ComMetrics: sense and simplicity ➡ actionable metrics

Starting the morning with an email inbox swamped in spam is painful. Nevertheless, email is a great help for transmitting documents and information. Now comes micro-blogging and social networks. Like email these can be a real distraction from getting our work done.

All things being equal (or ceteris paribus), here are a few questions and issues you might want to reflect upon and answer for yourself when using your time at work to micro-blog or tweet instead of hitting the phone to talk to your customers or constituents.

1 - The basics
When tweeting as a small business, consider these issues:

- what is my target audience (e.g., sports lovers vs. clients, consumers vs. industrial buyers)?
- what is the primary language of most of my followers (English, French, etc.)?
- what is the gender of most of my readers (for more info, read five steps to Twitter success)?

It is obvious that sports-related tweets are different than those about banking. Different languages can result in etiquette issues within the message (English rules - NOT on Twitter) and women tend to be more personal than men (see tweets to the right).

Hence, if the majority of your followers are primarily female CEOs or management types whose first language may not be English, how about tweeting accordingly?

2 - What is the purpose of your tweet?
Are you doing a fine job of providing snapshots of unfolding events or is your archive of tweets a compendium of banalities? The problem is that the nature of Twitter can encourage users to communicate endlessly without actually affecting events (Iran vote) or people’s behavior (e.g., purchasing a product).

Please reflect carefully before using one of your daily allotment of tweets and make each one count.

3 - Are stilettos appropriate for this occasion?

Sending out a mixture of sports scores and self-congratulatory notes is authentic (e.g., Senator John McCain), but it can be the opposite of what your followers want, need or expect.

With ComMetrics (see image at left) and WEFdavos we are trying to provide tweets that are interesting enough to achieve click-through rates of 15 percent or more, excluding re-tweeting (see also Twitter volume vs. Twitter influence).

Hence, one needs to find the type of shoe that suits one’s followers, not the other way round!

4 - Why 1,000 followers may do little for your bottom line
Some say it’s all about who you follow, NOT who follows you.

As a small business, it is most important to understand that Twitter is really not scalable. If you want to read tweets carefully and check out the URLs sent, it’s easy to spend two or more hours on it each day. Our business cannot really afford this (see below for more info).

Social media - Metrics to know and metrics to skip - FAQ #3
Social media - Ropes to skip - Twitter - FAQ #4

Bottom line
Surely, important and profound business messages can generally be encapsulated in 140 characters (or 120 to allow the recipient to retweet using RT @ComMetrics). Nonetheless, it is invariably more effective and enjoyable to share a cup of coffee with your client or colleague while having a real discussion, than exchanging bursts of 140 characters of information.

Increasing your followers for the sake of getting more may not be the answer either. Incidentally, the user to the right that advertised this link in one of his tweets failed to get more followers, as of four days after posting. And even if he would have, would those new followers have been the ones he is aiming for - possible clients?

As a micro-business, we have learned that neither Twitter nor Facebook are the miracle ingredient that will bring us all the users we want for My.ComMetrics.com. Our blog posts do better. Still.

Of course, if you tweet from home instead of watching two hours of TV at night, it might be great fun. However, if updating your Facebook status or Twitter content fails to create additional revenue for your small business, it should not be part of your workday, should it?

Also of interest:
Follow us on Twitter with ComMetrics or WEFdavos or find us on FriendFeed. Plus, check out All about Twitter and then some,
Corporate microblogging on Twitter, and
Corporate microblogging or Twitter-squatting?

Have your say. What have you experienced with services like Twitter and Naijapulse? Has it resulted in an expanded customer base or has it made little difference? Give me a shout and leave a comment below, I am very interested to hear about your take on things.

Posted in corporate blogging, twitter, usability and friendliness |

My main reason for writing these weekend reflection posts is to provide you with links of important insights I came across during the week while browsing the blogosphere. Some people call this short link blogging — often way fewer than 140 characters (a bit similar to Twitter).

In case you missed the last couple of weeks’ best links for the week:

Very useful links: Insight versus hindsight for week 23.
Very useful links: George Soros to US Homeland Security for week 24. [Read more →]

Posted in checklists, tools, twitter, white papers |

The current civil unrest in Iran has resulted in some discussion about how social media - specifically Twitter - may have influenced events.

Unfortunately, most of the information on Twitter cannot be easily verified as far as the election and its consequences are concerned. And while some news people use Twitter, others are prevented by their employers from doing so.

Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal
Recently we learned that Bloomberg issued a code of conduct that makes it quite difficult to refer to other sources such as blogs, microblogs or even research labs, as quoted below: [Read more →]

Posted in KPIs and metrics, business ethics, twitter |

This week’s best links pertaining to trends, research, privacy sales and environmental pollution refer to firms, cities and personalities like Calgary, George Soros, the US Federal Reserve System, Twitter, The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the security problem with your Apple iPhone - patch available

Last week’s links you can find here: Very useful links: the Governator to Wal-Mart [Read more →]

Posted in checklists, climate change, twitter, white papers |

Depending on who is responsible for the ranking - Tyler Brûlé (Monocle), The Economist Intelligence Unit or Mercer - the city of your dreams could be anywhere.

But what kind of ranking system will help you the most for deciding if you want to move to another town or not? We share a few insights about this challenge and reveal some of the strengths and weaknesses you need to know about when using Monocle, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) or Mercer’s rankings for making a decision. [Read more →]

Posted in KISS, sensible metrics |

This week’s best links pertaining to trends, research, cybercrime, privacy and sales refer to firms like Flickr, Google, T-Mobile, Twitter, Wal-Mart and, of course, California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - once known as the Terminator, now also known as the Governator - who once again comes to the rescue of our school children.

Last week’s links you can find here: Very useful links: Insight versus hindsight [Read more →]

Posted in checklists, tools, wef davos, white papers |

Last Saturday I came across a tweet by Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) that stated:

@juliaalison and Seaworld should read third bullet from @jbernoff When and How to Pay a Blogger (being held liable for false statements…).

The same day @_Annubis_ sent a tweet announcing that he would review blogs using his evaluation system (see Blogvorstellung mal anders).

In addition to the above and considering how popular product tests and reviews are, I decided to address some current ethical and moral concerns including sponsored conversations.

As one vendor put it to me recently:

“… no matter what I tell you about a product there is no substitute for the touch and feel of it, so it is a must to get you to use our product before you write about it.”

[Read more →]

Posted in business ethics |

My main reason for writing these weekend reflection posts is to provide you with links to important insights I came across during the week while browsing the blogosphere. Blog content can be both highly perishable and easy to miss. [Read more →]

Posted in checklists, tools, wef davos, white papers |

After publishing the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies’ corporate blogs, some readers came forward asking for some tips on how to improve one’s ranking and statistics.

Can we help? Definitely! We have developed some best practices, as outlined below in a series of posts.

Today we release the first two installments of these tips and lessons, the first of which can be read here:

1) Lessons 1 - 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot (2009-06-03)

The next set will be published July 8:
3) Lessons  8 - 11: Whatever domain, home you choose - beware
4) Lessons 12 - 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right

The final set will come your way August 12:
5) Lessons 14 - 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 - 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

To make sure that you don’t miss any of these upcoming posts, just leave your e-mail here:

Posted in FT ComMetrics Blog Index, KISS, corporate blogging, getting it right |

[Regularly updated] As bloggers we crave flexibility but risk frittering our time away by being bamboozled with too many tools and plugins that are supposed to help us blog more effectively. Hence, the key is to choose the best and most helpful plugins.

There are tons of great WordPress plugins out there, but these are our favorite plugins. [Read more →]

Posted in KISS, KPIs and metrics, checklists, corporate blogging, sensible metrics, white papers |

The global downturn may have bottomed out, but shrinking advertising revenue has forced newspapers to tighten their belts:
- New York Times: 1,300 editorial staff, 54 percent of revenue from advertising, big losses in Q1 of 2009
- Financial Times: 550 editorial staff, faltering advertising in Q1 of 2009
- Tages Anzeiger: 177 editorial staff after May 2009 cuts of 50 full-time editorial positions
All newspapers are feeling the pain, most due to lower spending on real estate, automotive, help-wanted and movie or theatre ads. Will this trend continue and will ever more newspapers be filing for bankruptcy? [Read more →]

Posted in KPIs and metrics, case study, corporate blogging, economy, serving a need |

Today is the big day: the Financial Times published our FT ComMetrics Blog Index for 2009 in the newspaper’s regular Digital Business supplement and on its webpage.

A decade ago the world’s largest companies were figuring out how to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the World Wide Web. In the last couple of years, many firms have focused on blogs and most of the noise has been made over the last year. We take a look at some examples and discuss them in some more detail.

In the past, most viewed blogs (or weblogs, to use the technically correct term) as diaries for people to write about and share their lives. However, corporate blogs are a very different kettle of fish and beyond sharing product information, they have the potential to communicate with a wider range of stakeholders, such as prospective employees, investors, suppliers and even consumers or non-profit organizations.

Most corporate blogs have been launched in the last two years, which indicates that companies are still experimenting with how best to use this tool. Consequently, the corporate blogosphere presents a heterogeneous and dynamic field for research. The data indicate some interesting trends. [Read more →]

Posted in FT ComMetrics Blog Index, KPIs and metrics, case study, sensible metrics, white papers |

How do you rank compared to your competitors? This question is answered in part by the FT ComMetrics Blog Index, which ranks FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 firms’ corporate blogs. It will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular supplement on Digital Business as well as on its webpage on Thursday, May 14.

In the never-ending quest to get the biggest bag for your buck and move up the rankings to become part of the best-in-class, there are some mistakes that must be avoided at all costs.
[Read more →]

Posted in FT ComMetrics Blog Index, corporate blogging |

Destroying brand value is not difficult: all it takes is relentlessly disappointing expectations. Kleenex, Fortis, L’Oréal, Motorola and BAE have all chosen to pass up the opportunity offered by blogging to secure themselves a new lease on life during this recession. In fact, these brands have decided to shut down blogs that had substantial numbers of followers.

In this post we share some of the things we discovered while working on the FT ComMetrics Blog Index. The latter will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular Digital Business supplement and its webpage (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness) on Thursday, May 14.
[Read more →]

Posted in FT ComMetrics Blog Index, case study, corporate blogging |

The current economic crisis has made it tougher for businesses to protect jobs and experience revenue growth. To help improve visibility and your brand, some suggest creating a Press Kit (aka media kit). Theoretically, this will help provide media with ‘powerful and actionable information about your business’, but more often than not it is another case of failure to communicate effectively.

There are five questions that you need to answer carefully for your business if you hope to make your mark when working with the media:
[Read more →]

Posted in SME, case study, failures |