Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
BUSINESSES should stop tweeting so much and shut up and listen to what their followers are saying about their brands on social media, according to Ted Rubin, Chief Marketing Officer of social media company Collective Bias.
And he would know. Of all the CMOs in the world, Ted has the most Twitter followers.
Most people are “lurkers” in social media. They are consuming your content but not responding. You are still building a relationship with these people, and they “do” participate… it is just vicariously via those who do engage and interact.
There are many lurkers, searchers and readers who may never interact, or even post, but still have a great deal of value.
Twitter gives you a view into what anyone and everyone is talking about, the ability to easily build a following, and immediacy.
I believe Twitter is a tool that leads to other forms of social sharing. I consider Twitter a place to lay the groundwork where other people pick up things.
Two days ago. Just two days ago right here in these hallowed halls, as it were, I scribed a column entitled For Brands There’s A Fine Line Between Capitalism And Capitalization – At Least There Should Be. 
The article essentially spoke to the fact that some brands will do whatever it takes, regardless of such minor details as ethics and morals, to move their product, whatever said product may be. And that they will go right on doing what they’ve always done which is to essentially use any medium necessary – email, print, direct marketing, TV, radio, mobile and on and on to drive their message home to as many consumers they possibly can.
Seems I forgot to mention one medium: social media.
Many misunderstand the current power and relevant scale of Twitter. It is not about how Twitter has scaled to the general public. The most important thing about News, Content, and anything else published via Twitter, is that a great deal of the influencer community “is” utilizing Twitter for news, communication, and discovery. This information then finds its way to other publishing mediums be it Blogs, Traditional News Media, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, the water cooler, or whatever other mediums exist. Twitter is a tool that leads into other forms of social sharing.
So can you maintain meaningful relationships with thousands of people at a time? No, but every touch is important, no matter how small. Think of it this way… individual touches are like relationship seeds. You have a much better likelihood of reaping a good harvest when you sow widely, but only if you prepare the ground with value and nurture with authenticity.
Twitter has not been readily accepted as a small business tool yet but there are those who are having a great deal of success using it in many ways. So why should small business be using social media at all? The most prominent reasons are responding to customer questions, networking and education… but there’s more. To date, most small businesses have not been looking to help build the sales funnel through these channels. This is interesting considering some of the success that can be found with a small business that gets it. And for those who do, and execute effectively, the opportunity to directly facilitate and create sales are out there and have the potential to be huge since the volume of additional sales that can make a difference are fractional compared to what it takes for a large organization.
The mistakes I see being made is trying to measure Social engagement with the same tools we measure every other digital touch point. In my view email, search, even banner ads, have spoiled marketers into thinking everything can be and must be measured with the metrics used to gauge success in other mediums. I am not sure of what the next stage will be for you, but in the beginning, when you are building your Social Media audience, and testing, I have three stages with which I measure… #1 is Audience growth, #2 is Reactivity… getting them to take an action, and #3 Stickiness… keeping them coming back, engaged and interacting. After you achieve all these I feel measurement will easily follow depending upon what is important to you and your brand.
If you want to continue to reach your market in this social media age, the marketing focus needs to be on building relationships, and metrics need to expand beyond ROI (Return on Investment) to include ROR: Return on Relationship™. If you are not engaging in your field of expertise on Twitter someone else is, so the first issue is that you are missing that opportunity and handing it to others. Second… if you are not talking about your business, your customers and prospects probably are, and you are not there to participate, engage, interact and most important for your business… listen and lead.
Recently we marked 100 years since the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, taking the lives of over 1,500 souls with her in those icy waters. And over the last year or so, the commercial side of the enterprise has been heating up at an amazing pace.
The Titanic has always had an allure about it – an amazing feat of engineering that was brought down on its maiden voyage, tales of heroism and chivalry (women and children first), class struggles and unforeseen safety needs. Indeed, it now stands as one of the greatest lessons of all time of man’s hubris in the face of nature, and will forever remind us that we need to plan for the worst possible contingencies despite our confidence in our own technological advances.
The first time I wrote about Twitter was March 2007. My, how time and Tweets fly. With 500 million registered users and 250 million Tweets flying across the Twitterverse every day, Twitter has become a fabric of our digital culture. Twitter is now ingrained in our digital DNA and is reflected in our lifestyle and how we connect and communicate with one another.
While many struggle to understand its utility or its significance in the greater world of media, it is the most efficient global information network in existence today. News no longer breaks, it Tweets. People have demonstrated the speed and efficacy of social networking by connecting to one another based on interests (interest graph) rather then limiting connections to relationships (social graph). Twitter represents a promising intersection of new media, relationships, traditional media and information to form one highly connected human network.
