.

Next we have another constant that can be found in pessimistic Twitter articles claiming that nothing can be said in 140 characters. Specifically, you can’t manage a brand in 140 characters. Please, Tom, manage a two-way interactive brand in a blog. Define a brand on a MySpace page through a comment wall and pictures because apparently MySpace is a better use of time according to you. Nobody is trying to define or manage a brand in 140 character messages. Blogs are great and MySpace is fine, but they are not specifically designed to ENGAGE customers in CONVERSATION. They allow people that will not adapt to stay comfortable in their mindset that marketing has the luxury of posting a message and customers will follow blindly if they like it.

Twitter is a tool, not a campaign. Successful marketing plans are not carried out through one medium and Twitter is no exception.

Finally, who are people like Tom Davenport? Why is Tom Davenport the authority for people that don’t get it? Tom Davenport is a Professor. It is very well known that educators are (in general, not all) having some trouble keeping up with adapting social media. It does not surprise me that Mr. Davenport doesn’t understand yet. My professors do not understand it, so why should he? On the other hand, the best of my professors are doing their best to figure it out because they know students need to learn it…fast.

For Tom’s purposes, Twitter had better be a fad or his students are in for a world of trouble.

Everybody has a bad review online. If you can’t find a good review, it is time to look at your product.

This seems obvious, but to me, this statement perfectly describes the role social media is playing in the business world. Consider the two parts of this statement: Firstly, everybody has a bad review online. That is a little pessimistic (or realistic?), but you must realize this before engaging in social media. Secondly, an abundance of bad reviews indicates an issue with your offer. Without agreeing to this statement, your brand will not survive.

The social media movement is weeding out the brands that are not willing to change. But how do you know when you should change?

The idea of social media is to engage in conversation. I believe the role of brands in social media should be to ask questions. Traditionally, marketing has meant providing a message – take it or leave it, this is what we want you to know. Social media marketing does not adhere to this traditional view. The social part indicates that brands do not hold all of the answers.

Begin by asking how can we help? It has been proven many times in the short history of social media that you cannot attack an individual with an issue and you cannot ignore an issue. By asking how you can help, your brand becomes a fallible entity that is willing to admit an accurate sense of reality including imperfections and limitations as well as achievements. Basically, give your brand humility.

Among others, questions offer two helpful characteristics: monitoring and engagement. Follow trending opinions of your brand by explicitly asking for those opinions. People love to hand out opinions, so take advantage. One of the best ways to engage individuals and groups online is to ask them questions. Your users feel valued when you ask them for suggestions or information in a personal manner.

Individuals must follow this same pattern when using social media. The way to learn is to ask. Every Twitter usage guide says “add value”. None of those guides say add value by having all of the answers. Questions are often as valuable as the answers that come of them. I am often asked questions I simply do not know the answer to until I take a minute to consider them. These types of answers help me as much as they help the person that asked (in fact, that is where this post came from).

In social media, nobody has all of the answers (except all of the “experts”…). Answer the questions asked of you, but be sure to ask the important questions of your own.

The reason I leave a question in the title here is because I really don’t know. I had dinner with a former boss this weekend and after a long discussion about social media (because he did not know too much and wanted to learn), he posed a question about social media’s ability to draw NEW customers. It is very obvious that SM can build loyalty and survey the needs and feelings of existing customers, and evaluate trends, but is it bringing in unique customers? Should it?

My initial reaction was that SM does bring in new customers and it should…but then I thought about it.

Take Twitter for example – You follow the accounts you are interested in. If you do not know or already dislike a product, you will not follow their account. Therefore, you are not a likely candidate to be a new customer. Yes, customers will engage with brands they like, but will new people engage?

These comments get me leaning toward SM as a branch of PR. Create impressions, gain coverage, get your product out.* Kraft/DiGiorno (with the help of Weber Shandwick) has illustrated this idea. Their recent announcement about delivering pizzas to tweet-ups has gained a lot of attention. I consider the campaign PR, but it has generated social media buzz. So maybe the campaign is PR, and what they do with it next to gain new customers will be the responsibility of SM. Hopefully I will get the chance to ask Weber how they have viewed the campaign later this week.

Perhaps SM is an “other” that cannot exist without the family to which it is associated. This implies that SM needs its own specialists within agencies that have an understanding of Marketing and PR. I know a few of you are just as thankful for that comment as I am.

I apologize for the lack of answers here, I’m looking for your opinion. Where are you getting your budget from? Marketing? PR? Other? Will their soon be an SM budget for companies? Does your SM bring in unique customers? Is that even the goal?

* Understandably simplified. Sorry PR people.

4. What can you say in 140 characters? That’s the Twitter limit, and that pretty much means any tweet will be personal. A business tweet would necessarily have to be longer than that to be of any use, so what’s the use?

3. It requires too much time: When you tweet, or follow someone’s tweets, that means you are not doing something else.

• Twitter takes time to learn, and to learn how to make it work

2. It offers just too much information: Do people really want to know what you are doing at 3:47 tomorrow afternoon, what you are thinking, who you are meeting?

– Since when did the rules of business change to dictate that your customers have to be so incredibly engaged in your business?

These are some exerpts from a USA Today article in a column called “Ask An Expert”. The expert in this case is Steve Strauss.

Do you agree? Is Twitter a passing fad on which businesses are wasting time right now? Nope. Notice the obvious sign that he simply doesn’t get the point of Twitter when he basically claims that nobody cares what your business is doing at a certain point in time. That might be true, but maybe you should get out of the game if you don’t know how to play. The companies that are succeeding on Twitter understand that it is a tool to be used for much more than answering what you are doing. This expert needs to pay attention to the conversation a bit more.

Twitter takes time to learn? Agreed (it takes a couple minutes out of your horrendously busy schedule*), but any business that has this issue, call me. If you don’t believe I can handle it, I know some great agencies that would be happy to do it for you so you don’t have to spend all of that time to figure out how to use it. Remember, Shaq and Miley make it work.

What can you say in 140 characters? If you have something to say that takes more than 140 characters…your customers don’t want to hear it. The best part about Twitter is that people and companies are forced to get to the point fast. Messages must be stripped down to the core. Some tweets will be personal, others will be more professional, but that’s the goal. People buy from *people* they like and trust.

No rules dictate that your customers must be engaged…but good luck to those of you following the model that does not engage customers. Those companies will soon have plenty of time to learn how to use Twitter correctly.

* Disclaimer: It does take a bit of time to figure out how to use Twitter strategically. I think it is worth it. If you really don’t have time, there are a lot of people doing it pretty well that would be happy to help.

Raise your hand if you want to own Twitter. Now that you only have one hand free, you are going to need to offer something neither Facebook nor Google has (including more than a quarter million dollars in cash apparently). Based on Biz Stone’s recent post about negotiations with Google, I am going to assume Twitter won’t be getting acquired any time soon.

Twitter, Google, and Facebook each offer unique value, but obviously they are linked whether they (or we) like it or not. Until recently, Facebook was the news-maker and Google was the understood powerhouse of the Internet. Google is still the undeniable heavyweight champion of the world…but is there a contender? And can Facebook only make news these days if it attempts to buy Twitter?

We already know why Facebook is Scared of Twitter (Basically, Facebook is afraid that Twitter has a better community building mechanism, and businesses and celebrities are able to connect with customers/fans better). Should Google be scared as well? It has been no secret that a major chunk of Twitter’s value can be found in the search abilities. Why else would Twitter jump all over Summize (well, formerly Summize – search.twitter.com* now)? The question is not whether real time search is useful, but whether real time search competes with Google search.

TechCrunch posted this week that “[Twitter] holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.” Apparently Google thinks real time search is a threat, but they are confident that both can not only survive, but are necessary. I agree.

So, Twitter is now valuable for community building and real time search. Which is more important to Twitter and the market? I appreciate that Twitter has hardly even flinched at the mention of a buy out because I want them to develop the product as they see fit rather than primarily influenced by search or community driven goals.

Twitter has pitted Google against Facebook. Search vs Coummunity. Until further notice, Twitter, the middle man, is winning this three-way battle. I believe the Twitter community could survive without search, but the search function of Twitter could not survive without a strong community. On the other hand, searching Twitter allows the community to grow and be useful for business…

What do you think? What is Twitter’s main purpose or value? Will Twitter sell out? Would the community’s worth slowly diminish without an effective search platform?

*If you haven’t heard of, seen, or been chosen to try the new interface Twitter is testing, you are missing out. While it is much more enjoyable to look at, one of the best parts is a search box in the sidebar and a list of trending topics directly below that. Miss out no more (view it here)!