Four Simple Ways To Not Suck at Twitter
I don’t mean to get all preachy with what I’m about to say because I do truly believe there are different ways to use Twitter. I also don’t buy into the “you’re doing it wrong” argument because unless you’re breaking Twitter’s terms of service, you’re not really technically doing anything wrong.
That being said, I do think there are a few points of etiquette that everyone should follow, even if they’re not violations of Twitter’s ToS.
1. No Auto DMs
Auto DMs are the work of the devil. Auto DMs are Twitter equivalent of the “first” post in a comments section. If I decide to follow you, I don’t need an automatically generated direct message sent back to me thanking me for the follow and giving me more ways to get in touch with you. This is why Twitter created the “bio” section – tell me about yourself there and show me who you are with the content you post in your timeline. Auto DMs should be a violation of Twitter as it’s spam in my eyes, and if I receive an auto DM from you, you get instantly unfollowed.
2. Don’t Retweet Every Response
The beauty of the “@ reply” is that I don’t have to read it if I’m not following the other person you’re talking to. This was done to prevent people from being exposed to useless conversations that won’t provide any value to them. I can’t tell you how many times I will see something along these lines:
Offender: The red one RT @OffendersFriend What dress are you wearing tonight?
Nobody outside of @Offender and @OffendersFriend cares about this discussion, so please, do us all a favor and get your finger away from the retweet button and move it over to the @ reply. There are instances where it’s perfectly acceptable to do a conversational retweet, but more often that not, it’s from someone with an enormous amount of followers and is asked the same question multiple times (AKA, not you). I hardly think the color of your dress is going to end up in a FAQ somewhere.
3. Don’t Follow for Follow
It’s comical the amount of people that do this. Every day I get about 10 or 20 new followers, and three days later they almost all unfollow me because I didn’t reciprocate the follow (aka “Follow Back”). The topic of “quality vs. quantity” in regards to Twitter followers has been beaten to death, but let’s face it…people like numbers and want to feel like they are better than others with enormous Twitter followers, even if they don’t care at all about you and what you say. Twitter followers are not Garbage Pail Kids cards – you don’t need to collect them all. If you are following me, please do so because you want to read what I say, not add me to your collection. Oh, and if you want me to follow you back, you should probably read this first.
4. Don’t Celebrate Follower Milestones
Big deal – you’re reaching you’re 1,000th follower. Nobody gives a crap except for you, so please don’t make any thinly veiled attempts of showing appreciation when we all know you’re tweet of “Only 6 more followers to 1,000 – I love you all” is just a ploy to get you more followers for your collection.
Did I miss any? If so, you know what to do. (hint: look below…see that comment box?)
Klout Sucks and Why You Should Use It
The Twitter influence measurement service Klout was a huge topic of debate at this year’s SXSW conference. Its founder Joe Fernandez was on various panels touting how wonderful it is that the startup has found a way to automate the influence measurement process – something many feel is the “holy grail” of social media marketing. Mr. Fernandez also discussed “Klout Perks” – a service that allows brands to target influencers by sending them tangible items in hopes they will talk about them throughout their social circles leading to increased sales. Unfortunately, Klout is nothing but snake oil when it comes to determining influence. That said, it’s an immensiely valuable service that should be incorporated into your reporting mix. Confused? Let me explain.
No matter what Joe Fernandez says, there is currently no tool that can accurately automate the process of identifying influencers on specific topics throughout Twitter. The only way to do this is to immerse yourself into the conversational context data manually. In fact, my own Klout profile says I’m most influential on the topics of “Social Media,” “Marketing,” “New York Yankees,” “Media,” “Family,” and “Public Relations.” Now I can see where some of those terms may come in to play as I do social media and digital marketing for a living, but I rarely ever tweet about topics related to my family or families in general. Perhaps a better example is a friend of mine that ranks as an influencer in “football” when in fact she probably can’t even name more than five teams in the NFL!
Now Klout claims they get their content analysis data on influencers from semantically analyzing tweets for engagement and reach to see which topics one is most influential in, but clearly this is a flawed method. I’m not saying it’s 100% inaccurate, but there is bad data coming back here. In fact, I recently spoke to a Klout employee on how I was personally targeted for two of their perks, one for Disney’s “Tangled” film and the other for an NBA promotion; these are two topics that I really couldn’t care less about, yet somehow I received invitations for their swag. When I mentioned this to the employee, I was told “sometimes people slip through the cracks” as if that’s an acceptable answer. If I was a brand paying good money to target influencers and there were people slipping through the cracks, I’d be very upset, especially with the value of some of these perks brands are sending out.
I also asked Joe Fernandez how Klout measures ROI on their perk program after he made the statement that some brands were so thrilled with the results that they came back for another go and was given no clear answer. It appears, from my take on his reply, that brands are using this money as “experimental marketing” and waiting to see if there’s any long tail effect. With no required action by those who receive perks, it’s impossible to measure any sort of ROI. (Klout users that receive perks are not required to say or do anything. The hope is that they will enjoy the perk so much they talk about it on their own.)
All this being said, I find there is value to be had in using the Klout score in social media monitoring as it aids in identifying those Twitter users that “get it” versus those that are speaking to a disengaged audience. While I firmly believe that brands should listen to and treat all customers throughout social media as if they have 100 Klout, I’m a realist and know that sometimes that’s impossible, especially if you’re a brand with thousands of mentions per day. When it comes down to reputation management and someone with a Klout of 50 is talking about how much they hate your brand, you’re going to want to put them on a higher priority list than someone with a Klout of 8. This score gives marketers some data to go back to CMOs with that satiates their need for numbers and data clustering.
I don’t want to come off like a Klout hater – I’d love to see the service thrive, but only if it’s doing it right. I had many conversations around this topic this week and can say that there are many out there that loathe Klout and everything it stands for. I just want any tool out there that can help me make my job easier. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to finding a way to automate the influencer identification process as there are too many variables that go into what makes one influential, but of everything out there, Klout at least seems to be heading down the right path, even if that path is thousands of miles long.
Review: The Facebook Marketing Book
I recently had the chance to review The Facebook Marketing Book
The book is an excellent resource for anyone new to social media marketing and does a great job of explaining best practices on creating an effective Facebook fan page. The book features a plethora of screenshots and wonderful real-world examples of Facebook fan pages done right. Towards the end of the book, the authors touch on the use of paid ads to help build awareness of one’s page. While you certainly will not become an expert in the paid-side of Facebook until you really dive in and try it for yourself, this book does an excellent job of giving you the foundation you need.
The Facebook Marketing Book is very similar to those wonderful “…For Dummies” books, however I much prefer the style that Dan and Alison Zarrella took with this book by skipping all the fluff and getting right down to the brass tacks. The book is a very quick read but full of information and features an index in the back which is crucial for any how-to books.
How I Use Twitter
Twitter can be a confusing tool for many people, especially those that are new to it. As you continue to build up the list of accounts you follow, managing the stream of data can be overwhelming. Thankfully, many developers have created some amazing utilities which make taming the Twitter beast much easier. After much tinkering, I have found a great suite of tools to maximize my value in Twitter that may be helpful to you.
Who I Follow
Twitter allows you to receive an email every time you get a new follower. Whenever I see someone new is following me, the first thing I do is look at their bio and ask myself, “does this person look like someone that might have something worthwhile to say?” I then look at their following/follower ratio; if they are following 1,500 people and only followed by 10, I stay away as there’s a good chance this person is just using me in hopes I’ll follow them back so they can spam me later. Should an account pass those first two litmus tests, I look to see if they replying to people or only pushing out one-way messages. If I don’t see any replies to users on the first page, I move on. If they’re actively engaging with folks, I’ll follow them.
Lists
One of, if not the most powerful and often under-utilized features of Twitter is lists. Lists allow you to segment accounts into categories to help filter through all the noise. Lists can be both public and private and you do not need to be following someone to add them to a list.
I have quite a few lists that I use to help manage my stream. I’ve got lists for all of my interests, such as music, technology, Apple news, sports and pop culture. I’ve also created a list that’s private and includes my “must read” accounts. This is basically my “Twitter All Stars” group and it pulls in my most favorite accounts across all of my other lists. This has become my replacement for the traditional Twitter timeline. I still will scan the timeline on occasion for all of the users I follow, but it’s impossible for me to keep up with everything there, as the All Star list is where I go to never miss a Tweet.
Twitter Clients
While the new additions to Twitter.com are nice for the average user, they are in no way a replacement for the power-user applications, especially those managing multiple accounts. Depending on where I am, I use different tools to manage Twitter.
From the desktop, my go-to applications are Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. While both of these applications are very similar in the power they offer, each has their strengths and weaknesses. Tweetdeck is great for real-time data capture and managing multiple accounts across various social networks. There are also powerful filters one can set up on-the-fly to filter out any unwanted information, such as spoiler alerts for TV shows.
For Hootsuite, its strengths are its built-in analytics and “team member” features. If you shorten a link from within Hootsuite, you can receive detailed stats on the numbers and demographics of clicks it receives. If you’re managing an account with multiple people, Hootsuite allows you to assign tasks to others in your organization for follow-up. This is something that’s very helpful with my co-workers and I on accounts that multiple people are involved with.
For mobile, both the official Twitter and Hootsuite apps are my favorite on iOS. Hootsuite recently launched an iPad-optimized version of their app which is also in my must-use tool box.
Other Twitter Tools
Formulists: Formulists is a web-service that can automatically generate Twitter lists for you. I currently have three lists set up within it that are accessible from all of my Twitter apps both on desktop and mobile. I have lists for “People who retweeted me,” “People who recently followed me” and “people I recently followed.” I can jump into any of these lists to find people worth following who retweeted me that I may not be aware of, as well as look at those new people I’ve just started following to see if they are someone I want to add to my “All Stars” list.
Who Unfollowed Me: A great tool I use nearly every day is “Who Unfollowed Me.” I’m not one of those people that get upset or offended if someone stops following me – I get it, not everyone wants to read some of the random things I post that interest me. Where I find the most use in Who Unfollowed Me is helping to weed out spammers or other users that are just trying to inflate their follow-to-following ratio. If you’re unfollowed by someone you were mutually following, you can dump them with one-click right from within the service and go on with your day.
I’m always looking for tools to optimize my experience. There’s no right or wrong way to use Twitter, as long as you’re receiving and providing value to the service. If you have any must-use tools, please share them with me on Twitter or in the comments, I’d love to hear them.
Photo by Fran Pregernik
What Ping Needs To Do To Be Relevant
Let’s face it – Apple does a lot of things right, but social networking is not one of them. They’re always late to the game when it comes to having a presence on popular social sites, and with the exception of their iTunes Facebook fan page, they’re really doing a crappy job in the space.
Apple launched their own music social service called Ping a few months back alongside the release of iTunes 10. If you haven’t tried Ping, think of it as Twitter for musicians, only not useful, anti-social and pretty pathetic.
I gave Apple the benefit of the doubt when Ping first launched and didn’t pile up on them when they were being hammered with all the (justifiable) complaints. As is the case with any new social site, it takes time for the content to populate and for users to find value. Fast forward to the beginning of December and with a few small exceptions, Ping is still a joke of a service that really serves no unique purpose.
First off, getting a profile on Ping as a musician is a tedious process. Artist profiles must be set up through Apple, and artists are basically given a rule book on what they can and can’t do on the service. This is the reason the initial run of artists at launch was so small. Ping is adding more and more artists every day, but there are still many notable exceptions still nowhere to be found. Apple also has a section of “high profile” people it suggests you follow. As someone that prides myself on my immense music knowledge and excellent taste, there was not one “tastemaker” that I felt was worth following.
Content aside, there are so many things that Ping doesn’t do which show that Apple is not using it as a true “social” tool as much as they are using it as a way to sell music. There’s no way to “scrobble” your songs like Last.FM does, to keep a running tally of what you listen to and use that data to crowd-source artist and song popularity. Ping only displays recommendations built upon your iTunes purchasing history. You know, because everyone buys all their music from iTunes.
When Ping first launched, you could connect with your friends via Facebook Connect for about 12 hours before the feature was pulled to never be replaced again. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that Ping finally integrated with Twitter to push out your activity. While it’s nice to have some Twitter integration, the real value is in Facebook where people tend to be much more closely connected in real life with their network.
There’s also no public API, so the only way to access Ping is via iTunes (desktop or mobile). While this isn’t a huge problem on the iPhone, it’s really inconvenient to have to open up iTunes just to check Ping. Would it have killed Apple to make this a web service too? The rich developer network utilizing the Twitter API is what helped propel that company into the mainstream that to launch any social network without a public API today is just foolish.
I’ll honestly be surprised if Ping is around two years from now. Nothing from what I’ve seen thus far shows me that there’s any interest by users, nor does Apple seem to be doing much to make this a service that people need to use. Until Apple takes a page out of Last.FM’s book and truly mixes social and music, it will just be another laughable, failed attempt at tapping into the ever-growing world of social networking.
In case you’re interested, you can follow me on Ping – while it’s still around.
Three Companies That Apple Could and Should Buy
It’s amazing how a company that went from the brink of bankruptcy 13 years ago now has $51B in cash reserves, market cap of $275 Billion and a share price of over $300. Last week, CEO Steve Jobs said that Apple plans to hold on to it’s $51B in cash to pursue “strategic opportunities.” As their war with Google continues to grow as does threats from music startups that could potentially dethrone iTunes as the de-facto digital music destination, here’s a list of companies that could be huge acquisitions for the Cupertino giant to buy that could potentially change the shape of the tech industry for decades to come.
Facebook
Facebook is currently valued at a little over $30B. While it would be an enormous investment for Apple to make, the rewards from purchasing the world’s number one social network could have seismic effects across all of Apple’s verticals. It’s pretty safe to say that Apple will be launching a music subscription service in the future and as physical music formats continue on their death march, streaming music startups such as Spotify, MOG and Rdio are winning people over left and right. As smartphone and home broadband penetration continues to expand, it’s only a matter of time until most music fans are enjoying their music in the cloud. Apple realizes this and it’s most likely why they purchased Lala.com last year. Should Apple buy Facebook, every user could have access to a streaming iTunes service instantly. Apple’s new music social network Ping would also have a much better home than living in the iTunes desktop & mobile software and Facebook credits could be used to purchase video rentals.
Putting aside the benefits that an embedded iTunes store from within Facebook could have, the most appealing thing that comes with the purchase of Facebook is their data. Apple’s foray into the mobile advertising business with iAd has put them toe-to-toe with Google and owning Facebook would give them ownership of the very lucrative Facebook ad platform to compete on the desktop as well. Facebook ads allow marketers to deliver very hyper-targeted messages based on the data found in a user’s profile and Apple’s merging of that information with the data they receive from their iAds could very well shift the power in online advertising for years to come.
Netflix
Netflix currently has a market cap of $9B and a subscriber base of over 15 million. While Apple dominates the digital music space, the same can be said for Netflix with regards to digital video. While Netflix started out as a DVD by mail service, their business model has shifted towards streaming video and as they continue to roll out streaming-only plans, their subscriber base is expected to explode. Analysts expect Netflix to have over 19 million subscribers by the end of 2010, which totals about 6% of the US population or 17% of the estimated 116 million US TV households.
An acquisition of Netflix would allow Apple the flexibility to focus on streaming video rather than the pay-per-view rental or pay-to-own model that they’re stuck in now. Streaming video is the way of the future and it’s only a matter of time when Blu-Ray users will see they can get the exact same audio and video experience via the cloud than on an overpriced physical disc that takes up space and is prone to scratching.
Additionally, a purchase of Netflix by Apple would give them enormous market penetration within streaming devices already in-use, such as video game consoles, TiVos, Roku Boxes and Netflix-enabled televisions. While the newest incarnation of the AppleTV is a huge leap forward compared to its predecessor, future success in streaming video will not come from being one of many players in the hardware game – one must control the content.
Last.FM
Last.FM is a popular music social network that founded in the UK and was acquired by CBS Interactive for £140 Million in 2009. While it may not have the cache or price tag as Facebook or Netflix, Last.fm would give Apple something that it’s failed to crack thus far – success in social media.
It’s pretty safe to say that most diehard music fans are finding Apple’s Ping social network to be a joke. Aside from the very lackluster initial offering of artists involved, it’s pretty much the most anti-social social network of them all. Artists that are on Ping are not interacting with fans like often found on Facebook or Twitter. Ping is basically a glorified RSS feed of artists news and events and feels as warm and welcoming as a hospital waiting room.
I don’t see Ping taking off ever in its current form. There’s no way for artists to create their own accounts; an Apple staff member must create the account on their end. There’s also a ridiculous list of rules for entertainers participating on Ping that is nothing if not laughable.
Music loves have embraced Last.fm for multiple reasons, but the three that are most popular are 1. scrobbling, 2. streaming radio and 3. social networking. Scrobbling is basically Last.fm’s way of indexing all the music you listen to on your computer or iPod and keeping a running record of it. It uses that data to show which artists and songs are most popular on the site as well as allows users to meet other music fans based on their compatible music tastes. Last.fm also leverages their API so other music services can import their data into a user’s Last.fm account for even more ways to scrobble music. Two great examples of the API use are Spotify and Blip.fm. Ping currently only automatically tracks your iTunes purchases. The streaming radio on Last.fm also allows users to listen to Pandora-like stations built for them based on their actual listening habits.
While a purchase of Last.fm would be a drop in the bucket for Apple, it would allow them to buy into an established and trusted network of music lovers. They could also leverage all the data they obtain from users on their listening habits to offer a better targeted buying experience within the iTunes music store.
I believe all three of these aforementioned services provide excellent growth opportunities for Apple as they continue into the next decade. I’d love to know what other companies you think Apple could and should realistically buy. Leave your thoughts in the comments.
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