Leverage Social Media By Knowing Which Network To Use

Wordless Wednesday Post: 

Tweeting CEO's Held in High Regard

by Ashley Haugen

@AshleyKaia

It may be time for community managers to give their duties to the boss for a day. Ok, so maybe not all of their duties, but at least show them this article from eMarketer. According to a study by social media branding firm BRANDfog (who's motto is, 'if you're not online you don't exist'), consumers and employees regard company leaders who engage on social media platforms positively.

A whopping 78% of survey respondents said that CEO participation in social media leads to better communication, 71% believes it leads to improved brand image and 64% said it provides more transparency. 

A company’s social media presence also trickles down and influences purchase decisions. The majority of BRANDfog survey respondents (77%) are more likely or much more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media to clearly define company values and leadership principles. And 94% said C-suite social media participation enhances a brand image.

CEO activity on social networks doesn't just effect consumer perception, but it also makes an impact on employees. The study finds that 82% of employee respondents trust a company more when the CEO and leadership team communicate via social media.

Having CEO and CMO's actively engaging on social networks not only instills confidence in consumers, but also in employees. After all, it is the age of the social network and what better way to show that your company is heading in the right direction, than your boss showing everyone he/she is "in the know." 

Do you follow any company CEO's on Twitter? What do you expect from their social media presence?

Video Post: New Twitter Advertising Policy

Tweet all about it! Businesses will now be able to create promoted tweets similar to Facebook. To kick off their new strategy, Twitter had partnered with American Express. For more on this join Natalie as she gives us the rundown in today's Daily Axioms.

Are Your Tweets Worthwhile?

by Shelly Gustafson

A recent study from a joint team of researchers out of Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology found that the average twitter user thinks ¼ of the tweets in their twitter stream aren’t worth reading.

The official study took place over 19 days and had almost 1,500 twitter users rating just fewer than 44,000 tweets of users who they were following. Participants were able to not only judge the tweets of those they follow but also submit their own tweets for judgment. 

Three rating options were available:

• Liked/Worth reading - 36% of tweets
• Okay/no strong opinion - 39% of tweets
• Disliked/Not worth reading - 25% of tweets

Notably tweets that were well-liked included information sharing, questions/soliciting feedback and conversation, and tweets that had an element of self-promotion. Disliked tweets included updates on one’s current mode and activities as well as tweets that tied into conversations with others. 

Clearly the study shows that twitter users quickly moved from the original slogan of “What are you doing?” and have fully embraced the more all encompassing slogan of “What’s happening?” Whether the newly minted “Yours to Discover” slogan will continue this trend remains to be seen.

While it’s easy on a personal level to simply unfollow certain users, for business and client work it’s important to take into account what current followers find informative and interesting. Many businesses focus too much on increasing followers and forget the importance of providing thought-provoking content to the ones they already have.

I'm NOT Sorry!

When a tweet gets noticed, is the spotlight a good or bad thing?

A high schooler in Kansas recently tweeted a not so glowing message to the Governor, his people noticed it and pushed for an apology.  The teens High School requested she write an 'I'm sorry' letter and she refused.  Standing behind her 1st amendment rights the teen received an apology from the Governor and her high school backed down.

One Tweet put this teen in the spotlight; national tv attention, an increase of 9,000 twitter followers and national conversation.  But, I have to wonder is this type of attention good or bad for what I'm guessing is a college bound teen.

Take a look at the Tweet that caused the commotion and let me know what your think.  Good attention or possible negative consequences?

Tweet: “Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot"

Share Mobile Videos with Klip

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Alain Rossman has another hit on his hands. In the mid '90s, he predicted that people would eventually use their phones for e-mail. As chairman of Vudu, he developed and commercialized a TV set-top box that streamed HD movies over the internet, which sold to Wal-Mart in 2010.

The latest hit from Rossman's Palo Alto-based firm is called Klip, which just released an iPhone app designed for organizing, searching and sharing video. The app is interesting, and offers one of the best user experiences out there. A swipe of your finger enables you to preview the video thumbnails. A shake of your iPhone enables you to fast-forward. It's easy to record footage from Klip, add video from another app, trim, and share via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or email. Klip also enables you to geotag the video and add hashtags.

For those who need a quick and easy way to shorten and upload videos for blogs or news stories, Klip is sure to please. Klip is available free of charge at the app store.

The Answers Social Media Infographics Provide (And The Questions They Raise)

Social media has obviously revolutionized the way brands connect with consumers. And with the hundreds of thousands of ways that marketers have planted themselves in our digital lives, sometimes it's nice to step back and admire the magnitude of social media marketing.

This infographic on Mashable examines some of the larger examples of effective campaigns based on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and location-based services like Foursquare. There are plenty of numbers on the infographic, but here's a quick sampling:

• 12 million YouTube views for the "Will It Blend?" iPad video over 4 months
• 86.5 million impressions for Coca-Cola's promoted trending topic in June 2010
• 11% consumers say they would buy something offered only to Facebook fans.
• 184,000 people participated in a 3-month Buffalo Wild Wings SCVNGR campaign

Of course, stats like this stir mixed emotions from people like me who work on the marketing/PR side of social media. On one hand, these numbers prove the impact social media marketing can have, as well as the sheer potential that exists online.

However, looking only at social media marketing's biggest successes (or failures for that matter) tend to skew the perception of brands looking to get into social media.

A company who only sees these grandiose examples of pages with thousands of fans or videos may come to expect that incredibly high level of success as normal. And when a campaign falls short of those lofty expectations, they may not see the value in social media even if the campaign was objectively successful.

The problem, however, can be solved by clearly defining the client's expectations before the campaign is agreed to. This should also include discussing the client's idea of success and, if need be, an honest assessment of what the client should expect from their social media efforts.

Getting the Gist of Lists

I recently came across an article on ReadWriteWeb that discussed Twitter's inability to fully take advantage of its Lists feature, noting a recent report showing that 44% of their own employees don't even create lists.

The report went on to show that 30% of Twitter employees don't subscribe to lists, while 51% don't subscribe to the official Twitter list. These numbers led the article to conclude that Twitter is doing a poor job of taking advantage of a "super-powerful" feature.

But should these numbers really trouble Twitter all that much?

Personally, I don't feel this is much of an issue. Yes, building Twitter lists can be a useful tool, but at the end of the day it's really just an organizational system. And like all methods of organizing, there isn't one right way to do it and it may not work well for everyone.

To be honest, I myself don't subscribe to many lists, and I definitely don't utilize them on a regular basis.

However, my own (lack of) List use aside, I do agree with ReadWriteWeb that Twitter should consider expanding the List limit beyond its current 500 user maximum.

Do you create and subscribe to lists yourself? Let us know in the comment section below.

Branding Social Media

Tony. The King. The Captain. The Gecko. They are all ferociously joining your ranks on social media sites. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the M&M’s start tweeting. That’s right, I’m talking about brand mascots, and they have also jumped on the social media bandwagon.

Mascots have been used for decades to increase brand awareness and create a more personal connection between consumer and business. Mostly relegated to meet and greets and traditional media, mascots haven’t had much exposure to status updates and 180 character limits. Until now.

With sites like Facebook and Twitter, brands now have a place to create a more personal and interactive relationship with consumers by using their mascot. The brand mascots that people have come to know and love are able to show off their unique personalities, while still promoting their company. Utilizing the mascot on social media allows companies to bridge the gap between professionalism and approachability.

Beth Mansfield, director of public relations for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, (whose mascot is Happy Star) puts it nicely, “With social media you have to be engaging and have a one-on-one voice. It’s much easier to have that one voice be Happy Star instead of the marketing department of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. If we signed our Facebook posts ‘from the marketing department,’ that would be a little awkward.”

Some of the more recent social media mascot campaigns include the ReuniteM Campaign with M&M’s, and Flo, the Progressive Insurance Girl. The ReuniteM campaign is offering consumers a chance to win prizes for finding the five M&M characters together. You just have to buy selected packages of M&M’s milk chocolate candies and look for all the five characters printed under the wrapper. The candy brand has about 2.2million fans on Facebook, where the “yellow” M&M posts updates.

Flo, the Progressive Insurance mascot, has also become increasingly social. She has her own Facebook page separate from Progressive Insurance. With over 3 million likes, her fan page allows people to interact with Flo’s character, while gaining exposure for Progressive.

I’m sure more and more brands will recognize the potential social media has for increasing mascot value, and in turn, increasing product value. It’s a great way to have consumers connect with the often original and entertaining spokespeople, cartoons and characters of companies. Now if only I could Facebook chat the Aflac duck...

Video Post: Is Twitter Tinkering With New Brand Pages?

A recent report from BrandRepublic suggests Twitter might be toying with the notion of developing separate brand pages. Is this stepping out of bounds of what Twitter has found to work in the realm of social media marketing? Steve dives into this story in today's Daily Axioms video post.

The 140-Character Future of RSS Feeds

I admit it. I was a bit late to the Twitter party, just getting into the tweeting game a few months ago. And although I've fully embraced it now, it took me a month or so to figure out how to get the most out of it.

Starting out, I (like many others) used Twitter as a sort of RSS feed for news or sports. Apparently, the discussion forum Quora has latched on to the idea as well. Since it's early days, Quora has allowed users to follow topics on the site to view new or edited questions relevant to them as they appear.

But now, Quora has created Twitter accounts for nearly all of their topics. There are accounts for very broad topics like "social media" (@q_socialmedia) or "science" (@q_science) and brand specific accounts like "Nikon" (@q_nikon). If you already have a Quora account, the accounts for the topics you follow show up here.

Now it's not exactly a true Twitter account, because the @QuoraQuestions account tweets out any questions and, if the question is about the topic you subscribe to, retweets it to the topic-specific feed.

It may be a modified Twitter account or it may be a new form of RSS feed, but either way it's still an intriguing method of sending out data and good for Quora users who spend way more time on Twitter than in their email inboxes.

Clicking Away Our Photo Freedom

When I signed up for Twitter, I, like many people out there, didn't even bother to skim the Terms of Service section before clicking I Agree (c'mon, why would I want to read 5 pages to start sending 140-character tweets?). But if you're one of the millions who upload photos to Twitter, you may have clicked away the rights to your pictures.

Although most of those Terms of Service sections are pretty generic legal lingo, the writers at Photofocus uncovered a sneaky little curveball Twitter threw in. I'll start by laying out what's actually in Twitter's Terms of Service:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

 Unfortunately, it goes a bit further:

You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

If you're confused by all of that, I'll summarize it Twitter-style in 140 characters:

If you post a picture on Twitter, we can do what we want with it and sell it to whoever we want. You want a royalty check? Sorry Charlie...

Now I won't rake Twitter over the coals too much here, because in all fairness they did put it right there in black and white. But given the backlash, I wouldn't be too surprised if Twitter did go back and change their stance on photo posting.


However, anyone who posts pictures on Twitter needs to be aware of this and needs to accept the fact that those pictures could end up somewhere else without their permission. This is especially true for photography enthusiasts and professionals, because they lose all licensing rights to their photos once they're posted on Twitter.

More importantly, this is a wake up call that we do need to start paying attention to every Terms of Service agreement, because you may end up clicking away your freedom.

Twitter's Billion-Dollar Question

"A million isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion."

This is one of the more famous lines (albeit paraphrased) from the Facebook movie The Social Network, and I think Twitter co-founder Evan Williams must be a fan of it based on his recent comments.

When asked whether or not Twitter could hit a billion users, Williams did not hesitate in affirming that it would. And while he didn't give a timetable for this goal, there's still the question everyone is now asking: Can Twitter hit one billion users?

Let's look at where Twitter's at right now. In June, Twitter COO Dick Costolo reported they had 190 million users. That's a solid number already and it continues to grow, but it seems rather bold to predict a billion users when you're less than a fifth of the way there. Mark Zuckerberg didn't even say Facebook would hit a billion users until it had already crossed the 500 million mark.

The other factor revolves around user retention. There was a recent infographic making its way around the Twittersphere, and there was one point specifically that was garnering a lot of attention. According to the infographic, only 3% of users have more than 100 followers. This is a problem because Twitter's success comes from higher levels of involvement, and low follower counts are often a sign that the engagement is lacking.

This illustrates the over-arcing obstacle Twitter faces in hitting their billion-user goal; Twitter is hard to get into. Sure, making an account and following a bunch of friends or celebrities is easy enough, but getting the most out of the service requires much deeper levels of engagement.

But there is hope. Twitter continues to grow with a very successful new redesign and increased ubiquity in our online culture. And if more users can get past that steeper learning curve and really become more involved with it, it's hard to doubt Twitter's potential to one day answer this billion-dollar question.

Say What? Twitter Just Now Surpasses MySpace

I remember about 6 months ago when our house finally got a DVR, and me excitedly telling my friends about it. But instead of sharing in my joy, they all blankly stared at me wondering, you didn't already?

That's the same reaction I had yesterday when I saw a Wall Street Journal article about Twitter finally surpassing MySpace in unique monthly traffic.

I wasn't at all surprised about Twitter outpacing MySpace, but I was shocked (and I doubt I was the only one) that it hadn't already passed MySpace years ago.

Even more surprising were the numbers themselves. Twitter had 96 million unique visits in August, a 76% increase from the same time last year. But Twitter just barely beat out MySpace's 95 million August visitors, and that's after the original social networking giant took a 17% hit to their traffic. This makes Twitter the 3rd-most trafficked network behind Facebook and Microsoft's Windows Live network.

Both companies are hoping for significant growth over the next year or so, with the new Twitter.com launch getting positive reviews and the upcoming overhaul from MySpace.

Still, if Twitter were tell me they surpassed MySpace last month, I'd probably just blankly stare at them wondering, you didn't already?

The New Twitter Finally Makes It Way to the Land of 10,000 Lakes

Yesterday was a big day for the tweeting masses here in Minnesota, because that's when the new version of Twitter was made available to many of us around the Twin Cities. That group of new Twitter tweeters includes some of us around the Axiom office, so I thought I'd give more of a hands-on review of the changes as a followup to my post earlier this month.

For those of you who haven't gotten the updated version of Twitter, here's Axiom's page:

The major change is the visual redesign to a two-panel layout, reflecting the look of the iPad Twitter app. Personally I really like this new look, but like any visual overhaul it will vary from person to person.

As you can see, the customized background (particularly the left sidebar) did get affected. However a little resizing of the background image should remedy that, but it should be noted that there is a noticeable effect.

From a user standpoint, there are several changes that make the Twitter experience much smoother:

• You don't need to leave your Twitter page to view pictures or other profiles, they just show up on the right panel.
• Interestingly, while Facebook moved their 'Messages' tab from the top of the page to the sidebar, Twitter moved their 'Messages' tab from the sidebar to the top of the page, separating it from the '@ replies' and 'Retweets' sections.
• My favorite change? A search box. It sounds simple, but finding people or tweets on Twitter is much easier with a box on the main page.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, this is mostly just a visual change. It shouldn't revolutionize the way we live our 140-character lives. However, I do like the changes overall and I think it should make the Twitter experience as a whole a little better.

Video Post: Negative Tweet Comes At A Price

For Daily Axiom's first (but hopefully not last) video blog in well over a year, I decided to discuss the social media/PR debacle from earlier this week when the Price Chopper grocery store chain complained to a Twitter user's employer after a negative tweet. For the original blog post that sparked the controversy, click here.

Teenager Behind Twitter's Mouseover Mayhem

Once the dust settled from yesterday's Twitter mouseover security breach and users could finally return to their 140-character lives, the next question was who was responsible.

Well, a 17-year old from Australia claims he may have started the whole mess when he tweeted a piece of code that exposed the security flaw in Twitter's system. And while that tweet didn't necessarily cause the problem, hackers had a field day modifying it for more nefarious purposes.

So although he wasn't the shark that caused the beach to be shut down, he was the one who threw chum in the water.

Have a Custom Twitter Background? Keep an Eye on the New Changes

My RSS feed this morning has been buzzing with news about the big changes coming to Twitter's website. If you haven't already seen it, here's a video Twitter released accompanying the overhaul. But to save you some reading, here's a quick look at the major moves being made:

• Visually, the new Twitter.com (especially the profile pages) will look a lot like the Twitter iPad app's layout, which has been highly acclaimed since its release.
• The default avatar is being changed from the bird to an egg.
• "More" no more: the "more" button is being scrapped, and now there will just be an endless stream of tweets.
• Introduction of the mini-profile: You'll be able to utilize a mini-profile for things like bringing up information on a user in the timeline and following users. 
• There will be a huge focus on multimedia support, with 16 partnerships planned. The companies named so far are YouTube, Flickr, Justin.TV, TwitPic, UStream, Vimeo, yfrog, TwitVid, Twitgoo, Plixi, Photozou, Kiva, DeviantART, Etsy, Kickstarter, and DailyBooth.

Did you notice how I didn't say anything about Twitter page dimensions? That's because I haven't heard anything either way about whether or not the box in the middle of the Twitter page (which can't be changed/formatted by users) will be adjusted.

This is an important piece of information for the thousands of Twitter users, myself included, who have custom backgrounds on their pages. If that main box gets moved or changed, there will be many unhappy Twitter users who will have to re-format their background images.

But like I said, I haven't heard that the Twitter page dimensions will be changed, I just haven't heard that they won't be changed. And if the box does get re-sized, you can expect to see a lot of users voicing their frustration 140 characters at a time.

Check-in Cheaters

Cheaters. They existed in elementary school, and since we’re still playing Foursquare, they exist now. I came into work this morning with this not-so-lovely email from Foursquare.

Let me explain why this is so confusing. There are only about a dozen of us who work at Axiom on a daily basis. We have some out-of-staters, some who work from home and some who are simply not here every day.

My Foursquare competitors are limited to the three people in my office who have Foursquare and use it on a daily basis –  Principal Mike Ferrara, Project Manager Stephanie Lopato and Intern Steve Retka. I took the mayorship from Stephanie early on, and Steve and Mike are still new so they don’t have the ability to catch up.

So imagine my surprise when I lost my mayorship to Matt. Who’s Matt? There’s no Matt that works here. We don’t have a client named Matt. I see every single person that walks into our office everyday, so it’s not as though someone has the ability to come to our office 27 times in the past 60 days without someone noticing. For the record, Matt has 102 mayorships. Something tells me we’re not the only victims of his ambitions.

My question is this. Why does he check into Axiom when he’s clearly not here? Why does he want the mayorship? What’s the motivation to lie about checking into a venue that has no perks for their mayors? And the big question: Why doesn’t Foursquare have a “report” option for us to alert them of cheaters?

Before I wrote this blog post I began some initial topic brainstorming via Twitter. While some provided some helpful ideas on how to confront the cheater, my favorite response was from an old college friend of mine.

Talk about food for thought. Am I the only one who cares this much about the integrity of the game? If you’re wondering, yes I am “that girl” who will pull out the Scrabble Dictionary if you lay down a questionable word.

Am I missing the fun of Foursquare by following the rules, or am I justified in my wanting to reprimand the cheater?

Following Follow Friday

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, undoubtedly you’ve seen these #FF or #FollowFriday memes that have users suggesting their favorite Tweeps to follow. It carries the same feelings of the once-envied MySpace Top Eight, but without the exclusivity of limits.

Always nice to get picked, it seems that the more recommendations one receives the more they’re willing to give. Which ends up with a tweet of links. No rationale on why you should follow them, just one link in a tweet alongside several others. Perhaps even one link in a list of tweets with even more links. So what’s the point?

Earlier today there was some speculation about @TwitterShoutOut, a Twitter account that looked to be the first steps of an official Twitter recommending service. What I can only imagine would evolve into a more official (not to mention beneficial) recommending system, @TwitterShoutOut is alleged to provide users with the ability to recommend other users to their followers while giving reason and rationale for their online endorsement.

Unfortunately this rumor was dispelled a few hours ago, with an official Twitter rep admitting that although @TwitterShoutOut is a Twitter-official account, it’s for internal purposes only. So Twitter employees can virtually high-five each other all day long, but the rest of us are forced to hold our endorsements in until Friday, only to then explode with a list of links.

Do you think there’s any benefit to being included in a Follow Friday link list? Do you take other recommendations on who to follow if accompanied with #FF or #FollowFriday? Would you use an official Twitter Endorsement Service, if they were to develop one?