The Social Media Success Summit opened last night with a keynote address from Guy Kawasaki. Although I don’t follow him on Twitter or elsewhere, he is well known in the industry, and I was looking forward to learning from him. This was my first time using Twitter while participating in an event, and it was equally interesting to see other people’s reactions to the things Guy was saying.
His presentation was well organized, first going through a list of the different ways people are using Twitter, complete with examples, and then describing several ways to gain new followers.
One strategy that was new to many participants, including myself, was the use of the Advanced Search feature. For example, let’s say you want to connect with blues fans in your community. You can simply search on “the blues” to get a quick list of recent tweets about the blues, but to go through the tweeters to see if any are in your area would be extremely time-consuming and tedious. With Advanced Search you can enter not only your search word or phrase, but the name of a place (or a zip code) and how close to that place you want the tweets in your search results to be. There are many other search options, so be sure to check it out!
Of particular interest were the many tools that Guy recommends for automating his tweets. Some people were excited to realize that they can be on Twitter without investing a lot of time into it, while those at the other end of the spectrum felt that this was inauthentic. I think there’s a place for automation, but I also think it’s essential to log into your account and interact with other people. Automation should be used so that you can spend your time forming quality connections, not so you can just put Twitter on autopilot and forget about it. Sure, people want information, but they also want to build relationships.
Furthermore, I don’t agree that tweets should be repeated every few hours as Guy recommends. His rationale is that CNN repeats their news stories throughout the day, so it makes sense for us to repeat our tweets. I already have a few people in my feed who do that, and I find it quite tedious. If you’re promoting an event or a new product, obviously you don’t want to just send out one tweet and hope it gets noticed, but instead of just repeating the same tweet over and over, you can be creative and present the information in a different way (yes, you can still be creative in under 140 characters!).
You can see the outline of the session at http://holykaw.alltop.com/twitter-as-a-weapon-demo-script, and read the discussions on Twitter by entering #SMSS10.
In one of the side conversations, Scott Schumpert asked, “Is Twitter for Marketing or Social Networking?” which I thought was a great question. After giving it some thought, I came up with this:
Social networking is one aspect of marketing, and vice versa.
What is your answer to this question?
Great post Janet! I especially liked:
Automation vs interaction – I’ve stopped following some people because they just tweeted without any interaction; no “thanks for the RT”, no wise cracks or comments on other tweets; just one sided conversation.
Repetitive tweets – I find them tedious too! I’ve stopped following people for having the same tweet 24/7. Some of them repeat themselves on other social media sites too (like Facebook) so you get it in stereo.
Interesting take and some good observations, Janet. I think Guy’s repeat tweeting has some merit, as he showed in his stats, it’s just that some people get carried away with automation and end up becoming spammers.
Not all of your followers are going to see your single Tweet, especially due to time zones around the world. I think a compromise might work though (in lieu of the 8-hour intervals Guy uses).
And yes,
“Social networking is one aspect of marketing, and vice versa.”
However, keep in mind that Guy was not there to talk to us about social networking so much as he was to tell us how Twitter is used as a marketing tool – thus the title of his Keynote.
Jacki – that stereo becomes Quadrophenia if you’re both a friend and a fan on Facebook!
Randy – although I haven’t tried automating my tweets yet, I realize there is some merit to it. But I have to say that the honour of a #followfriday mention is very diluted when the exact same message appears every single week (and sometimes not even on Friday!). So maybe repeat tweets make sense for marketing, but not for networking. Will have to ponder this some more…
“Is Twitter for Marketing or Social Networking?”
For me personally twitter is another place to connect and create relationships…so for that reason I don’t autofollow, I want to know who is on my list. people ultimately buy from people they like and people they trust….so for me twitter is first for connecting and then for sharing.
I don’t autofollow either, Elaine. I have enough trouble keeping track of the people I’ve chosen to follow myself!
For me, using Twitter isn’t that different than going to live networking events. You talk to lots of people, share information and ideas, and if you eventually do business with some of them, it’s great, but even if you don’t, it’s a valuable experience.
Hi Janet,
I was wondering if there would be anyone who would be doing a wrap-up after each session and then voila! I was struggling to catch up with note-taking, tweet chat reading/retweets (with which I could copy later from the history of my tweets into my notes. The firehose is rather dauntingly fast and hard to control!
I feel Social Networking (and Twitter is a tool with SN) is part of Marketing. I remember in the earlier days, e.g. late ’90s when I was administrating an Intranet discussion forum and was really struggling to get discussions going. And then a new wave of consumer behavior change happened – more openness in sharing in social networks came along. With change in consumer behavior, comes change in how we need to set up listening posts, listen more rigorously and stay engaged to consumers’ market feedback.
Nelson, I’m glad you’ve found my blog! I’m not sure I’ll have time to blog about every single session, but I will try to capture at least some of the highlights.
I appreciate your historical perspective. It reinforces the fact that as society changes, the way we market needs to change too.