Eggblogg

Interesting stuff I've seen recently on Twitter

Several times over the last week or so I've found myself in the position of being asked, in fact almost bombarded, with questions about Twitter. At a workshop on PR (where I was a participant), at a dinner party, in the pub.

What is it? What's it for? Is it like Facebook? What's the point of it for businesses? Isn't it just people saying what they just had for breakfast?

Clearly the broadcast media has fuelled a Twitter frenzy, but it has very few answers to the questions on people's lips.

One of the things I always tell people is that Twitter is very much in-the-moment. It's like a conversation that passes very quickly, and if you weren't there when something happened or was said, it's easy to miss it. I found that out the hard way on Friday morning, after I'd spent the previous evening at an event and hadn't been online since midday. When I got to work and caught site of a tweet about Michael Jackson, without pausing to check out the story I tweeted 'Did MJ really die or is it an Internet rumour?"

Within minutes I'd been inundated with replies, ranging from the straightforward ("yes, he'd dead") the ironic ("well it's on the BBC so I guess it's probably true") to the condemnatory ("Don't you read the papers/watch TV or listen to radio?")

It has since occurred to me that not everyone is 'in the room' when a story, question or discussion takes place, and therefore quite a lot of good stuff probably gets missed on Twitter. OK, so no-one in the entire universe could now be in any doubt as to the sad demise of Michael Jackson, but here are a few interesting stories I retweeted that you may have missed this week.

- About the death of local newspapers, interesting piece by Jonathan Guthrie in the FT
- Excellent article from @marketingwizdom: If you're in business you must read this: The forgotten cost of discounting
- Retweeted by @chriskeene: the Guardian on library uses of twitter
- How @msofficeus plans to carry on using Word to render emails in Outlook, killing standards support. See http://fixoutlook.org
- Tweeted by @journalismnews Twitterers claim victory over loaded Daily Mail poll
- Tweeted by @getshust: A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009  <--useful for presentations, pitches

Please stop re-tweeting your blog posts again & again!

I may be having a grumpy moment, but a few annoying habits are creeping in on Twitter.

It's inevitable that every new community/system/organisation will develop its problems, things that aren't evident in the early days. I could just 'unfollow' the offenders, but some of them do have valuable things to offer, and besides, if these habits are highlighted then there's a chance someone else might think twice about it.

I'm talking about two things that have really struck me today. One is to do with the #followfriday routine - the idea is to recommend someone you follow and give a reason why you think they're worth following. Some people insist on recommending all their followees, and broadcast a succession of tweets consisting of just lists of names, with no reason for why they are on the list. There have been complaints about this, but to be honest I can live with it.

But what irritates me is people re-tweeting those 'list' tweets, when their own names are on the list. Is this to amplify the effect of the #followfriday? Hardly, since the re-tweeter is tweeting to people who already follow him! In other words it's just showing off. 'Look - I've been recommended in a #followfriday tweet, aren't I great!'

Second annoyance is those 'guru' types who promote every blog post or article they write, then re-tweet the original tweet ad infinitum - same time every day for several days, same time every hour throughout the day. It's not as if they say 'For those who may have missed it...' No. It's a word for word repeat, more than likely auto-retweeted. The tweeter just has to hit a button and it's scheduled to be retweeted as many times as they want.

The result: our already crowded tweet streams get clogged up and we waste valuable time reading tweets we've already read, not to mention missing other more useful tweets.

Enough already! Will the offenders please desist, and if you're a Twitter newbie thinking about blasting out links to your blog posts several times, please remember this is the twitter equivalent of spam, and you will cause people to unfollow you quicker that you can imagine.

Customer service via Twitter - too much to ask?

Recent research has revealed that just 10% of registered Twitter users are responsible for 90% of tweets, and, in another report, we've learned that 80% of Tweeters have fewer than 10 followers, with 30% having no followers at all.

What these stats suggest is that despite all the declarations that Twitter has gone mainstream, it still has a way to go before (and if) it reaches critical mass as a communications channel.

Which is bad news for those of us who are desperate to see improvements in customer service. I've said before how Twitter is potentially a fantastic customer service tool - not only facilitating immediate, synchronous (realtime) communication without the cost and frustration of contacting call centres, but also introducing a proactive approach through monitoring Twitter conversations. Some firms are already using Twitter in this way - most famously Dell, but I've also had good experiences with smaller outfits such as Campaign Monitor.

Unfortunately, those that could really benefit from listening more proactively to customers and solving problems promptly, such as banks, local government departments, utilities and telecomms providers, haven't yet cottoned on.

Personally I can't wait for the day when call centres as we currently experience them are dead in the water, premium-rate phone calls to customer service become a thing of the past and large companies re-connect to their customers via real people operating Twitter accounts, transparently and consistently. Now that's what I'd call customer service.

eTips: beware the 'sponsored link' scammers

Here's something that really makes my blood boil: unscrupulous companies screwing money out of small businesses by pulling the wool over their eyes. It's not illegal. It's just wrong.

Scammy practices give legitimate marketers, not to mention the internet, a bad name.

The only answer is education - and in the interests of spreading the word, here's a tale of how one hard working, reasonably web-savvy business ALMOST fell for a smooth-talking, low-level web scam, the kind that no doubt works and is making a lot of money for someone (but not for its customers).

Read this month's eTips here...

"We won't be druv"

There's a saying in Sussex, and particularly in my home town of Lewes: "We won't be druv". Woe betide the bureaucrats if they try to interfere with historic customs or offend local sensibilities. As a result, the area has a reputation for 'stroppiness'.

Until recently, online marketing has been about 'driving' people. Eight years ago I was working for an online marketing agency. We were planning to attend a trade show and one of the directors was adamant about the theme for our stand: traffic. Yep, we had traffic lights, bollards, yellow lines... it's all about driving traffic to websites, geddit? The meaning is clear: we're in control and the audience is passive, bovine even. I didn't like it then, and I don't now.

With the emergence of the social web, things seem to be changing. Marketers are talking more about listening, attracting and engaging consumers.

But the old 'driving' terminology still lingers on, as I see in this week's New Media Age: "An estimated £250,000 is being spent by Yahoo on efforts to drive traffic to its newly designed mobile home page..."

Let's get out of the driving seat, guys ... whether we like it or not, people won't be druv.