Many of us use micro-blogging services such as Identi.ca, Naijapulse and/or Twitter. But are they worth the time it takes to use them or just another megaphone to blast your message to people who don’t really care?

=> Twitter – what works and what fails for Pepsi, HSBC, Coca-Cola, Dell may not do the same for your business

I recently had a chat with two entrepreneurs – let’s call them Michael and Judy – whose business provides services such as telephone sales workshops and technical translations.

Judy and Michael have been tweeting regularly for at least six months. While they enjoy it, they believe much of what comes up on Twitter is like an autoresponder: a cacophony of sound with little, if any, intelligible language in the mix. Another platform for some to toot their own horn to the few who care to listen. Here we share some of their insights.

By the way, you can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics, get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

I will follow you on Twitter – but only in return for a discount

Judy came across various Twitter accounts that belong to Dell and seem to offer discount coupons and other valuable stuff.

=> Dell Twitter accounts – from investor relations to sales

The problem is, discount coupons are unlikely to make a difference in Judy and Michael’s business.

Bottom line: Judy and Michael’s business philosophy is to provide their clients value for money and personal service, so those waiting for discount coupons need not apply.

=> ComMetrics: What is worse, Dell claiming it sold more or…?

I am loyal – but what I really want is more reward points

Last week Judy and Michael read my blog post entitled 4 roads to success? Microsoft, NBC, Toyota and Swiss PostBus, in which we also mentioned dairy-based soft serve frozen dessert Tasti D-Lite. It was the first company to offer a loyalty program: customers who enroll can sign in online and connect their Twitter and Foursquare accounts to their my.Tasti.com loyalty account.

But when Judy talked to her pal Deborah in New York, she learned that getting tweets from someone you follow about their latest Tasti D-Lite purchase can quickly become a nuisance.

Bottom line: Michael and Judy fear that a loyalty account that is connected to their client’s Twitter account makes no sense in their business.

Instead, they will continue to have a more personalized customer loyalty event twice a year (e.g., barbecue, reception, etc.).

=> No one reads anything on Twitter – a test case

I have a customer problem – Twitter cannot help me

Obviously, solving a customer relations challenge in 140 characters or less on Twitter is virtually impossible. Posting things to a blog does not help matters much either, but people may vent their frustrations using either medium.

In this way, social media can amplify a customer issue, forcing the company to use Twitter or its blog to keep the public abreast of efforts to resolve the disgruntled consumer’s problem.

Bottom line: Judy and Michael’s clients prefer to talk to them over the phone or – better yet – face-to-face to discuss matters. Rarely, if ever, does a customer send a direct message on Twitter. Twitter does not seem to add much depth or quality to their communications strategy.

=> Southwest Airlines tweets – Trying to refund ‘Silent Bob’ actor Kevin Smith’s ticket

Having a public relations war – I slept through the battle

Judy and Michael have followed the recent Nestlé vs. Greenpeace battle on Facebook.

=> Being thorough and precise fails to stop the emotional tide – Nestlé versus Greenpeace – update and videos

The case illustrates that Twitter can spread things even faster than the bush telephone or traditional media. But it’s a flash – though a rather large one – in the pan and a couple of months later, Twitter users have moved on to more urgent matters.

Identi.ca did show a few more problem tweets regarding this issue. But even here, two months later things have quieted on the public relations battlefield.

Bottom line: Michael and Judy will monitor mentions on Twitter, but they doubt that customers will use a hashtag like #ComMetrics when tweeting.

So what does this mean for Giuseppe?
Giuseppe has a one-man bricklaying business and joined us for discussions last Friday afternoon.

He took away the following from our discussions:

1. Twitter might just be a tempest in a teapot: Twitter might continue to be popular, but for a micro-business it is hardly the way to raise awareness among those who may bring you your next job. But Michael, Judy and Giuseppe all agreed that exceptions are possible.
2. Don’t read about it, start practicing by playing the game instead! Try tweeting and see how it works – dip your toe in the water, but don’t spend too much time on it.
3. Shift resources to actually talking to your customers, instead of tweeting! Talk to current customers and avoid the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ syndrome. Two phone calls a day can do wonders for your bottom line a few weeks down the road. Imagine that.
4. Move your Twitter users to the 2nd phase of your marketing funnel! To get Twitter followers to eventually become clients, get them to join our LinkedIn or Xing group, subscribe to your blog and talk to them (see point 3 above). Having followers from far away will hardly get you work as a brick layer or translator for a local client.

Xing SM Monitoring – more cases about social media and marketing flops and successes

So here are some of my questions to you.
Why do you, or why do you not use Twitter for business?
No trap, but inquiring minds want to know because Twitter seems to provide some things for many, a few for others and maybe nothing for a majority outside the US?
How do you see these issues? Have you tried to apply any of these approaches to any business  you manage. Are you using Twitter?

Share, please! Please let us know in the comments!

Article source: ComMetrics – Twitter: Glorified autoresponder?

Discussion thread about this issue  by our SM Monitoring group members

Also, please check out our upcoming complimentary ComMetrics University coffee break webinars and register yourself for the next one!

We are back with another week’s worth of tidbits, tools and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, blogging and posting on Facebook or Twitter.

In case you missed previous weeks’ memorable moments on social media, just point your browser to:

ComMetrics weekly review – social media going’s on

Don’t miss the upcoming week! Sign up right now with your email to get it first:

So here come the highs, lows and oddities I discovered through my various social media channels.

Sunday, Monday

Online feedback is increasingly important. In fact, the web has essentially made everyone a product reviewer. Moreover, people have become suspicious of what companies say about themselves. In turn, peer reviews are seen as more objective.

Now someone is studying whether Twitter chatter and subsequent ‘breadcrumbs’ touting a movie have an effect on its box revenues. Social media expert Deborah Drake brought a paper to my attention detailing these efforts.

=> The effect of Twitter chatter on box-office revenue

It is interesting to note that other micro-blogging sites, such as Naijapulse.com or Identi.ca, enjoy a closer relationship with box-office receipts than Twitter.

Correlation indicates whether two variables move together. Since, movie revenue tends to be higher when people tweet a lot about that movie, those two factors are positively correlated. But correlation cannot tell us why revenues are up: is it because people tweet (so their friends go to the movie as well), or do people tweet because revenue for a movie is high (i.e. a box office hit is written about a lot in the more traditional media). Maybe the two just happen to go together… as your doctor would say, more tests are needed to answer that question.

Tuesday

I went to Basel for a Xing Apéro, a forum for people from Germany, France and Switzerland to meet, chat and network. Recently, a friend told me she thought these things were useless, with mostly 40-plus folks attending and extremely time-consuming.

Of course it takes time to network. Moreover, selling is a big no-no at such events and the 30-second elevator pitch rule applies (i.e. explain in 30 seconds or less what you do so a non-expert can follow – see below, “what is social media”). But ask anybody and they have a few anecdotes about the power of schmooze. Personally, I am happy to chat with a friend or meet one interesting individual during these events, enriching my day.

Wednesday

We held another successful webinar entitled ComMetrics University – Bill Gates, Greg Grunberg, Lukas Podolski, Ronaldinho and Kaka. This one was close to home because it addressed four rules to follow for successful networking in virtual groups, such as Xing or LinkedIn.

I myself have discovered that I don’t have the time to spend much time actively participating in the various groups I am a member of: the day only has 24 hours, no more. The webinar supplemented our blog post and discussions revealed that many more people seem to have issues managing this challenge.

Article source: ComMetrics University – Building one’s reputation on social networks
Webinar abstract: 2010-05-19 ComMetrics University – Building one’s reputation on social networks

Next week, we’ll focus on issues regarding Twitter and how to make sure that your brand is being protected and supported with this social media activity:

Webinar descriptionComMetrics University – Twitter: Serving your clients better

Wednesday/Thursday

Olga and I had a chat during the Xing Apéro in Basel and then she left a question in our Xing Forum asking about what people tend to ask the most about social media. In my experience with business people, this question often pops up: What is social media?

So I tried to explain it addressing technical, software, social exchange and communication issues while still making it comprehensible. Here is my crack at defining social media:

Social media encompasses Weblogs (blogs), social networks (e.g., Facebook), discussion forums (e.g., Xing groups), wikis, video and micro-blogs (such as Twitter), enabling users to create, record, discuss and share content with a few or many others.

A key point is that a consumer of content can also be an author of content. For instance, one can view videos online while also creating and sharing one’s own. What supports these developments is that software and other tools enable users to create their own private or proprietary social networks relatively easily, using only limited programming and/or technical skills.

This has led to a world in which software, tools or platforms supporting social media activities evolve increasingly quickly. What stays the same is people’s desire to communicate, interact and share content with other people.

P.S. – Social media is a great way to stimulate conversation and discussion between employees, customers, partners, and others.

P.P.S. – Social media users are nothing if not fickle and easily offended: many Facebook users were once MySpace users, while Google users were once AltaVista, MSN and Yahoo! aficionados. If a better version of Facebook is developed, there are surely people ready to switch allegiance and start using the new gadget. Customer loyalty in this business is very elusive.

Friday

Friday is usually a quiet day for me, but I got myself into hot water on our social media monitoring group by talking about sentiment analysis. A while back I had posted Sentiment analysis for online content: Honest? and recently came across another great blog post about text analysis:

Discussing text analytics and sentiment analysis’ merit in social media measurement (read it, it’s interesting!)

Saturday/Sunday

Next week, Facebook will serve up another privacy policy change. Facebook’s December changes made sharing information with everyone a default setting. Naturally, many users complained and considering that

- Facebook’s Privacy Policy is 5,830 words long; and,
- the United States Constitution (not including amendments) is a concise 4,543 words,

it seems likely that many people will overlook important aspects of the new rules.

Alert – Facebook launches privacy overhaul next week

Trendwatch: Gail Rebuck, chairman and CEO of the Random House Group (Bertelsmann) has stated that illegal copying is “culturally ingrained”. She cited The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code as an example, which had spawned more than 1,000 illegal websites by the end of its first week on the market.

The American Association of Publishers estimates eBook sales made up 1.3 percent of total book sales last year. For the UK, the Publishers Association estimates digital sales made up 4.9 percent of total receipts.

That wraps up this week’s social media diary. Please let me know how you feel about it – your opinions matter to me!

Article source: ComMetrics weekly review: Sentiment analysis in social media

Bill Gates closed his personal Facebook page in 2008. Early in 2010 he started again with a Facebook fanpage. Within less than 30 days, the page had 50,000 fans and 150,000 four months later.

On Tuesday, 2010-01-19,  Bill Gates began using Twitter. After only two days, he had more than 260,000 followers and 850,000 by early May.

Can we repeat his success? Here are some suggestions that will help make a difference.

1. Separate private and business content

While much of a celebrity’s private life is no longer private, others may feel differently. In a recent discussion on our SM monitoring group on Xing, Karen Purves put it as follows:

I have Facebook personal and business pages and have largely different connections on each. On my personal page, I talk about things that I am doing socially whilst on the fan pages, these are purely about events, information and sharing on the topic of the page.

I use Facebook for purely professional matters. We discuss measurement issues on my personal page, as well as on our ComMetrics fanpage and the Europe – Social Media Metrics group.

Similar to Karen Purves’ situation, the overlap between these pages is probably no more than 40 percent.

Bill Gates did not want to approve 8,000 friend requests each day for his personal page. Nor did he want to deal with wall posts that could be considered harassment. These issues are easier to manage with his fanpage.

My advice: To protect the ever decreasing privacy you still enjoy, keep your private life – including snapshots of your loved ones – off Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Second Life, etc. Your grandchildren will appreciate it.

2. Amplifying the message to your target-audience is key

The advantage for Bill Gates is that he is both a personality and represents a major brand (Microsoft), as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (known to be the number one donor to various aid programs and initiatives around the globe). Accordingly, re-tweeting his tweets is far more exciting than re-tweeting ours – it’s that simple.

To illustrate, when I started out a few years back I was always amazed that any Symantec press release, even one with little substance, was always covered in a IT section of a daily or magazine. Of course, I felt lucky if a journalist called me in response to a personal email with an attached press release. Then an editor told me,

“Urs, when Symantec releases anything it is newsworthy. Our readers know the brand, they want to know.”

As a movie star, Demi Moore is in a super-league of tweeters because her every single tweet is of interest to her millions of fans (and followers). Unfortunately, neither yours nor my tweets will ever be of relevance to so many people.

Nevertheless, social media like Twitter or Second Life can be used effectively by referring the crowd to great content on our website and corporate blog.

My advice: Create valuable content for the audience you want. Having 10 percent of your 1,500 followers click on one of your tweeted links might be worth more than getting ignored by 15,000 followers who get that kind of news elsewhere.

3. Social media is a consumer platform

Social media is not really a marketing platform, it’s a consumer one. It is a place where consumers can share information such as book reviews, comments about products and much more.

I doubt that Bill Gates tries to get donations with the help of his tweets, but he uses Twitter to sensitize people to the issues he is concerned about.

Nevertheless, social media is the place where a potential customer gets introduced to your brand, while you actually sell it on your website and blog.

My advice: Consumer brands can use social media to distribute customer information, discount coupons and run sweepstakes that will create excitement and engagement (e.g., win a free trip to South Africa and tickets to the 2010 FIFA World Cup).
Unfortunately, these days we seem to focus a bit too much on numbers with Twitter or Facebook. As we previously mentioned, a million Twitter followers does not necessarily sell a pair of shoes for your luxury brand.

4. Be prolific and leverage your user base to increase engagement

Of course, it is possible to gain popular acceptance of a social media tool by being so prolific to start with that people cannot help but use it. For instance, Google leveraged its 180 million Gmail users to launch Google Buzz, a smart attempt to integrate Twitter with Facebook’s commenting and ‘like’ system. The information is made easily accessible via Google Search.

In the end, it is less important whether Google Buzz succeeds, but that tweets and Facebook wall updates are now available through Google search. This is necessary is Google wishes to continue to dominate the search market that is key to its continued profitability and growth.

Unfortunately, while this is a neat trick, it only applies if you can do it and maintain the same competitive advantage. Most companies or brands do not even come close.

My advice: It is about user engagement with the followers you have, whether millions or just one. If they read your blog, attend your webinars and participate in user forums, your are increasing engagement with your target audience.

Diana Huff – Social Media: It’s About Engagement, Not Page Views

Take-aways

1. The best social media campaigns refer people to the best content. This means things people can download, such as eBooks, white papers, videos, valuable information and advice or help posted on a corporate blog or website.
2. Let blockheads use metrics that only blockheads measure. Using follower counts, fan numbers or group size, including re-tweet numbers, as a measure of success in social media is not necessarily helpful.

There are always blogs that break all the rules, but are considered hugely successful. But I do not recommend that you start breaking all the rules right away – you have to know what rules to break to get ahead, and that means learning them all from the beginning.

Nevertheless, you may still be surprised that posts or tweets that you consider your best sometimes get less traffic than others.

Fine-tune for clients – start with your blog to help achieve higher engagement levels now:

Achieving greater engagement – mistakes you do NOT want to make

What is your take? How do you see these issues? Have you tried to apply any of these approaches for your products? Worked, failed – share, please! Please let us know in the comments!

You can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics, get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

Article source: ComMetrics – Forget inbound marketing, engagement is key

This blog post is related to our webinar held on 2010-05-12 – Why Bill Gates was right to drop his Facebook page and what it means for you

Upcoming webinar:

2010-05-19 – What makes us better at social networking?

Attend our webinars by registering for ComMetrics University – we help you improve your social media performance faster.

Commenting on other blogs has been, and continues to be an integral part of blogging. However, the challenge is to get blog comments that add depth and insight to the original post. Better engagement is also fostered if the blogger manages to provide thoughtful replies to commentators. That’s all great in theory, but how to put it into practice?

This blog post discusses five steps to writing a high-quality comment and three ways to elicit game-changing comments, outlining some of the obstacles to getting there and why low-level brickbats need not apply.

Recently I came across Why the retweet is a powerful engagement tool

“… This is where the retweet, and now the via feature in Facebook, really come to the fore. They are a very simple way for all people to say “I agree with this” or “I want you to see this too” without actually having to articulate their own opinion from scratch, or start their own discussion…”

I certainly hope social media’s value proposition is more than getting people to re-tweet our Facebook or Twitter material. I left a comment:

I am sorry but maybe I am missing something… just re-tweeting as you suggest: “… very simple way for all people to say “I agree with this” or “I want you to see this too.” “
Does this add much value to the discussion or debate?
In many cases, people have not taken the time to read carefully the story about which they might send out a tweet (e.g., using Google to feed Twitterfeed that, in turn, triggers your Twitter account to send out a tweet).
So how can I recommend something before having studied the material? Is this a scenario where sheep is following other sheep or my answering machine is talking to yours so we can meet next week?
As a brand, I want to be sure that people support something – my brand – based on product experience, knowledge and insight not just by blindly and wildly re-tweeting other people’s opinion or tweets.
Respectfully
Urs

Comments like the above can add some value to the discussion, especially if the blogger writes an insightful response.

Unfortunately, our comment never made it up on Matt Rhodes’ blog – whatever the reason, this does not foster engagement (see Take-away section below for a comment about this).

Blog comments: Brickbats need not apply
So why are blog comments important? In 2007 Dave Winer explained why he thought they were in The subject of blog comments. Clay puts it another way in this blog post:

“…spirited disputation and emendation, alternate points of view, linky goodness, and a conversational sharpening of the argument on all sides, in a way that doesn’t happen blog to blog.” – Clay Shirky (Corante Blog)

5 steps to a high-quality comment
Unless we are willing to spend 10 minutes drafting a sensible comment, we might provide the blogger a better service by just tweeting the post’s title and url on Twitter. But here are five suggestions one should follow to craft a comment that adds value to the equation:

1. Relate your comment to the post: Quality comments refer to the blog post by quoting a portion and then refining or expanding on the thought (e.g., I agree with this point. However, in my line of work…).
2. Have a train of thought: Make sure the comment contains a main theme from beginning to end (Why ROI fails or may work).
3. Wrap-up the comment: A conclusion in a comment is more than, “This is my five cents.” Drawing a conclusion makes a fashion statement, so to speak (make a splash – thank you).
4. Tell the blogger why the post helps you work smarter: We all want to write stuff that makes a difference in other people’s lives. But please, explain why it is helpful or how you were able to apply it (e.g., don’t just tell me I am great, explain why).
5. If you disagree you should explain: Please explain where this disagreement comes from. It might very well be that the blogger forgot to consider an important angle of the problem, made an incorrect assumption or fell prey to misinformation, to mention a few examples (tell me where I have erred and how it can work – I love it).

Finally, please remember leaving a blog comment is like a digital trace and its quality will reflect upon your personal brand and reputation.

Comments mean more work for the blogger – really
When I write a comment on someone’s blog, this quickly takes more than 15 minutes, especially if a conversation develops. Commenting is far more time-intensive than writing a tweet or re-tweeting. Of course, both are needed: one to spread the news and the other to add more depth to the post.

Unfortunately, one will often come across comments that seem somewhat shallow or where the commenter had little time. Other times it seems to be ‘feel good’ feedback.

The comments to the right surely made Bernie feel good. Unfortunately, they do not add content or substance to the discussion of an important topic. On the positive side, writing this kind of feedback did not take the commentators more than one to two minutes.

But the blogger does not really raise the performance bar either. His comment (see last one in screenshot) provides a pat on the back for each of the three commentators above.

The ‘I am great – You are great’ approach is fine and makes sure nobody is offended, but it also does not move the discussion to a higher plateau.

All things being equal (ignoring how much traffic the blog has, language it is in and country, etc.), there are three things that affect your comment count:

1. Write a blog post that is interesting to many people, such as ‘Calculating ROI for social media activities’.
2. Keep your blog post short (under 300 words), and
3. Don’t try to be too in-depth.

Guaranteed, with a short post you will always get the type of visitor willing to spend another 60 seconds to add their two cents by leaving a comment.

The challenge is that complex subjects like calculus can hardly be explained in under 300 words. We can try and people might even believe they have grasped the concept, but if we were to put it to a test, 80 percent would likely fail. In turn, addressing a complex matter in 1,600 words as done here may turn some people off, since they might feel that it takes too much time to read and comprehend the issue discussed.

More resources about the importance of quality comments

Jody Hedlund - Do blog comments really matter?
Read Write Web (Sarah Perez) - Blog comments still matter – but not those about organs – really
Paul Graham - How to disagree – disagreement hierarchy
The Herald Blog (Lorelle VanFossen) - How is your comment quality quotient?

Bottom line
While tweeting about something does not take much time, writing a blog comment that adds value to the discussion does. Lastly, thoughtfully responding to comments is time-consuming for the blogger.

Building on your audience’s comments is a real challenge that few, like Jeremiah, manage. He tries to add value to each comment whenever possible and/or steer subsequent comments in the right direction.

However, it is probably better to approve each comment or reply before it goes up on the blog. If one fails to do this, then what happened to Jeremiah can happen to you, too. A spammer replied to several comments made on the blog (one shown to the right) and this, of course, does not foster your all-important reader engagement.

Take-aways
I have been blogging for a while and developed the following three insights that I would like to share with you:

1. Quality attracts quality: It is perfectly okay to ask somebody you know to comment, if you are quite certain they will add substance. Even better if the person brings a different viewpoint. Our data shows that getting a high quality first comment usually attracts other quality comments and, most importantly, those afraid of going first have this hurdle removed…
2. Being humble pays off: Try to acknowledge each commenter. Make sure that you add beef with your reply to their comment. Writing something like the comment below is okay but is this person taking her commentators seriously?
“Thanks @Laya, @Andrew, @Laura  Thanks for your comments on the same.  Looking forward to your views / comments in the near future too.”
A response like that lacks depth and makes you wonder if the blogger cares… please take your readers seriously.
3. Fostering engagement means letting nothing fall between the cracks: Make sure no comment is inadvertently lost in your spam box; check it daily. Also, both negative and positive comments must go up on your blog. Otherwise you throttle engagement, even while talking about it.
Finally, as Jeremiah’s example shows, monitoring the many comments he gets takes time, and therefore suggests all comments should be pre-approved before going up. Nobody wants spam to end up in a set of otherwise nice comments.

Please, leave a comment! We love to hear your thoughts: how do you feel about managing blog content and encouraging greater engagement for your blog? What is your experience with this subject? Have any tips to make sure we use the commenting feature more effectively? Please share your insights.

P.S. - Visit My.ComMetrics (register yourself – benchmark your blog(s) => improve performance). You can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics or get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

Article source: ComMetrics – Engaging comments: Where is the beef?

Some of you may remember the Wendy’s TV commercial in the US in which Clara Peller (August 4, 1902 – August 11, 1987 – lived in the Chicago area) posed an important question about the golden arches’ burger: Where is the beef?

Next time we write a comment or reply to one, let us all remember - adding substance is key.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update 2010-01-20: This morning (lunch time GMT) the Twitter whale is showing again. How reliable a technology is and how this affects our business is another issue we could have addressed here. But we did not.

In the meantime,  anyone curious about why their CEO fails with Twitter, or whether better (Twitter) micro-blogging might give your company a more personal voice and better client-engagement, this post is for you. This article will clarify where Twitter could fail you miserably and why social media experts may try to sell you snake-oil.

Context!?
Smaller companies like ours simply do not have the resources to be active everywhere. Nevertheless, so-called social media experts tell you that being active in at least 10 channels is a must. Get real!

The opportunity costs could simply be too high for you. For instance, instead of spending another two hours on Facebook, why not talk to one or two clients?

Lesson 1: Regardless of what ‘experts’ tell you, focus on a maximum of two channels (e.g., Naijapulse, Identi.ca, Twitter), drop the time-wasters and focus on doing a good job wherever your customers participate.

Doing a good job speaks louder than tweets
These days, an increasing number of self-styled experts want to teach you the indispensable tricks to Twitter success:

“In my opinion, Twitter is an indispensable tool, no matter what size of company you run (or work in).” – Susan Rice Lincoln

Lincoln (Europe’s self-proclaimed leading Social Media specialist) tells companies to:

- Find daily interesting information about what you do.
- Develop a list of jokes and tips to share on a daily basis.

So why doesn’t she take her own advice? It’s been 61 days since her last tweet on November 20 and dry spells of 30 days or more seemed to be a common occurrence in 2009. Usually, there is a spurt of tweets just before she holds a webinar or a workshop and not much after.

Lesson 2: Don’t just believe what others says will succeed, find out for yourself. One tweet each workday about something and at a time that your clients find valuable is a smart way to build a network of weak ties on Twitter.

Relationships are reserved for family and friends – others need not apply
Everybody insists that Twitter is great for relationships, but not really for most people in Europe.

“The only way for a company to earn attention and loyalty is to develop an authentic and relevant relationship.”
“Trust is the life-force of successful relationship marketing, and trust is developed and strengthened through relevant communications through relevant channels at relevant times.” ((White Paper: Relationship marketing 3.0, p. 2))

The above gave me pause.

As @richmeyer points out in one of his tweets (see right) – most of us don’t want a relationship with Nespresso, except maybe George Clooney. We are satisfied with good value, and fast and courteous service.

Most important, I need to be able to trust the claims made by a brand in its advertising, product catalog or on its webpage (e.g., money back guarantee).

Lesson 3: Answer this key question - why be on Twitter? To find information that helps your clients solve their problems quicker or helps you work smarter.

The follow/unfollow syndrome
I recently came across the Sergio Rossi shoe brand and got curious and was amused by the tweet that my monitoring tool picked up, stating that the brand was enjoying positive feedback (see image at right).

So, I visited the site that gave Sergio Rossi a positive review and left a comment:

Dear Administrator,
I am wondering how you addressed the disclosure issue when doing this product review as required by the FTC? See here: http://commetrics.com/articles/sheer-transparency/
Did you get samples from Rossi? Did you take these pictures or images yourself or receive them from Rossi to be used?
Can you clarify this please?
Thank you.
Cordially
Urs @ComMetrics

Here is what happened:
a) The comment never make it onto the website – not good, and
b) Rossi followed our Twitter account @ComMetrics for two days and then dropped us again, because we did not follow back.

Trash the idea that because you follow me, I need to follow back. Following back is earned. As customers we want to follow suppliers’ or brands’ tweets only if we find they add value.

Lesson 4: Using Twitter is not about blatantly selling, but about building a social network of weak ties. @SergioRossi sure failed that test.

More resources about Twitter, metrics and benchmarking – what is it worth to you?

ComMetrics - Social media: Metrics to know and metrics to skip FAQ #1
ComMetrics – Social media: Metrics to know and metrics to skip FAQ #2
ComMetrics – Three metrics: Influence, impact and outcome
ComMetrics – 6 steps to get started in measurement of social media activities
Daily Telegraph – Man arrested under Terrorism Act for Doncaster airport Twitter joke
ComMetrics - Best 100 Twitter tools.

Bottom line
You can say one thing and do the other when you use Twitter, but in the digital world, nothing is forgotten. As a business person, you need to figure out your company or product’s best social media channel for yourself. Before you start micro-blogging or a Facebook fan page, you seriously need to examine the purpose of the exercise before you adopt a new technology as part of your goal-driven business.

Take-aways
I have been micro-blogging since late 2007 – a bit earlier than some people, definitely later than the geeks. As CEO of a small company, I have developed the following four insights:

1. Twitter is not scalable, so following 150 people is my limit: If a person averages three tweets a day, I need to scan 450 tweets or ignore most of them. But if I do that, am I not misleading those I claim to follow?

You might say, “I use TweetDeck and I screen and search for the best tweets using hashtags.” Good for you, but can you afford the time it takes to search through 8,000 tweets each day? “Yes,” you say. “When I ride an hour into the City every morning and back every evening… plenty of time to check and tweet.”

Is spending two hours on Twitter everyday the best use of your time? (See also saving time on Twitter.) Maybe it would be smarter to talk to a fellow commuter, nap, read important papers or a great novel…

2. Serious conversations happen elsewhere: If somebody wants to chat with me they may send me a direct message, but experience has taught me to move it to email, the phone or a face-to-face meeting to get to the heart of the matter faster.

3. Forget the sales game: No, we don’t sell things or promote a TV show. We sell software as a web-based service, as well as advisory work and coaching.

Our clients are mostly businesses, industrial buyers and professional bloggers. Our best-case scenario is what happened one afternoon last week, when a Twitter follower called me from another country. The conversation went something like this:

“Urs, I follow you on Twitter.” …3 minutes later… “I have a client… and I thought about you.“

The rest is history and yes, my bottom line is making me smile. Twitter has gotten us business directly twice so far and people talk to me at conferences about my tweets, resulting in business relationships.

Stop worrying about the number of followers versus RTs and such. Instead, find one customer who finds your tweets valuable and build your list of followers from there… Kimberly Castleberry suggests you use vanity metrics for your Twitter account – please don’t!

4. Twitter can be useful if you have a purpose and stick to it: Having said all the above, I would not want to miss Twitter. The 75 smart people I follow provide me with know-how that I might otherwise not come across.  Most follow back. In turn, they benefit from my quality tweets that help them benchmark smarter to perform better.

As my esteemed colleague Paul W. Reidl put it:

“For those of us who are old enough to remember client development before Al Gore invented the internet, I think that potential clients today have much, much more information available to them about potential counsel. That’s why having a positive social media presence is so important.” - @TMguy

For me, that means Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Xing – for you it may be different. Just remember, unless your client or business partner believes you provide value and follows or connects, why bother?

Please, leave a comment! We love to hear your thoughts: how do you feel about Twitter and your business? What is your experience with this subject? Have any tips to make sure we use Twitter more effectively? Please share your insights.

P.S. - Visit My.ComMetrics (register yourself – benchmark your blog(s) => improve performance). You can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics or get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

Article source: ComMetrics –  4 ways to Twitter success