I have been asked that a number of times and I have a specifically crafted response, “I follow everyone that includes social media expert in their bio.” The response has a certain tongue in cheek quality to it but it has more truth than anything else. Yes it is true, like falling out of boat you hit water and like pulling up a Twitter bio you see “social media.” There are experts, gurus, strategists, consultants, wizards, rock stars and many other titles associated with social media people and their listed professions. I often joke about my own title. I have called myself social media consultant as it seems to be the buzz phrase, but I used to be a blog consultant, and my running joke at present is side bar wigetizer expert. You can never tell which way that tide will take you.

My point to all of this is merely to state that it really matters not the number of followers but the quality of those followers. If you sell flowers or if your business is chocolate covered cherries, chances are you can find your own niche on Twitter and any other network. Heck, some of those niches have huge networks. Scrapbooking is a group that comes to mind and knitters. They have a huge niche. You can find like minded people using some of the apps available, I mentioned before using Mr. Tweet, and then there is Twellow, and some of the other apps you can use. The idea is to find people that have your interest.

The important takeaway from this is to make sure you put the information you want people to see in your Twitter bio and profile. If you want people to find you, your bio should be filled with the keywords or phrases that people are looking for or trying to find. A look at Twellow makes my point. Just so happens at the time of this writing there are 3800+ people that have made “social media” a searchable term. Also it just so happens I have just over 4000 people I am following. Actually, it is more a coincidence because I am also following lots of mothers and fathers and other niche’s, but if you want to find a specific person to follow on Twitter, say an underwater basket weaver, I can find one for you (Thanks to @zinkly for allowing this bit of humor, our sole listed Twitterer at the time I put this together).

People talk all the time about search and increasing your search rank and search marketing, are you being found through this source? Ask yourself that question and I hope your answer is yes.

[Photo by Sreejith K]

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I was multitasking when it happened. When I mention the idea of multitasking, I mean serious business. I was once looked at by my old boss as someone that could teach ADD to a rock.

I was looking over my emails for the day and saw I had an inordinate amount of Twitter followers. I attributed the large amount of people recently using Mr. Tweet. I knew when I left the house to spend Sunday afternoon with the family at the pool I would have a number of emails to respond to when I got home. After supper I logged in and saw a few emails from people that told me the bad news. My Twitter account had been compromised. I had looked at my Tweetdeck and tried to send a message, it was also not working. The password changed on my account and the ability to send messages stopped. I had been hacked by a spammer. The irony of this was, I was on the lookout for spammers as earlier in the day I had tweeted about this very thing.

I tried logging into Twitter from the regular account on the application itself. I couldn’t. I needed to reset the password. Then I noticed that twitter themselves had indicated that the spammers had attacked many other people as well. The picture you must be wary of is on the Twitter blog and a copy of that I have posted below.

I had fallen prey to this because I wasn’t paying attention to what was happening. I was entering new followers from email and didn’t pay attention to what I was doing and found that I had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. I gave someone my password and login not realizing I had done so. Then I had left my house giving them access for a long time. The worst thing that could have happened. I always suggest people change their passwords on a regular basis just for this purpose. I’m the last guy that should be in charge of passwords. Just ask my assistant. She always gives me a hard time. Actually if she wanted she could probably hack my bank account and everything else I have that requires a password. I’m hoping we can come up with a new way of logging in to our accounts in the future. I am ready to install the retinal scan after this last episode.

In the meantime, if you find that you have been compromised like I have, please change your passwords immediately. Then when you feel safe and that your accounts are okay, change your password again. To those of you that had to deal with my account being hacked by these bad guys, I apologize. I hope that my Twitter credibility will hold up after this latest craziness. My thanks to the folks at Twitter for the quick response to this and for making it so we victims of this can keep things going. They responded quickly to this and should be commended. This was accomplished on a Sunday following a holiday. That is customer service at its best, and protection of their customers at its finest.

As of the time that I posted this they are still trying to work the scam and they will be getting into more and more accounts. I am not sure what is being done to help prevent this other than getting suers to recognize when there is a problem. I hope that they can get that taken care of. In the meantime, if you see a message from anyone with a twitter login page, please ignore it.
UPDATE: Pete Cashmore seems to think this is a rite of passage for Twitter. You have made it when your site gets Phished.
Update 2: Here is a picture of the screen shot taken from a follower that received a message from me. Thanks @ghozali at http://andyghozali.info/

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There are many people out there getting into shape this week. Those 2009 New Year’s resolutions are getting into full swing. This is a time for the local gym to be jam packed with new people. That new guy that has a large gut (yes I am raising my hand), and an unused sweat suit will be showing up full of vigor and ready to be the next calendar boy or Men’s Health magazine cover. He’ll go a few days and then the pain will set in and the monotony will start and suddenly the honeymoon is over. They have small result on the scale and they think “wow this is easy” or they think “boy, I have this exercise thing licked.” Then reality hits and they suddenly wonder why they are having to actually work at it. The scale quit moving, or they get busy doing other “more important” things.

This is very similar to the idea of social media and starting that as a business. Many business people have all said to themselves, “I need to start a social media program here.” They perhaps even make it a resolution for the new year.  

They do a little research and get all jazzed about how it is going to change the way they market, advertise and interact in their community of customers. It is going to save them in this dark and scary economy. The propaganda they have read, and yes I consider it nearly as bad as propaganda, tells them that their troubles are over. Start a blog and you can sit back and watch the needle move to the black, get on Twitter and Facebook and watch you bank account soar. Sure they get a little bit of a result in the beginning as anything that is new. They watched as their weight on the scale drops a bit, like the guy that cuts Christmas fudge out of his diet and gets on the treadmill (raises his hand again). Then as with the guy that started his exercise routine, it starts to get hard, and the results are not easily seen, and the monotony starts to get the better of them and they finally abandon the program going back to the old ways. Gone is the difficulty, and that lactic acid burn they means it might be hard again tomorrow.

I’m like that trainer in the gym that everyone seeks out in January only to cuss out in March as it gets more painful to continue. I’m everyone’s go to guy when they want to get started then suddenly I’m the enemy and that evil guy that keeps pushing them to keep posting on their blog or to make those comments in Twitter. Many of them don’t have the discipline for it. Like the person that sets out to be the latest cover of a magazine they end up abandoning the program. Those that start and quit are not uncommon. The one that sees it through are the ones that will be the cover of a magazine soon. Which are you going to be this year. Can we push through the hard part?

[photo via DryRot]

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One the best referrals I get from Google is my post on Google as a Lead Generator. I get many leads as a result of people simply searching on Google for the services I offer. I recently found others that are using online tools as a lead generator as well. Twitter.   

I am speaking at an event in Miami this week with Rick Calvert of Blog World Expo and Chris Brogan. We are doing a panel on using social media to help promote your convention or trade show. The event is IAEE which is the trade show or convention for the trade show and convention industry. I am looking forward to being in Miami while the snow falls here in Denver. I sent out a Tweet on Twitter about heading out to the city.

Anyone want to organize a Tweetup in the Miami area Wednesday night?

Immediately upon sending out that Twitter I noticed that three new twitter followers were now following me. As is my norm I checked out these new followers and wanted to see their bio, where they were from and who they were following and speaking to on Twitter. Did i have anything in common with them, Should I be interested in following them on twitter as well? What I found was interesting. 3 out of the three new followers I had gained were from the hotel or travel industry in the Miami area. This is interesting because one of the followers had a pitch right in their bio. Coming to Miami? Check out our stuff. I am paraphrasing of course but this is a very interesting use of Twitter. They can quickly follow a user that sends out a tweet that contains a keyword they are interest in for instance “Travel Miami”. They set up a twitter search for that phrase and can quickly drill down and get a quick lead follow up to the person sending that Twitter. If I had been looking for perhaps their service, they are there and showing me what they have to offer. Chances are I might but their product or book travel through them or whatever the case might be.

I remember Robert Scoble talking about this when Marayam was pregnant with their child. He continued to ask why companies were not there looking for ways to sell him a stroller or to get him to sign up for their gods in a registry etc. This is doing exactly that. Using Twitter to generate a possible sale. I think this is an innovative way to do business. If they get a few sales or leads for sales using this method it makes sense. It is an inexpensive use of a social media tool.

[Pic via Glengarry Glen Ross]

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Reading Marketing Profs Paul Dunay’s post regarding the company budget for social media I found it interesting specifically about the idea behind content creation. Paul states:

Ok but the real cost (again unlike the traditional media stuff) is in Content Creation to fill up those social media / new media channels - here is where the cost can get large. I happen to think I am very fortunate since I work at a consulting firm where many people are thought leaders - so we have no shortage of opinions

He does not get into the costs specifically as he does with pricing the actual tools of social media. The tools he itemizes are:

A Blog;

A Podcast;

A Video;

A Wiki; and

A Community.

I refer to these things as tools as I also believe that applications can be used in a social media planned budget as well. The applications are mostly free to very inexpensive. I did notice he did not budget for the activities surrounding the likes of Twitter or other which enhance the above tools. Basically, they are free. He is correct however when he states:

So unlike traditional media – Print, TV and Radio - which can cost big money. Social media’s upfront costs very little…

You have to read through his original post regarding the overall budgets to get an idea of the numbers, but I wanted to wrap my mind around the budget ideas first and foremost. The low cost of social media is right now making it a hot and much sought after way of accomplishing a company’s advertising, marketing and public relations strategy.

The real cost is the people that can manage this strategy, someone that can understand the uses of each tool and application and how to make it work for its intended use. This is where the budget has to be difficult to nail down. The person that is responsible for this doesn’t even have a job title or description these days. Is it the marketing person, the advertising person or the public relations person that handles this? What department do we charge for the implementation of this new way of handling our media? These are some difficult questions to answer. I am personally seeing many more job openings on job boards, and seeing recruiters provide the answers to the question of who to place in the position. The real question I have for Paul is the budget for the wage for this person. How much does your company expert in the leadership of social media get paid? Do you have a budget line item for a social media manager?

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I have been meaning to write this post for some time and continue to get sidetracked and have my ADD kick in which keeps me from writing (oh look something shiny). It wasn’t until Guy Kawasaki recently wrote a post on Twitter as a business tool or as he refers to it a Twool, that i decided I had to finally get words to a page.

I am referring to Guy’s post of a few days ago called “How To Use Twitter As A Twool.” I had to look twice to see if he spelled that correctly. Normally I do not disagree with Guy. He has about twice the brain power I have and it shows in his success and frankly his bank account. When he speaks people really do tune in and listen to his advice. He is one of the leaders in the world of tech and social media which is why I don’t often disagree with his blog posts. In this instance however, I have to say I think he misses the mark on a couple of things. Not because Twitter should not be used in business as part of your online social media arsenal, but because his advice comes from on high and not down in the trenches.

Guy has paid his dues early and has worked hard to garner the celebrity status he has today. He has launched a few online things that take off immediately just because it has his name attached to it. Some of his things are not too popular as in Truemors, but other things he has are quite cool and do well such as Alltop. I needed to preface my post with all of this because I have seen companies like Guy’s try to launch and get attention and hit below the mark. His companies get instant saturation because he is in the cool kids group. I struggle to help some companies not in the cool kids group get the traction they deserve and help with with the use of tools just like Twitter, which brings us full circle to my point (we had to get there sooner or later).

Guy provides 10 ways to use twitter as a business tool and I agree with nearly all of the points made but I wanted to clarify the point or flat out tell Guy he is wrong. The first of his 10 tips caught my attention immediately:

1. Forget the “influentials.” You must buy into the theory that products and services reach critical mass because mere mortals spread the word for you. This defies the common wisdom that a handful of “influentials” shape what the rest of us try and what we adopt. In the online world, these influentials include Mike “I can go a week without Twitter” Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and to some extent me.

Guy is very much correct in his opinion that mere mortals will make your business a success. The problem with that statement however is the fact that mere mortals do not have the accessibility to the information as much as the influentials like Guy and Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington and Seth Godin. It is easy for Guy to say I can’t make or break your company you have to have a product that doesn’t suck. Agreed Guy, but you have to have the ability for a mass amount of the little people to actually hear of your product and then you can sit back and watch the buzz begin. Not everyone has that luxury. I watched at Blog World Expo when you mentioned a company you were looking at everyone madly making a note to go and see what company you mentioned. Yeah, it was a cool company, but because you mentioned it, I actually had a chance to check them out. My advice is don’t discount getting the info to the people through a megaphone such as those influencers mentioned. It is the somebodies that get the information to the nobodies. I myself would never hear about some of the cool stuff in the tech world had it not been for Robert Scoble having access to things where I cannot get past the door. Yes, Robert Scoble is the Richard Grieco to me being a Butabi brother. This is a blog post unto itself (more to come).

Remember the Motrin debacle? It took a few of the influencers in the Mommy blogdom to get the ball rolling, then the army of the nobodies were able to take the ball and run. Actually that is not true completely as a nobody mentioned it to a somebody and then, well you know the outcome. Getting the influencers to light the fuse is a part of the equation Guy discounts in his post. I think it is one of the more important parts of the puzzle. Guy has never not been invited to the party. He has not stood on the street hoping his name is on “the list”.

I also wanted to touch on the third point Guy makes in his tips:

3. Get as many followers as you can. I recently explained what I do to get more followers. Click here to read about my methods. Ignore people who tell you that it’s the quality of your followers not the quantity. They’re trying to make friends, not use Twitter as a tool. And, truth be told, there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie. You can follow me here.

The reason you want more followers is the law of big numbers: the more followers, the more people talking about what you do, the more you can reach the tipping point. If you think you “know” exactly who can and will help you, you are deluding yourself.

I purposely ignore those people on Twitter that don’t use the tool as it is intended. This is a fine line you must learn to walk. Guy seems to imply that getting followers is important, and it is (follow me here) but how you get those followers is more of the point. I get many people that follow me on Twitter and when I go to their twitter page they have perhaps 10 updates in the last 6 months or even not at all and they have 3000 people they are following and have about 100

people that have reciprocated that action. This is in no way using Twitter. You have to put a little effort into it to get anything out of it. Yes, Guy is correct, the more followers the larger the reach, but make sure you are not shelved as a Twitter spammer. Your influence will be ignored.

At the end of the day however, pay attention to Guy and what he has to say about things. He had a hard time with twitter at first and I must admit I unfollowed him and ignored any Twitter stream he had. He has since turned that ship around and really uses Twitter as a tool for his own business. I have read a book or two and the man is a genius when it comes to doing things right. Guy’s latest book is Reality Check and I don’t yet have my copy. I’m hoping I can get one of those checks soon.

[tool photo via flattop341]

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One of the things I used to love about Technorati was when Dave Sifry would come out with his State of the Blogosphere address to all of us bloggers.  It sort of gave us a pie in the sky look at the number of blogs and what was happening on the back end of the blogosphere.  Those of us that consider ourselves old timers in the arena could sit back and watch as things began to unfold and we could talk about the good old days.  Technorati recently did another State of the Blogosphere that was released at Blog World Expo and CEO Richard Jalichandra was instrumental in getting the word out.

Now there has been a new sphere of influence in new media, and I have been labeling it the micromediasphere.  I know that others in my industry like Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting who refers to it as “microsharing“, and others are calling it something else like microblogging, but for the most part we are all talking about the likes of Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, Yammer and up to an including today, Pownce. As of this writing, the folks at Pownce have given their 2 week notice that they are no longer going to be in the game.  I know that is a shame for some as they were one company that was well liked by developers and someone that was pushing the others applications to not suck.

I’ll be talking about the State of the Micromediasphere tomorrow on my radio show over at Blog Talk Radio.  My show The Social Mediasphere looks into hot topics like these and this is shaping up to be one of those topics.  I am hoping to get some guests on the show that can also talk about the State of the Micromediasphere.  I am inviting all to participate and give us your opinion and see what we can come up with and how things are looking for the future.

UPDATE:  This email just received today from the Pownce people:

We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15, 2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts.

To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.

Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce

Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,

The Pownce Crew

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As I was growing up in rural Colorado, we had plenty of opportunities to see magpies in their environment. They were usually standing over the latest roadkill. Basically they are scavengers. They get fed from nothing they have done on their own but finding the opportunity. I draw that picture to my own mind and drawing the metaphor of the name and bird over to thinking about the latest company and their attempt to monetize from the efforts of others. I am speaking from the recent launch of a advertising site that is asking people to use their Twitter stream for advertising purposes. I am speaking of Magpie. I had a chance to hear of this from my friend Lucretia Pruitt (@geekmommy) on Twitter itself.

I spoke about the idea of a third party monetizing Twitter earlier today. I think that Twitter needs to get on board with a private beta or an alpha or a something. I know they have been wrestling with this like most others on how they take something and make money at it. They throw ads on it and sit back and hope the sales guys can turn a profit. I’m not in the boardroom of Twitter and this is probably already a part of their behind the scenes workings. At least I hope so given their latest offer of $500 Million from Facebook. To turn down an amount like that you have to have your reasons. I know they say Facebook is overvalued but that is another blog post completely.

Frankly they may do well to have Magpie or another third party prove the ability to make it work and then just take some of the money they have and buy it up. I’m sure that they would not have a problem to make that happen unless of course the price tag of the company was too high and in that respect they merely block the company from the API and not allow them to use twitter for that purpose. The terms of service clearly allows for them to do what they feel is best for Twitter:

We reserve the right to alter these Terms of Use at any time.

Magpie spends the time the effort and energy to monetize the system, gets everyone used to the fact that Twitter now shows up with ads in the streams, or in the background and companies bring the ads and back the money truck up to the Twitter dock.
I have seen and read about the idea that the people on Twitter are calling the Magpie service the PayPerPost (Ted Murphy’s company that used bloggers and their blog content for advertising, now known as IZEA) of Twitter. People forget that PayPerPost was not real popular with the blogging elite or the purists, yet the investors and VC types have been writing checks to the group on a regular basis. I can foresee the same thing happening for the folks at Magpie. They are beginning to get some traction and according to TechCrunch people that use their service are bound to make some decent money.

[photo via Neil Phillips]

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I have been busily working out my Twitter thoughts here in the last few days as it has become apparent that I have a slight addiction that needs to be fed now and then as it relates to how I use the service.  I have, at this writing, just under 3000 people or organizations I am following and have begun to turn up my drinking from that fire hose of information a little.  I continue to feel a connection with this application, and I am drawn to it much like I was to blogging when I first caught on with it nearly five years ago.  To me Twitter is the epitome of social media.

I joined Twitter about the time Robert Scoble said he had found this new application in late 2006.  I didn’t really get it at first, but I continued to monitor things.  I have joined and downloaded many apps and tools, but this one seemed a little different.  Then I went to SXSW and suddenly I was caught up in the Twitter plague like most of my friends and colleagues.  For whatever reason, the application had gone viral.

I am now at more than 7000 messages or “Tweets” and not looking back.  It’s funny how some applications just seem to catch on with the people that use them.  I think there are a few components that make an application like this work, and it has to do with need obviously, ego which is the driving force for many of us, and lastly it connects us as groups.  This is why I think Twitter is successful.  Looking over my Tweetstats, I see that I am talking to the same friends in my Twitter life as I do in my real life.  This makes it a little simpler to speak to them and I think that is a hook as well.

I was reading Kara Swisher this morning about the possibility of a merger between two giants, Facebook and Twitter, and I don’t see that happening until the two can at least figure out a way to make money.  Twitter is valued at $98 Million and Facebook is exponentially more.

Neville Hobson showed us what we might expect to see as it relates to Twitter putting advertisements on its pages.  Frankly, if they don’t launch something soon, a third party (i.e. Magpie) may be in the works to do it for them. Of course, this may be their thought or plan to have someone else find and fund the way to making money for the company.  I continue to joke about the fact that people like Guy Kawasaki, and I will admit even myself would pay a monthly fee if they wanted to charge for the service.

This post started out being much more in depth but I kept biloing it down to 140 characters or less.  To say the least, it is a beneficial tool for anyone looking to be a part of their network and communicating with that network.  As I sit here hoping that as I type this post my computer does not crash again, I find that many of my Twitter followers are helping me decide what desktop to buy, what third party Twitter client to use to monitor my Tweets.  I also have a good understanding of what all of my friends are doing.  I guess it all starts with that single questions we see as an empty box on that Twitter screen…”What are you doing?”

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The other night I had a special and impromptu radio show talking about social media and what has become known as the  the Motrin video debacle.

During the discussion and roundtable of experts,  we talked about the idea that Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of Motrin, and more specifically, McNeil Consumer Healthcare the company that is heading up any campaigns, was not listening and did not respond to the situation in a quick manner.  That perhaps they had an opportunity to jump on this before it got to the heights it did and they could have done something more.  The response, and apology and the aftermath is a different post altogether.

In that discussion one of my guests, Jessica Gottlieb, mentioned that the company is big enough to have a team dedicated to listening to what is being said about them online.  I debated that this was not the reality of the situation. Even the largest of companies have no idea what is being said on a regular basis and they in fact have nothing in place to help them with this idea.  This also made me think of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

President: We didn’t see this thing coming?

 
Dan: Well, our object collision budget’s a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg’n your pardon sir, but it’s a big-ass sky. ~ Armageddon (1998/I)

The line in the movie refers to the fact that a big asteroid the size of Texas was about to hit the earth.  The President of the United States wanted to know why we were surprised by this fact.

I thought about the Motrin incident with the Mommy Bloggers and the Internet in the same fashion.  Turns out the YouTube Video referred to was released to the website in September and didn’t really get known until a month later.  They were completely caught unaware.  The video went viral over a weekend, and I am sure that the folks that are in charge of the campaign were all home for their weekend off and had no idea what was coming.  The Internet doesn’t take weekends off. Monday morning, I can picture the CEO standing in a boardroom with the same conversation as above.  The department head responding the same way, “we are sorry but we don’t spend much time or money on this kind of thing.”

I recently attended,  as a representative of the IBNMA,  the Blogwell event put on by the Blog Council in San Jose a few weeks ago and I was introduced to this very idea by Debbie Curtis-Magley, at United Parcel Service.  Debbie is the whole department for their social media campaign as it relates to their online management or brand reputation management and quipped about having difficulty tracking the entire Internet, and knowing that their are quite a few people writing online about “sit-ups” and “chin-ups.”  She has her work cut out for her because like above, “it’s a big ass Internet”.

There are quite a few companies out their that do help companies with their online brand and reputation management and they have proprietary applications that they use to accomplish their task.  They specialize in making sure you are alerted to what is being said about you, your company, or about that crazy YouTube video you put up on your website that set off a wildfire response in the blogosphere.  They can also be there when something good happens.  Normally however, and most unfortunately, the good stuff does not get quite the play as the bad stuff.  What is being said about you and your company?  Are you listening?  It is after all a very big ass Internet.

I would challenge the people I mentioned above to leave a comment if you are monitoring the Internet.  Did you read this post or see it come across your screen?  Debbie, did you pick it up?  Jessica, can you leave a comment here in more than a day or two? How about my own folks at the IBNMA?

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