Nicholas Cifuentes

Twitter.

What if there was a business tool that existed, which could allow companies to listen in on discussions about how people are using their products, analyze what people are saying about them, and could allow that company to respond to that “person” directly.

It’s a tool that effectively hones in on embracing the early product adopters and influencers who are then able to share with their friends, followers and other individuals related to these “key” components.

It’s is Twitter. But more importantly, it’s a Twitter built around building discussion, interest and awareness of your products and overall branding strategy.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows a user to create short posts, or better known as “tweets” - which others then can follow, reply and respond to as they see fit.

But, you have to realize, this is much more than just telling someone what you had for dinner a last night or that you just finished your laundry. This is a tool that creates a bridge of genuine interaction with people who choose to use your products. If a company properly integrates this process - you can utilize Twitter to capture “conversation” between your company, customers, clients and colleagues.

Proper Conversation.

But you have to remember, Twitter is a conversation tool, and you have to treat it as such. People will STOP following and paying attention to you quickly if you blast them with blatant “marketing.” They don’t want to see your latest press release. Trust me…I and many other have quickly “de-followed” brands which do so. This kind of “tweeting” could leave your brand in a worse position then when it started, and leave your reputation tainted.

Get The Most Out of Twitter.

Who are you trying to reach with Twitter? Is it the key influencers in your field, or might it be the possible users who wish to engage in using your products? Choose one and stick with it.

To do this, it might be best to create an online persona for both - so think one twitter account to get the “news” out, another to harness customer complaints, and maybe a third to take part in the conversation. Just please don’t use one account for all three purposes - this will hurt you severely in the end.

Followers.

To use Twitter in the most effective way - you have to “listen” to the conversations and what others are talking about. As a brand, you do not want to go just follow 2,000 random people and hope that is going to work - think quality, not quantity.

To achieve this goal - utilize the many twitter search tools that exists in the social space. One very useful Twitter search tool is search.twitter.com to find people who are tweeting about you, your brand, competitors, and products you offer. Follow these individuals who you have identified as key constituents for your brand, and then begin to engage them back in conversation.

By following customers, clients, colleagues and leaders in your industry or field, this shows them that you want to “hear” what they have to say. These people will almost always “follow” you back.

Don’t Be Boring. Please.

Always remember to offer something of value to the conversation. It could be advice about your products, news about the company, quality information about what you do, or maybe the occasional joke - Twitter users want to be informed, entertained and kept interested at all times. Don’t constantly push self promotion with no value and consistent ad-rhetoric - this will quickly hurt your Twitter reputation.

Show interests in your users…share with them in their experiences, and ask them questions, engage them! This will quickly show them that you are interested in what they are doing, and will allow them to respond, follow, and possibly use your product.

Beyond Twitter.

Twitter has so much potential for harnessing conversation and interaction. Don’t allow the conversation to stop there. Tie Twitter to your blog and blog posts, link it to your Flickr account, Facebook & MySpace pages, and YouTube Channels…there is so much you can do with this platform and pushing it beyond the Twitter bubble will allow you to further expand your presence in the social media channels.

Utilize Those Twitter Tools.

Twitter can be a bit confusing to the newbie…but there are so many available Twitter tools to take advantage of that allow you to easily perform keyword searches, send direct messages, shorten URL’s and mark tweets as read or unread.

The Twitter website offers the advanced search tool, which allows you to enter keywords and seek out tweets. You can even subscribe to search as an RSS feed.

TweetDeck is a desktop client that allows you to run multiple searches that update in real time. It allows you to see your replies and direct messages in separate columns in the same interface. Twhirl is another client that acts in the same way, but a smaller interface.

Another tool I like to personally use is FriendFeed, a social media website that allows you to consolidate more than 45 different social media and social networking websites, including Digg, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Flickr, Stumbleupon, MySpace, and more.

And then in the mobile space, you have three fantastic Twitter applications for the iPhone, Blackberry and Treo. Twitterific for the iPhone, and TwitterBerry & TinyTwitter for the BlackBerry and MoTwit on the Treo are great applications to utilize - who knows when the next great thought might come to you? It could be when your standing in line for a cup of coffee or in a business meeting that just doesn’t end, or maybe your waiting on the runway for the plane to take off, either way - it’s more than just a fad.

It’s Twitter.

Fin.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Influencers.

Yes, you…the man in the corner of Starbucks sipping your vanilla late. You, the young blonde typing away to the world, using your ‘content’ to help unite others. You, the young man with a camera strapped to your head, broadcasting to the world your every moving moment. You, the brand.

You, I, and the other 10 percent of social media website users are the so called influencers. A new study by Rubicon Consulting reveals that those who dominate social media conversations are most likely to influence their peers. The study confirms that 80 - 90 percent of user-generated content is produced by less than 10 percent of users.

You, the brand.

Now, let’s think about a recent poll Forrester Research conducted that declared social media as now a ‘mainstream’ activity. It said 75 percent of Internet users participate in social media, whereas only 56 percent participated in 2007. Also, 48 percent of the poll-takers said they read a blog at least once a day. And 69 percent of them said that they are ’spectators’ of blogs, that is up from 48 percent the previous year. When it comes to writing product reviews on websites, 37 percent said they take part in this activity, up 25 percent from the previous year. And 19 percent collect content through social bookmarking and RSS feeds, up 12 percent from the previous year. And 21 percent said they publish a personal blog or Web page, a small increase from 18 percent the previous year.

You, the brand.

Online retailers also take advantage of this space, a survey by the Opinion Research Corporation found that 85 percent of social media users believe that companies should interact with them through social media. And Emarketer recently reported that only 7 percent of the public believed that companies should not be in the social media space at all. In that same report, despite the call for companies to ‘go all in’ with social media marketing, many ecommerce websites are fairly new to the social media space.

In the same report, it was said that Facebook garnered 32 percent of companies interest when testing the social media space, with MySpace coming in second @ 27 percent and YouTube @ 26 percent. That then left Flickr with a 5 percent share and another 10 percent scattered about on various other social networking sites.

You, the brand.

OK…so what does this mean? Let’s think about that a second. With the economy falling apart, and not getting up anytime soon - people are turning to social networking for marketing as an escape. An escape from what though?

The old, historic ways of traditional marketing are simply becoming too antique in design. This old model has been turned upside down. This process started with email, but that led to a filtering system that was simply too clogged, and as not effective as when first developed. Now, with a filtering system that has expanded, in large part to social networking sites, technology has allowed the average person to create audio, video and text products that rival the traditional marketing channels of old - such as radio, tv and print medias.

The idea is simple - we must adapt. There is little choice to resist.

And from the points made to begin this article, the transition has already started. Social networking is a tool that clearly has the capacity and outreach to succeed. You consistently listen to people in the marketing sectors and those who believe social media has become overused and the channels have become too convoluted.

But have they really?

You see the numbers above - such small percentage of users even actively ‘influence’ those channels - while the numbers of just basic participants are moderate at best…but hardly overwhelming. Consider the the number of Internet users worldwide, only about 1.5 billion people use the Internet, only about a 1/5 of the worldwide population, according to InternetWorldStats.com. And just a mere (very, very small) percentage of those users take part in social media at the moment.

So, for the naysayers to excuse this new wave of communications as a ‘phase’ is simply foolish. It really is.

Branding Will Work.

If you casually take part in the social media streams, it will be hard to negotiate who is an ‘influencer’ and who is simply a passerby. But the shock factor these major ‘influencers’ trigger is quite impressive. No, they aren’t stats that are going to blow your mind away, nor can they be tracked in an uncomplicated manner. But these influencers that are found on social networks, such as blogs, video, audio and micro-blogging websites have surfaced in the past two years and truly have become growing ‘brands’ themselves.

I know it’s a bit of reach to go out on a limb like this, but the effectiveness of their ‘campaigning’ can be found in in their following. These are not just individuals who garner a number of links to their website based on Alexa rankings, these are people who have the creativity, energy and charisma to capture an audience, keep them involved, and keep them coming back for more. Doesn’t that sound all too familar?

Now, there are many people to mention, but personally, people who I think effectively market not only their own service, and help influence others to take part in social media - but are individuals who have created an effective ‘brand’ of themselves. Now, of course, 99 percent of these people do what I do, Internet marketing & consulting of some kind - but those are the ones who have the most ‘play’ inside the networks and can become the influencers necessary to gather an audience quickly.

Let’s take a look @ a few:

Chris Brogan, a brilliant mind who has been involved in social media for a number of years now - has quickly put himself ahead of the pack when it comes to influencing his field - now that is from a marketing perspective.

Another person who has done a good job at influencing her field is Liz Strauss - an effective online marketer with a large influence in the field - prospect from the marketing field.

Now, that is just two of the many major ‘marketing brands’, but I think some truly effective influencers in the field are not the major marketing professionals, but the personalities that have the opportunity to use many characteristics to brand themselves. And through that process - bring in other influencers and outside attention themselves.

Justine Ezarik.

My first influencer, who is not in anyway a major marketing expert, but more a growing brand is Justine Ezarik. She is young, energetic blonde, that started off lifecasting herself and every moment by one of her many cameras, be it in coffee shops, at work as a designer - video editor, or even through a camera in her car - she started that way and grew herself into an internet phenomena. Now, she is one the growing ‘brands’ and from what I have seen, doing many Internet and TV shows, traveling all over, and all because she wanted to create herself as a brand. She engages an audience, keep them interested, and returning often. And speaks @ many social media events across the States.

Gary Vaynerchuck.

Another major influencer is the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk. His wine knowledge propelled him from a successful Northern New Jersey wine store owner into a internet marvel - all because of his wine knowledge, energy, charisma and passion for influencing others. He has turned a daily wine video blog into appearances on Conan, Ellen, Mad Money, Nightline and more. He speaks often @ social media and Internet marketing conferences across the country - his energy is unmatched; and has put him into a position to market himself as a business consultant, speaker and social media expert based on his personal experiences.

Gary has a massive following, and has influenced many across the world to not only take part in wine, his field of expertise, but social media as a whole. He is a brand that has truly blossomed in the past year - in a very large way! He has even put together his own wine cruise, on massive cruise ship - that is impressive!

Sarah Austin.

Next on my list of great branding entrepreneurs is Miss Pop17 herself, Sarah Austin. This Manhattan-based lifecaster and video journalist graduated from the line of those trying to get into major technology shows, to being invited on a regular basis just a year later. She is based in Manhattan and concentrates on the new cultural phenomenon of online micro-celebrity. She interviews other Internet stars, both established and growing.

Justin.tv & Mogulus.com

Another original that took lifecasting to the forefront, and provided the platform and idea for many of the above influencers to start on are the geniuses @ Justin.tv They have created a platform that allows anyone in mere minutes to begin lifecasting yourself. Why would you do this - you might ask? Well, that seems like another blog entry soon to arrive, but my guess is that everyone wants to be seen in some way, whether its online, in person or through some other manner - most people who go on these lifecasting channels, such as Justin.tv just sit in front of the computer and chat with viewers through instant messaging - pointless…yea, I would say most of them are…but if you do it right - you can market your brand to the fullest.

As in blogging, high quality content is the most effective in driving interest, so when it comes to video, (for you lifecasters) please think that way - be relevant and produce high quality, interesting video - and you will see yourself blossom into success. Sure, there are other factors involved, but content, as in blogging, SEO and beyond - remember, it is the most important. Another notable lifecasting platform that I have to recommend is Mogulus.com - similar to Justin.tv - but Mogulus features the ability to mix multiple live cameras, import video clips, and overlay graphics…so if you are thinking of lifecasting - check them out as well.

Julia Roy.

One last growing brand, my personal darkhorse at the moment - and one that I think can really push herself into the limelight, is my fellow tweeter - Miss Julia Roy. I have only seen a little bit of her in the public eye, but she has been mentioned as one of the top graded twitter-ers, and also has been a guest on the Pop17, as mentioned above. I don’t know what it exactly is…but I believe she can do what the others are doing just as well - she has a new feature coming out called ‘tweet-week’ a video blog that will offer tips, insight, and more to the twitter community and beyond. Keep an eye on her…I am calling it now. (Gotta do it now JR).

Where Are We Going?

In the deep bowels of social media and personal branding, their is a secret to all of this. It is you.

There are many other popular Internet stars and budding personalities - many more than the few I have mentioned above. And they are all branding in some way or another, but most importantly - they are all influencers. They are the ones that are going to capture you, or your friends, your family, brothers, sisters, and so on - the influencers. It is these individuals who will help grow traditional marketing and its antique manners into a growing platform social networking has yet to really establish. Where it is going…it’s truly a waiting game to see how things play out. But just remember, it is we, the influencers, that will keep social media growing into something truly amazing.

fin.

Yammer.

So what is all this Yammer-ing about? After coming across a NY Times article posted Monday that spoke about one of my favorite websites Twitter, and another similar modeled website called Yammer, the question came up - microblogging for business? Yes, I know many people have asked this before, but when combining that question & the topic of non-existent ‘dollar-generating business models’ - what is the outlook?

I cam across Yammer last month when I noticed they won the TechCrunch50, and after reading about them in depth more yesterday - a very interesting point arose - the Twitter for the business world - could it really work?

Yammer, a service that mimics Twitter, but charges from the outset…(applaud). Sort of, Yammer is aimed at the corporate customers, and already has 60,000 users. And they aim to answer the key question, “What are you working on?” Their goal is to make offices more productive through updates on company events and work-related questions that will not clog e-mail boxes with mass mailings.

And how is that money made you ask? Well, TechCrunch, a Web 2.0 technology blog, that gave them the TechCrunch50 prize for start-ups, said they were “Twitter with a business model.” This is no knock @ Twitter though - they have been around since 2006, and have more than 3 million users, but have been criticized by some for their lack of a proper “business model”, as said by several VC’s. More on that shortly….

However, Yammer’s business model is interesting, because it spreads virally in a sense. Anyone with a company email address can sign up and start using Yammer for free. But when a company “officially” joins Yammer, giving an administrator more control over security and how employees use the service - it pays $1 a month for each user. And unlike Twitter, that will limit you to a 140 characters in a message, Yammer let’s you type as much as you need to. In Yammer’s first six weeks, it had 10,000 companies with more than 60,000 users sign up, although only 200 companies with 4,000 users are paying so far.

Now that is certainly not a massive amount of income, but Yammer is similar to what Twitter has been - a decision to grow first and monetize second.

Twitter has raised a reportedly $20 million from venture capitalist, and are similar in belief to the ‘grow first, monetize second’ - but has the economic downturn changed that mindset?

Last week, Twitter pushed aside engineer and creator of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and gave the job to Evan Williams, Twitter’s chairman and more experienced executive. This leads to that overall question…how does Twitter generate revenue?

Early next year, Twitter has plans to introduce many ways to introduce revenue streams into the current business model. I believe one idea is to charge companies that want to use Twitter as an official channel to talk with their customers and monitor what they are saying.

It seems that many companies grew on the idea of first growing the product and then monetizing thereafter - Google began as a search engine with no revenue before turning a lucrative advertising model that turned it into an internet god. But any company needs to know, chances they will have ‘Google-like’ success - doubtful.

Let’s go back to Yammer though for a minute - obviously chances everyone @ your workplace is on a computer?  Very good. Now, let’s promote in-house conversation how? - emails do get very cluttered and does everyone read them? No.

I admit, I have never read everything that came from the ‘higher-ups’ from places I once worked for, that includes stuff from HR or other departments that just get overcooked in your inbox - you don’t have time, and many the patience to read it all.  So here comes Yammer - ‘a corporate Twitter’ that includes a bevy of security features, include limiting I.P. addresses, requiring passwords, cutting off ex-employees and removing certain messages. Once that company administrator takes over, Yammer charges a $1 per user per month.

Yammer has already recruited companies like Cisco Systems, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard, motion picture companies, and a large casino company.

We have to look @ the obvious for a second though - Yammer is a new way to do a lot of stuff people already do in the workplace. Social enterprise software like SharePoint, Jive Software offer many of these features, as does Twitter and Facebook to communicate with co-workers. But with Yammer, will this more concentrated method of communication change the way businesses communicate?

I suppose all we can do is wait on this one.

Although this might be slightly old news, it still something worth writing about. A new report from Peter Schilling, the Director of IT @ Amherst College, said that 438 students who enrolled at Amherst this fall, 432 had joined the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook Group by the end of August (classes started the first week of September). Schilling also said that 3,225 posts were made in the group by that time.

To think that only six students out of an entire class are not on Facebook is quite an astonishing fact. Over the past four years Facebook has become a second language on college campuses nationwide. Ask almost any student what ‘friending’, ‘poking’ or ‘leaving a message on someone’s wall’ means and they will be able to tell you almost instantly.

Facebook is your identity.

For many teenagers, college students, young adults, and even adults; Facebook is simply irresistible. It honestly is. Just look @ the numbers:

• Just this past June, Facebook became the largest social network by reach at 132 million uniques, a 35% jump from the end of 2007, according to comScore.
• Facebook’s user base grew by nearly 25% to 102 million active users. Facebook nearly added 20 million more members during the third quarter, 80% of which came from outside the U.S.
• 17 countries now have more than 1 million Facebook users: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Chile, France, Australia, Colombia, Venezuela, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Argentina. South Africa and Belgium will be next to cross the mark.
• Facebook’s torrid growth in Europe and South America has continued. 10 of the 15 fastest growing countries in 3Q08 were European; 3 were South American.

Despite the international growth, Zuckerberg (Sir Mark), recently said in a German Newspaper interview that the company is focused on growth first, revenue second.

Sir Mark said:

“What every great internet company has done is to figure out a way to make money that has to match to what they are doing on the site. I don’t think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable. I’m pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today… Growth is primary, revenue is secondary.”

And when asked about a potential IPO:

“No, we are really not planning to go public. For the next few years we are really focused on user growth.”

Finally, when asked about why the company is allowing employees to sell up to 20% of their vested shares (up to $900K), Zuckerberg answered:

“We are not going public for a while. So we want the people to have enough money to life [sic] for the period of time until we go public. In the early days of Facebook I was able to get $900,000 dollar of liquidity. That made a pretty big deal to me. We want engineers or other people in the company don’t have to worry about simple things.”

Facebook Futures.

Recently, Zuckerberg spoke @ the Future of Web Apps Expo in London - although mostly a controlled PR show for web app companies; Sir Mark hinted at a few things, most interestingly the theme of ‘enabling people to share’.

Some interesting tidbits from the event: (thanks to insidefacebook.com)

• The vision of Facebook Connect is to enable people to do on the rest of the web what they currently do on Facebook.
• There’s no firm launch date for Connect, but it’s expected to be within the next few months.
• As everyone already knows, Facebook does not want to encourage third party applications that are only interested in occupying profile space. The recent redesign has been specifically developed to encourage applications that enable sharing between users. Part of this is the prioritisation of feeds over profile boxes.
• Talk of the payment system was downplayed, and was even referred to as “the rumoured payment system.” (It’s more than a rumour, given the solicitation for developers to sign up for a beta programme last year, but obviously there’s nothing to be announced imminently.)
• Mark talked about his loose theory of a “Moore’s Law” for content sharing: the amount of sharing that goes on is growing exponentially over time.
• Asked about Open Auth, Open ID and other standards initiatives, the view expressed was very much along the lines of not having done it yet as opposed to not wanting to follow open standards at all. Mark’s view of Facebook as it stands was that “It’s more closed than we want it to be.” However, he believes Facebook’s implementation of things such as the Platform APIs and FBML are more developed than their open standard equivalents.
• Asked if he would build Facebook (or any web application) the same today as he did four years ago he said no, especially given advances in cloud computing and the availability of other sites-as-platforms.
• Despite running a multi-billion dollar company, he still goes into the code base and fixes bugs from time-to-time as a way to keep in touch with how the site is being developed and abstracted. (Still doing the dirty work…what a guy!)

To see more about what M. E. Zuckerberg had to say about Facebook, see his BBC interview here & his FOWA interview coming soon here.

Final.

Whether you are a student, e-marketer, or just a normal someone (wink), you know where this is heading - Facebook is growing daily, and your just a small part of that. So go ahead and look @ those pictures from the rager last night…look @ those party invites you have yet to confirm, go write on Steph’s wall about her new dog pictures…go nudge that other someone, go see what the class is saying about the new Physics professor, go watch that video with that kid getting hit in the nuts with the soccer ball, go see how many comments you have that partially naked photo of you that you just ‘had’ to get up on the site as soon as you got back from the party, go add that fun application where you can send growing plants to your friends and let’s go buy fake gift icons for a $1 and send them to everyone too.

I am not making fun…I take part in this revolution daily.  I just always like to step out of the ‘branding’ work I do on a daily basis (sometimes it feels much more often) and realize the actuality of the framework in this platform.

It really is amazing…or scary.  You choose.

Fin.

In a recent survey done by Careerbuilder.com, an increasing number of employers are taking a look at staff’s social networking profiles before hiring a candidate.

The survey found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out the profile pages of potential employees on social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace before deciding to hire them. Another 9 percent said that they would begin to review potential employees social-networking websites in the future.

The research also revealed that while 24 percent of employers had hired a member of the staff based on their social-networking profile, 33 percent had decided NOT to make a job offer after reviewing certain content on a profile.  Use of drugs, alcohol and posting of photographs that seemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘provocative’ were identified as the most popular reasons why employers eliminated a candidate after reviewing their social-networking profile.

Should you be scared of this?

Yes.  You absolutely should.  If you dragged yourself out for a Saturday night pub crawl, blacked out at some point and the next day arrives with you not remembering what happened - be worried. In today’s world - transitioning from school to a professional career can be a lot of work, but just be careful with what you do on your social-networking profiles.  You don’t want to have last week’s party to be the reason you don’t get hired for that job you’ve always you wanted.  These pictures work great in college, and globally acceptable among that crowd - but the professional world is a much different story. Pictures and comments your friends might leave about you could become a liability in the workplace.  

First, privacy settings are your friend - use them.  You can set websites like Facebook and MySpace to allow only your friends to view pictures or profile specifics.  Blogs can be a huge risk too - so unless you are blogging about things like what I am talking about - keep it clean and remember, people can find what you are reading easily - so use those privacy settings. And even if you do have a job - remember that people get fired for unauthorized blogging all the time now - so BE CAREFUL!

Are you that person that Google’s themselves all the time?  You should be.  You have to keep up with what people might be saying about you on Yahoo! and Google. Or, if you are really curious, give Pipl.com, a “people search engine” a try.  What you see here is the same thing a possible hiring manager is seeing - be careful!

And another thing to be careful of - don’t befriend people who you don’t know.  You just don’t know if it will come back to bite you later.  Keep your friend list to ‘friends’ and associates in both personal and professional social networks.  

Case Study.

A bank intern, in 2007, was caught through Facebook lying to his boss about a family emergency, when he actually just wanted to ‘party it up’ on Halloween instead.

Kevin Colvin (pictured below) was an intern at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American arm, was busted by his manager Paul Davis after Kevin told Paul that he had to miss work because of a family emergency.  His boss then turned up this photo of Colvin on his Facebook profile from a Halloween party he apparently missed work to attend, and attached it to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it.

Below is the short email exchange and incriminating photo.