Inspired Business Growth:

Twitter, in case you aren’t familiar with the service, is a way of staying in touch and keeping up with friends and colleagues no matter where you are or what you’re doing.You can access it via the web or via SMS on your mobile phone. At first blush, Twitter appears to be a giant chat room. But if you stopped there, you would miss out on one of the most important emerging social media destinations in 2008.

Twitter is simple to use and, admittedly, can be a little addicting. But after spending about a month using it, I have found that Twitter’s impact on web communities is powerful indeed. Yesterday, I posted a link on Twitter to an article about social media etiquette–and within the next hour, I received more comments about the post on Twitter than I did on my actual blog.

So what does this mean? It means that online conversations are moving to where the people are. And that means that we, as business owners, need to be “out there” participating in the conversation, wherever it is happening. While this isn’t relevant for every business or brand, I would encourage you to explore Twitter for the real value in the service: the conversation.

In the past hour, the following brands were mentioned at least once by one of the 500+ people I “follow” (these are the people whose updates I choose to read). It also gives us clues as to the high level of technology usage of Twitters users:

YouTube, Starbucks, Kinko’s, Google, Nintendo, iTunes, NASCAR, Virgin Atlantic, Zappos and Target.

While you might think that big brands aren’t on the same playing field as small businesses, what is more important to realize is that these conversations tell you truthfully what people think of the companies they interact with on a regular basis. This can give us clues o their frustrations, unmet needs and, probably most important, what they love enough to willingly evangelize these brands–true word-of-mouth marketing in action.

Since Twitter is a cross-platform service, messages posted to the system must be under 140 characters. I’ve pulled a sample of some insightful messages as an example.

From a status “tweet,” I made mention of what I did this morning:

Went grocery shopping at Target = came back with all sorts of International Bazaar stuff at 75% off — and a lot of melted frozen food

Replies:

Like I needed another reason to go to Target! I sense a shopping trip coming on.

It is definitely one of those places where it is hard to come out without spending over $100.

From a question “tweet,” I looked for advice from my peers as I consider making a laptop purchase:

If you were to buy a laptop for less than $1,000, what brand would you buy, and what upgrades would be a priority for you?

Replies:

Dell with on-site service, 2 gig or more of RAM and a duel core processor

Found some systems on the Dell site with XP instead of Vista. I like the way Vista looks/works but don’t want the headaches

Hewlett Packard. My desktop and laptop I gave to brother going on 5 years. Toshiba=crap. Gateway=3 months and already sent to shop.

There’s a whole other level to Twitter as well. Using the unrelated serivce Twitterverse can give us clues as to what people are talking about that have nothing to do with brands. Twitterverse aggregates messages across the entire system and pulls together a tag cloud of the most commonly used words in the last hour, five hours or 10 hours. At this time mid-day on a Friday in February, the most mentioned words overall on Twitter are:

Day, Going, Having, Love, New, Really, Snow, Think and Work.

And if we look at some commonly used adjectives, such as…

Amazing, Awesome, Cool, Favorite, Hate or Interesting.

We can read the conversations people are having that have invoked these emotional responses:

“Yahoo Pipes looks really cool“

“Coolest mobile service so far at http://qik.com/”

“Thinking it will be really awesome if [Google’s] Gmail has an embeddable calendar (like Gtalk)”

“Just picked up a new [Nissan] pathfinder. Love the car, hate the dealer. Amazing what they can’t do until you really push.”

So what can we do with all of this information?

1. Watch trends emerge within an extremely tech-savvy and influential group of individuals
   (many Twitter users are also publishers, bloggers, and new media experts);
2. Get real-time feedback on news stories, product launches and popular services
   (Twitter would have been a great place to “hang out” when Apple launched its MacBook a few weeks ago);
3. Find pain points in consumers’ lives
   (if I were Nissan, I’d work more closely with my dealers on customer service, for example);
4. Determine what products, brands and services that are worthy of emulation
   (Target is doing something right to have evoked such a positive response);
5. Position your company or brand to become a part of the existing conversation
   (again, word-of-mouth marketing in action).

I think most of all, Twitter is one of the best places for people new to Social Media to “get their feet wet.” It is a friendly atmosphere in which to meet people, understand how online conversations work and be a part of that conversation without a big time commitment, unlike starting up a new blog, for example.

And if you do decide to join the conversation at Twitter, you are invited to follow me at Twitter.com/eMom.

Want to Learn More about Twitter?

Read this series by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide:

From Twits to Tweeple, Why I Embraced Twitter and You Should Too Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

On Monday, I was the keynote speaker at the Blogging for Business Conference in Salt Lake City. The room was filled mostly with marketing and media professionals, with some business owners - who all had some big questions about blogging.

At the forefront of everyone’s mind were a few key business blogging questions:

1. How can you keep control of your brand with a blog, social media & user-generated content?
2. How do you use a blog to build your brand?
3. How do you measure the effectiveness of social media on your bottom line?

Hefty questions indeed.

And unfortunately, there aren’t clean cut answers. Books could be written about each - but I’ll dedicate an article to answering each of them over the next couple of weeks.

How Can You Keep Control of Your Brand with a Blog & Social Media?

The short answer? You can’t control the conversation anymore.

Social media has permanently changed the way consumers interact with brands - both online and offline. No longer are people willing to sit back and be fed a marketing strategy - consumers now demand conversation and interaction with the companies they do business with.

The good news? Companies willing to be transparent and that engage their audience are winning - both offline and online. And it’s not just consumers that are rewarding companies for engaging their audience. Search engines are at the forefront of pushing social media in front of internet users.

For example, let’s take a common question asked by new mothers, “getting baby to take medicine”. Here’s a screen capture of the first 4 pages of results:

As you can see - the first and second results are from Berkley.edu and BabyCenter.com respectively. Social network Minti comes in at #3 and my own blog eMoms at Home comes in at #4 - this is because the company that creates a new baby medicine dispensing product called “Reliadose” provided some free products to give away to our site visitors.

Ironically, I really don’t think that my site should have ranked that well for the phrase “getting baby to take medicine”. We run a home business blog - I think these answers would actually be better answered elsewhere, although admittedly the article in question did provide an answer that the searcher was looking for. But this doesn’t change the fact that Google ranks blogs so well in the search results that we rank highly even if in the big picture, there might be a more relevant result.

Let me make this simple:

Your customers have questions.

Blogs and social networks are providing the answers.

If your company or brand isn’t blogging or engaging with your customers via social media, then you aren’t controlling your brand.

You may have fears about comments, complaints, or difficult questions your customers have for you and your company. But the conversation about you is happening online, whether or not you are participating.

Customers don’t expect perfection - customers expect honest communications from businesses that conduct business in a trustworthy manner. Random unfounded criticisms won’t stand the test of social media - consumers are smarter than that. But if you are afraid of having open conversations with your customers, having a blog is not the problem you should be dealing with - instead you should be focusing on the products or services that are not delivering what your customers are expecting.

In the end, a strong brand and a strong business will either engage their audience with blogs and social media, or they will be left behind.

I couldn’t resist sharing this viral video with you this weekend! Since we were chatting about conversation marketing earlier this week, this video says it all:

RSS subscribers, view the video here.

With the advent of social media and user-generated content, the way that consumers interact with companies and brands has changed drastically.

And, dare I say it, permanently.

In March, the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association held a panel dinner with some of leading companies involved with user-generated content. Video, Blogs, RSS, Social Networks and Interactive Agencies all spoke with a united voice on the following point:

If you’re waiting for this social networking - user generated “fad” to go away before you market online, you’re sunk. The next ‘new thing’ will evolve directly from social media, and if you aren’t getting into a conversation with your customers now, your customers will soon be conversing with your competition instead.

So What is a Marketing Conversation?

A marketing conversation embraces the following:

• An open invitation to interact vs. a pushed marketing message
• A willingness to hear honest feedback vs. a censored or scripted review
• A trust in the customer vs. a controlled brand image

Companies who have done this successfully are finding that even when they mess up or get negative PR, their customers and clients speak up and defend the brand. Why?

These companies have built trust, loyalty and they have empowered their customers to turn into evangelists.

So How to you Create a Marketing Conversation?

1. Create a place for online conversations to happen
   Create a company blog, forum, social network or review section. Consumers want to talk to you - so they need a place to do just that
2. Use conversation starters
   Use questions instead of statements and add value to the site experience. Offer help and resources and make it easy for people to get the information they are seeking.
3. Listen to your customers
   Don’t delete or censor comments or bad reviews. Respond to them - if you messed up, admit it. If you are in the right, find a way to make both you AND your customer look good.
4. Create a company, product or experience worth talking about
   Most entrepreneurs are remarkable people - hopefully the company they started is just as remarkable. Remarkable companies and products create their own buzz - so make it easy for people to talk by being innovative and different from start to finish. It’s hard to get people conversing about dog food - but you can get creative. Find ways to get people talking about their dogs instead - and if they want to talk about your dog food, they will.

For more about marketing conversations, you can download Ian Lurie’s book Conversation Marketing for free (the printed version is $20).

And I’ll even keep the conversation going: Ian, what would you add to this post?

Update: Ian answers fast. 

Social Media is the hallmark of Web 2.0. User-generated content has not only changed the internet, but it has also made its mark on traditional mainstream media and has gone so far as to change the face of congress.

Why should you care about Social Media? The two main reasons are 1 - It has the greatest potential to garner massive word of mouth marketing opportunitites for your business and 2 - Your competition is probably already doing it! Additionally, some of the best opportunities to get highly targeted and high volumes of online PR are f r e e.

Blogs

The greatest misconception about blogs are that they are still just an online personal journal. Blogs are simply a content management system - an easy way to publish a web site that fosters interactivity with site visitors via comments and trackbacks. Today’s popular blogs weild tremendous influence over an extremely loyal and savvy audience. Companies and individuals who are taking the time to create blogs are reaping the rewards of higher quality leads, more customers, and increased brand recognition.

To learn more about Blogging, visit The BlogHerald or ConverStations.

Podcasts

Podcasting is a trendy new name for ‘internet talk radio’. Technology also enables individuals to subscribe to podcasts, which can get downloaded automatically to a user’s MP3 player. Business applications for podcasting include distribution of seminars, school lessons, audio tours or industry interviews.

To learn more about Podcasting, visit PodcastingNews or PodBlaze.

Media Sharing

Gone are the days of illegal file swapping online - today’s big media sharing sites are getting bought up by Yahoo, Google, and some of the biggest online companies around. Video and photo sharing sites are giving creative entrepreneurs a way to generate large amounts of traffic, especially when a piece goes ‘viral’. YouTube, Flickr, and most of the major search engine and news portals have been drawing millions of site visitors a year with photos and video.

To learn more about Media Sharing, visit Tubetorial, Digital Inspiration or any of the above mentioned sites.

Social Networking

Social networking sites are some of the most popular destinations on the internet. What you may be surprised to know is that businesses are harnessing the power of these social networks to build communities around their companies or products. MySpace isn’t just for kids anymore, and other sites like LinkedIn, Classmates, Meetup, and Facebook have become an integral part of a smart word of mouth campaign strategy.

To learn more about Social Networking, visit SocialNetworking-Weblog, Mashable or any of the above mentioned sites..

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the close cousin of social networking - on social bookmarking sites communities share online bookmarks. The process can drive so much traffic to a particular page that a site can crash under what’s sometimes called a “Diggalanche”. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Netscape and del.icio.us are some of the most popular, and finding success with each of them requires a bit of research and hard work. But traditional journalists turn to these sites first sometimes for breaking news - so the effort can pay off very quickly.

To learn more about Social Bookmarking, visit Pronet Advertising or any of the above mentioned sites.