microsharing

This is a guest post Samir Balwani of the Internet Marketing blog Left the Box. He writes about social media strategies and how businesses can better utilize the web. Follow him on Twitter or sign up for his newsletter.

The post below features some pretty well-known case studies, but if you are new to Twitter for Business, this is a great place to start.

Twitter has become a popular business tool for everything from Public Relations to Customer Relations Management.

It’s an integral part of business social media campaigns but because of its youth, Twitter strategies are still vastly misunderstood. To better understand how people are using it I decided to explore the three corporate stars of Twitter. I asked each to describe how they’re using social media in 140 characters.

Zappos

One of the best things that Zappos did was create their twitter.zappos.com page. It shows their dedication to keeping in contact with their consumers, and gives people a rare look into the company itself.

What does this level of transparency bring? Trust. The less a company is perceived as a black hole the more people trust them.

When a business is no longer seen as a business but a friend, you overcome the distrust of online shopping. People feel safer using your site with their credit cards and know that returning something won’t be a hassle.

Not only are the Zappos employees easy to contact but the CEO is using it consistently. Tony doesn’t only push out press releases, but instead talks as if he were any other employee. He’s the point man for delivering discounts and conducting research for Zappos on Twitter.

Their use and the Zappos Twitter page has created an online fan base. Not only are they able to generate buzz quickly but they’re able to take care of PR problems right away. If you don’t think Twitter, along with great PR, hasn’t helped make Zappos what it is it now, you’re sorely mistaken.

Ford

Scott has taken Ford’s social media campaigns to a new level and have really used Twitter as a major part of the strategy.

Ford introduced multiple Twitter accounts based on what they talk about. You can follow @forddriveone, @fordtrucks, or @forddrivegreen depending on what you want. Not only that, but Scott has said before that each department will have a team sending out messages and chatting on Twitter.

They’ve used Twitter to create a strong customer relationship. Scott has been known to generate buzz about new launches (for example, the new Mustang) and is quick to track any Ford mentions.

The brand’s social media strategy spans beyond Twitter and is also targeted towards bloggers. For example, they have invited bloggers to events. Twitter allows them to keep in touch with these bloggers and the Internet-savvy fans of Ford.

Comcast

Comcast has taken customer service and super-sized it with Twitter. Frank is in charge of @comcastcares, which is the company’s response to some public relations mistakes of past.

Frank monitors Twitter for any mention of Comcast and works to quickly alleviate any issues. At the same time, he offers great customer service.

The brand uses Twitter for customer service, and with it, public relations. By quickly resolving any problems people might have, they save themselves from having an Internet public relations fiasco.

It’s smart because many of Twitter users are bloggers and business owners, and we know the power of bloggers and how a minority can make a lot of noise.

Twitter’s ability constantly monitor people’s feelings lets brands target aggravated (and happy) customers. You’re able to create a relationship based on helping them use your product and letting consumers know just who you are. Using it to mold and grow relationships means better public relations, more brand evangelists, and more customers.

Related:

• Motrin’s Twitter Moment
• Twitter for Business Reading List
• Let Pistachio Consulting help your business get started

Obama’s transition team has garnered much of the spotlight surrounding “Government 2.0″ in recent weeks, and with good reason.  He is on a quest to bring transparency to the federal government via blogging at change.gov and “fireside chats” on YouTube.  It will be an uphill battle to say the least, but the quest is noble; and as someone fighting for this type of change at the state government level, I most certainly hope he succeeds.

But there is big news out of Washington this week (as opposed to Chicago) on the microsharing front.  The State Department waded into the social media waters in September of 2007 by starting their blog Dipnote.  A month later they joined Twitter (@dipnote).  It’s a less-than-ideal Twitter account, in my opinion, because it’s simply a feed of their blog headlines — there’s no human touch, like with 10 Downing Street’s account (@DowningStreet).  However, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, has a personal Twitter account (@cgraffy) and she’s using it to keep her followers up-to-date as she visits Romania during “International Education Week.”

For those of you on Twitter, you can experience public diplomacy in real-time as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, travels to Bucharest and twitters along the way. It is “International Education Week” in Romania, and she will be meeting with students, Fulbright scholars, conducting media interviews, visiting the University of Bucharest, and speaking at the Romanian Diplomatic Institute, among other things. Follow the details of Colleen Graffy’s trip here, and don’t forget, DipNote is also on Twitter.

Twitter This: Public Diplomacy in Romania

twitter.com/cgraffy

So far she’s visited the US Embassy, met with the Fulbright Commission, done a couple of interviews, and met Remus Pricopie, State Secretary for Education.  It’s a fascinating, real-time look into the world of a US diplomat.

Hillary Hartley is a leading authority on government’s use of emerging technologies to deliver on its mission of service to constituents. In her role as Director of Integrated Marketing for NIC, Hillary consults with 21 states and hundreds of local governments on portal management, Web design, marketing, and Web 2.0 best practices for eGovernment. A frequent speaker at a wide range of technology-related events, Hillary is a blogger, San Franciscan, photographer, and Citizen Space coworker.  Follow her on Twitter (@quepol).

Mashable’s startup review for TigerBow has raised a few questions regarding the subject of privacy and security online. This is a service that will allow anyone to send a real gift (movie or book at this time) to anyone they want via an email address or social networking ID such as their Facebook name. The gimmick is that you’ll be able to receive things without having to divulge your actual address which is nice when it comes to security. However, something about it bothers some people. They feel a little uneasy about this prospect of allowing potential strangers to send you things with someone easily attained such as email addresses and social media names which are splattered all over blogs and websites everywhere.

Tigerbow isn’t the first to do this virtual to reality delivery trick. I remember SocialFlowers being one of the first services that allowed people to ship to unknown addresses from within social networks. The way they did it was by
being the middleman that brokered the deal, much like PayPal distributes money from the buyer’s real bank account to the seller’s real bank account. SocialFlowers did the same thing but instead of handling money, they managed the real addresses of both parties, providing the cloak of anonymity for both parties involved in the transaction.

There are other services now like You Got Beer that let you send things like beer to others across the country. There are also many Facebook apps that do the same thing, and not just beer but also other items such as flowers, candy and more.

This crossover behavior has infiltrated the microblogging world as well with services such as TrackThis which lets members of Twitter receive notifications in real-time of real-world shipment updates for packages. Also, as everyone has witnessed by the deluge of new followers, there are increasing numbers of brick and mortar establishments jumping on Twitter to setup shop. Rumor has it that we will be able to place orders on Amazon from Twitter directly with a tweet. The same will happen with all types of businesses someday soon.

Now that there are services such as TigerBow and SocialFlowers that have become in essence the middle man between the virtual world (social networks) and the real world (customers), then whose to say that a microblogging platform such as twitter couldn’t also be the broker for such deals? Companies took a leap of face many years ago when they allowed customers to place orders with faxes and then even riskier emails. Why wouldn’t they go a step further and embrace the current standards of communication (social media, social networking, microblogging)?

I firmly believe that we will be able to place orders not only with a tweet on Twitter for anything we want but also instant messages. As long as the social identities can be verified and confirmed and ultimately linked to some form of financial account (PayPal or bank account), then there shouldn’t be any problems with doing business with people on Microblogs, any instant messenger or social network. If they want to keep their real address a mystery to the business then so be it. As long as payments are made and products or services have been delivered then what does it matter?

The thin line between virtual and reality continues to blur and fade. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What do you think? Does it matter if the sender knows your real address or not?

P.S. Earlier this year, a business partner and I came close to launching a service in ultra stealth mode where we planned to allow people to place orders for anything they wanted (pizza, coffee, flowers, etc.) via twitter or even instant messenger. However, we backed out due to several factors including not only the gloomy economy but also because we found a great deal of services that failed trying to let customers place orders online for one reason or another. I still believe without a doubt this type of service will succeed someday soon if done right.

Doriano, A.K.A. Paisano or Pai to his friends on Twitter and elsewhere, has been in the I.T. Industry ever since the MS-DOS 6.22 days. Besides his day job as an IT Admin he also writes for Mashable.com as well as his own tech blog (http://ThePaisano.com) and ocassional guest posts elsewhere. His favorite service is Twitter where you can find him as @Paisano (What else?)

Congratulations (sort of) Motrin:

You are trending on Twitter!

Congratulations Motrin…

I’m going to take a wild guess that McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a Division of McNEIL-PPC, and their agency of record (Taxi NYC, from what we can tell at the moment) are not carefully monitoring Twitter right now. I’m also going to guess that you’re going to hear a thing or two more about this in the business press (WSJ, Forbes, AP, NYT) before it subsides.

The Fuss.

Many moms (and dads) who blog and tweet and are fans of “babywearing” are finding this Motrin ad (currently it’s right on Sunday afternoon it was pulled from the Motrin.com home page, which was more or less down for the next 16 hours and now displays their apologia) patronizing and disrespectful of the practice of babywearing. It’s kicked up some relatively strong feelings among the community, and a resulting loud racket on Twitter and blogs. (I’ll disclose: 1) I agree the ad is a bit dumb, 2) that I was a babywearer, and 3) that frankly, carrying those g-dmn “bucket style” infant carseats wrecked my back way more than any of my slings and backpacks ever did. But that’s not the point.) UPDATE: Follow the Twittering here. Skimbaco (Katja Presnal) compiled the Twitter screenshots and babywearing photos video below, and collected a long list of blog responses, including her original post. (Found via Jet With Kids)

The Reponse.

On Twitter right now, nothing has appeared from Johnson & Johnson, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Motrin or Taxi.

Huh.

The Lesson.

Even if your brand or agency isn’t ready to engage formally and integrate the business applications of Twitter throughout your campaigns, community building and other market engagement efforts, you need to get clued in — fast — to the reasons, times and ways that you can listen. Maybe you’re not even ready for full-time social media monitoring. That’s your call. But not tuning in while you launch a new tactic borders on gross negligence, in this day and age.

Rolling out a new tactic is THE most important time to lend an ear. Smart SuperBowl advertisers could have gained instant consumer feedback on their efforts during the game last year. After every ad Twitter lit up with opinions. Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang prepared this formal analysis based on responses sent to his experimental account @superbowlads. His colleague (who co-authored Groundswell) Josh Bernoff shared his assessment here. Searching or watching Twitter’s search tools for your brand at the moment your ad aired would have yielded even more results.

I’ll update this post as I hear more, and when the companies involved begin to respond. Meanwhile, if your company doesn’t have a good understanding of how your full range of market engagement needs to be informed by sensitive consumer sentiment engines like Twitter, you might want to give your agency a call.

Coda

(Evolving: I’ll spare you all the “UPDATE” notations)

• Lesson #2: the Twitter chatter is not to be dismissed as an angry mob. There are TONS of productive ideas being shared. The company that listens, learns. (and, earns!)
• AdeleMcAlear Searched YouTube for “Motrin baby ad” and noticed the protest videos have already been up for 12 hours (at 3:30 EST Sunday), including Twitter screen shots. She also uncovered this blogger’s (awkwardly self-promotional) report that she called Taxi’s Director of Corporate Communications at home who had not, then, heard of the fuss.
• McNeil marketing VP responds. In an email to Katja Presnal:
  

We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad.

• Later, McNeil posted that apology on Motrin.com
• Seth Godin weighs in: not a very useful apology.
• Josh Bernoff breaks down the events, and agrees with Godin.
• Jeremiah Owyang’s analysis with screenshots and brand impact context

Related articles by Zemanta

• Forget Motrin, Take a Deep Breath
• Motrin learns about Twitter
• “Motrin moms,” a-Twitter over ad, take on Big Pharma–And win

UPDATE: The delete function has been restored, but you should still be smart and careful posting to Twitter for the reasons discussed below.

This is a fairly urgent warning to business users of Twitter that applies to everyone. Currently you cannot delete your tweets should you make a mistake that you wish to remove from your profile page.

Be careful.

To some extent, the ability to delete tweets in the first place is a false comfort. Once published, ALL tweets remain searchable in search.twitter.com, even if you delete them. Also, those following you by SMS and most Twitter clients receive the tweet immediately, or at least before you can delete it. As with email, “recall” is an illusion.

That said, it’s still nice to be able to remove typos, misdirected “dm’s” and other undesirable information from your profile page and the web-based stream, and at the moment you cannot. There used to be a trash can icon below the star next to each tweet. If you click through to the individual tweet (the unique URL that contains only that tweet) the icon still appears, but it does not work.

ALWAYS be smart and use common sense about what kind of information you relay via Twitter, and think twice before hitting submit. This applies double to dm’s sent using the syntax “d username message” for if you fatfinger the “d” by accident, your post will show up publicly in your stream.

We’re waiting to hear back from Twitter on why the feature was disabled, and its future status. The feature was restored Friday.

Would you expect a 222 year-old company would be fully engaged in social media? Yes, if it’s Molson; this includes Twitter, blogging, vlogging, Flickr and more.  As this came to me as a surprise, I was eager to find out why a such well-established company would take an active role on the Web. Ferg Devins, VP Government and Public Affairs, Molson Canada, was gracious to speak to me this past Wednesday.

It turns out community engagement has been part of this family-run company (now in its 7th generation) since the beginning. Banking and transportation are but a few of the new technologies pushed by the Molson family since its founding. Why? Beer is a social commodity. Maintaining good relations with the community drives the business.

Several things became clear during the conversation:

1. Molson’s social media team not only gets social media, it really fires them up. The vibe and excitement was palpable. After I got off the phone, I wanted to jump up and down and fire up my colleagues (but that’s a different story).
2. Engagement is successful when aligned to corporate goals and culture.
3. Social engagement isn’t about directly impacting financial returns. It’s about relationships. This ties in to my take on ROI and the applicability of strategy maps to social media.

How has Molson used social media to engage community?

1. The launch of the new blog included a major fundraising effort that engaged 1100 Molson employees on a cold February morning. Wake people up at 6am to sell “Toques” in Toronto for Raising the Roof: Sure, why not? It resulted in a $125K being raised for the homeless, including an amazing $90K raised by Molson.
2. Brew 2.0. Seriously, need I say anything more?

The following are highlights from our conversation.

ROI
JK: Social media is a cost-center in most organizations. How do you report value?
Ferg: How does traditional media report value? Social media is a part of the communications mix, and as such, represents one channel to reach out to the public. Thanks to Google Analytics and other tracking measures, activity is easily quantifiable.

Scalability
JK: How will you scale if social media takes off?
Ferg: Give me that problem!

Twitter
JK: Who started tweeting at Molson?
Ferg: @toniahammer; she often is out shooting pictures and video for the company.
JK: How do you see brands providing value on Twitter?
Ferg: I’m still feeling out the sense of what people want to see “commercially” on the site. I get tremendous value from the learning that is shared through various links from folks.  When I look at Home Depot updates, I guess it’s useful information and thus I follow…like taking back lights last weekend. The flash updates from Globe and Mail and other news providers is of value to me.
JK: What challenges do you think companies face in using Twitter?
Ferg: The greatest challenge for me and my team will be how we want to integrate our brand communications into Twitter in a relevant and friendly way to beer drinkers.  The best way to do that might just be to start reaching out and asking them.

The Lawyers
JK: I have a lot of experience in the legal industry and was curious: have the lawyers jumped on your case?
Ferg: We’ve guided by a simple edict: use common sense. Not only are you representing yourself, you speak for the company. There are certain things, like politics, that should be avoided.

What’s the take-away from this conversation?
JK: If Twitter were to disappear, how would you engage your community?
Ferg: Evolution is key.

How is Twitter used at Molson?
Tonia Hammer of Molson’s PR Team provided great examples of their Twitter use:

• Direct traffic to our blog and Web sites: Twitter definitely helps drive traffic to the blog. For example:  In October, twitter was the 4th highest traffic source for the blog (7% traffic).  To put into perspective, we didn’t use twitter to communicate blog posts until March, and then, less than 1% of visits were directed from twitter.  It took communicating, building relationships and generating followers to eventually see the positive outcome of ‘twittering’ with respect to our blog traffic.
• Events: We use Twitter to live-tweet and monitor events. For our Brew 2.0 events in Toronto and Vancouver, we followed the tweets to get feedback and also to share thanks, photos and video.
• Soliciting Feedback: We ask questions about new websites, promotions, or what people would like to hear from Molson.
• Monitoring: The various Molson brands are monitored using tweetbeep.
• Promotions: We’ve done tweets with offers – discount code for ShopMolson.com, taxiguy discounts for the holidays

Learn more:
For a closer look at Molson’s foray into social media, check out the following:

• Molson in the Community blog

• Molson on Twitter: @MolsonFerg, @Moffat, @ToniaHammer

• Molson blog’s Flickr account

My thanks go out to the Molson social media team for sharing their experience and time for this post.

Jonathan Kash is Director of Web Services at a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., and writes the blog Fluent Simplicity. He also created the Social Media Brand Index (originally the Twitter Brand Index). Interests include brand identity, online reputation and strategy.

To Claude Malaison and his team at Webcom Montreal, congratulations on a successful conference and thanks kindly for the privilege of speaking.

I spoke (no shock) about microsharing, interpreting some of the “big picture” business potential for this audience of Canadian business and government leaders.

My slides are below. I’ll add the video as soon as I can get it to offload from my camera.

In an article released today, Brian Womack of Bloomberg.com reports that Twitter is exploring revenue models that include charging businesses to use Twitter, rather than seek additional venture capital funding. The company has already raised $22 million in funds, but with the current state of the economy, Twitter CEO Evan Williams says, “the VCs have the money, but they’ll just negotiate harder” wanting a larger return on investment.

According to the article, Williams said that Twitter may charge businesses to reach users. This may include opt-in coupon promotions, market research and display advertising. “I want to manage things so I don’t have to raise money in 2009,” Williams said.

The article also states that “global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier.”

Image via Wikipedia

The Adoption Problem

An E2.0 application only works if enough people use it. To me, this is the single biggest reason that abrupt rollouts or “adding microblogging as a feature” to existing software seem doomed to fail.

When people organically find a microblogging platform to be powerful for them, perhaps as it opens significant opportunities in their lives, it is hard to assess the precise hows and whys of how they got there. They no longer care, for having experienced the benefit, their buy-in is strong enough for them to persist. Others looking at their case will struggle to understand it and find universally applicable lessons.

But it takes time, luck, critical mass and enough of a network for the reaction to get started.

So if microsharing is introduced all at once, or stapled on as a haphazard feature to existing platforms with various rates of adoption and user buy-in, can the same powerful network effects be created?

I’m skeptical.

Adoption Solutions

1. Convey compelling, appealing use cases
2. Discover and seed the natural talents
3. Encourage “softer” functions to habituate employees to the tool
4. Recognize and encourage those making creative use.

Specific advantages and their inherent “use cases” are exploding. In an enterprise build of microsharing, it seems better to scale this down to a handful of really compelling, really salient use cases. Be direct and persuasive with the adoption pool about what they can do with it and why they might want to, but also do a good enough job expressing some clear, actionable, useful habit that will become possible. There needs to be a “slide” on the otherwise strange-looking playscape to get kids started playing.

Once a critical mass of people engage, network effects mean that the benefits grow stronger and stronger and become more obvious. Word-of-mouth adoption and uptake spreads. “Pied Piper” types — who draw others in closer by their creative and compelling uses of the platform should also be discovered within the organization.

Off to Defrag, but here is a quick peek at enterprise microsharing late entrant Co-op, which launched October 20th and narrowly missed inclusion in the Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison report we released this morning.

My first impression is that Co-op is a bit like Status with time-tracking and an agenda view, but until we can dig in more I’ve added them to the matrix under the pure-play classification.

Integration with Iridesco’s other tool Harvest means time tracking in Co-op can be used for invoicing. They point out that microsharing can eliminate or reduce routine “status” meetings, and the agenda feature looks especially helpful for this.

Here’s the run-down:

Name: Co-op
Company:
Description: Co-op is a “casual” communication tool for small teams with built-in time tracking capabilities.
Inside Firewall: Will consider if there’s demand
Directory Integration: No
Twitter’s Functions: Most
Groups: Yes
Location: No
Sharing: Links
SMS: No
IM: No
Desktop Client: Future

Smart-phone App: No
Twitter Integration: No
Underlying Software Platform: Ruby on Rails
API: Soon
Twitter Compatible API: Future
Largest Company: N/A
Largest Group: N/A
Pricing /month: Free
Additional Notes: Integrates with Iridesco’s Harvest, a time tracking and invoicing tool. Agenda feature allows teams to plan out their days together, sharing who is working on what and what they will be working on later.

Related posts:

• Enterprise Microsharing Apps: Read All About Em
• Enterprise Microsharing Reading List

Want to talk to us about enterprise microsharing for your company? Please let us know.