Analyze your Twitter profile

Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of twitter applications.

What’s the best way to get analytics on your Twitter profile?

As you try to build your Twitter profile and find new people to follow, it’s important to track how you use Twitter. Odds are you’re doing things with your account that you’re not even aware of. By using analytics, you can discover not only what your Twitter habits are, but the Twitter habits of your friends as well. This is important info when you want to get a lot of exposure for a tweet or launch a Twitter campaign. There a lot of websites that provide one aspect of user statistics or have a gimmick to measure popularity, but today we’re looking at sites that provide thorough user statistics. In the future, we’ll cover user trends and ranking.



I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in a Twitter account analyzer. Of course, all the apps have to be free and require no downloadable client. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• see how many daily tweets are added
• see how many daily chats we have
• analyze subjects we tweet about
• see the hashtags we use most often
• see our online follower growth rate
• see the location of followers
• see who is retweets most often
• see who we contact the most
• see who mentions us the most


The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about ten minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

Twitter Grader is best known for its Twitter user account grading. What people don’t realize is that it also has analytics. Well...sort of. They can analyze followers within their site, meaning that if your followers or followings are registered with Twitter Grader, they can be analyzed. Of our 3,681 followers and 2,705 following only two people were found. 

Twitter Grader’s best feature is its user history. This is a quick chart that shows how your follower rate compares to your following rate. You can also register with the site to get more functionality, but I didn’t see any after registering. While it’s not a very good analysis tool, the site’s account grading is still the best bragging rights tool available.

PROS: You can grade your account against other Twitter accounts with a tangible grade. You can also see how many people follow you and you follow.

CONS: None of the other metrics really work or have any meaning. While the grading is a good indication of how well you use Twitter, none of the other metrics are useful.

RATING:




Twitter Analyzer is a great free tool that provides over 26 different analytics, and more are in the works. If you need to know specific information about your Twitter habits, this is it. From the number of times you tweet a day to what groups your Twitter followers fall into to the friends you mention most in your tweets, Twitter Analyzer covers all my analytics needs and then some. It is easily the most thorough free analytics tool available today. The best part is you don’t have to register with the site to use it. This means you can also check out the Twitter usage of your friends as well. Analytics like “the friends you’re most in contact with” can help you identify the people that influence the people that influence you. This can be incredibly helpful in building your online network.

PROS: If you need to know something about your Twitter habits, this is the place to go. I’m looking forward to seeing what the ‘Trends’ and ‘FUN’ tabs will add to the experience.

CONS: Some of the analytics get a little confusing. Under ‘Mentions’, it’s hard to tell what exactly the difference is between the mentions. What is the difference between “the friends you mention the most in your Update Messages” and “the friends you mention the most”? Since the results can be slightly different, some deeper explanation of the functions would be appreciated.

RESULTS:

Twitalyzer measures your Twitter profile against five analytics: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity and Clout. The concept is similar to Twitter Grader – your profile is measured on a scale of 0-100. The grading is rather harsh, so you really have to work on your account to bring it up. Each of the five areas go into more detail and offer up suggestions on how to improve your score. This can be very helpful if you’re trying to be more influential on Twitter. A nice additional feature is the use of time-based analysis using Google Motion Charts and the ability to set benchmarks to work towards. Finally, if you’re weak in one area, Twitalyzer provides the top 100 people in each of the five components you can follow and learn from.

PROS: Simple to use and provides lots of details. While it doesn’t hit many of the criteria I set out to find, the information it does provide empowers you to create a superior Twitter account.

CONS: It takes several uses to remember exactly what the five components do. Even after reading each one, I found myself returning to refresh my memory. There are also some loading issues. When you click on any of the analytics under “Recent Activity”, it either takes a very long time to pull up the information or it just hangs in limbo forever.

RATING:

TweetStatswas the first Twitter analytics tool I ever used. It’s bright, colorful and simple to use. Not much has changed in the time I’ve been using it. There are eight graphs and two tweet word clouds. From time of day to who you reply to and retweet the most, the graphs give you a quick overview of your Twitter activity. As for the Tweet Cloud, this gives you a great breakdown of which words you use the most, the top five words you use and the top five hashtags you use.

PROS: Simple and colorful. The Tweet Cloud is a great way to see what you’re saying online.

CONS: The site needs more analytics to deliver real impact. If you need a quick breakdown with graphs you can use in a report, TweetStats will do in a pinch.

RATINGS:

Xerfer serves up your Twitter usage. You can find the times you most often tweet, reply and which days and hours you’re mostly likely to tweet. This is a useful function, but considering that other sites have this as one part of a bigger package, it just isn’t enough. Sure, you can research anyone on Twitter, but you can do the same thing with other sites.

PROS: Easy to use and simple to understand but with useful graphics.

CONS: Doesn’t provide much past the one chart. With other sites doing the same thing and providing more content, it’s hard to recommend this site.

RATING:

Klout is another grading site, but with much more statistical analysis. Using five key analytics – reach, demand, engagement, velocity and activity – Klout allows you to not only  see who you influence and who influences you, but also shows who is losing influence and who is gaining influence. The site feels very similar to Twitalyzer in look and feel. There is no explanation for what their five analytics mean or how to influence them. Klout’s current offer is a good start, but still has some growing to do.

PROS: Lots of analytics that provide a good deal information. The influence tracker is a great feature to find out who is most influential in your network while helping you build your own influence.

CONS: Little explanation of any of the analytics used. Klout could easily rip off what Twitalyzer does to create a better experience, but for now they are living their shadow.

RATING:

CONCLUSION: While TweetStats and Twitalyzer both have very useful analytics, neither comes close to the depth and variety of Twitter Analyzer. Twitalyzer’s benchmarking tool is a great way to set goals for yourself. Combined with Twitter Analyzer, you have all the software you need to mount a Twitter campaign and measure its success. Because the analytics are live, you can make course adjustments on the fly to optimize your Tweeting.

What tools do you use to analyze your Twitter profile?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Help stop global warming in one minute, or less.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but global warming is for real. Oceans are rising. The polar caps are melting. Land masses are shrinking. There is no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, and the planet is in grave danger. In fact, some pessimistic experts opine that it’s already too late, and you may as well hand in your papers and kiss your backside goodbye.

So should you scream ‘Armageddon’, drink all the wine you’ve been hoarding and turn to spirituality in anticipation of the inevitable?

Er, not just yet. Sure, as human beings we’ve some explaining to do for our fatheadedness (Reality TV, Sarah Palin, Karaoke.) But we’ve also demonstrated we can make the impossible happen, especially when our backs are to the wall.
 
We’ve saved the panda from extinction. We’ve plugged the hole in the ozone layer. And Michael Bolton no longer pollutes the airwaves.

We can reverse global warming too. All we have to do is rally around and make a genuine effort. OK, this is where the ad spiel comes in.

We’ve just launched a website for our client Schneider Electric. It’s called ActiveBE.com. This site is helping raise awareness about climate change. The idea behind the site is to help visitors record and upload a short video of themselves pledging to do their bit to stop global warming. These videos will be compiled into a global video petition that will initiate debate and discussion around this issue amongst key opinion leaders.

You can do your part by recording your video petition on the website, or uploading a short video you’ve made using your cellphone or digital camera.

Get started right away. Record your video pledge now.

It would also be fantastic if you could populate the social media properties we’ve created around this project.

Become a fan on Facebook here.

Join our MyGreenPledge Group.

Follow ActiveBE on Twitter.

Join ActiveBE on LinkedIn.

Thanks a bunch in advance. I hope to see you on ActiveBE.com.

Asif Ansari is partner and creative director at The Duffy Agency. He loves writing, technology and beer.

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Social media and death

How to use social media to cope with loss

As Halloween draws near, our thoughts turn to the more macabre areas of the imagination. While visions of ghouls, goblins, vampires (no, not the sparkly Twilight kind) and zombies creep into my mind, the celebration of the darker nature of humanity eventually brought me to thoughts about death. Sure, social media helps people connect to meet up for coffee, attend conferences or find a good place to buy shoes, but how does it help us cope with death? I had no idea, so I set out to discover how support groups are using social media these days.

The Compassionate Friends , a support group for families dealing with the death of a child, has gone beyond a standard support site and added a Facebook page. You can leave videos, upload photos and participate on their discussion board to help build a community on a site you already visit regularly. Their discussion page is very active with many people offering up stories and advice about their experiences.

Pocket Cemetery is an iPhone app that lets you create memorials to your lost friends and relatives (or beloved celebrities and pets). You can create customizable virtual gravestones, send virtual flowers and send prayers and messages.

This is the only iPhone app I could find in this area. As death is something that touches us all, without exception, I’d expect to see a lot more effort to cater to our need to cope in the future.

People often turn to religion in their grieving. Tangle, a Christian lifestyle site, has embraced Web 2.0 technology. They’ve launched an online prayer wall that allows you to share videos, photos, leave prayers and have someone add their own support for you. They allow you to share your prayers through Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and via email and Twitter. Tangle is very active within the Christian community, and with comments posted on almost every prayer, many people are finding the community support they need.

Muxlim.tv is the world’s largest Muslim lifestyle site. On it, you can read blogs, watch videos, listen to prayers, take polls and a whole lot more. It’s a social media haven for Muslim’s online. Once you register, you create a personal profile, which appears to be a cross between Facebook and MySpace.

But what about those of us who aren’t religious? Experience Project is for anyone regardless of religious preference – or lack thereof. You can create a group to talk about your experiences where others can comment and offer support, insight and help. Each group has its own built-in support system that helps create a support community.

Dealing with the death of a loved one is never easy, but with the help of social media many people are finding it a little less painful.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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When to DM and when to @

 
Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of twitter applications.

It’s the difference between looking like a n00b and looking like a pro

In our previous post entitled “These are the twrules”, rule #10 is: “Don’t have a huge conversation.” It’s always good to communicate with the people you follow on Twitter. You can make new business connections, find an excellent resource or make new friends. I’ve done all three through Twitter. It’s very easy to start chatting with people and the more you use the site, the more this will happen. Just remember that it isn’t a chat room or instant messenger.

Twitter is a broadcast system where you send out a message for everyone to hear. Imagine Twitter as your local television station. They broadcast the latest episode of “30 Rock” and anyone watching will see the episode, but so will anyone else searching for the words “30 Rock.” This is the essence of Twitter. Anyone following you can see your message and so can anyone searching for the keywords in your tweet. Now imagine that anyone that sees your broadcast can respond to it with their own message. This is called an @ reply. 

By using an @ symbol and the Twitter user’s name, you can reply to their message. As such, you can have a simple conversation. So if I ask, “Does anyone know a good steak restaurant?”, anyone that lives in my area can contact me with an “@stefanhy you should try Mando.”

And I might reply with  “@username Thanks.” Since my tweet and my follower’s tweet have been broadcast to all of our followers, and if our respective followers aren’t following both of us, they are only seeing a fragment of the conversation. That’s why a conversation shouldn’t go much beyond this.

If I need further information about location, prices, reservations or opening hours, as a good tweeter, I would move the conversation to direct messages (DM) that only the two of us can see. DM’s are best used when asking someone a question that the general population doesn’t need to be aware of. If I’m asking @maydbs if she’s going to debaser for lunch, it’s not really a question everyone needs to see, especially my followers who aren’t in the Malmö area.

Any direct remark that is only useful to you and the responder should always be a direct message. Any tweet that is business related should probably be a direct message. Also, use DM’s for setting appointments, giving someone a notice, planning events or confirming personal information.

These aren’t rules set in stone. It’s more of a general guideline. Like most things, the more you use Twitter, the more you’ll get a feel for the do’s and dont’s. How you use Twitter and how you communicate with others can greatly effect your follower count and how people view you. If you feel like you’re having too many instant messenger style conversations, odds are you probably are. Be vigilant of how you use Twitter and you’ll discover that your experience will be more beneficial and rewarding.

What are your rules for using @replies and DM's?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Fall is in the air

Time to bundle up

Summer is over and gone and taken with it all those sunny days on the beach. It’s rainy in Atlanta and snowy in Stockholm. Time to put away your swimsuits and dig out the scarfs, gloves and coats. If you find that last year’s fashion has become horribly out of date, check out Uniqlo’s  website for a fun and unique way to shop for clothes.


Having lived in a warmer climate for ten years, how to wear a scarf is a bit of a mystery. Then I found this video that shows how to wear a scarf in six different way. Now I can do something different every day of the week.


Knowing what the weather will be like has never been easier. AccuWeather.com has an iPhone app, Mac and Windows dashboard widgets, a Twitter & Tumblr app and a browser toolbar. Now you can find out if you need to wear a windbreaker, heavy coat or if you’ll need an umbrella anywhere you are.

No matter how bad the weather gets where you are, there is always worse weather somewhere else.

You could be caught in a huge hail storm.


or a tornado


or a blizzard.


So this fall when you’re stuck inside trying to keep warm, just imagine relaxing on an island paradise and dream of a happier place.

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Blog Action Day: 5 ways to use social media to affect climate change

Social media is the new voice of the people. Don’t believe me? Twitter kept alive the civil unrest in Iran after the elections and awoke interest around the world leading to global protests. This week in the United Kingdom, bloggers and Twitter usersfought back against a court injunction that called into question the Guardian newspaper’s right to report on a parliamentary debate. Within 16 hours, they were able to get to the judge to overturn the order. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are filled with groups to join on almost any and every issue you can think of. From Dafur to H1N1 to climate change, groups are forming to affect change. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Living right next door to Copenhagen, the upcoming United Nation’s Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December is a constant source of conversation. Climate change has become more and more a topic of daily conversation. Every day, we see more tweets, blog posts and YouTube videos being used to crack the public consciousness. Social media is activating more people in better ways than in the whole history of communication. It’s no longer students on college campuses trying to find a few hundred votes. Now you can mobilize a city, a state or a nation from your living room.

Here are five ways you can help affect climate change though social media.

1. Join a Facebook group – Don’t join a group just to join. Find a group with lots of members and actively post news, videos and content you find online. Start discussions with other members of the group and invite your friends to join.
2. Sign an online petition – Care2.com has an entire section dedicated to petitions involved with climate change.
3. Add a badge to your blog or online profile – If you’re active online these days, odds are you have a blog, a website, a facebook profile, or a Twitter account. Show people that visit your site that you care about an issue. Blog Action Day has done a great job of raising awareness of what they’re doing. They have created a series of badges with the most common banner sizes that you can add to your blog or website. You can also add one to your Twitter profile or add a link to your Facebook profile.
4. Share videos – Here are six videos that will help you get started and give you ideas for our next suggestion.
5. Make your own content – Create a new website around an issue, make a video about a project you are working on, write a song, do a dance and show people how you would affect climate change.

The good news is you’re already doing the 6th thing. You’re reading blogs that promote climate change. Check out more of the bloggers participating in the Blog Action Day. If we all work together and make our voices heard, we can make the people in charge listen and change the world for the better.

So what would you do to get involved in affecting climate change?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Twitter follower management apps

 
Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of twitter applications.  

What’s the best way to manage your Twitter followers?

The longer you’re on Twitter, hopefully the more followers you’ll gain. The more followers you gain, the more difficult it becomes to monitor who you follow and who follows you. Fortunately, there are lots of applications created to solve this very problem. It’s important to monitor your followers and the people you follow to make sure you’ve got the right audience. Finding the right online application will make doing this simpler and help make you even more productive on Twitter.

I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that we as marketing people want in a follower management application. Of course, all the apps have to be free and have no downloadable client. Beyond that, we wanted to be able to:

• have an easy-to-use interface
• get the hang of it quickly
• see who we’re following
• see who is following us
• unfollow/follow people
• bulk unfollow/follow users
• see how active our followers are
• view profiles
• tag followers to better organize them
• add comments to followers profiles
• sort followers by Twitter activity
• offer suggest for new people to follow

The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. After my profile loaded, I took a screenshot of the interface and then spent about 10 minutes looking around the site. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

 






The URL is Huitter.com but the site is also called Mutuality. You can find both names in various places on the web. It allows you to sign in using Twitter Authority, which is nice since you don’t have to create another account just for this site. Once logged in, you’re presented two options: Manual, for people with accounts with under 10,000 followers; and Auto for accounts with over 10,000 followers. The Manual version is free, while the Auto has a slight charge. Mutuality doesn’t do much. You can follow all who follow you and unfollow all who do not follow you back. It’s possible to make exclusions to these tasks but you have to know their Twitter name.

PROS: You can bulk follow or unfollow Twitter users.

CONS: That’s all you can do. This is the definition of a single service site. It does one thing and not very well. At the very least they need a way to view your users to find the accounts that you want to exclude from your action.

RATING:

  

UnTweeps allows you to unfollow users based on the last time they tweeted. This is a great way to cut out the dead users. It’s very easy to use and uses the Twitter Authentication to login. On the downside, you can only use the site once every 14 days unless you want to pay for the service. You can get a 3 day subscription for $1.37 or a monthly subscription for $5, which can only be paid through PayPal. I would have taken a screenshot but after using it once I discovered I had to pay to get back in.

PROS: Easy to use and allows you to filter your followers based on how many days since their last tweet. The site is very straightforward and looks great.

CONS: The one time use feature is a huge drawback for a single service site. UnTweeps only does one thing and then charges you for it after you use it once. It’s even more limiting by the fact that you have to have a PayPal account.

RAITING:

Friend or Follow was my “go to” site to manage my Twitter account before I started researching this article. You don’t have to register with the site. You simply enter your Twitter username and it will pull in your following, fans and friends. The interface is very graphic. Each follower’s picture is lined up and when you roll over their photo, you get their name, followers, following, last tweet and the date the account was created. Because you don’t login, you’re unable to follow or unfollow from the site. When you click on a photo, it takes you to that person’s Twitter account. It’s also possible to sort users by A-Z ascending or descending order, most recent tweet and the date the account was created.

PROS: No login and easy to use. Easy to navigate and sort users.

CONS: You can’t follow or unfollow from the site. Looking at a bunch of tiny boxes can be hard on the eyes and makes it difficult to keep track of what you’re doing.

RATING:

With its rainbow color pallet, Tweepular looks like it was designed by someone with a passion for Skittles. But this is the first site that really gets what Twitter follower management is all about. You can bulk follow and unfollow, see who you mutual follow, who doesn’t follow you and who you don’t follow back. The main display shows each follower and has their Twitter name, last update, date added, if you are following them, if they are following you and their follower count. Under their photo, there is a follow and unfollow button. There is a tick box that allows you to select multiple accounts to follow/unfollow. There is also the ability to sort by “tweepularity”, number of followers, date added, last updated or A-Z ascending and descending. Finally, they have a tab that recommends new followers to you. There is a warning window that appears when you first visit the site. After using the site several times, I never experienced any problems. I'm not sure what the reason for the warning is.

PROS: Tweepular has all the main features we want plus it suggests new people to follow. It’s easy to use and simple to understand. You can see who you’re following and see who is following you. Plus, it has the standard unfollow/follow accounts, bulk unfollow/follow users and allows you to see how active accounts are.

CONS: We can’t tag accounts or comment on profiles to better organize followers. It’s not a deal breaker, but it would be nice to have.

RATING:

Refollow has it all. There are seventeen different ways to filter. Besides the expected follow/unfollow filtering, you can also sort by never followed, with picture, without picture, last tweeted, search for, users who are following other users, users who are followed by other users, users who have @mentioned you, and more. Sorting is available by last tweet, tweet count, screen name, follow count and friend count. You have the ability to bulk follow and unfollow. Moving your cursor over a profile brings up a window that shows their last tweet, any tags you’ve given and their entire Twitter profile. There is a details button that opens a sidebar with the person’s profile, the ability to retweet their last tweet, tagging options and comments.

PROS: WOW, this site hits all of our criteria save one – the ability to suggest new followers. I can’t recommend this site enough.

CONS: It doesn’t recommend new followers, but we can find those people though other sites if we have to.

RATING:

Twitter Karma was my other “go to” site to manage my followers. It’s slow to load and times out if you have more a than a few thousand followers. The site allows you to see who you’re following, who is following you and who you mutually follow. It also allows you to bulk follow/unfollow and select individuals to follow/unfollow. 

PROS: Simple to use and easy to navigate.

CONS: Very slow to load and refresh. It doesn’t do anything beyond allowing you to follow or unfollow accounts.

RATING:

I also tried to use MyCleenr, Tweeple, Tweetscan, Mr. Tweet and Twitterless. Some of the sites simply required I follow them on Twitter, like Mr. Tweet and Twitterless, but then I never heard back on how to access the site. In the case of MyCleenr, it simply couldn’t handle accounts with more than 700 followers.



CONCLUSION: Refollow and Tweepular are the hands-down winners here. Refollow slightly edges out Tweepular due to the variety of filtering options and the ability to tag and comment on user accounts. This is a great site for beginners as well as super users. Tweepular’s colorful design, broad functionality and suggested user tab make it a strong runner up. This is still a wide open field as the top two sites are miles ahead of the rest. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more contenders in this arena soon that offer even more features.

Which Twitter follower management application do you use?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Sorry all, had to shut down the comments because of too much SPAM.

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These are the twrules

 
Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of twitter applications.

10 tips to good Twitter manners

It doesn’t matter if you’re CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a 75 year old grandmother, there are basic guidelines that people follow to get the most out of Twitter. These are the ten twrules that I find most important.  

1. Don’t Auto DM – The whole business model of Twitter involves people following people they don’t know. You don’t have make your first impression an obnoxious bore. In the summer of 2008 it was a great way to promote yourself, now it’s just annoying spam. This is probably the quickest way to get someone to unfollow you. Honestly, no one cares that ”you’re glad they are following you and that you look forward to their tweets.” If you would like to block people from auto DMing you, start with this opt-out page from Social Oomph.
   
   
2. Share useful information - We’ve all been guilty of tweeting the most banal subjects: ”I just got coffee”, ”That ham sandwich at lunch was delicious”. The good news is it is OK to do it occasionally provided you also provide useful information. People want to connect and showing that you share a common interest through useful links, insight and comments works best. Keep your lunch, bathroom and bedtime events to yourself.
   
   
3. It's OK to ask for a ReTweet, just say Thank You - The best way to get people to retweet your tweet is to ask. It sounds simple but most people don’t do it. When you have really good content, ask for people to share it. Odds are they will. You’ll garner even better good will after you thank people for their time.
   
   
4. Give credit to someone for good content - It’s easy to steal a tweet and use it as your own. It’s better if you retweet and give credit. Odds are then next time you tweet something good, that people will retweet you.
   
   
5. Don't spam - A certain amount of self-promotion is to be expected. These days everyone has a blog or a website. Be proud of your links. But don’t just don’t repost the same link over and over again. Mix in other links, retweets and comments instead of the same link.
   
   
6. Watch what you say – This is one of the most important guidelines. The internet has a very, very, very long memory and rarely forgets. One offhanded comment or inappropriate link might not harm you right away but could find you later. Or it could set the internet on fire with bad publicity and brand reputation damage. If you think your tweet might be too controversial, odds are it probably is.
   
   
7. Become a resource - This is especially important to smaller companies. Show you’re more than just a brand trying to sell someone on your product. Provide links to news, website or blogs that your clients might find useful. Become an expert in your field so when you do tweet your followers look forward to what you say.
   
   
8. Tweet often but don't over tweet or under tweet - This is the hardest to define. How much is too much? How little is too little? The ”experts” say that 20-30 tweets a day is too much. Anything less than 10 times a day is too little. You need to establish a presence and anything less than 10 times a day will be lost in the stream of tweets. Otherwise, go crazy. Tweet as often as you feel comfortable. Through feedback and time, you’ll develop a natural feel for what you think is the proper amount your audience will accept.
   
   
9. Learn the lingo - What is RT, hashtags, DM – it’s important to be able to talk to the talk with others. Learn what the language of Twitter is before you get started.
   
   
10. Don’t have huge conversations – Twitter isn’t a message board or instant messenger. Its main function is send out a single message. Of course you want people to respond to your tweets. As a rule of thumb, anything longer than three tweets back and forth should be moved to DMs or another channel like email, AIM or MSN. Since everyone that follows you can see your tweets, if they aren’t following the other person, they miss half the conversation and your tweets are cluttering their twit stream.

If I could offer one last piece of advice, read and listen to what’s being said by your followers. You’ll have a much richer Twitter experience and develop greater relationships. There are more rules that could be added but these are the top ten that I find the most useful.

What are your rules for good tweeting?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Random Sitings

Here at the agency we come across some pretty interesting web content in the course of any given week. We thought we'd share some with you. This week we have helicopter fishing, a guide to world domination, a dancing baby and the secret to retweeting.

Chris Guillebeau has written a brief guide to world domination.  Not bad for a 30 year old whose goal in life is to travel to all 197 countries in the world. So far he’s visited 119 of them. His guide is very thought-provoking and contains a great deal of useful information. Check out his blog The Art of Non-Conformity.

Just when you thought you had seen everything, someone comes up with something unexpected. A man with too much time on his hands uses a R/C helicopter with an E-Flite blade 400 for fishing.  I don't know what that means but the video has had 1.6 million views to date.

 
Dan Zarrella is about to become a household name in social media circles. He spent nine months looking at 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets and may have discovered the secret to getting your post retweeted more frequently. His report “Science of ReTweets” is a 22 page document that breaks down the who, what, when, where and why of retweeting.

Sure Kanye disrupted the MTV Video Awards to tell everyone that Beyonce had the best video ever, but watching a baby dance to her video is even better.  1.7 million people agree with me.

What have you seen this week that others should see?

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Ten things I don’t want to hear at Cannes Lions 2010.

It’s the end of the second day at the Cannes Lions 2009. The evening rains have done their bit to contribute to a festival that is already proving to be quite damp in other respects.

Attendance seems to be thin. (Some are saying it’s down by 40%, but the festival organizers obviously won’t confirm or comment on it.) The quality of entries leave a lot to be desired. And the speakers, in a variety of different accents, seem to be parrotting the same platitudes we’ve been hearing for the last several years. So here, in no particular order are some things I wouldn’t want to pay 2,600 Euros to sit through next year.

1.    ”It’s not about advertising, it’s about engagement.”
2.    ”Print’s days are numbered.”
3.    ”You don’t want to advertise, you want to have a conversation.”
4.    ”It’s about having a great narrative, a great story.”
5.    ”Advertising is no longer a one-way process. The consumer can now talk back to you.”
6.    ”You have to let go when it comes to the controls for your brand online. Consumers will take it anyway.”
7.    ”Online banner and display advertising is a broken model.”
8.    ”The next big breakthrough will be centered around mobile devices.”
9.    ”Social media is not a fad, it’s here to stay.”
10.    ”Consumers are ’always on’.”

Asif Ansari is partner and creative director at The Duffy Agency. He loves writing, technology and beer.

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The Common Denominator

Where’s My Jet Pack has a great picture that nails the current state of social media. People spend hours and hours trying to figure out the best way to crack the “social media nut” in order to get more followers, sell more products or become more popular. No matter how clever we think we are, witty we try to be, or intelligent we try to make our communications, it’s usually the off comment about having breakfast that gets the most attention.

Why is that?

It goes back to being relatable.  You can blog/tweet/comment about the best ways to use Twitter or how to get 5,000 followers on Facebook and that will get quick attention but if you can’t follow it up with meaningful discussion in a relatable way, it will be pointless. 

People want to be distracted and it doesn’t take much to push someone in the direction you want. Mention breakfast and post a photo to go with it and people can immediately relate. We all know what breakfast is and most people start their day with it. Add a photo and now you’ve got a visual device that allows people to provide even greater feedback.

A couple of days ago, I posted the following on my Facebook status, “Stefan is happy it’s today.” Basically I’m saying I’m happy it is a day. The phrase has no meaning. Normally, I get no comments on my status updates, but I received three comments on this.  Why? Because people could relate to it being a happy day and they were having one or something special was happening to them that day. It struck a note with my followers and they were able to place their own meaning on it.

When using social media it’s important to keep the message simple and relatable. When companies enter social media, they should first figure out how they are going to communicate with their audience. Will it be at a highly technical or at a more simple level? Will it just be a broadcasting tool or will you talk with the people that start to follow or friend your brand?

Before starting any social media campaign should know three things.

• Know what your message is.
• Know who your audience is.
• Know what you want to achieve.

The great thing about social media is you can have several conversations in different places on different levels. Some people want to talk about the technical aspects of a product, others want want to share their experience with a brand or product and some just want to talk about what they had for breakfast. You can talk with developers on a technical level in one place; have an everyday conversation in another and a broadcast message area in a third place.  It’s about knowing how to talk to your target market and understanding the needs of the environment in which you’re communicating.

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Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Advertising on the Edge

In case you missed it, the world economy is in the toilet. Companies are laying off people and cutting budgets. The good news is now is the time to embrace social media and online advertising. The Economist has created an exceptional slide show that explains why companies shouldn’t quit advertising in an economic crisis but shift the way the market their message.

Ads on Edge

View more presentations from Geert Desager. (tags: branding recession)

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The Future Is Free

According to Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail, the future is free, or as Chris calls it “Freeconomics.” It’s no longer about charging for a service but giving the base away and charging for the upgrades and extras. In other words, “giveaway the abundance, sell the scarcity.”

At the Media Evolution in Malmö, Sweden yesterday, Chris spent almost an hour giving us what amounts to basically an outline to his new book, “Free, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love $0.00.” While not groundbreaking, Chris gave an interesting lecture that had some comments that appeared to be a rude wake up for the panel that followed.

Today’s generation expects everything to be free. From games to music to movies, the expectation is it’s out there for the taking and you shouldn’t have to pay for it. That is in direct contrast to older generations where you expect to pay for everything.  The balance falls in-between.  You can see this happening with everything from video games to music sites. You give away the base service and then charge for the add-on or unique version. With Second Life, you get the basic online interaction but if you want house, that’s going to cost you. Spotify allows you to listen to free music all day, but if you want to avoid commercials, that’s going to require a credit card.

Chris has taken this model and applied it to his new book. You can get the mp3, pdf or any other online version for free, but it will cost you $24.95 to buy the hardback version. This is a great model for him because it is a quick and easy way to disseminate his ideas. His publisher thinks it is a horrible concept. Since they are in the market to sell books, just giving it away is not what they want to see.

Publishers of content (music, literature, movies, etc) are not prepared to handle the freeconomy. After Chris’ lecture, there was a panel filled with publishers and it was obvious they weren’t thrilled with Chris’ message. As more and more newspapers and magazines fail, it’s hard to compete with free online news and information. The solution is to build a following with free and then convert them to offline clients with good content. It’s not an easy sell to publishers but you either embrace the future or you fall by the side for those who can.

Overall, I would call the Media Evolution a positive experience. The panel at the end was well organized and it was interesting to hear the concerns of the panelists. Chris is a talented speaker and was able to hold the huge crowd’s attention. In the future, I would like to see it expand to a full day’s conference with a keynote speaker at the end. There are enough people in the Nordic region to fill six hours. For the price, hearing two and half hours worth of material seems a little steep. Sure there were other events (live singer and an after party) but they felt more like padding and didn’t add any real value.  Also, how do you not have free wi-fi at an event that talks about the value of free?

I hope they have more Media Evolutions. It was a good start and I met some interesting people. If you want to see Chris’s lecture and hear the panel, Media Evolutions has the entire event up to view.

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Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Can Social Media Save Advertising?

You’ve created your Twitter account, made your Facebook and MySpace profile, uploaded your pictures to Flickr and stumble your way through StumbleUpon, shared your bookmarks on Del.i.cious, so now what?  The internet is abuzz with hype about social media and web 2.0 apps.  If you were to believe the conversations online, if you’re not online in at least five different places, then you don’t exist. 

The experts are right in some regards. While the amount of people online with active profiles is steadily rising.  Facebook reports to have 150 million active users (they count an active user as someone that has logged in within the past 90 days).  That’s a lot of people and it’s just one networking service. Now that the economy is in the toilet in most of the world, media evangelist are heralding the social media revolution and how it will save advertising.  While social media makes huge strides every year, we’re still a 2-5 years before it hits the mainstream. 

Sure the motrin moms were able to get Johnson & Johnson to take down an ad but we’re talking about a few hundred people raising a stink.  Hardly mainstream and if social media pundits didn’t raise awareness of it, it’s doubtful, Johnson & Johnson would have even known about furor. 

Social media is still in the honeymoon phase.  Large corporations are finally pulling their heads out of their shells and taking a look at corporate blogging, social networking pages and online viral marketing.  The companies that get on board now are the ones that will benefit most. In the past, it’s been about controlling the message. In the next four years, the way corporations interact with people will change because the message delivery system and feedback methods will change.  Any new advertising campaign should have some element of social media to support it. 

Social media advertising isn’t work like online advertising.  It’s not banner ads or pop ups or commercials that play in little boxes.  It’s about creating dynamic participation on both the company and the consumers part.  Kraft Foods has done an excellent job with this.  They already had a Facebook recipe application, which hardly anyone was using (152 monthly active users).  Instead of just being another app that clutters up your Facebook account, Kraft is giving six meals to families in need for every person that adds the application.  In a few weeks they have added more than 37,000 users, which equals 1.7 million meals. 

Kraft doesn’t show their products or advertise mac & cheese with this app.  It’s about creating good will for a mega corporation and making people feel good about their brand.  The positive aspects should generate more sales down the road for them and make people hold the company in a better light.

This is just one example of a large corporation reaching out to consumers in a way that makes their users want to support them. More brands have failed at social marketing than succeeded because they failed to realized that you have to give consumers a reason to care. Advertising is advertising no matter what the medium.  If you don't engage the audience, they won't bother looking at you twice.  It doesn't matter if you're doing a YouTube viral video or Facebook app, becoming part of the conversation and engaging people, instead of waiting for them to come to you, will pay off.

What other companies are using social media to successfully reach their market?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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You Are Being Served

Social media is taking new forms daily.  When people create an account they forget that they can be seen by everyone that is a member of that site.  In the past people have put photos of themselves doing something stupid and ended up getting fired, divorced or sued. It’s called social media for a reason. You can display yourself and people see what your doing.

The latest use is serving court papers.  A company in Australia couldn’t reach a couple by phone, email or at their house to serve them court papers, so taking advantage of social media, they contacted the two people via their Facebook profile.  Lawyer Mark McCormack found the couple on Facebook after they had defaulted on a six-figure loan.  It’s surprising a court would allow this but since they duo had their names, dates of birth and listed each other as friends, the courts allowed it. Since it was all public information, there was no reason not to.

This is another case of social media reaching out in a new way and it reminds you that just because you can, maybe you shouldn’t. I love social media and have accounts on so many sites I can’t remember them half the time.  But I have a rule, don’t put too much of yourself out there.  When creating an account on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., remember a few guidelines.

1.    Don’t put your full name.
2.    Don’t display your birthday, if you do, just put month and day.
3.    Don’t list your full address.

These three things aren’t just to keep the courts from serving you summons but it’s also to keep people from stealing your identity.  If these two individuals hadn’t provided so much personal information, the courts wouldn’t have agreed to the serving of the papers. 

This also marks what could become a larger trend. As more and more people are creating their second lives online, companies, governments and social groups are starting to wise up and track people down.  Companies do online background checks to see what potential hires are blogging about, sharing on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flikr, Picasa, Linkedin and more. 

Never mind the Big Brother/Orwellian overtones to the whole affair, this event shows how mainstream social media is becoming and how important it is for companies and individuals to take it serious.  Social media isn’t going anywhere.  In fact, it’s just getting started. With global economy in a slump, people are looking for new, cheaper ways to communicate and get information. 

Could we see divorce papers served on Second Life? Will you receive jury duty via twitter? Maybe track down deadbeat dads on Facebook.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency.  He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.  Don't get him started.

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I Survivied the Great Quake of '08

If you live in the southern region of Sweden called Skåne, you got a bit of a surprise this morning. The strongest earthquake in 100 years hit us with a magnitude of 4.7 on the Richter scale. Personally, I was asleep and by the time it was over I thought it was the dog scratching himself (he’s a big dog and a vicious scratcher). 

When I got up to do my morning Twitter check, I discovered two things:

1.    My boss is up by 6:30 am.
2.    I slept through an earthquake
 
I went to work and checked my Twitter feeds again. People were talking about the earthquake and the comments ranged from shock to dismay to "huh, there was an earthquake?" 

So the reaction wasn’t overwhelming (it was a pretty small earthquake) but what's interesting is that I was able to find useful news links and discover how people reacted to the quake from all over Sweden and Denmark. Within minutes of the event, people started talking about it. I didn’t have to wait for the news to report, and when they did, someone provided a link before I even had a chance to search it out.

It's no wonder that newspapers are going bankrupt.  More and more, people are turning online to keep apace of current events.  Who wants to wait for the next edition of a newspaper when you can go online and find out instantly? 

My favorite tweet is from @choirshark, ”Huh? Earthquake in Sweden? It's like 'snowstorm in the sahara'"

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Mumbai Terror Attacks and Twitter

The Tweet Who Cried Wolf

The news out of Mumbai, India came quick and sudden.  No one knew what was going on at first but if you were on Twitter, the reports were flooding in.  From individuals tweeting about “the horrible thing happening” to people blogging from within the Oberoi Hotel (“Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for rooms of American citizens and holding them hostage on one floor,” reported one person from inside the hotel), Twitter was the front line reporting method for people all over the world.

It was used to get blood supplies to hospitals in need as well as transcribe lists of the wounded and dead that could be posted online.  Twitter may be the window that allowed people to put a human face to a travesty, but it also did damage and created even more confusion. 

Currently Hashtags.org, a site that allows you to follow conversations on Twitter via a preset code, shows 574 pages of tweets over the past 24 hours.  The chatter is just amazing.  Twitter once again shows how powerful it is in getting in on the ground floor of an event and providing in-depth coverage.  It also shows how dangerous it can be by perpetuating rumors.  It would be easy for someone to create a fake account and overwhelm a subject with false information.

With hundreds of people tweeting and re-tweeting, the information soon became redundant and when new information came in, it was treated as truth when it should have been questioned.  Rumor-mongering ran rampant with reports of the dead ranging between 100 to 1000.  Bombs exploding at the Marriott, when nothing happened there but at the Ramada next door. The number of armed men ranged wildly and pleas from the Indian government to quit using Twitter were believed to be true at first but later tracked to a high schooler in America.

The attacks in Mumbai are yet another test case on how Twitter and social media is being use to spread information.  You can already find scores of bloggers talking about how great Twitter has been in covering the event.  What doesn’t seem to be asked is what good is the information if none of it is correct or can be corroborated? Or should we trust the tweets that are coming out of a situation where anyone can say anything? 

Several social media evangelist have been praising Twitter as a new news source.  They are right for the most part.  It was used to great effect during the earthquakes in China and the forest fires in California but Twitter is a fairly unreliable news source and should be treated as such.  It’s an excellent way to find out what’s happening at the moment but just don’t believe everything you read. Temper the Twitter news with more factual reports and eventually we’ll be able to separate the truth from the fiction.

Photo Credit: By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency.  He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.  Don't get him started.

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When moms attack

 
Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin is supposed to ease back pain. Instead, it ended up being more of a pain in the backside for J&J, after an attempt to get cute and patronising with moms backfired in the face of the healthcare giant.

The online and print campaign for Motrin, created by Taxi, New York suggested that mothers carried their babies as fashion accessories. Ooh la la, what a faux pas that was.

The campaign, which broke on the 30th of September 2008 has now been officially pulled. And it all happened over the weekend.

On Friday evening, Jessica Gottlieb an influential blogger from LA, who admits to being ‘tipped off’ about the campaign, started twittering about the campaign in a not very friendly way. Next day, Katja Presnal, a New York blogger collected tweets from upset moms, stitched together a rough video and posted it on YouTube.

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The New Face of Communication

I started using Twitter a year ago and like 99% of the people that first start using it, I thought  ”What a waste of time. Who would use this?”  This isn’t another post on the top 10 apps/widgets/tricks to make Twitter work for you.  There are hundreds of blog posts about that from people that are probably far more qualified than I to talk about it. 

If you haven’t heard of Twitter, Wikipedia defines the site as ”a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”  I know 140 characters doesn’t seem like much can be accomplished, but it makes for more precise thought as well as random tangents depending on the user.

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Flood of Information

I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin a few weeks back. Founded by TechWeb and O’Reilly Media, it brought together individuals from all over the world to discuss social media and web 2.0 applications. It was a great experience. Stowe Boyd (the man that coined the term "social tools") really brought together everything I’ve been thinking about the last months. He described today’s social media explosion as the ”Tower of Babel” where everyone is fragmented and awash in a sea of information.

Today, you can post a blog entry, have it linked on Digg, viewed on someone’s desktop through an RSS feed and so on. You can comment on it using Twitter, Facebook and scores of other sites. Each of these provide individual areas to comment on your blog without ever going back to the original post. There can be several levels of communication about your blog post that never lead back to the original material.  

The Internet has changed, as has the way we use and perceive it. You no longer go online just to look up information, find the latest news or purchase tickets to an event. Today’s Internet is interactive and conversational. Blogging seems almost antiquated compared to the instant act/react ability of sites like Twitter or ReJaw. The ability to see and be seen is amazing. 

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